Post Christendom and the Front Porch

      Tim Keller says, “Today’s culture believes the thing we need salvation from is the idea that we need salvation.”[1] We live in a culture that lacks the foundational Christian understanding of previous generations. At the same time, we live in a culture deeply and foundationally influenced and shaped by Christian values. Our modern world has what the Scottish Professor James Eglinton calls a “love-hate relationship with Christianity,”[2] simultaneously shaped by and offended by the claims of the Church. Christianity both attracts and repels modern people. Many refer to this as a “post-Christian” culture. In his book Biblical Critical Theory, Christopher Watkin explains this paradoxical environment.

      We live at a peculiar moment in history when our culture’s assumptions and values retain a deeply Christian imprint but when the teachings of the Bible are largely unknown, misunderstood, or condemned. This makes for a strange and at times amusing situation in which society increasingly sets itself against Christianity but does so by using distinctively Christian arguments and assumptions.[3]

      Apologist Glen Scrivener argues that the Western world has been so deeply shaped by the Christian worldview that it is simply the air we breathe, though many have no idea their values spring from Christ.[4] Values such as equality, justice, compassion, consent, freedom, and even individuality find their basis in Christianity. But without the Christian understanding combined with expressive individualism, we end up with unequal equality, unjust justice, uncompassionate compassion, nonconsensual consent, and unfree freedom. Everything separated from God eventually becomes its opposite.

      Post-Christianity combined with expressive individualism makes for a very complex and paradoxical world in which you can have someone deeply devoted to the idea of sexual consent as a fundamental value but also very affirming of others’ freedom to express themselves sexually any way they want. So, on the one hand, they firmly believe certain sexual relationships are off-limits because they are fundamentally non-consensual, such as situations in which one party is influenced by the power dynamic of the relationship, compromising willing consent. On the other hand, they are firmly committed to individual expressive sexual freedom. But you can’t have both. Suppose you rightly hold to the importance of consent. In that case, you must denounce some sexual activity, but if you confirm expressive individualism, how can you deny that person’s right to express themself? There is a dissonance.

      It’s worth asking where this person got their idea of consent in the first place. It came from Christianity. In the first century, a man had total power over women. But when the Christian sexual ethic flooded the world, Paul said things like 1 Corinthians 7:4, “Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.” Historian Kyle Harper comments. “The social assumptions of pre-Christian sexual morality, such as the casual exploitation of the bodies of [powerless] non-persons, seem incomprehensible [to us today] precisely because the Christian revolution so completely swept away that old order.”[5] The modern person deeply believes in consent but has no idea that value was born of God.

      This goes for a value like justice as well. Without the biblical social ethic, there is no modern understanding of justice. Leviticus 19:15 says: “You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor.” Deuteronomy 16:19 says: “You shall not show partiality, and you shall not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and subverts the cause of the righteous.” Jesus showed up and went after the powerful religious leaders, cleansing the temple they defiled with their injustice. His brother told us in James 2 not to show partiality or favoritism. Justice is a biblical idea.

      But you cannot simply say to many people, “Justice is a Christian value.” They won’t believe you. The Church, of course, hasn’t helped with this. The Church has carried out many injustices throughout history. Even today, we see so many inside the church pushing against the idea of social justice, claiming it is a Marxist ideology. What was once an obvious connection between a Christian value and a publicly shared value is now severed. People can no longer connect the dots. With no shared language for God and no obviously Christian influence, many people find it difficult to understand what we are talking about when we talk about Christianity. To many, it’s just another religion they are ready to lop off, not understanding in many significant ways that it is the branch they are sitting on.

How Can We Help?

      So, how can we help? Tim Keller asked this question in an article written a couple of months before his death called “Lemonade on the Porch – The Gospel in a Post-Christendom Society.” I will discuss it in detail because it is the most compelling discussion I’ve read on the topic, and I believe it needs more attention.

      Keller combined two similar ideas. First was the idea of the front porch. Many of us don’t even have front porches today, but historically, the front porch served as the meeting place between the home and the street. You could invite a neighbor up to the porch for a glass of lemonade and get to know them. It was a good halfway point. Not in the house, but not on the street either. The second idea was drawn from the Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper. In the early 1900s, Kuyper discussed the European relationship between Christianity and culture.

      Kuyper argued that for centuries, the cultural institutions of European countries had a “Christianizing” effect on most people in the population. General beliefs in a heaven and hell, in a personal creator God, the authority of the Bible, the need for forgiveness of our sins, sexual fidelity within marriage—all these and more were instilled in the general populations. Genuine, born-again Christians were only a fraction of any European society at the time, but Kuyper in no way despised the nominal Christians who constituted the majority. When nominal Christians came into church to hear the gospel preached, they had been prepared for it all their lives. The message did not sound completely, utterly confusing, or radically contradictory to their moral sensibilities because they had been “on the porch” of Christianity.

      European culture was, to use Kuyper’s metaphor, a “forecourt” or porch for the church. It was a half-way place between complete unbelief on the one hand (the “street”) and fervent, heart-faith on the other (the “sanctuary”). On the porch were people friendly and respectful toward Christianity.[6]

      Kuyper went on to point out that the culture was changing. The church’s forecourt, or porch, was disappearing. “The large number of people in western societies who were unconverted but who nonetheless had traditional values and a respect for Christianity were melting away.”[7] Years after Kuyper wrote this about Europe, the United States seemed to be proving an exception. But as Keller saw in New York City, in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, Kuyper’s observations about a post-Christian Europe began to show up in America. New York is typically ahead of places like Nashville, but that gap is closing. Nashville is growing into a major city in this nation, and along with all the good that means, it also means we will experience more of the big city ethos that we see in places such as New York.

      What is the impact of this shift? Keller explains.

      Suddenly, especially in the minds of younger Americans, Christians were the immoral ones, the cruel ones, the enemies of democracy, freedom, and compassion. In most parts of the country, church growth and church planting became far more difficult. Christians found themselves public targets of criticism for their views, especially on sex and gender. Then the pandemic emptied the churches. And since public services began again, most churches to this day have not yet recovered their former congregations. The American forecourt was emptying; Kuyper’s prediction was coming true even in the United States.[8]

      That means we live in a culture that is increasingly losing our Christian language, and, therefore, most unconverted people lack the fundamentals for hearing and responding to the traditional gospel presentation. Keller explains those fundamental beliefs:

      1) there is a personal God who created us and who judges us, 2) there is some kind of objective moral standard by which we are judged, 3) no one lives up to that standard perfectly and so we need forgiveness, 4) there is an afterlife, a heaven and hell.

      Those are the basic building blocks of evangelism. “If you think for a moment of these beliefs as ‘dots,’” Keller says, “then evangelism for centuries in the West has consisted of simply connecting the dots.”[9] Unfortunately, the post-Christian world can no longer connect the dots because they lack a fundamental Christian understanding. Our work just got much harder. Keller presents the problem.

      Most non-believers cannot quickly hear a gospel presentation and be asked if they want to receive Christ. Rather, like the early church and the church throughout the non-western world, congregations in the West must learn to create their own porches or forecourts where people can enter a relational process and be prepared to hear and understand and perhaps embrace the gospel… The vast majority of churches continue to reflexively work as if there was still a cultural forecourt. Their ministries and messages implicitly still assume that non-believers will be brought by friends or will simply show up in church and understand what is being preached. Some may, but this will increasingly not be so. This is a lethal kind of spiritual blindness and is a contributing factor to the decline in the church that we are seeing now in the U.S.[10]

      The punch line is this: Churches can no longer rely on the culture to provide the front porch. We must build our own. How do we do that? Keller offers some advice.

      On porches people are regularly exposed to Christianity in at least three ways: (1) They are enabled to see it. This happens when it is modeled in the lives of individual Christians, but it may also consist of visible expressions of Christianity, whether it be a service in the community (such as caring for the poor), art (such as literature, music, or theater) or in education (such as a Christian school). (2) They must be encouraged to question it. This happens when Christians in the space listen intently, patiently, and with great respect to non-believers’ doubts and questions, and respond with humility and thoughtfulness. Of course the questioning goes both ways. On porches, the powerful and unquestioned cultural narratives—“we are only intolerant of intolerance” and “you always have to be true to yourself” are patiently interrogated. (3) Finally, they must be enabled to hear it. This happens when Christianity is presented in their own language and vocabulary (instead of Christians’ insider jargon), and as answers to the questions that are most on their hearts, fulfilling their greatest aspirations and hopes better than their own intuitions and beliefs.

      Keller ended his article by teasing a second part that would include practical tips on building porches. Unfortunately, Keller didn’t live to write the second installment of the article. However, Keller’s conversation partner on this topic, James Eglinton, attempted to flesh out three practical ways to help in the follow-up article, “Lemonade on the Porch – Why and How to Build Porches: The Gospel in a Post-Christendom Society.”[11] He proposed three things: hospitality, cultural apologetics, and forgiveness (to which I will add repentance). I agree with all three, and I will discuss each one, but first, I want to add another one that is the foundation upon which the others are built.

Personal Reality with Christ

      The only way to avoid the despair of our modern age is to deeply accept the gospel identity Jesus can give us. That includes not only a proclamation over you but also the offer of reality with Christ within you.

      To help others in any way, we must have a vibrant personal life with Jesus. He must be more than a theory for us. He must be more than a talking point, more than an argument, more than an approach to society's ills. He must be our personal Lord and Savior, deepest Friend, and nearest Companion. If we are not cultivating our relationship with Jesus, we will not be much help to our hurting and lost culture. How could we? We will draw our identity from the same wells as the world. We will suffer the same despair. We will adopt the same talking points. We will draw lines between “us” and “them.” The only way we can truly help is if we are personally walking with Jesus—if we experience reality with him moment by moment, by his grace.

Hospitality

      We live in a world where it is common to close doors instead of opening them. We define ourselves by enemies as much as our friends. Whom we fight against tells the story of what we believe. Person X believes that, so I believe this. We see this attitude most clearly in politics, where issues are defined in black and white, Republican and Democrat, but it appears nearly everywhere today. It’s impossible to be hospitable with that attitude.

      Modern identities are fragile and competitive, and so they struggle with hospitality.[12] Our mindset isn’t pure. We aren’t welcoming, especially to those unlike us. But recovering the Christian practice of hospitality can speak a powerful word to our world. Listen to author Rosaria Butterfield’s exhortation on what she calls “radically ordinary hospitality.”

      Engaging in radically ordinary hospitality means we provide the time necessary to build strong relationships with people who think differently than we do as well as build strong relationships from within the family of God. It means we know that only hypocrites and cowards let their words be stronger than their relationships, making sneaky raids into culture on social media or behaving like moralizing social prigs in the neighborhood. Radically ordinary hospitality shows this skeptical, post-Christian world what authentic Christianity looks like.[13]

      Pastor Michael Keller believes that the way to fight against the weakening cultural bonds and fragmentation we experience is to invest more deeply in joyful hospitality.

      A church that celebrates, a church that does meals for those inside the church, but also those outside the church becomes a curious space. Christians should be the best at hosting parties and celebrating others as we have every reason in the world to have joy about the coming kingdom, including present “wins” whether they are simple birthdays that highlight the created-ness of others, or milestones of our neighbors’ achievements.[14]

      Hospitality is one thing we can all do to build porches. All it takes is willingness to open the door.          

Cultural Apologetics

      According to The Gospel Coalition’s Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics, “We’re living amid the largest religious transformation in American history. Forty million Americans have left the church in the last 25 years. Many other Western countries have already seen similar declines. But that’s not the only challenge. After the fall of Christendom, believers in Western countries now face a strange mixture of apathy and antagonism toward the gospel. Many of our neighbors view Christianity as yesterday’s news but also as the source of today’s problems.”

      Hospitality is good. It can show unbelievers what Christianity looks like. But despite what you may have heard, we cannot preach the gospel at all times through deeds and only use words if necessary.[15] We must use words. But which words? Eglinton, again, is helpful. “Cultural apologetics deals with explaining the history, workings, and shortcomings of secular modernity to the people who depend on it most but think about it least: secular Westerners.”[16] Collin Hansen defines cultural apologetics as apologetics that “helps unbelievers want the gospel to be true even before they may fully understand this good news. We offer the beauty of the lordship of Christ as opposed to the ugliness of the lordship of the principalities and powers (Eph. 6:12).”[17] Ted Turnau says, “The job of apologetics is to build a bridge between hope and the non-Christian.”[18]

      Cultural apologetics proposes engagement with unbelievers using their own language and values (their culture) to show them how Christianity is the true truth, the spring from which it all flows, and to show them how it fulfills human longings. Both the Bible and church history are filled with this type of cultural engagement. Jesus used illustrations from every day life that made sense to his hearers. Peter at Pentecost and Paul on Mars Hill speak to their specific audiences in their cultural languages. Justin Martyr’s First Apology and St. Augustine’s City of God spoke to the Roman empire in their specific cultural moments. Cultural apologetics understands that every culture expresses itself in ways that lead to an opening to Jesus and his gospel. Our job is to help unbelievers connect the dots.

      Dan Strange calls this “subversive fulfillment.”[19] Keller explains it this way.

      When the gospel is rightly preached, it not only confronts but attracts. It not only appeals and compels, it offends. It says, “the plot-lines of your life will only come to a happy ending in Jesus Christ.” Subversive fulfillment is both affirming and contradicting. It challenges people, but on their own terms. And it means offering them, on gospel terms, what all human hearts rightly need—a meaning that suffering can’t take away, a satisfaction not based on circumstances, a freedom that doesn’t destroy love and community, an identity that doesn’t elude you, crush you, or lead you to exclude others, a basis for justice that doesn’t turn you into a new oppressor, a relief from shame and guilt without resorting to relativism, and a hope that can enable you to face anything with poise, even death.

      This means, first, that on the church porch we are seeking to win the respect of non-believers and to affirm some of their beliefs. We are not merely saying, “We are right and you are wrong.” Rather, we affirm some of their beliefs and reason in this way, “If you believe (rightly) this – then why do you inconsistently believe that?” And then we attract them by showing how the things they seek can only be found in Christ.[20]

Repentance and Forgiveness

      Eglinton points out that hospitality needs to be accompanied by cultural apologetics, and forgiveness holds the two together.

      The existential power of forgiveness holds together the porches of hospitality and cultural apologetics. If we have no capacity to forgive, hospitality is impossible. Forgiveness is hospitality’s constant assumption—and when hospitality has to give an apologetic for its own existence, sooner or later, it will have to talk about forgiveness. But forgiveness also has to provide its own apologetic: why forgive, rather than be indifferent to wrongs, or bear grudges, or mete out your own revenge?[21]

      In a cancel-culture world, we have lost the ability to forgive. We have lost, in many instances, even the possibility of forgiveness. We not only withhold it, but we heap condemnation on top of condemnation. The transgressor is not simply wrong; they are evil. There are no mistakes, only evil hearts proving themselves.  

      The Bible has something to say about that, doesn’t it? No one is good, not even one (Rom. 3:10-12). Yet the God of the Bible does not leave us in that hell. He brings heaven down in his Son to offer forgiveness freely and fully. That vertical reality affects our horizontal relationships. Christians must show that to the world. Other things may bring people onto the porch, but the doctrine and practice of forgiveness will get them in the house.

      The precursor to forgiveness is repentance, and that starts with us too. We will sin, and when we do, we must repent and ask for forgiveness. Instead of doubling down, we need to humble ourselves. In his book Losing Our Religion, Russell Moore says, “As the prophet Ezekiel was told to dramatically enact carrying “exile’s baggage” as a way of showing Israel their coming judgment (Ezek. 12:1-16), maybe what the church is most called to do in this moment is not, first, to preach repentance but to embody what repentance looks like so that a culture seeking forgiveness will know what the words even mean.”[22]

Conclusion 

      We live in a complex world. There are no easy answers. The goal is not to find the silver bullet answer. The goal is to be formed by Christ to live for him in this world. The goal is to let him work through us, and that begins by humbling ourselves, acknowledging our weaknesses, and trusting him for the grace to help.

      We will end with James Eglinton’s exhortation.

      The goal of the forecourt is to offer something that secular Westerners need as human beings (made in the image of God), and to an extent still partially intuit (in the confused heritage of post-Christendom), but that they cannot get to on their own.[23]

      We have news to share. We have a Savior to invite them to know. We have salvation to offer.

            There is much to do, and it may feel, at times, impossible. But with God, all things are possible, especially with the God that will step out of heaven to find us. The Church is his house, and he has welcomed us in. Now, in response, will we go out to the porch and invite others in?

[1] Tim Keller, How to Reach the West Again, page 7.

[2] See Eglinton’s talk “The Church and Society,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5SGaIt0-GE

[3] Christopher Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory, page 15.

[4] Glen Scrivener, The Air We Breathe, page 12.

[5] Kyle Harper, “The First Sexual Revolution”, https://www.firstthings.com/article/2018/01/the-first-sexual-revolution

[6] Tim Keller, “Lemonade on the Porch (Part 1): The Gospel in a Post-Christendom Society,” https://quarterly.gospelinlife.com/gospel-in-a-post-christendom-society/

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.

[11] James Eglinton, “Lemonade on the Porch – Why and How to Build Porches: The Gospel in a Post-Christendom Society,” https://quarterly.gospelinlife.com/lemonade-on-the-porch-part-2/

[12] Ibid.

[13] Rosaria Butterfield, The Gospel Comes with A House Key, page 13.

[14] Michael Keller, “Lemonade on the Porch: Redeemer Pastors Suggestions,” https://rpc-download.s3.amazonaws.com/Lemonade_on_the_Porch_Redeemer_Pastors_Suggestions.pdf

[15] A quote often (wrongly) attributed to St. Francis of Assisi.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Collin Hansen, “What is Cultural Apologetics?” https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/what-cultural-apologetics/

[18] Ted Turnau, Popologetics.

[19] See Daniel Strange, “For Their Rock Is Not as Our Rock: The Gospel as the ‘Subversive Fulfillment’ of the Religious Other.” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 56/2 (2013) 379–95.  https://www.etsjets.org/files/JETS-PDFs/56/56-2/JETS_56-2_379-395_Strange.pdf

[20] Tim Keller, “Lemonade on the Porch (Part 1): The Gospel in a Post-Christendom Society,” https://quarterly.gospelinlife.com/gospel-in-a-post-christendom-society/

[21] James Eglinton, “Lemonade on the Porch – Why and How to Build Porches: The Gospel in a Post-Christendom Society,” https://quarterly.gospelinlife.com/lemonade-on-the-porch-part-2/

[22] Russell Moore, Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America, page 201.

[23] Ibid.