We were out visiting for the church, the Deacon and I, two Baptists prepared to “win the lost for Christ” on a steamy summer Sunday afternoon in Fort Worth. The Deacon was a committed soul winner, and I was a high school student, filled to the brim with evangelical zeal and adolescent testosterone, both of which can kill you.
Armed with “prospect cards,” we arrived at a little house on Fort Worth’s south side. A young man answered the door and invited us in, padding across the linoleum floor in his sock feet.
Bill Leonard
With television still blaring, the Deacon asked: Did the young man “know Jesus as his personal savior?” The answer was negative, and the Deacon began that evangelical litany, “the plan of salvation.” The young man, like the entire human race, was lost and unless he put his faith in Jesus, right then, he could be lost forever, separated from God in this world and the next. Would he be willing to pray a simple prayer and invite Jesus into his heart?
“No,” he replied, he was not ready, not yet anyway.
“Well,” the Deacon remarked, looking him straight in the eye, “I guess you’ll just have to go to hell, won’t you?” And out the door we marched, the Texas heat reminding us of the wrath which is to come.
“Our supposed Christian witness was mortally wounded by our own lack of Christian compassion.”
We called this “witnessing for Christ,” bringing the word of salvation to all who would receive it. What the Deacon and I failed to realize was that our supposed Christian witness was mortally wounded by our own lack of Christian compassion.
Cruel Christians
The memory of that decades-old experience overtook me on reading David French’s Dec. 22 New York Times op-ed that begins with this stark perception of American Christianity’s public witness:
“Here’s a question I hear everywhere I go, including from fellow Christians: ‘Why are so many Christians so cruel?’ I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard someone say something like: ‘I’ve experienced blowback in the secular world, but nothing prepared me for church hate; Christian believers can be especially angry and even sometimes vicious.’”
French, an evangelical before that word got horribly politicized, offers this diagnosis: “It’s a simple question with a complicated answer, but that answer often begins with a particularly seductive temptation, one common to people of all faiths: that the faithful, those who possess eternal truth, are entitled to rule. Under this construct, might makes right, and right deserves might.”
This he continues: “It’s remarkable how often ambition becomes cruelty. In our self-delusion, we persuade ourselves that we’re not just right but that we’re so clearly right that opposition has to be rooted in arrogance and evil. We lash out. We seek to silence and destroy our enemies. … But it is all for the public good. So we sleep well at night. We become one of the most dangerous kinds of people — a cruel person with a clean conscience.”
In the eyes of many Americans, is cruelty now a distinguishing element of the Christian “witness” in the land of the free and the home of Culture Holy Wars?
That’s not all. In his Dec. 21 New York Times op-ed, conservative Roman Catholic Ross Douthat expresses cautious optimism regarding signs that some Americans may be reconnecting with religion, but outside traditional contexts. Says Douthat:
“Is cruelty now a distinguishing element of the Christian ‘witness’ in the land of the free and the home of Culture Holy Wars?”
“This Christmas seems different. There is statistical evidence that the latest wave of secularization has reached some sort of limit. There is suggestive cultural evidence that secular liberalism has lost faith in itself, that many people miss not just religion’s moral vision but also its metaphysical horizons, that the arguments for religious belief might be getting a new hearing.”
He adds: “But different probably means really different, not just a return to what existed in the past. The last bastions of the before times, the old religious establishments, are likely to remain in existential trouble. For instance, … the American Protestant Mainline isn’t about to leap up from its sickbed, nor is an all but expired Anglicanism in Britain. Likewise, groups such as the Southern Baptists and the Mormons, fast growing a few decades ago and struggling today, aren’t going to automatically rebound or boom again.
He concludes: “Instead, any growth is likely to be nondenominational, subcultural (think Latin Mass Catholics or converts to Eastern Orthodoxy or communally oriented Protestants), mystical and sui generis, with notable flowerings in places where traditional faith has rarely grown before (like in the tech industry, say).
From Douthat’s perspective, those Christian communions that give witness to the presence and experience of divine transcendence may offer various “metaphysical horizons” for a new constituency of spiritual seekers. Or is this simply wishful thinking at a time when many continue to disengage from involvement in religious beliefs and practices?
Have we reached a limit?
In fact, what if secularism hasn’t “reached some sort of limit” after all, but has morphed into conservative populism, co-opting an entire subculture of conservative evangelical Christians who continue claiming moral/doctrinal high ground even as they ignore or rationalize the ethical malfunctions and worldly tenets of their religio-political compatriots. Case in point, Al Mohler’s explanations for his governmental alliances contain enough moral casuistry to make a Medieval Jesuit blush.
“Al Mohler’s explanations for his governmental alliances contain enough moral casuistry to make a Medieval Jesuit blush.”
On the cusp of 2025, some American Christians seem to be girding up their ecclesiastical loins toward securing legislative enforcement of a particular nationalist “witness” throughout the entire society. (See Project 2025.) So, like it or not, it appears American culture, inside and outside the church, is putting the gospel witness to the test. For not only are we to bear witness to the Jesus story in the church and the world, but the nature of the witness we bear in ourselves informs the kind of Jesus whose witness we profess.
Fortunately, there are followers of the Jesus Way who bear witness to a Christianity that is compassionate rather than cruel. When the inevitable but unexpected “test” falls upon them, they respond with grace.
Tommy Justus
My friend Tommy Justus, pastor of Mars Hill Baptist Church in Mars Hill, N.C., reminded me recently that to confront a test of your Christian witness you’ve got to stand in line. He and his congregation are in the middle of one right now.
Hurricane Helene struck the North Carolina mountains Sept. 27, 2024, dumping an estimated 40 trillion gallons of rain on a group of western counties including Buncombe, Madison and Yancey. The destruction was immediate and devastating, but the damage was less dire in Mars Hill where the congregation quickly responded, becoming what one local paper called “a community hub and distribution/relief center” for their region.
Justus, who also drives a school bus on local mountain roads, and chairs Madison County’s Transportation Board, co-opted vehicles that took Mars Hill University students, on campus but with no classes, to the nearby, severely damaged town of Marshall. The young people spent two weeks literally digging out mud from streets and businesses and, Justus says, bringing energy and hope to their neighbors.
Losing electricity and Wi-Fi for only one day, the church became a resource for students and locals to use computers and cell phones, allowing many local businesses to continue functioning. Church members cook, organize and serve daily meals for citizens and rescuers, coordinating dispersal of meals and materials across several counties.
Other faith communities have given similar witness in the face of desperate human need in this Appalachian region. Recovery will be a long time coming, and the Mars Hill Baptist congregation and other communions have proved themselves up for the task. Their witness was immediate; it remains intact and enduring.
The sign in front says, “Mars Hill Baptist Church — Every Member a Minister.” Pastor Justus observes: “You spend your career telling people to live like that, and then when the test comes, they do it!”
Where’s our witness?
Bill Leonard is founding dean and the James and Marilyn Dunn professor of Baptist studies and church history emeritus at Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, N.C. He is the author or editor of 25 books. A native Texan, he lives in Winston-Salem with his wife, Candyce, and their daughter, Stephanie.
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