Past & Present Conflict of the Church

What I found most remarkable of Hatch’s The Democratization of American Christianity was how the intellectual, theological, and political conflict described in the book is still very much playing out within me and within many of the Christians I associate with.  Paul became “all things to all people so that by all possible means [he] might save some.”  Thus camp meetings, praise bands, casual worship, etc. can all be valid tools.  At the same time, we are not to throw our pearls to pigs.  There is an inherent conflict in American evangelicalism between conservative, pious religion and the sometimes vulgar, democratic methods of the republic.  American Christian traditions into the present continue to draw their own boundaries around what is too vulgar and when order and discipline have been lost in the church.

In John, Jesus ask the Father that we “all may be one.” Decoupled from clear ecclesiastic authority, Americans can continue to build new boundaries around what it means to be the church.  At times this has been beneficial to the church and allowed the American church to more easily adapt to the changing world.  However, this also means that the American church has become splintered into hundreds of little factions.  I fear the fusion of vulgar democratic authority in the church ensures, just as it has in Washington, that oneness is still a way off.