Opposing Pietism While Bypassing Piety Is a Toxic Cocktail

Though rightly abandoning pietism, the Christian New Right has dangerously abandoned piety. This is a formula for catastrophe.

Dear friends and supporters:

For 35+ years, I've criticized and refuted pietism, dualism, gnosticism, and escapism. Under the influence of earlier thinkers like Abraham Kuyper, Herman Dooyeweerd, and Francis Schaeffer, I’ve bannered the Lordship of Christ in all of life, not just the family and church. During much of the 20th century, conservative Protestantism retreated into ecclesial panic rooms while avoiding bold, consistently Christian engagement in the wider society, expecting that cultural apostasy was destined to fester right up to the any-moment Second Advent or “rapture” of the church. Sure enough, the more the church withdrew from culture, the more the culture apostatized.

Behind this retreat was an ostensibly legitimate motivation and theology: our chief, and perhaps only, task in the present world is devotion to God and his word and prayer and, at most, the church and personal evangelism. In other words, personal piety. The first and great command is to love God with our entire being, and cultural dominion diverts us from that godly, all-consuming calling. In this view, Christians committed to the cultural mandate (Gen. 1:27–28) have reversed godly priorities: if they spend time consumed with God and his word and in prayer and evangelizing, what God wants done in the world will take care of itself. But if we try to Christianize the world, we’ll end up de-Christianizing ourselves and the church.

Anti-Pietistic Success

The relentless critique of this pietism has gotten through. Over the last 15 years a sea change has propelled numerous Christians, particularly young men, into the social arena with a bold message that Jesus is Lord of all of culture including — and especially — politics. This is the Christian sector of the New Right, tired of the vision of the American Founders (classical liberalism) that operates within a system of the rule of law, blind justice, checks and balances, negotiated politics, and religious and political and economic liberty. Rather, the Christian New Right wishes to capture political power to crush depraved Leftists with their Drag Queen Story Hour, radical feminism, open borders, global free trade, and pro-abortion agenda. While the American — and, I might add, biblical — way is for everyone to play fairly by the rules, the Christian New Right’s way is to bend the rules for bold Christian purposes. Imposing the Christian vision via one-sided coercive politics is their obsession. (“My goal is to reward my friends and crush my enemies.”)

Against Pietism, Against Piety

More pernicious still, in turning away from pietism many seem to have turned away from piety. Pietism is reducing the Faith to personal devotion to the Lord while avoiding the job of Christian impact on the wider society. Piety is reverence toward God and his word and ways. We need less pietism, and more piety. Unfortunately, too many of the Christian New Right have thrown out both pietism and piety.

Young pastors coveting followers on the platform-formerly-known-as-Twitter (X) rarely say anything about the gospel of Jesus Christ; about powerful and prevailing prayer; about consuming the word of God; about living a life of faith; and, perhaps most egregious all, about a quest for personal holiness. Rather, they routinely mock and demean women under the guise of opposition to feminism. They relish coarse, unbiblical language. They’re obsessed with bizarre theories about aliens and extraterrestrials. They treat weightlifting and physical fitness as almost fruits of the Spirit (remember they are very young). Some are even downright racists — spouting Jewish conspiracy theories and arguing for an ethno-state, meaning: a nation of white people.

Politics is the name of their game, because politics is all about coercion. Like the German existentialist and nihilist Friedrich Nietzsche, they’re obsessed with a will to power. Just as they’re captivated by the physical power of masculinity as weightlifting, so they’re preoccupied with the social power of masculinity as politics. It’s all about power, the will to coercion, the will to crushing.

In the Bible, coercion has its place, notably in parents’ limited discipline of minor children and in the state’s enforcement of a narrow range of God’s law. But coercion plays a distant, tertiary role in a Christian society. A Christian society depends chiefly on gospel persuasion and the power of the Spirit. Non-Christian societies tend to degenerate into coercion societies because they lack the power of the Holy Spirit. By substituting the power of the state, in other words, the Christian New Right is disintegrating into a non-Christian approach to society while parading beneath a Christian veneer. It is not remotely Christian.

A Christian Society Presupposes Christian Means

A Christian society presupposes Christian means. The Christian society isn’t a society in which Christians capture the levers of political power and impose Christianity. This is a mark of non-Christian societies, political soteriology. John Murray writes (1:358–359):

For Christian [world] order is order that is Christian and, if Christian, it rests upon the supernatural and redemptive foundations of Christianity. Christian order is brought into existence by the deliverance from sin and evil wrought by redemption and regeneration. The principles and forces that must be at the basis and centre of Christian order in any of its forms must be the principles and forces of God’s regenerative and sanctifying grace. (emphasis supplied)

In other words, society becomes Christian when Christians, justified by the redeeming grace of God in Christ and sanctified by the power of the Holy Spirit, preach the gospel, obey God’s law, and peacefully influence the culture around them for Christian truth. Gradually over time — not in the next election cycle — a society is leavened (Mt. 13:33) by biblical gospel and law, starting with the family and education and media and journalism and music and art and architecture and economics and business and also, one factor among many, politics. In a Christian society politics is neither unimportant nor all-important. We might even say: politics comes last.

Christian people, if they act consistently Christian in all of life, tend to engender Christian culture and society. They don’t hide their candle under a bushel, but shine it brightly that all can see. They are salt and light. They exercise the cultural mandate, the primal commission given by God to godly man and woman.

Conclusion

Because, as A.W. Tozer once soberingly wrote, “Our fruit will be what we are,” if unsanctified young Christians neglecting or deemphasizing the gospel and prayer and the word of God race headlong into women-demeaning, profanity-spouting, conspiracy-spreading, racism-embracing, iron-pumping messianic politics, they will tend to produce a blatantly non-Christian society wallpapered in a formalized Christianity. It won’t be remotely Christian, and the end will be no better than a Leftist, secular, neopagan society, which is equally non-Christian. A Christian society necessitates redeemed, sanctified, obedient Christians.

This does not describe the Christian New Right, to put it mildly.

If Jesus is cosmic Lord (Col. 1:15–20), he must dominate not just politics and the state but our thoughts and Bible reading and prayer and evangelism and tongue and friendships and all else. If Jesus is cosmic Lord, our love for and devotion to him must be white-hot. We must seek him with all our heart. We must routinely expect — and get — answered prayer. Every dimension of our lives must be a testimony to the triune God. Our political task must be one — and one of the last — of those dimensions.

Personal

Sharon and I just returned from the Worldview Youth Academy in Gatlinburg hosted by Joe Boot and the Ezra Institute. I was last in Gatlinburg over 55 years ago when my father took me there as a boy. The conference was outstanding, even better than I anticipated. The teenagers were hungry for God’s word and worldview instruction. When the Q&A panel arrived, I was profoundly impressed that every question (no exception) was thoughtful and articulate, reflecting a robust spiritual appetite.

Ezra is already making plans for next year's WYA at the same venue in Gatlinburg. I encourage you to invite teenagers to register when the Ezra website makes the announcement.

And please plan to sign up for the truthXchange conference the last weekend of August. See the details below.

Thank you so much for your friendship. ✞

Yours for the cosmic Lord,

Founder & President, Center for Cultural Leadership

Isa. 49:1–2

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Preaching in San Diego

For you friends in the San Diego area, I'll be preaching for Providence Church of San Diego (Pastor Brian Hendry) on Sunday, August 4. I hope to see a number of you there.

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