c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Robert M. Parham is executive director of the Nashville-based Baptist Center for Ethics.)

UNDATED _ A hairline fracture runs across the traditional divide between mainline Protestant and conservative evangelical churches. It could widen into a major fault line over how Christians should interface with culture.

Despite the long-standing cultural war between the Christian right and left, both share a common assumption. Both assume they have a God-given responsibility to manage the culture, to use the state to advance their moral commitments.

The intensity of the conflict blocks the vision of many Christians and they fail to see that the right and left are different sides of the same coin.

Actions by the fundamentalist-controlled Southern Baptist Convention, for example, illustrate one side of the fault line. The SBC no longer recommends American Airlines for travel to its annual meetings. The airline broke its promise to stop corporate sponsorship of homosexual groups, the SBC charges.

Another illustration appears in a statement about the desired relationship between the Republican Party and Southern Baptists. An SBC official said,”The go-along, get-along strategy is dead. No more engagement. We want a wedding ring, we want a ceremony, we want a consummation of the marriage.” Many observers conclude that these actions and statements reflect the puritanical agenda of a conservative denomination battling against culture.

A more insightful reading is that Southern Baptist conservatives are opposed to the waywardness of American culture, not against the culture itself. They see American culture as Christian and themselves as moral managers of culture. They believe the church’s duty is to make society better through the democratic process.

Joining these fundamentalists are moderate Baptists. They, too, think the church must manage society. These Baptists lobby against gambling and for child welfare in their state legislatures. They buddy up to the Clinton administration, pushing the White House to pursue their moral agenda.

On the other side of this fault line stands another group of little- noticed Baptists. They have no official standing within their denomination and seek none. They resemble Amish with e-mail, living in the halls of academia instead of on the farm.

They see both fundamentalist and moderate Baptists as holding the same illusion that the church’s mission is to transform society. These Baptists view themselves as foreigners in a non-Christian culture. Their mission is to live the Sermon on the Mount, speak the truth, honor the poor and tell the story of Jesus.

Their goal is for the church to form a people who speak a different language and live a different set of values, not to make American society a little less promiscuous and racist through legislative and judicial actions. They do not seek to be in charge. They seek to give moral witness to the surrounding culture through their worship and life together.

This hairline split also appears within mainline churches. Two Duke University divinity school professors with backgrounds in mainline Protestantism have called Christians to see themselves like the Jews in dispersion, strangers in a strange land. From their vantage point, the church is”an island of one culture in the middle of another.” They contend the church has no business underwriting American democracy. The church is to confess Christ and create a counterculture that helps believers live as Christians through nonviolent practices.

These professors have authored a widely-read book that calls for a radical approach for the church’s interface with culture. Their book,”Resident Aliens,”has sold over 70,000 copies and has spawned a number of parallel books.

One,”A Peculiar People,”was written by an Episcopalian who criticizes fundamentalism for its desire to retrench Christian faith to an earlier era and liberalism for its attempt to reduce faith to therapy. Another,”Good News in Exile,”was authored by a United Methodist pastor and a United Church of Christ pastor who contend mainline churches lack clout in American culture. They believe if churches awaken to the truth that running the world is not in their job description, congregations will experience powerful opportunities to advance their faith.

Such books are creating a stir within pockets of Protestantism, especially among younger clergy.

But this agenda also faces a number of obstacles. First is the perception that this approach retreats from society and that the church’s abandonment of culture tips the scales in favor of even greater social evil. Second is the lack of moral guidance for those engaged in government and the commercial world. Third is the difficulty of explaining this foreign-sounding vision of the faith to a broad spectrum of Christians.

Nevertheless, if this Amish-like agenda moves successfully from academia into churches, denominational lines will be gerrymandered and some churches might even be revitalized.

DEA END PARHAM