This is the second instalment of an interview by Mary Davis for en with Ranald Macaulay
Last month, Ranald explained his deep concerns about evangelicalism: how Christianity seems totally implausible to our postmodern culture and how post-modernity’s effect is hugely accelerated by the Internet, social media and TV.
en: I do hope you’ve got some wisdom in how to deal with this…
RM: There are no easy answers. I do think that Francis Schaeffer saw things clearly. When I first met him, I was thrilled to find that my questions from my atheist background had adequate answers from Scripture. He was committed to what he called ‘true truth’ – that is, that what God has revealed in the Bible is really true and, on the basis of that, he was able to challenge the false ideas of the non-Christian world-views around us.
He felt that this was a priority for the church, what he called ‘the orthodoxy of doctrine’. Truth matters in every age until Christ returns. But all this rested on his idea of ‘true spirituality’ – ‘the moment-by-moment relationship with the living Christ’ as he put it, which, when applied to the local church, he called ‘the orthodoxy of community’.
en: What exactly did he mean?
RM: It was his way of balancing the intellectual things of the faith with the lived experience of individual Christians and of the church – the first ‘the orthodoxy of doctrine’, the second, ‘the orthodoxy of community’.
When I arrived at L’Abri in Switzerland in 1959, for example, I was struck by the reality of the community. Here was an ordinary family where people loved each other, but where they were also idiosyncratic and not sinless; where they had fights and had to make up; where the children were included; where there was plenty of creativity going on. It was a lovely, wholesome thing to see. It was also genuinely sacrificial – when you open your home, as the Schaeffers did, there’s lots of noise and confusion and difficult people and broken wedding-presents, etc.
Christianity isn’t just an intellectual discussion. We have to embody a life that is totally different from the way the world operates, because it’s centred on Jesus, on hope, on salvation, on clear ideas of right and wrong, on the Holy Spirit. So, the combination of these two things – the intellectual answers coupled with a living, communal spirituality – was magical to me.
en: And you think that evangelical churches are missing this?
RM: Not in the sense that everyone’s working away at community earnestly and sincerely. Where we’re slipping up is in our lack of flexibility, especially given the enormity of the changes in society.
Some of that inflexibility comes from a formulaic mind-set that depends too much on strategies, techniques and programmes, just as in the business world. Not that programmes are wrong. But, as I said before, if we train young people to do expository preaching without helping them to understand the larger picture around us, we’re focusing on technique rather than on truth. We’ve elevated the method and neglected the mind. That can’t be right. As a result, preaching tends to become mechanical.
Another example is church planting. Church planting is great: by God’s grace I’ve planted two churches myself. But if there’s a fundamental weakness in church A, then that will inevitably be transferred to church-plant B. Nothing’s changed. We’ve got a technique rolling but not dealt with the problem.
In terms of flexibility, the apostle Paul gives us a different pattern. He was only too aware of what others were thinking – and it shows in his defence before Festus, the Roman governor, or when he challenges the Athenian philosophers. ‘Why on earth would you think that to be true?’ That’s how we should be challenging Naturalism today. Our culture is hooked on what I call ‘the virus of technique’ and I think we’ve got too much of it in the way we do church. Both our teaching and our church programmes tend to be formulaic. They inevitably take us towards legalism – stiff and sterile.
en: When did Schaeffer start to identify the weakness of the evangelical church?
RM: It grew on him, I think, after he moved to Europe in the late 1940s. He became aware that a lot of his activism was like ‘selling cornflakes’, as he put it. Then he had a simple but profound spiritual renewal around 1953. His book True Spirituality came out of that. This is where people misunderstand him. They think he’s just interested in intellectual things when, really, he was a reformer, a prophet. His basic message was ‘We’ve got to recover a New Testament spirituality, summed up by the twin ‘orthodoxies’ of doctrine and community. (Of course, Edith, his wife, was also fundamental in all this).
en: So what should we do?
RM: In terms of doctrine, the church needs to have a much clearer ‘educational’ model in mind.
We have educational goals for our children – GCSEs, A levels, university, etc. We know that’s important for them. Similarly, in the church we should review all our programmes and ask ourselves honestly: are our kids, are all our adults, being helped to understand what’s happening around them so that they can begin to confront falsehood?
Why are we suddenly deluged with gender confusion? What about Adam and Eve? Is Darwinian evolution really true scientifically? What about the relativistic ideas being circulated on TV, as in the recent series called Civilisations?
What about the deconstruction of language? My point is that the cultural shifts require us to bring these educational needs inside the church – to show that only Scripture, centred on Christ, can make sense of all this stuff.
And not only ‘make sense’ but inspire us to go out and challenge the ‘foolishness’ of unbelief, as Paul called it, with the gospel of truth (Romans 1.22).
We’re living in a pagan culture and we must make sure we understand what’s happening. Not to be ‘intellectuals’ – but so we can help our people understand how glorious the truth is in relation to everything that’s hitting them in the public arena.
en: And what about the ‘orthodoxy of community’?
RM: Well, on the community side, we can all chip in. And we must. There are gifts of all kinds. Paul used the illustration of the body. So, what about those who are musical or artistic? What about those who are passionate about the deprived and needy? Could our evangelical businessmen/women help to expose the neo-Marxist rhetoric behind so much of our political discourse today – just as Jordan Peterson is doing with gender-politics?
I believe people around us are increasingly wistful about the absence of imaginative, creative, caring, environmentally sensitive communities – because they’re increasingly rare in today’s consumer society. It’s a golden opportunity for evangelical churches to demonstrate that this is possible and that it’s the norm for Christians in every century.
It isn’t going to be big news. It’ll involve lots of ‘you-in-your-small-corner-and-I-in-mine’. The last thing we need is inflexible models with an emphasis on conformism – like children parading in a crocodile on a school outing. We’re set free by Christ to be fully human and to use our different gifts creatively. I could give so many examples of this: Christians setting up really good schools that non-Christians want to go to; Crossway Books producing a first-class Study Bible (ESV) now not only being published in China, but being distributed to thousands of church leaders in the country. There’s so much we can do.
But, there are no techniques! L’Abri isn’t ‘the’ answer. And good as they may be, nor is UCCF or Uncover, or FIEC, or AMiE, or ‘camp’, or whatever. It must be a truly deep, spiritual renewing of our minds, with each of our Christian communities becoming more and more compassionate, creative and imaginative.
I think about the Pilgrims going to America in the 17th century. The situation seemed dire and their lives were tough in the extreme. But look what came out of their faithfulness. Our time is just as exciting. If you want a real Christian life which could, in due course, involve martyrdom – now is the time to be alive. What each of us needs to do in view of the seriousness of our moment in history is to take ourselves off to the Lord saying: ‘Here I am, Lord. Send me!’
