In today’s world, we need unabashed Christian leaders in the realms of intellectual pursuits. However, this is difficult because of the particular antagonism Christianity generates in secular academia.
In our eagerness to see Christians assume positions of social and cultural influence, we will do well to encourage Christian scholars and intellectuals not to modify their beliefs, either to make them more palatable or to retain their own popularity. There are many examples of such so-called “Christian Intellectuals” throughout history.
Take the great thinker Reinhold Niebuhr, for example. Highly acclaimed and popular, he was not ashamed of the fact that he was Christian. However, he amended crucial orthodox Christian beliefs to satisfy the cultural demands around him. Talking about Niebuhr, Albert Mohler writes:
As Marsden noted in his fine work, The Twilight of the American Enlightenment, “The grand irony of that strategy was that, while Niebuhr himself used it effectively as a way to preserve a public role for the Christian heritage, its subjective qualities made the faith wholly optional and dispensable.”
In the cover story on Niebuhr, we read the acknowledgement that “Reinhold Niebuhr’s new orthodoxy is the old-time religion put through the intellectual wringer. It is a re-examination of orthodoxy for an age dominated by such trends as rationalism, liberalism, Marxism, fascism, idealism, and the idea of progress.”
In the search to bring Christianity to culture, many fall into the trap of compromising their faith for modern ideals. However, regardless of public opinion, principles should not be modified to meet societal standards. Mohler goes on to write about this in no uncertain terms:
But we must be careful lest a quest for Christian intellectual influence meets its end in an intellect that is neither Christian nor influential.
The Christian intellectual influence we should seek is the influence of an intellect saturated in Christian truth, keenly applied to the questions of our times. Whether the secular world will listen to us, much less thank us for the effort, is another question altogether.
In today’s world, we desperately need Christian leaders: people in prominent positions in culture who are willing to live differently and lead the culture to Christ. People who are unafraid to challenge societal norms and live a lifestyle that reflects what should be the world’s overarching mission: to seek God.
September 14, 2016
