Christless Christianity: An interview with Michael Horton

Has the Church become captive to the spirit of the age? Many believe that Martin Luther's fears, which led him to write The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, certainly apply to the modern Protestant church. Michael Horton, professor of systematic theology and apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary in California, believes that the church has been taken captive by American culture and its ideals of consumerism, pragmatism, self-sufficiency, individualism and positive thinking. He claims that while the church still invokes the name of Christ, we have precious little reason to believe that we need him. Hence we are moving towards a state that he describes as ‘Christless Christianity’.

Dr Horton is the also editor of Modern Reformation magazine and the author of number of books, including A Better Way (on worship); Where in the World is the Church? (on vocation); The Covenant and Eschatology, Lord and Servant, Covenant and Salvation and People and Place (all on covenant theology); Covenants of Promise (on covenant); The Law of Perfect Freedom (on the Ten Commandments); and Putting Amazing Back Into Grace. His latest book is Christless Christianity. Dr Horton speaks regularly on White Horse Inn, a national syndicated radio program, and is a minister in the United Reformed Churches in North America. He lives with his wife Lisa and four children in Escondido, California.

 

Michael, in your new book, Christless Christianity, you claim that the historic orthodox message about Jesus is being lost in modern evangelicalism. What has led you to this conclusion?

Well, the simple answer is that I am becoming increasingly concerned about a creeping fog that is spreading throughout the evangelical world—even in conservative Reformed churches—over the nature and identity of Jesus Christ. My concern is that I can go into any number of churches and not know how Jesus will be presented. In some places, preachers will talk about him as the modern-day equivalent of a ‘life coach’ or a locker room pal. Others think of him as a culture warrior, philosopher or corporate CEO. What really concerns me is that less and less Jesus is understood as the divine redeemer. Of course, there are plenty of other challenges out there as well. I could point to a number of theologians or Christian groups who are challenging central doctrines, such as original sin, substitutionary atonement and justification. However, my real concern is with the way in which Jesus is being presented within so-called evangelical churches. I am no longer confident that when I attend a church, I am going to be introduced to Christ in all the Scriptures. So my aim in this book is to try and identify what this creeping fog is in a lot of our churches. In my research, I came across a number of recent sociological studies that were more effective than most theological analyses. The first study that impressed me was by Christian Smith, a professor at Notre Dame. He and a team of sociologists at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, put together a book called Soul Searching. It was published by Oxford University Press, and investigates the spirituality of America's teens. After five years of interviews and extensive research across various church traditions, he concluded that “moralistic, therapeutic deism” was the best description for the religious orientation of the young people he spoke to.

What does he mean by “moralistic”?

He says that the orientation of youth has a moralistic element to it because the most typical response he got from individuals went something like this: “People are basically good; they just need good advice and encouragement and coaching. Good people go to heaven when they die; bad people go to hell. I think I'm pretty good. Most of the people I know are pretty good, and so we're not expecting anything too dangerous up ahead.”

So, “moralistic therapeutic deism” is essentially a theology for nice people?

That's right. I should add that it's also therapeutic in the sense that God exists for my purposes and my personal happiness. He is there to make me feel good and to ensure my emotion wellbeing. Naturally, this is opposed to the view that we exist to glorify God, to honour him by our obedience and to serve others. For many young people, the question of whether moralistic therapeutic deism is true is immaterial. It may be true; it may not be true. What matters for them is how it makes them feel. Finally, by ‘deism’ is meant a view of God whereby he keeps his distance from us and is not involved in our lives, except insofar as we need him to solve a problem for us or to make us feel better. Essentially, God functions as genie and a therapist. This is the view of God that emerges out of the Oprah culture of spirituality. It's deistic in the sense that it says, “Normally, God doesn't get involved with us; but if a special situation arises where we need someone to do some heavy lifting for us, then God will lend a hand. We just have to whistle him up and he'll lighten our load.”

Is this deistic view of God rooted in a particular ideology, or is there some other explanation for God's supposed disengagement from the world and human affairs?

I don't think that “moralistic therapeutic deism” is rooted in keen theoretical insights. This is one of the things that Christian Smith explored. He said that it wasn't really reflective. In fact, he observed that young people aren't thinking about what they believe or why they believe it. All that matters to them is that they have certain feelings. One of the interesting things he says is that when you talk to young people raised in conservative evangelical circles, you discover that often the people who are most excited about talking about their faith are stunningly inarticulate about what it means. Smith said he would frequently ask follow-up questions like, “What do you mean by God? What do you mean when you refer to Jesus Christ? In what sense did he die for our sins? What do you mean by all these words you are using?” He said that for the most part, they simply couldn't tell him what they meant. Their words were just feelings tied to slogans. They couldn't explain them. This led Smith to ask, “What are the pastors, parents and Sunday School teachers doing to pass on the faith intelligently to the next generation?”

Are there other scholars who have reached the same conclusions as Christian Smith?

Yes, there are. It's not just Christian Smith who is making these observations. Some well-known researchers have come to the same conclusions. For example, James Davison Hunter, Wade Clark Roof and Robert Bellah are all saying much the same things. One of the most interesting studies to have emerged in the 90s was by Marsha Witten. She explored a series of sermons from Southern Baptist and mainline Presbyterian preachers over a 10-year period, and noted that the common theme in all their preaching was essentially the message of secular America. She chose representative sermons on the parable of the prodigal son. As she studied these sermons, she said that the common thread that connected them all was their small view of God. In this sense, these sermons contrasted sharply with the view of God that was characteristic of preachers during the Reformation and the Evangelical Awakening. The interesting thing about Marsha Written is that she has come out quite explicitly and said that she's not a Christian. Her book, All is Forgiven: The Secular Message in American Protestantism, was published by Princeton University Press. As I have read these authors, I have found that they have some valid insights. So my aim was to bring some of that analysis to bear on people like myself who are trying to do a faithful job of ministry in evangelical reformed churches.

Do you think that our cultural focus on entertainment, or what is now called ‘infotainment’, has played a role in the development of “moralistic therapeutic deism”? For instance, a lot of church programs have a higher level of entertainment in them than teaching.

I think television and entertainment have had a huge influence on the way we communicate today. I don't think we understand how culturally incapable we have become of both preaching and hearing. My friend, T David Gordon, has recently written an excellent book called Why Johnny Can't Preach, which explores this theme. He says that even if you go to a good seminary, it's very hard to undo all of the cultural emptiness that you were raised with. A lot of young preachers who have been through seminary now face this problem. They had to raise themselves while their ‘boomer’ parents went off and enjoyed themselves. While they were growing up, they received no teaching. They may have been interested in the Christian faith, but they received no systematic instruction even though they went to camps and sang songs around the campfire with a guitar. That is the culture that they were raised in. I was raised in it too. We weren't encouraged to think or explore theological issues.

What sort of Christian environment did you grow up in?

Well, my school and church experience did not encourage me to question or think seriously about my beliefs. It was a very experience-oriented environment. We could quote Bible verses about the importance of humility and loving others, but we were not taught to engage with serious issues. We were as affected by popular culture as everyone else. We were ‘dumbed down’. Over the last 15 years, this trend has only intensified with the arrival of the internet. Now we act like bees flitting from flower to flower. We live with a remote control in one hand, looking for whatever entertains us. Even the church has geared itself for the entertainment medium. We have become preoccupied with trivia. How often do kids say, “Dad, church is boring”? Yet the teaching and preaching at church may be good, and the sacraments are being rightly administered. Nevertheless, our kids are being lured to another church where they have entertaining and exciting programs, but where the teaching is vacuous. I mean, preachers and parents need to wake up and ask the question, “How can you deliver something that is profound and serious in a trivial and superficial way?” It's an important question that no-one in the evangelical church seems to be asking. But it's a critical issue for the future of the church. We need to challenge the accepted mantra of the evangelical church—“unchanging message with ever-changing methods”. Methods are not neutral; they can either undermine or uphold the message that we are proclaiming.

You have challenged some very influential people in the wider evangelical church. Has it caused a lot of resentment?

I have had mixed reactions to my comments. I actually try to talk with people with whom I disagree. I want to have friendly conversations with them on these important issues. I work on the basis that I want to understand their position, and if we disagree, to move on. I keep in touch with many of them. I have an understanding with them that if we disagree on some important things, we don't let that affect our relationship.

Are you in contact with Robert Schuller?

I have been, but I am not at the moment. I do have contact with Rick Warren. I think that it's really important for me to say up-front that I am not challenging anyone's motives. I want to make that very clear. I would love to have even half the zeal that some of these folks have for taking the gospel to the world. I certainly learn from their enthusiasm to reach the lost. And I think Reformed and Presbyterian churches can learn from them as well in this sense. But the question we must ask is, “What are we reaching them with?” That is my concern. I am not questioning anyone's motives. I don't think the average evangelical pastor ever thinks, “You know, I am not sure that I want to be Christ-centred this week.” I am convinced that he wants to be Christ-centred, and yet the diet he feeds his people is something different. I think a big part of that is because we take the gospel for granted. We assume that we ourselves know the gospel because we know a bunch of slogans and we have had a ‘born again’ experience. We assume that our people know the gospel too because they have had the same experience and know the slogans as well. However, this knowledge is only an inch deep. We shouldn't be surprised that the next generation doesn't know the gospel at all, and challenges the gospel at certain critical points.

You claim that the Christ of the Bible is missing in many parts of the modern evangelical church. How is this possible when so many card-carrying evangelicals believe in the authority of the Scriptures, the Trinity and the Great Commission?

Well, let's look at each of the topics you've just mentioned. The authority of Scripture, the Trinity and the Great Commission are staples of evangelical conviction. Indeed, they are central beliefs for the universal church as well. Nevertheless, if you ask people who attend evangelical churches what they mean by the Trinity and the Great Commission, and what they understand by the authority of Scripture, my guess is that most of them would be hard-pressed to explain their views. And I am not alone in saying that. There are quite a few studies that come to similar conclusions. Look at the authority of Scripture, for example. I have been in circles where the minister and the church would be described as fundamentalist. They have very strong views on the inerrancy of the Bible—almost bordering on an exclusive dictation theory. Nevertheless, on a Sunday, they don't have proper exposition of the text. However, if this is the inspired word of God and the means by which God recreates the world, I would have thought that, at the very least, the minister would treat it seriously and preach what God wants him to say. So, regardless of what we believe on paper, there is enough evidence around to suggest that our beliefs are not being translated into action. The problem in a lot of modern preaching is that there is too much emphasis on feelings and not enough on content. The Reformers rightly saw that faith consists of three parts: knowledge, assent and trust. In conservative evangelical circles at the moment, there is a strong emphasis on assent, but insufficient emphasis on content. People may not know what they believe, but they believe it very strongly. All we are left with at that point is a faith that is strong on passion but weak on content. No wonder so many non-Christians say, “You guys really scare me!” In that sense many evangelicals are not really any different in the way they think from the cults.

If we go back to the sociologists and commentators that you have already mentioned, which one of them do you think has delivered the most incisive comments on the state of the Christian faith today?

They all have their strengths. Each of them has special insights on the subject. I think Christian Smith does the best job I've seen at exploring the spirituality of America's teens. I asked him, “Surely you are talking about Unitarians?” But he said, “No, in most cases, I am talking about young people who were raised in evangelical, Bible-believing churches. In fact, it's kids who are raised in these churches who are more likely to buy into moralistic therapeutic deism than the un-churched.” Smith is convinced that there is some causal link between being an evangelical and being a Pelagian—at least in modern America. I am not sure that I agree with him at this point. I think Pelagianism is more a default setting when people in our churches don't know what they believe.

It is a rather audacious claim that the modern evangelical church has been captured by the American dream. What specifically has led you to that conclusion?

I know I am painting with a broad brush, and there are a lot of exceptions to it, but I think it's generally true that there is a lot about American Christianity that is too American and panders to the American dream of consumerism. I hear a lot of criticism along those lines. The so-called ‘emergent church’ has been very critical of those aspects of modern American evangelicalism. However, once again, even ‘emergent’ churches are very consumerist. They are the ‘Starbucks Coffee’-type instead of the regular coffee shop. They specialize in postmodernism instead of modernity. My problem with mainstream evangelical churches and ‘emergent’ ones is that in neither of them do we have a radical confrontation with the law in the gospel. This is not a problem we can fix easily. It's like smog in our lungs; we can't get rid of it easily. We just have to have to live with it and understand the extent to which it affects our breathing. However, the only way we can be transformed into the image of Christ is through the renewing of our minds through the word, which must happen week after week. This is the only thing that will progressively drive the smog out of our lungs. We must recover the categories of radical guilt and radical grace. We must understand what God has done in Christ. For some people, this might seem like heresy, but the main question of the Bible is not “What would Jesus do?” The real question is, “What has Jesus done?” The answer to that question unfolds from Genesis to Revelation.

And yet “What would Jesus do?” has been taught to the rising generation, and lots Christian youth have all got the wristband.

Yes, it's amazing, isn't it? Imagine if there was a wristband that asked, “What did Jesus do?” Maybe we would get a lot of Christian youth talking about the atonement for a change! My great problem with ‘emerging church’ leaders like Brian McLaren is that they see Christianity too much in terms of works. In his book, Generous Orthodoxy, he says, “... my goal isn't to turn Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims into Christians, but to make them better Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu followers of Jesus.” You see, if Christianity is essentially about following Jesus by doing what Jesus would do, then we don't need a divine redeemer. We just need a life coach or a therapist. So it's not surprising to me at all that this is now where we have come to. Brian McLaren acts like he is inventing something new when he talks about ‘deeds not creeds’ and ‘just following Jesus’. But there's nothing new here at all. It's not postmodern. I was raised with that emphasis as I was growing up in California 40 years ago. Incidentally, it's Rick Warren's emphasis at the moment too. He is also big on ‘deeds not creeds’ as well. My observation is that this emphasis on “What would Jesus do?” over “What has Jesus done?” has been with us a long time. I think if you asked a lot of pastors to confirm this, they would do so. They all know what Jesus has done, they know the gospel, they believe they're saved, they've prayed the prayer. Their problem is that they think they can leave that behind and move on to transforming themselves and the world. They believe that the main issue now is about how to be a good disciple. And this is what my book picks up on. Actually, Christless Christianity points out that the reason why evangelicals are going wrong is that we start with the wrong assumption. We assume that it's easy to believe the gospel. We think that's our default setting, however that's a serious error. Actually, our default setting is that we reject the gospel. That's where we must start from. Even as Christians, we face this problem. We are always wrestling with our tendency to self-reliance. Even the Apostle Paul faced this issue (2 Cor 1:9). Our default setting is that we are naturally moralistic therapeutic deists. We are Pelagians at heart. We don't get rid of that tendency when we first become Christians; that is the spiritual sewage that has to be flushed out of us every day until we die. Only at death will we be released from this struggle. At that point, we will no longer be moralists. However, until we die, we are going to be moralists who believe that God exists to make us happy. That is our default setting. We need to realize that, from the start, even as Christians, our default setting is that we think we can be saved by works. It's in our hearts. We are legalists through and through. Everybody, including pagans, has the law written into their hearts. We just take it for granted that we are saved this way. However, what we must never take for granted is the gospel. We have no trouble believing in the law, but we find it very difficult to believe in the gospel. That's why the gospel has to be continually proclaimed in the church. Even Christians find it really hard to believe. It comes as astonishing, wonderful, surprising news every time we hear it.

Robert Schuller, who is very influential in the church growth movement, has said it's time for a new reformation. Now what sort of a reformation does he have in mind?

In one sense, Robert Schuller is old news. His star is fading; he is no longer the icon he used to be. Nevertheless, he serves as a good example of how deeply secularized the Christian message has become in our churches. Schuller's forerunner in the 1950s was Norman Vincent Peale. Peale was considered a liberal then, and evangelicals paid him no attention at all. But in the period 1970-95, Robert Schuller became very popular, and his theological convictions were far more troubling than Peale's. Surprisingly, however, evangelicals ate him up. He was welcomed into the evangelical fold, and became an evangelical leader. I refer to Schuller in my book because, in many ways, he is followed by Joel Osteen. The media in America treat the phenomenal success of people like Joel Osteen at Lakewood Church in Houston as a novel event. It's not. The simple truth is that about once a decade, a new Joel Osteen is created in America. It is roughly the same philosophy, roughly the same teaching, and it all goes back to a book at the end of the 19th century called Acres of Diamonds by Russell Conwell. Norman Vincent Peale was influenced by that book. About every 10 years, you get someone like Robert Schuller—like Joel Osteen—who preaches this characteristically American gospel of ‘believe in yourself’, ‘pull yourself up by your own bootstraps’, “Here is some good advice and encouragement for how you can have a better life”, and “Here are some Bible verses to help you claim your best life now”. It has a fairly blatant therapeutic moralistic aspect to it. Robert Schuller is quite unashamed in coming out and saying that the Reformation erred because it was God-centred rather than man-centred. I know it's hard to believe, but that's what he said! I mean, he did it on my radio show, The Whitehorse Inn. It's worthwhile quoting him because he was so brazen in asserting what we all knew he was thinking. I was reading Paul's words to Timothy where he says that in the last days, men will be lovers of themselves, boastful, proud, arrogant and so forth, and he interrupted me and said, “Son, I really hope you don't preach that”. And I said, “What, the text? I am just reading it.” And Dr Schuller said to me, “I don't care what it is. I am referring to whatever it is that you are spewing out there.” Well, I was shocked! I was reading the word of God, and he dismissed it in that way. Then he rounded on me by saying, “Michael, if you preach that sort of stuff, you are going to hurt a lot of beautiful people”. Now Joel Osteen is no different. He says, “I am not called to preach the Bible, nor am I called to explain the doctrines of Christianity. My gifting is to encourage people and help them put their lives back together.” So, he said, “I don't really talk about sin. I don't talk about hell or Christ's atoning death to save sinners, because that is not what people really need most. What they need is encouragement, and that is really what I am best at.” In Schuller and Osteen, we have reached the point where preachers feel that they can create their own message, write their own job description—as if they are kings, rather than ambassadors. This is the self-made man. It is American Christianity, not just American culture. The moderate Catholic historian, Gary Wills, in his book, Head and Heart, describes American revivalism like this: “The self-made man required a self-made ministry, and a do-it-yourself salvation required a do-it-yourself church.” I think that is exactly what has happened in America. George Barna has said that very shortly, we will reach the place where most Christians will get their discipleship resources off the internet instead of going to actual physical churches.

Doesn't Barna see the church playing a significant role in the future?

No, he doesn't. Self-help Christianity has a very individualistic focus. There is little room for the community. Doing away with church and the community is the consummation of narcissistic, do-it-yourself, moralistic therapeutic deism. It is an ideology that un-churches the churched. This is where we are headed if preachers don't challenge this dangerous theology now.

Has the American church ever have a sound theology of sin? Has it been lost? Is Karl Menninger right when he says that the loss of this notion of sin is the most critical cultural factor of all?

Isn't it interesting that a secular psychologist is the one who tells us, “Hey, what are you doing here? Why are you abandoning the notion of sin?”? The move away from a biblical view of sin came after the First Great Awakening in the 1740s. It was more around the time of the Second Great Awakening in the 1830s that the rot really set in when the evangelist, Charles Finney, explicitly denied original sin. However, steps had already been taken in that direction by Jonathan Edwards' own son and many of his students, who developed what became known as New Haven Theology. This theology certainly played a role in shaping Charles Finney's theological views and ecclesiastical practices. This ‘New School’ Presbyterianism was what was responsible for the triumph of both Arminian theology and American pragmatism in the Protestant church in America. So the collapse of a biblical doctrine of sin goes back a long way in American church history.

How does the idea that Christianity is some form of personal therapy affect the ministry activities of the church?

It has had a very deep impact in a number of ways. Think for a moment of the music we sing, the way we speak about our relationship with God, and the new ways of evangelism. Every one of these areas reflects the depth to which a therapeutic orientation has shaped us. Think, for example, of how typically we are encouraged to talk to unbelieving friends and relatives. Today, we are told, “Share your personal testimony!” Now, why should anybody care about my personal testimony? Perhaps it's useful as a conversation-starter. Or maybe it's a way of getting to the testimony that is saving. However, my personal testimony of how I ‘got saved’ is not the gospel. A Buddhist can tell me his or her personal testimony. Everyone has a personal testimony about something meaningful in their life. However, Christians need to start telling people that Jesus Christ did not come to earth primarily to give us meaning, happiness, wholeness, and peace of mind. I know this will sound like heresy to evangelicals today, but not a single verse can even be wrenched out of its context to support the view that this is the gospel. So what is the testimony or gospel that Christians should be giving? It is that Christ was crucified for our sins and raised for our justification. Think about this. If ever there were people who could talk about their personal experience as the gospel, it would be the apostles. But do they? Has it ever hit modern evangelicals how little we know about Peter, Paul and John, and how little we know about their personal relationship with Jesus? We know a lot about their sin and unbelief. We know that Peter denied Jesus three times, and we know that he compromised the gospel in Antioch. But do we ever hear about Peter's obedience and the quality of his prayer life? Does anyone bother to ask, ‘Why?’ Well, John tells us. He says that libraries could be filled with all of the things Jesus said and did, but the things that are recorded in his gospel have been included for the purpose of helping us to believe that Jesus is the Christ, and that by believing, we might have eternal life in his name. That is the main point of the John's testimony. Let's be very clear about this. John says in first letter that the apostles have seen, heard and touched Christ so that they can declare the message about him to us. In other words, they are not passing on a testimony about what has happened in their own lives; their testimony is about Christ himself. They are passing on information to which they were eyewitnesses in the same way that someone today might be a witness to a momentous historical event. What is the difference between the two? Well, the difference is that one is focused on our personal experience of Christ, while the other is focused on certain real and objective deeds that Christ performed for our salvation. The difference is huge. One talks about my feelings—what has happened inside me; the other talks about earth-shattering, historical events that have taken place outside of me. Now, the problem today is that most people in the West think that religion is all about what happens inside of me. And so most evangelicals today have become convinced that if we are going to sell people on Christianity, then we have to focus the message on what happens on the inside, rather than looking at what has taken place on the outside. This is where we need to make a major decision. Are we going to frame the gospel in terms of what gives us meaning, purpose, peace and happiness, or are we going to talk in New Testament terms about what God did in Christ for our salvation to save us from his just wrath? That puts all gospel conversation in an entirely different atmosphere.

You say that it is possible to lose the gospel and Christ by believing that while we get into the kingdom by grace alone through faith, we only stay there by performing good works. Is that a widespread problem among Christians?

I think it is. It's been a problem in the church ever since Paul highlighted the problems in Galatia. “Having been perfected by the Spirit are you trying to be perfected by the flesh?” (Gal 3:3). In fact, this problem is on us like the plague. One of the main concerns that I address in my book is that the message that I hear, both in preaching in America and overseas, is “Do more. Try harder”. Sometimes it's expressed in reasonably strident ways: “If you don't do this, then you are going to go to hell”, or “If you do this, then you are going to face judgement”, or “You better do this or else!” Alternatively, it can be expressed with a warm smile like this: “Okay, so you are not putting yourself eternally at risk, but you are not going to enjoy your best life now.” The point is that whether it is the stern version or the smiling version, it boils down to essentially the same thing: “Do more. Try harder”. Joel Osteen, for example, doesn't dispense with law; he just creates his own. Osteen's version of the commandments doesn't condemn you; it's just a series of suggestions. You know, friendly advice as opposed to commandments. Nevertheless, he clearly