Rebuilding the City on a Hill
by Josiah A. Jones
Soren Kierkegaard, a 19th-century philosopher and theologian, once wrote, “The greatest danger to Christianity is, I contend, not heresies, not heterodoxies, not atheists, not profane secularism - no, but the kind of orthodoxy which is cordial drivel mediocrity served up sweet. There is nothing that so insidiously displaces the majestic as cordiality” (“The Greatest Danger” 16-17). In 1854, he began writing one of his most prescient works: a scathing critique of the Danish church entitled The Attack Upon Christendom. He argued that despite Denmark’s status as an overwhelmingly Christian nation, the church had become an apathetic shadow of its true calling. If the state of the church during his lifetime was enough to inspire such condemnations, I have no doubt that the modern church would leave Kierkegaard speechless. From ideological decay to dramatic increases in international conflict, rising mental disorder rates to widespread hedonistic escapism, one thing is clear: a strong, healthy church is needed now more than ever.
But, by every measurable statistic, Christianity’s influence is dwindling. Each year, the percentage of Americans who identify as Christian shrinks. Pew Research reported that 78.4% of Americans saw themselves as Christians in 2007, down from over 90% in the 1990s. In 2014, that number dropped to 70.4% (2). In 2022, at the time of the most recent poll, just 63% of Americans were Christians (4-5). To further highlight America’s recent and rapid movement toward secularism, Pew Research reports that in a study of twenty-three countries, more than two-thirds of them consider America equally or less religious than other countries of similar wealth (1-8). In Matthew 5:14, Jesus called His followers to be “the light of the world” and “a city set upon a hill.” Do these statistics paint a promising picture of the church’s ability to be the light of the world?
The troubling reality is that this mandate has been all but forgotten, which has left an impact on both Christianity and the world at large. It is imperative that the church remembers its calling: to be the light that the world desperately needs. After examining the causes of American Christianity’s descent into cordial apathy, some conclusion can be reached regarding the steps that must be taken for a new dawn of passionate faith in America. Comparing modern American Christianity to the radical faith of the early church in Rome presents a striking contrast with which we must grapple. Many believers idealize the fearless martyrs who rebelled against the most powerful government in the world to practice their faith under the penalty and fear of death. More than just a part of their life, their faith was their center. In America, there is no analogue to the Roman church’s radical devotion, and the statistics demonstrate a notable shift away from that kind of Christianity. According to a study done by the American Bible Society, only 39% of American Christians are active Bible users. The criterion for this classification is simply using the Bible three to four times per year (12). According to a Pew Research report from 2021, less than 45% of U.S. adults prayed daily (Fig. 1). Gallup reported that in 2020, a record low of only 20% of Americans believed that the Bible was the word of God (1-8). However, as Kierkegaard’s critique of his own country demonstrates, the church did not suddenly become lukewarm and apathetic overnight. This raises the question: What has caused this gradual decay? Several factors are partially to blame. The first, and perhaps most important, is ideology. As citizens of Western nations that value democracy, both Americans and Europeans tend to place significant value on tolerance. However, while freedom of thought and expression are undoubtedly important, there is a difference between tolerance and acceptance. At the time of Attack Upon Christendom’s writing, Europe was feeling the full effects of the Enlightenment and all that it entailed. The burgeoning ideology of Relativism is of particular note. Immanuel Kant’s assertion that knowledge of the world was constrained by individual perception lent validity to beliefs that contradicted not only the Bible, but all reason (4.2). After all, if objective knowledge is impossible, judgment of other worldviews is unreasonable and meaningless. Relativism continues to act as a shield against criticism and an excuse for not having a consistent and reasonable ideology. Today, it rears its head in related movements like universalism and unitarianism (The Gospel Coalition, 1-12; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1-4). The connection between the belief that no objective knowledge of the world is possible and the belief that all faiths are equally true and equally capable of saving a believer’s soul is not a difficult one to make.
If these ideologies are incompatible with Christianity, why have they managed to infiltrate it? The underlying commonality between them is the dismissal of truth. Referring back to Kierkegaard’s diagnosis of the greatest problem in the church, enlightenment ideologies have given Christians and non-Christians alike an excuse to view faith with cordial apathy. It is no wonder that, according to a study conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute, just 16% of American Christians attend church each week (11). And, who can blame them? In a world that teaches them to accept all other beliefs as different but equivalent truths, why should they care? One would expect a truth as beautiful and life-changing as Christianity to have some comparative advantage over these hollow philosophies, but the disturbing reality is that modern Christianity is often equally hollow. In a vain effort to turn the tide of secularism, Western Christendom has developed an obsession with simplifying sacred mysteries for easy digestion by the common twenty-first-century person. To accommodate the attention span of a world that requires a constant injection of information into the bloodstream, the clergy has opted to talk down to their communities.1 Kierkegaard provided an ominously prescient diagnosis of the disease that plagues the church today: “Perhaps too it is without an analogy in history that a religion has been abolished by flourishing. But note that in saying ‘flourishing’ Christianity is understood as the opposite of what the New Testament understands by Christianity. The religion of suffering has become the religion of mirth, but it retains the name un-changed.” The city that once was set upon a hill now bears a closer resemblance to the ruins of something that once was great.
Considering the state of the modern church, it naturally follows to ask what can be done. Is Christianity in the West a failed experiment, given way to popular Christendom? Perhaps. However, one must take care not to exclusively blame institutions for the failings of their members. In Matthew 16:24, Jesus commanded his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” What does it mean to take up one’s cross in an age when the phrase has become a platitude and the cross little more than a sentimental icon? Why are we so quick to turn to the cross as a symbol of hope and comfort while forgetting the pain that Christ endured as he carried it to Golgotha? Just as he indicted the institution of the church, Kierkegaard had equally strong words for the individuals who composed the collective body of Christendom.
“The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. ‘My God,’ you will say, ‘if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world?’ Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless
scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God.” (“Kill the Commentators” essay, from Provocations)
In these words, the root of the problem can be found, as well as its solution. By condemning “Christian scholarship,” Kierkegaard is not condemning the study or understanding of the Bible. Rather, he is attacking the interpretation of the Bible as a set of principles to study performatively and set aside. The true Christian life has been sacrificed in the interest of hypocrisy and false scholarship. By the American church, yes, but also by the members it claims to serve. The church has elevated false doctrines. The church has reduced the Bible to a collection of clichés and axioms. The church has apathetically cast faith aside in favor of worldly things. But, are we not the church? Calling oneself a Christian is incredibly easy, while conversely, taking up the cross and living the Christian life is a task that demands fortitude, commitment, and devotion.
In Romans 12:1-2, Paul says, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (ESV). We are called to be the metaphorical body of Christ, and every part of that body is indispensable. The weight of that calling should not be understated, which effectively would subvert the purpose of striving to achieve it. As followers of Christ, we must choose to be Christians, accepting all that the term entails: we must be scholars, not in a performative sense, but with sincerity and curiosity. In doing so, we must reclaim the mystery and complexity of the Bible while acknowledging that our best efforts to understand the God we serve will fall infinitely short. We must be advocates for truth, even as objectivity and reason continue to fall out of fashion. We must walk the Christian walk in a meaningful way, engaging with and transforming the global church rather than simply leaving an inspirational Bible verse in our social media profiles. Finally, we would be wise to honor the warnings with which Soren Kierkegaard left us almost two hundred years ago, and be wary of allowing our zeal for Christ to lapse into false scholarship and performative Christendom. The body of Christ is needed for its hope, reason, and light more today than at any other time in history, and it falls to us to replace the infection of cordial apathy in the church with genuine Christianity in rhetoric and action. The institution of the church demands change, and we as Christian individuals are called to change it. If we accept this calling, we can rebuild these ruins into a beacon of hope for the world to see: a city set upon a hill that cannot be hidden.
Works Cited
American Bible Society. “State of the Bible.” American Bible Society, 1s712.americanbible.org/state-of-the-bible/stateofthebible/State_of_the_bible-2022.pdf. Accessed 29 Feb. 2024.
“America’s Changing Religious Landscape.” Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project, Pew Research Center, 12 May 2015, www.pewresearch.org/religion/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/.
“Fewer than Half of U.S. Adults Pray Daily.” Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project, Pew Research Center, 8 Dec. 2021, www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/12/14/about-three-in-ten-u-s-adults-are-now-religiously-unaffiliated/pf_12-14-21_npors_0_3/.
“How U.S. Religious Composition Has Changed in Recent Decades.” Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project, Pew Research Center, 13 Sept. 2022, www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/09/13/how-u-s-religious-composition-has-changed-in-recent-decades/.
Kierkegaard, Søren, and Charles E. Moore. Provocations: Spiritual Writings. Plough Publishing House, 2014.
Kramer, Stephanie. “The U.S. Is Not Widely Seen as Highly Religious.” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 31 July 2023, www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/07/31/the-us-is-not-widely-seen-as-highly-religious/.
Newport, Frank. “Fewer in U.S.. Now See Bible as Literal Word of God.” Gallup.Com, Gallup, 7 Feb. 2024, news.gallup.com/poll/394262/fewer-bible-literal-word-god.aspx.
Rohlf, Michael. “Immanuel Kant - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University, 28 July 2020, plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant/.
Strange, Daniel. “Universalism: Will Everyone Finally Be Saved?” The Gospel Coalition, www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/universalism-will-everyone-finally-be-saved/. Accessed 29 Feb. 2024.
Tuggy, Dale. “Unitarianism - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University, plato.stanford.edu/entries/trinity/unitarianism.html. Accessed 29 Feb. 2024.