Social/protest movements will always promise you more than what they can deliver. Whether the left or the right, if you embrace it wholly they will entice you with religious language only to leave you disappointed in the end. They will often articulate ideals that sound good, but in practice are often contradictory. For the Christian, some movements will be so explicitly un-christian that it justifies an immediate refusal. While other movements will seek to persuade you on the basis of their compassion and desire for unity which are certainly Christian virtues.
What I have seen is a steady passion among advocates of social movements to view them as the sine qua non of existence. This can happen with sports, but it’s much more visible at a social movement level. Social movements encompass not only the existential but also the intellectual which make them more compelling.
When Christians embrace such social movements their energies are drained quickly because they demand religion-like stamina. What is left of the strength after engaging the itinerary of these movements through the week is nothing more than left-over enthusiasm for foundational habits like worship and worldview thinking.
Very often social movements suck the life out of true religion and diminish any attempt to see life through Christian lenses. Social movements too often make you more passionate about “causes” than “Christ.” A quick tour through the dangerous world of twitter will reveal that rapidly. And here is the great danger: one can view their social movement as an extension of their faith, but most likely it is an extension of their social self, which often puts the individual at risk of embracing other like-minded movements that may not be as careful to delineate ideas than the first.
Protest movements are generally absorbed into an ethos that does not provide sensitivity to kingdom ideals or people, but sensitivity and proclivity to be around people who share only those ideas. I would argue that this is the beginning of racist formulations which as we have seen is found in every skin color. Further, social or protest movements when embraced as sole forms of expression lead to the vast politicization of churches who view their role to affirm such movements and never to challenge them for fear of backlash.
But Christendom is not dependent on social or protest movements, and if we do embrace or enter such movements, we need to attach ourselves temporarily to them lest we begin to trust in ideological horses and chariots over the Lord our God. All our movements need to come under the Lordship of Jesus, and must begin with that reality; any other other foundation is sinking sand.
His father was a professor of French Literature and his mother a piano teacher and a poetess. Jordan graduated from the University of Georgia in 1971 with a degree in Comparative Literature and studies in music and political philosophy. He finished his master’s degree in systematic theology at Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia and was awarded the D. Litt. degree from the Central School of Religion, England, in 1993.
