The encounter between the 21st century and American evangelicalism has reached an important turning point. The Gospel Coalition, one of the nation’s largest and most important evangelical church networks, has just unveiled its own new catechism, the New City Catechism. (Full disclosure: as readers of Hang Together already know, I publish articles on TGC fairly regularly.) The whole thing is very impressive. You download an app that not only gives you the catechism – in adult and child versions – but also explanatory videos, passages from great theologians of history, devotionals, etc. They didn’t cut corners on this.

They’ve culled material from the Heidelberg, Geneva and Westminster catechisms, relying especially on the Heidelberg. You can see why; the Heidelberg is the most pastoral of the three, making it the easiest fit for the relatively emotive and narrative mental environment of early 21st century America. The NCC follows Heidelberg in opening with: “What is our only hope in life and death?” In a culture starved for hope, that’s a powerful place to begin. But more about the significance of that in a moment.

Don’t let the continuity between the NCC and earlier catechisms fool you. Publishing a new catechism is an incredibly audacious act. Although most of the words are old, TGC is making decisions on which of the old words to use from which catechisms and how to arrange and present them. That TGC can get away with publishing the NCC demonstrates the high level of theological trust its audience feels it has earned – and, as importantly, that audience’s hunger for networks like TGC to be audacious in providing a more robust set of shared resources. But more about the significance of that, too, in a moment.

As it happens, my daughter and I recently started memorizing the Catechism for Young Children together. The CYC, first published in the 19th century, is a simplified version of the Westminster Shorter Catechism. It begins with: “Who made you? God.” Good old fashioned Presbyterian analytical method! The questions do get harder; I’m dreading when we have to memorize the whole second and fourth commandments.

It’s going very well; after just a little work each day for a couple weeks, we’ve got the first 14 questions memorized. Only 136 to go! She loves it; not only is she good at memorizing, she really wants to know more about God. And this will give her a permanent foundation of understanding to build on throughout her life.

That’s why NCC is such a heartening development. The desire for better catechesis is moving from the “evangelicals can’t think, isn’t it such a scandal” stage, where we’ve been stuck for a generation, to the “hey, let’s roll up our sleeves and actually do something about this” stage.

I’ll be sticking with the CYC, mainly because it’s easier for a seven-year-old; the NCC’s child version is more suitable for 4th or 5th grade. Another reason is the value I place on maintaining historic continuity with my Presbyterian tradition; while the Reformation taught us that traditions don’t trump everything, they’re still highly valuable in that they allow for the building up of wisdom over time in community. My hope is that when she’s older my daughter will pass from the CYC to the Westminster Shorter, which is of course what the CYC is designed to facilitate.

But a third reason brings me to the reason I think the NCC marks a turning point for American evangelicalism. I want to stick with the CYC because it affirms infant baptism, and I think that’s important. Naturally, since TGC includes churches of different beliefs about this practice, the NCC is unable to address infant baptism.

This illustrates how the future of American evangelicalism is going to do two things simultaneously: reach back to the past before the schism with liberalism in the early 20th century, while also reaching forward with entrepreneurial innovation to invent new modes of godliness for the 21st.

If you’ve been following developments in American evangelicalism, you know that church networks have been the big thing for a while now. Willow Creek is probably the biggest; TGC is the biggest Reformed network; there are plenty of others. These networks convene at huge conferences; have high-traffic websites to discuss and debate; produce and share books, videos and curricular materials; and are even beginning to serve some limited accountability functions.

They are, in short, embryonic denominations. With the NCC, TGC has taken a big step toward becoming a quasi-denomination. I expect at least some other networks to follow the same path – perhaps not with new catechisms, but with continued development of quasi-denominational functions.

I view this as a positive development. There is such a thing as human nature, and therefore some human needs (including the needs of church life) are perennial. Many of these needs used to be filled by denominations. As denominations have declined, evangelicals are increasingly seeking those needs in their networks. I am far from the first to observe this!

But while denominations are coming back, the denominations of the future are not going to be the same as the ones of the past. The two major forces that first shaped the emergence of Protestant denominations were politics (in an era when states were confessional) and doctrinal development (in an era when the ability to reason seriously about things had at least some cultural value). These factors led denominations to build up institutional power and emphasize their distinctives.

Neither of these factors – thankfully in the former case, lamentably in the latter – is a major factor just at the moment. Far more important now is the great confrontation between the Christian story of the universe and the competing stories that vie with it for allegiance in ways they haven’t since the fifth century.

So I expect the new denominations to be more tribal, in both good ways and dangerous ones, than the old denominations. I say “tribal” because that’s what you call a group that is held together more by a shared story about the universe than by shared institutions or intellectual commitments. This will allow for greater flexibility than the old denominations had, particularly in developing our networks locally rather than just nationally. It will also hopefully keep us relationally stronger and more mission-focused. (It’s hard to imagine the new denominations conducting anything like a Machen trial.) And of course it will facilitate stronger gospel unity across barriers such as ecclesiological and sacramentological differences.

On the other hand, it will be a long time before the new denominations will be able to match the old ones either in learning or in institutional development. We may never get back where we were on those measures. Don’t look for a new Westminster Assembly any time soon. And all the popular connotations of the word “tribalism” ought to give us food for sober thought.

Obviously the legacies of the old denominations will continue to matter. We are never really starting from scratch; only God creates ex nihilo. NCC’s debt to the historic Reformed catechisms makes this clear. I’m not expecting to see NCC get much traction among Pentecostal churches.

But Christianity is a religion of history; it is in fact the only world religion that truly believes in history. It says God entered time-space history and even accomplished redemption by his acts within it. No doubt he is the same God yesterday, today, and tomorrow. But we are not the same, so I see no reason to expect his work in our hearts and our world will have the same emphasis.

Watching what God does in our time, as opposed to what he did for our forefathers, will be like the difference between Shakespeare’s Roman political tragedies and his Italian romantic tragedies. The same author with the same genius, but a different setting and topic, and thus a truly different experience.

An article of mine on the Reformation and sanctification appears on The Gospel Coalition this morning:

These days, we usually identify only two causes with the Reformation: the final authority of the Bible and the doctrine of justification without the works of the law. In fact, when the Reformation first began, it had almost nothing to do with either of those causes. The Reformation began as an argument over sanctification.

I’m pretty proud of the title: “No Reformation without Sanctification.”

“What is real? How do you define real? If you’re talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.”

 Last week we were discussing whether those who control America’s elite institutions are aware that the policies they promote are destructive of the ends they claim to cherish. The context was my claim that they can be brought around on marriage by appeals to their values on helping the poor, protecting women and children, preventing a two-class society, etc.

Dan wrote:

 They unquestionably know what their favored policies do.  How could they not?

Let’s quibble over epistemology!

Dan seems to me to have a very excessive faith in human reason. No one examines every one of his beliefs carefully, and very few examine more than a handful of their beliefs carefully. That is not a lamentable state into which our particular society happens to have fallen at this point; it is the permanent condition of humanity in all times and places. Locke wrote great stuff on this.

The great majority of human behavior does not consist of rationally evaluated decisions based on objective information-gathering and deliberation over setting priorities. It consists of only briefly examined, very imperfectly informed responses to “cues” from centers of cultural authority.

This is as much true of our cultural elites as of anyone else. We see millions of people following the cues of the dinosaur media and we sometimes think of those media as shrewd manipulators. In fact, they are not much more awake than those who follow them. They are only following each others’ cues.

And it’s also true of the elites within the conservative subculture. The conservative media world is not much more thoughtful than the “mainstream” one. Ditto the world of Christian leaders, who are to a large extent just following one another’s cues.

Obviously I’m not saying no thought goes on, or that these cycles where everyone is just following everyone else in a big circle can’t be disrupted. In fact, my whole case here is precisely that real thought does go on and the circular marches can be broken.

It’s difficult and it will take a radical shift in strategy.Our first task will be to disrupt the circular marches within our own worlds (both conservative and Christian) to get them to change gears and approach the task of fighting for marriage, life, religious liberty and good stewardship of the economy in a very different way. We have to get our own house in order before we can hope to get the nation’s house in order.

But we can’t do that if we live in a false reality where we imagine that our opponents are knowingly accepting the destruction of America as the price they pay for fidelity to their values. That picture strikes me as ludicrous.

Ayn Rand could believe that everyone who supported collectivism really knew in his heart that collectivism was destructive, because her Pelagian anthropology required this conclusion. Read that interminable Galt speech (if you can) and you’ll see the whole system is laid out very clearly. Starting from the classical Pelagian premises about human behavior, she demonstrates that they imply a Manichean social world. Every person without exception clearly and fully percieves the distinction between the way of living that is morally right and the way of living that pleasurable in the short term, and has deliberately chosen one or the other. This is what Whittaker Chambers correctly percieved about Rand in his notorious review of Atlas Shrugged.

I don’t have space here to explain why Pelagianism is wrong, but I hope that on Hang Together I don’t have to. Both Christian teaching and conservative beliefs about human behavior explain why we shouldn’t expect to find that our opponents are conscious of the destructiveness of their policies. And Christian belief also admonishes us to beware of our own tendencies to make ourselves into angels and our opponents into demons.

At the risk of dwelling on a topic that it may not be edifying to dwell upon, I’m going to circle back to public nudity. (Hang Together has existed for just one month and we’re already establishing a clear brand identity!)

Replying to my argument that the moral imperatives of reproduction alone are insufficient for a shared public morality, Dan wrote that he agreed, but thought that the state specifically should only have a role where reproduction is involved. I asked whether Dan’s position didn’t imply “whole hog libertarianism on everything sexual other than actual intercourse.” After all, as long as intercourse isn’t involved, it would seem reproduction isn’t an issue and thus (by Dan’s theory) the state seemed to be excluded.

So what about banning public nudity? After some back and forth, Dan said:

The state’s interest in the presentation of sexuality in the commons is not an interest in sexuality per se, but in refereeing the interests of two competing actors who have a claim on the commons.

But how is the state to referee these conflicts if it doesn’t know anything about the subject? Suppose actor A does action X in the commons, and actor B goes to the state and makes a claim that X excludes his use of the commons, not because X does direct harm to B but because X degrades the commons in such a way that it makes our moral formation as human beings impossible, such that (as Dan himself admits) the state can exclude it. How is the state to evaluate the claim unless the state understands the moral significance of action X and its impact on the moral formation of human beings?

Law can’t be legitimate if it’s not grounded in a moral consensus. All law presupposes a mroal framework. You can’t ban public nudity without some implied judgment on the moral status of public nudity.

This judgment need not be a total judgment. The state need not decide whether sexuality is an expression of God’s loving nature and marriage is an image of Christ and the church. But it does need to know that flapping your bits around in the town square is wrong.

When the state favors the parents over the pornographers, it is not doing so because it has made an independent moral determination that the pornographer is purveying a harmful metaphysical something.  It is responding to the community’s demand that the commons’ floor be set at a certain level.

I agree the state should not make an “independent” determination, but ground its own moral knowledge in the public moral consensus. My point is that the state does need to exercise some kind of moral competence or it can’t do the job you’re asking it to do.

The state must take this role because the pornographers and the parents have mutually exclusive claims to use of the commons.  And the state can, and does, draw the line without reference to an absolute moral standard.  It simply references community standards.

Not sure what you mean by “absolute” here. But your statement does seem to imply that a moral standard (ultimately, the public’s rather than the state’s) is being codified in law. This implies a need for some level of competence in moral judgment by the state – so it can know and execute the public moral conesnsus.

That’s about all it can legitimately do.  Doing more would involve the state in determining what is orthodox.  And that it may not do.

I agree the state should not enforce a doctrinal orthodoxy. But the state simply cannot be neutral about whether it is morally OK to flap your bits around in the town square. That option just doesn’t exist.

That is why culture is so important.  On these types of questions, when both sides cannot simultaneously do as they wish, culture is the deciding factor.  The state, although a cultural actor, simply enforces the decision made by all the other cultural actors.

But how does it enforce a view unless it has some competence to understand that view and pass judgment on what particular actions do and do not conform to it?

Bottom line: The state ought not enforce a total view of the meaning of life, but it cannot by any possible means avoid enforcing at least a partial view of the meaning of life. The choice to ban public nudity presupposes a moral view (ultimately, the public’s moral view) and thus requires the state to know and judge morality to some extent.

I want to isolate one issue in Dan’s most recent post on whether there’s hope for marriage. The larger issues are important and we’ll get to them in due course. But I think Dan has made a pretty key mistake that needs to be addressed before we carry the broader conversation further.

In social science, the mistake that I have in mind is known as “functionalism.” This is a method for explaining human behavior that was fashionable for a short period but is now generally recognized as a fallacy.

Functionalism assumes that the true meaning of human behavior is unrelated to the subjective experience of the one engaging in the behavior. My thoughts, my feelings, my understanding of what I’m doing, my motivation for doing it – all are treated as irrelevant to the question of what my behavior is really all about. Only the actual impact of my behavior is relevant.

So, for example, when explaining the significance of a social ritual (say, a rain dance) the functionalist disregards what the people carrying out the ritual believe they are doing (summoning the gods to make it rain) and looks only at the practical impact (reinforcement of the tribe’s social solidarity, transfer of wealth to the rainmaker). The reductio ad absurdum of functionalism can be seen in the old joke about the Martian who observes our world and concludes that dogs rule the Earth and humans are their slaves, because we follow them around all day picking up their poop.

Functionalism fails because it cannot account for the behavior it describes. The tribe would not do the rain dance if they didn’t believe it made rain.

Functionalism is particularly destructive to practical application. If all you want to do is describe the tribe, you can get away with a functionalist account, although it will be inferior to an alternative account that includes the subjective. But if you want to influence the behavior of the tribe, you had better know not just what the rain dance does but why they do it.

Speaking of America’s elite cultural institutions, Dan writes:

They do not see the well-being of women, children, the poor, and minorities as ends in themselves.  In fact, most often they seem to be little more than sacramental obeisances…

Let’s try out a sample conflict:  Radical Islam.  Everyone, and I mean everyone, knows that the radical thread of Islam oppresses women in unspeakable ways.  That includes these institutions.  But instead of chasing this misogynist theology to ground, they have been in full-throated defense ever since 2001.  Why?  Because finding fault with America rates so much higher on their priority list…

The poor?  Compare and contrast the wealth-creating track record of socialism and capitalism, then compare America’s poor to those of the rest of the world.  Which system do these institutions champion?  The one trapping more people in poverty, of course.  Children?  We all know that abortion kills them; even those conducting the procedures and their defenders know.  But, to these institutions, sexual libertinism is more important than a child’s life.  Or even millions of them.

I’ll leave aside the implied libel against the sacraments in the phrase “sacramental obeisances” and stick to the political questions.

I agree that our institutions are promoting policies and priorities destructive to the ends they purport to uphold. Does Dan think they do so intentionally? That seems to be the implication of both his word choices and his substantive position. But is this plausible?

Or is the real problem that our side is so sociologically incompetent that we are unable to effectively demonstrate the failure of the policies and hold our institutions accountable for results?

A final note. There’s a fascinating new group blog out there that Dan should really check out. Here’s a quote from its vision statement:

We have seen some of our fellow conservatives identify the success of conservatism with the success of America, such that progressives are viewed as alien to the polity rather than fellow Americans with whom we disagree; we will not go that way.

Words worth contemplating.