David Frum is exactly right. But his opening (and closing) paragraphs could just as easily have been written for David French’s piece yesterday, or Russell Moore’s the day before.
I don’t know enough to say how much I would or wouldn’t agree with Michael Budde, but it is difficult do disagree with his critique here:
Few people inside the churches seem eager to admit it, but in matters of human allegiance, loyalty, and priorities, Christianity is a nearly complete, unabashed failure. It has had little discernible impact in making the Sermon on the Mount remotely relevant in Christian life and lifestyles; it has provided no alternative sense of community capable of withstanding the absolutist claims of state, movement, and market; and it can offer nothing but an awkward embarrassed silence in response to the scandal of Christians slaughtering Christians (not to mention everybody else) in “just” wars blessed by hierarchs on all sides in slavish obedience to presumably more important loyalties.
The failures are so huge, the contradictions with the gospel so enormous, that they don’t even register as subjects of concern in the churches. When forced to confront our hypocrisy and our obedience to other sources of meaning, we wring our hands, lament the sinfulness of the human condition, and pray for a human solidarity that would terrify us if it ever came to pass. And the institutions of death grind on in our world, with good Christians serving them efficiently, responsibly, and in ways indistinguishable from those who reject the premise that Jesus of Nazareth incarnated God’s way for his people on earth.
Budde may focus on murder and “just” wars, but it’s important to see that that silence in the face of scandal exists for Christians faced with scandals of any kind. Exactly what is it that the Christian church has to offer to America or to the world, even on their own biblical or gospel terms?