My wife took a year out from her medical training to attend Bible School in California. During that time she encountered a sect of Christians who believed Jesus' return was imminent. When they found out she was in medical training, they asked her, "Why waste your time becoming a doctor when you ought to be preaching the gospel?"
That's the sort of thinking that is behind Steve Camp's latest rant against evangelical cultural engagement. An Open Letter to Pastors and Church Leaders...Are We Playing Politics with God?. Camp states, "We live in a fallen world (Romans 3:10-18)) and America is a pagan nation in need not of political-social-cultural-moral reform, but regeneration through the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ."
Basically Camp is saying forget about building the human community, just preach the gospel: "So then why are gifted men of God trading their voices for the gospel to the triviality of cultural issues? Why bring an unbiblical emphasis on what is temporal rather than what is eternal?"
Mark Noll is an evangelical who I think would give Steve Camp an answer to that question. In his book "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind ." he states,
"By an evangelical "life of the mind" I mean more the effort to think like a Christian - to think within a specifically Christian framework - across the whole spectrum of modern learning, including economics and political science, literary criticism and imaginative writing, historical inquiry and philosophical studies, linguistics and the history of science, social theory and the arts... The much more important matter is what it means to think like a Christian about the nature and workings of the physical world, the character of human socio-structures like government and the economy, the meaning of the past, the nature artistic creation, and the circumstances attending our perception of the world outside ourselves. Failure to exercise the mind for Christ in these areas has become acute in the twentieth century. that failure is the scandal of the evangelical mind." (Noll, 1994, 7)
Camp likes to refer to the heroes of the Reformed faith, especially in his reference to " sola Scriptura". Yet, it is these heroes that Noll finds developed a "vigorous intellectual life" that engaged the culture of their times.
I don't think the problem is with evangelical engagement I think it is exactly the opposite. It is evangelical disengagement that is at the root of many of our social and political problems today. It's the scandal of a mind that thinks like Steve Camp that has discouraged many young people from taking faith to work to be physicians, scientists, teachers and politicians.
I am sorry Steve, but a gospel that denies the goodness of God's creation and the redemptive value of cultural engagement is no gospel at all!
Here are some blogs following this debate.
Imago Dei: Co-Belligerent or One Who Prepares the Way?
Some blogs that are cheering for Steve Camp
Challies Dot Com: "It's the Church... Stupid!"
a ticking time blog » Blog Archive » Steve Camp’s 107 Theses
