I’ve never read anything by Brennan Manning.
I grew up with Rich Mullins’ smash hit “Awesome God” on constant rotation on our local Christian FM station. And I came to learn through a college roommate that Mullins was a big fan of Manning, even naming his band “A Ragamuffin Band” in ode to Manning’s book “The Ragamuffin Gospel.”
I’ve never read anything by Brennan Manning, but I realized this morning that my younger self was perhaps more influenced by him than I knew. And that influence came through one, lone, gravelly-voiced audio quote within another smash hit album of my youth: DCTalk’s 1995 world-shaking “Jesus Freak.”
On the album, immediately after the title track, is that quote from Manning:
“The single greatest cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, then walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyles. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.”
My teens were filled with that quote rattling around in my mind, and that sentiment pervading the Christian culture I grew up in.
I remember those days, and I remember that world. But I wonder if it’s true anymore? I wonder if that’s still the world we live in?
To boil the quote down to its kernel, hypocritical Christians cause atheism. We say “love one another” and then we don’t love one another. We say we’re Christ’s disciples, and then we don’t act that way. Christ tells us, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another,” (John 13:35) and so by our lack of love, the world believes that we are not His disciples. They believe that we are untrue to our confession, and thus our confession must be false.
In the 1990s as I remember them, this rang true here in the United States. Christians still enjoyed significant social capital. Presidents could scarcely be elected if they didn’t genuflect towards Christian ideals and claim Christianity for themselves. Christians at large felt that we were the basic majority. Christianity and the Stars and Stripes seemed to go together, like Colonialism and the Union Jack.
Our “Youth Groups” talked earnestly and often about our “witness” in the world. We were taught that we should “live out” what we believed, and not deny Christ by our actions. We were to be “salt and light” and win others to Christ, not by our words, but by our deeds.
But something has changed. As I observe the popular discourse today, the “atheist-making hypocrisy” of Christians does not appear to be the same sort Manning wrote against two decades ago.
In the wake of leaked documents suggesting that the Supreme Court is poised to show Roe v. Wade the door with a “don’t let it hit ya’ on the way out,” abortion has come to the fore of our national consciousness again, in a way it has not since David Daleiden’s undercover exposé of Planned Parenthood’s trafficking in baby parts did back in 2015.
And what do we hear? “You Christians aren’t ‘pro-life,’ you are ‘pro-birth.’ You don’t care what happens to children after they’re born!”
Aside from the preposterousness of these claims—Christians are twice as likely to adopt and three times more likely to consider foster care,a and are active in crisis pregnancy centers, counseling, and other care agencies—what are those who claim this saying? In essence, they’re saying that Christians claim to follow Christ, who tells them to care for the needy, but they’re not doing so. Christian Pro-Lifers are hypocrites because they don’t actually care about the children they’re trying to save.
But what do they mean by this? Often, in today’s culture, they mean that Christian Pro-Lifers oppose Big Government programs to help single mothers, through government-subsidized housing, welfare programs, free education, universal basic income, and the like. If Christians were REALLY Pro-Life, they would support our policies! And since they don’t, they’re hypocrites!
To re-work Manning for the third decade of the 21st century: Christian Pro-Lifers acknowledge Jesus with their lips, then walk out the door and deny Him at the ballot box. That is what the unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.
Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in the 90s anymore.
Is this a true hypocrisy that is a great source of atheism today? I don’t believe so. Rather, it is a perceived hypocrisy based on a misconception. Unlike the America of decades past, which generally (note: generally) understood the basic tenets of Christianity, and could more clearly assess the faithfulness of Christians to such tenets, the America of today has lost its understanding of Christianity.
The America of today doesn’t see “love” through the lens of the lingering remnants of a broader Christian social order. The America of today sees “love” through the lens of its post-modern and liberalizing social order. They keep using that word, but they don’t seem to know what it means. “Love”—the thing Christians claim to want to practice—is acted upon through government programs, and sprinkle a heavy dose of intersectional politics into the cauldron, and out comes a very “unloving Christianity.”
If we really loved the “least of these,” we would give full succor to practicing poly-amorists, homo-amorists, and very soon, pedo-amorists. Amor is Amor, after all. Love is Love, and how unloving it is to dis-love the love of another?
Sadly, the failure of the Church in catechesis and covenant nurture of the next generation has reaped a whirlwind: one which has lapped up multitudes of mainline and, increasingly, ostensibly conservative churches in its funnel cloud.
It’s not that hypocrisy is not present in Christians today. But today’s America, in many ways, has lost the ability to clearly identify it because it has lost the ability to identify who Christ is, and thus, what love is.
Conservative Christians today have, by their lifestyle, denied a “Christ” who is made in the image of our present neo-pagan age. And apostasy from that “Christ” is the chief heresy that can be imagined today.
Christians in the United States in 2022 have an uphill battle. Yes, we must confess Christ with our lips, and not deny Him by our lifestyle when we walk out the door. Failure to do so may make atheists of our neighbors. But more often than not, our neighbors are already atheists, and the temptation is to confess today’s false “Christ” with our lips, and serve him with our lifestyle.
So not only must we match our practice with our profession, lest the unbelieving world finds our profession simply unbelievable. But we face a society in which we must again declare what our profession actually is.
They don’t just need to see us following Christ: they need to know who Christ actually is.
- See various Barna surveys, mentioned here: https://cafo.org/2018/06/23/heritage-foundation-forum-how-faith-foster-care-and-adoption-go-together/ (back)
