John Halldorf:

It seems like churches that are at arm’s length from power and the cultural mainstream are in a better position to develop the Christian virtue of hospitality. As a majority religion intertwined with the state, Christianity often becomes more rigid, less hospitable, and at times hostile—even to other Christian minorities. Pluralism is seen as a threat, since it might mean that Christianity will lose its privileged position. In contrast to this, a minority can never expect to set the rules for any encounter. Instead they must find ways to negotiate and live with difference. Accordingly, they become well equipped to live as a creative minority in a pluralistic society.

This explains why Swedish evangelicals are less threatened by immigration, pluralism, and the growth of Islam than are their US evangelical counterparts, to say nothing of the Swedish secular majority. To a minority, pluralism is not the big threat. In this case, diversity is a step up from the traditional homogenous secular-Lutheran society. It levels the playing field, and makes clear that there is no neutral ground, only competing perspectives. The development of what Jürgen Habermas called the post-secular society is a welcome development to a minority. Swedish evangelicals are aware that any attempt to homogenize the culture would marginalize them.

Wesley Hill is one of those extraordinary writers whose words always manage to inspire. Even the use of a word like “exvangelical”—a word that I’m a little too excited to add to my vocabulary—becomes an opportunity for genuine insight, for the encouragement of a critical thought life that is always also longing for and returning to its “naive” faith. From his recent essay on the novels of Chaim Potock:

Even so, the Evangelical faith in which I was nurtured continues to beguile, inspire, and compel me in ways I am still discovering. I can’t be the Christian I used to be, but I want still, very much, to be a Christian. Potok’s characters help me understand my complicated feelings. They are not only interested in the deconstructive moment, in which childhood certainties are relinquished. They strive also for the chastened second naiveté, on the far side of the desert of criticism, that will make it possible for them to go on being faithfully Jewish.

The eighteenth-century aphorist G. C. Lichtenberg says there is “a great difference between believing something still and believing it again.” The novels of Chaim Potok show us what the latter looks like, and in doing so, make believers like me feel much less alone.

“He who has ears let him hear.” With that admonition, a Christian leader in the region of central Maine (who shall remain nameless) recently posted a link to a call for churches to defy government mandates, which comes from John MacArthur and the elders at Grace Community Church. Putting aside the fact that, according to said leader, this 2000-word blog post is too lengthy for most of us and too truth-laden for anyone but the elect to appreciate, and putting aside the cringe-worthy problem of equating “what the Spirit says to the church” with what is, despite MacArthur’s disclaimer, ultimately a defense of the First Amendment masquerading as biblical authority, and also putting aside the enormously problematic argument from MacArthur that government limits on large gatherings “in principle” prevent the church from being the church—I see little connection between anything MacArthur says and the scripture he references; and I see no connection between the scripture he references and our current situation. None.

I don’t deny that there can be problems with government mandates. Nor do I deny that the church “must obey God rather than men.” But what that obedience looks like and what it requires of us as citizens is not easy to nail down, and certainly hasn’t, to my understanding, been well represented here by MacArthur. I also affirm the truth of every verse MacArthur links to. But as I see it, these scriptural passages, rather than being representative proofs, seem more than a little politically abused and parenthetically imprisoned on the page: open them up and they fly far, far away from MacArthur’s exhortation, as the context of Acts 5:29 alone should suffice to show.

Perhaps most alarmingly, MacArthur makes a point of saying that “the Lord may be using these pressures as means of purging to reveal the true church.” Maybe. It could very well be a chance to reveal the “true church.” Who knows. But if it is, I highly doubt that the litmus test will be the refusal of the true church to consider public health (i.e. love of neighbor) over its accustomed form of “worship.” More likely, the reason will be that the true church knows how to meet and to worship and to serve its Lord outside of a building, and it will likely be too concerned with emulating the true spirit of Christ in the world to be very concerned with signing some confused petition or to complain about the church’s “right” to meet in large, medium, or small numbers.

That said, I think this response from Jonathan Leeman is eminently (if not excessively) gracious. I really do envy the humility in his grammatical voice and his meekness in simply saying, “Four things are worth mentioning.” They are. And they are certainly worth reading, which is more than I can say for MacArthur’s clarion call.