During the last few years I have been describing at different meetings and gatherings of my church the reality of religious decline in American society. In a recent study realized by the Pew Research Center, they found that 65% of American adults describe themselves as Christians when asked about their religious affiliation. This is down 12 percentage points over the past decade. On the other hand, the religiously unaffiliated share of the population, consisting of people who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular,” now stands at 26%, up from 17% in 2009. This means that in the last ten years less people are showing up to church, or to any organized religious group.
Some people have argued that the reason for the decline of Christianity in America has to do with the Church’s accommodation to cultural values that are contrary to Christian teaching. I, for my part, agree with the statement in principle. I believe that we, as Christians, have adopted the values of our dominant culture, as if they actually were the same as the values of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. At different times in our cultural development we, Christians, have come to adopt values such as believing that people of African descent were only 3/5th of a human being. This idea, which became law of the land, was enshrined in our Constitution (Article 1, Section 2).
We came to believe that Native Americans’ segregation into reservations, established by law, was an acceptable practice. Between 1929 and 1936 an estimated 2,000,000 people of Mexicans ancestry were removed from their homeland, the U.S.A., and sent to Mexico. Of those removed from the U.S., sixty percent were birthright citizens. This was done by the law and by our cultural agreement, which sustained that these folks were different from us, meaning white.
Under the common law legal doctrine known as coverture, a married woman in the United States had hardly any legal existence apart from her husband. Her rights and obligations were subsumed under her husband. Women could not vote, own property, enter into contracts, or earn a salary. By law, we, Christian people, established policies of segregation in our land that created and supported disparities and neglect over various segments of our population, we called them Jim Crow Laws.
For many Christians, especially those who had power in our country, and who had power in our churches, these policies were not only good but necessary for a good society. However, there were many other Christians who disagreed with these ideas, cultural values, laws, and policies. Christians who will break immoral laws, life denying laws, in their obedience to a higher law: God’s Good News in Jesus Christ. This obedience to the Gospel made possible an end to slavery, segregation, and discrimination; their obedience, and their faithfulness to God, made possible changes to the constitution (the 13th Amendment, the 14th Amendment, the 15th Amendment, and the 19th Amendment), which recognized the full humanity of people of color and women. For these Christians the most important law was that of God’s love for the world.
Love is the main principle of Christian life, as it is the main principle of the Kingdom of God, as John reminds us in his first letter:
Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.
God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. (4:7-8, 16b, 20).
But love must be understood not as something we do because it makes us feel good but rather because it is our way of imitating the character of God. There will be occasions in which we are going to find that to love as we have been loved means to be willing to risk our own safety and well being just as Jesus did (Philippians 2:1-8). So this love that our Holy Scriptures speak about it is not a sentimental matter, but rather, it is at the core of our Christian teaching, which will take us to challenge and confront the powers of this world, the cultural values of our society, and the laws of the land that reject the values of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
I believe that the Good News Jesus preached is life giving, life sustaining, and life affirming. For the Gospel all life is worthy of value because God has so decreed (John 3:16). Therefore, any law or practice that denies the values of the Gospel are contrary to the message of Jesus; and from my perspective must be rejected and opposed.
Therefore, I believe that if we turn ourselves to the Gospel message that Jesus preached and taught, we will see people coming to faith in Jesus, people coming to be in the fellowship of the Christian community, a community that sustains and teaches people that to love is the key to abundant life. I believe that if we live out the love of God in the world we will experience a Christian revival in American society and around the world. The “nones,” the “dones,” the unbelievers, the millennials, the poor, and the oppressed will come to experience the love, mercy, and compassion of God the way Jesus’ showed us:
This is my command: Love one another the way I loved you. This is the very best way to love. Put your life on the line for your friends. (John 15:12-13, The Message)
Let us pray for this revival! May you have a blessed thanksgiving time with friends and family.
The Rev. Dr. Eliezer Valentin-Castañón
