This is Life!: Revolutions Around the Cruciform Axis

Gnostic Christianity

In an article, The Church Why Bother? (hat tip: Touchstone's Mere Comments), Tim Stafford analyzes a recent Barna report:

The Barna Research Group reports that in the United States about 10 million self-proclaimed, born-again Christians have not been to church in the last six months, apart from Christmas or Easter. (Barna defines "born-again" as those who say they have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important today, and believe they will "go to heaven because I have confessed my sins and have accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior.")

Nearly all born-agains say their spiritual life is very important, but for 10 million of them, spiritual life has nothing to do with church.

About a third of Americans are unchurched, according to Barna's national data. Approximately 23 million of those—35 percent of the unchurched—claim they have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important in their lives today.

This split--thoroughly modern, thoroughly Cartesian--between what one believes or thinks and what one does with one's body, is, in my view, endemic in modern-day Protestantism. I know. This was pretty much the scenario in my heritage churches, except it was easier twenty and thirty years ago to stress the need for church. Not that my family went all the time. By the time I was in grade school, except for a couple of brief periods, our family went very irregularly to church.

Stafford is right: "I would call it Gnostic faith. For them the spirit is completely separated from the body. They think your spirit can be with Jesus Christ while your body goes its own way."

But, when you think about it, really, what do "born-again believers" miss by opting out of Protestant/evangelical/fundamentalist church?

They need not lack the Word of God. The Bible is available through Barnes & Noble, and will undoubtedly continue to be published at a profit even if all the Christians get raptured away. Radio and TV offer excellent Bible teaching. So do books and magazines.

Fellowship? The internet offers chat rooms and Bible study groups. Friends have told me their internet prayer support group reaches more depth and is more dependable than anything they encounter in the flesh.

Worship? Some people find that music CDs provide what they need. Others find great inspiration watching Robert Schuller's Hour of Power. Anyway, if you need a worship fix you can slip into any big church and leave without bothering a soul.

Granted, you need a church to get baptized and to receive Communion. Let's admit, though, that in many churches the sacraments are a devalued commodity. The same for church discipline, only more so. If you expect church to provide the bracing rule that purifies souls, forget it in most places.

Few modern churches really emphasize either baptism or Communion. In my own churches, anyone could baptize you, and you could always buy grape juice and unsalted crackers at the store and "remember" Christ's sacrifice on your own. I know. I did it myself a few times.

But this is a Gnostic, which is to say, heretical, Christianity. If you deny the bodily aspects of the Faith, you soon deny the Church. And if you deny the Church, it's not too far a step to deny the Incarnation. And then Christ becomes just another moral exemplar and teacher: just like Muhammed, Buddha, and Ghandi. It's not inevitable, but there is a progression: deny the Sacraments, deny the Church, deny Christ.