From earlier this week at the ‘Great Gathering’of Republicans.
Many people have already pointed out the blasphemous and idiotic nature of this ‘benediction’ by Mark Burns at the RNC this week, so I won’t go there. But I do want to share a thought about the use of language.
I was listening to a discussion on Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the context in which he found himself in the 1930’s and 40’s in Berlin. The Christian church in Germany was by and large supportive of the Nazi regime, long after the true nature of its aims was made murderously clear. One of Bonhoeffer’s concerns was how to prophetically communicate Biblical Christianity to a culture where the language of Christianity had been corrupted and co-opted in the service of an evil political empire.
This is no small task.
We need a word to help us understand some of this. I propose syncretism, here defined by missiologist Gailyn Van Rheenen:
Syncretism occurs when Christian leaders accommodate, either consciously or unconsciously, to the prevailing plausibility structures or worldviews of their culture. Syncretism, then, is the conscious or unconscious reshaping of Christian plausibility structures, beliefs, and practices through cultural accommodation so that they reflect those of the dominant culture. Or, stated in other terms, syncretism is the blending of Christian beliefs and practices with those of the dominant culture so that Christianity loses it distinctiveness and speaks with a voice reflective of its culture.
That last line is worth repeating in italics: “Syncretism is the blending of Christian beliefs and practices with those of the dominant culture so that Christianity loses its distinctiveness and speaks with a voice reflective of its culture.” I went wild with the formatting and threw some bold in there too; forgive me.
Syncretism happens all the time and everywhere to varying degrees, but in this case it is particularly alarming because it is paraded on center stage at one of the most televised and closely watched events in America – an event which is supposed to represent the political beliefs of about half of Americans.
The end result of all this is that it becomes harder and harder to communicate gospel truth in a way that is clearly distinguished from the culture, in a way prophetically speaks to the culture.
Once you marry Jesus to the Republican Party or political conservatism, it’s an awfully knotty mess to separate them again.
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