Agin' It!

I finished Pastor Peter Leithart's provocative little book Against Christianity. Here Christianity is described as it's commonly found in our culture: a private, individual, spiritual, propositional religion; i.e. an unbiblical faith. Christianity is an invention designed to keep Christians and the Church in its proper marginal place rather than the biblical view of the Church as the beginning of a new city with a distinct holy culture--the City of God. The link provides a more thorough review, so I'll only add some of my favorite quotes and points below.

Christian community is not an extra "religious layer" on social life. The Church is not a club for religious people. The Church is a way of living together before God, a new way of being human together.

The Church's mission is not to disguise herself so to slip in unnoticed and blend in with the existing culture. Her mission is to confront the existing culture with a culture of her own.

Prayer is not "quiet time" but a time of wrestling and passion. Contemporary hymnology, by contrast, gives us words for a small segment of our experience, the happy, fluffy, light experiences of life. If we are trained in prayer by contemporary praise choruses, when we face the pain and tests of life, we will lack the vocabulary to name them. Singing the Psalms makes the biblical story and biblical language part of us.

A test for your local church: which holiday receives more attention, the Fourth of July or Ascension? Mother's Day or Pentecost? Now, why is that?

Pastors see themselves as proponents of Christianity, teaching "religious" things or assisting people on their personal spiritual journeys. Pastors have lost any sense that they are overseers of a new city and that they therefore have responsibilities for governance.