Thank you all very much for this opportunity to share some of my thoughts to help answer a crucial question for Christians today. In this multi-media-dizzy 21st Century – What are we to think about, and how should we take part in, the Christian Voice in the World Village Town Square? A Square that seems – at times – about to explode with “Public-ness.”
Let’s look first at the end of the 20th century and two prominent Christian voices in a public square that was smaller. C.S. Lewis, an Irishman by birth, had an active career in Britain as a scholar, author and public speaker. American Pastor and evangelist Francis Schaeffer became a public figure later in his life as he evolved into a writer, speaker, and film maker. Both men appeared on the cover of Time magazine. Both men spoke and defended the historical Christian faith. Lewis was an Anglican; Schaeffer was a fundamentalist and conservative historic Presbyterian. I never met Lewis; he died on the same day that John Kennedy was killed in Dallas, and I was a teenager then. As for Francis Schaeffer, I did meet him and studied under him – both at Covenant College and at Covenant Seminary. He holds a place now as one of the founding fathers from our denomination’s roots.
Both men were prolific writers, not only of books, but also personal letters. If someone wrote to one of these men, he would take the time to answer. Both showed a strong commitment to the next generation – Lewis with his books and Schaeffer with conversations and conferences.
I want to consider first how the public square has changed since the lives of Lewis and Schaeffer; then I want to suggest what we can learn from these men about the use of technology in the communication of the Christian voice in the public square. Technology for them did not match what we have available today, but they both cared about the clarity of the language of faith in their generation.
The history of a fallen people always includes the tragedy of war, and wars and conflict are a major component of the shape of today’s public square. C.S. Lewis, who was born in 1898, served as a line officer in the trenches in WW1. There are fascinating stories of his exploits on the battlefield. Schaeffer, born in 1912, never served in the military, but his ministry was shaped by WW2 as he and his family moved to Europe after the war as missionaries.
When it comes to perspective on wars and conflicts, let me say this: WW1 was a global war of Empires. WW2 was a global war of alliances. Both had start dates with formal declarations of war and end dates of surrender. Today, things are different. We have conflicts. We do not go to war with formal declarations. There have been no surrenders. For our current circumstances, go back to the Invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Move forward – event to event – and two months from today, we will have been involved in ceaseless conflicts for the past 26 years.
In the days of Lewis and Schaeffer, wars started and wars ended. Today they do not. Those overseas conflicts, and their life-taking violence, now come to our American hometowns, as well as hometowns around the entire globe.
Unlike the generation of Lewis and Schaeffer, the conflicts of our generation have become background noise in the public square. Conflicts, with United States military involvement, seem relentless. In WW2 refugees were part of the consequences of war. Today, with never-ending conflicts there comes a stream of never-ending refugees. After WW2 the refugees were European, some were Jewish. We often, as Americans, forget about our refusal at times to accept Jewish refugees just because they were Jewish – not like us. Today most refugees are not like us – in religion, language, or cultural context and history.
Speaking to the specific issue of war, we find an example of CS Lewis and the public square in a lecture he gave after Britain, on the first of January, 1940, called up 2 million 19 to 27-year-olds for military service. Lewis gave his famous “Why I am Not a Pacifist” speech at the Oxford Pacifist Society! He addresses the question, “How do we decide what is good and evil?” You can read the speech as an essay in his collection, “The Weight of Glory,” or you can use our contemporary tools and watch it on YouTube. People still offer push-back to Lewis’s views, demonstrating the enduring strength of his voice in the public square.
Christians need to understand that these military conflicts represent competing narratives with heroes, adventures, and goals – the “where-we-are-going” in the future last chapters of our earthly book. There are competing narratives in the Islamic world between those who would have peace and those who wage war by any means. In the west – in the US and Europe – there are competing narratives between what we refer to as secular narratives and religious narratives. As we are thinking tonight about the Christian Voice in the Public Square, in our context here, many of you likely think of this voice with an accent of Biblical conservative protestant.
Ongoing conflict, with competing narratives – so far, these 26 years’ worth– is part of the changing Public Square in which Christians need to raise their voices. Before we move on, think, please, about two realities. First, security has become an idol for people, demonstrated by the rise of all kinds of fears in the public square. Prescriptions for anti-anxiety medications are at their highest, even for children. It is apparent that people will give up freedoms for security – and this fact is something Francis Schaeffer predicted back in the 60s. Remember what the Apostle John said, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.” A second reality is our public and private response to the ongoing refugee crisis in the world. My church, the Presbyterian Church in America, works with refugees in overseas nations of transit. The church also helps with settlement here in the United States, loving their new “not like me” neighbors.
Technology came to Professor Lewis when the BBC asked him, and he agreed, to give BBC radio talks during WW2. He was able to shift from the academic world and context to a national radio audience as he told stories and asked questions as background to spur his generation to consider the orthodox Christian faith. Radio stretched his great mind in ways academic writing and publishing did not. Lewis was not alone in the use of radio broadcasting in his generation and coming generations, but he left a multigenerational high water mark for Christians in the public square.
Francis Schaeffer moved from his books and conversations and conferences to tape recordings and films. The tapes became part of study centers where people could listen to lectures on many topics and then discuss the content of the tapes. Besides the L’Abri study centers that Francis and Edith Schaeffer fostered, I recall seeing a prep school ministry on Martha’s Vineyard running a study center for high school students with Schaeffer tapes. The vehicle of film served Schaeffer well as he presented his world view and European history – all the while raising his prophetic voice in the public square in the last half of the 20th century.
I often wonder what Lewis and Schaeffer would think of today’s public square and its contrast with theirs. Today’s is crowded, and it is 24/7. Would Lewis be on talk radio or cable TV or have his own podcasts and YouTube channel? Wait! There is a CS Lewis YouTube channel – and more! Schaeffer’s tapes were copied and copied again and shared by mail. His films are now on YouTube. The tapes make their way to the internet as they are remastered and digitized for this century.
The public square in today’s “search engine culture” has many voices, but who is heard? So often our public squares are just what we refer to as “echo chambers.” We search, view or read what we look for from people we trust and know already, people like us who speak with that Biblical conservative Protestant accent. The PCA’s Tim Keller gets a call from the cable talk shows occasionally, or Russell Moore, a Southern Baptist, gets print inches or is copied in the Huffington Post. Expand your searches to include African Americans who are in the PCA or another Reformed branch. Then move on to other African American Christians, who might be politically different and have different social concerns based on Biblical values. This deliberate exploration helps us ask ourselves whose Christian voice we are looking for in the Public Square. I am confounded by the main stream media’s use of “evangelical,” so much so that I stopped using “evangelical” to describe myself when asked. If I feel the need for an adjective before Christian, I quietly say, “confessional Presbyterian.”
Let’s look now at the use of language by Lewis and Schaeffer in their desire for clarity in the language of faith. Lewis spent all his adult life in academia studying words. Read or listen to Lewis and hear the clarity of the use of words in a well-reasoned argument. Schaeffer coined words or phrases that were startling in their clarity. “True truth,” pointing to the truth of the Word of God, is the best known and maybe the most used because it makes its point so clearly. As for today’s world, we owe thanks to your native son Stephen Colbert, who has given us the perfect new entry for our dictionaries – “Truthiness,” or “what feels true to me.” Yes, folks, that is the mindset of so many who are in our public square. People determine what is true for them – individually– based upon what feels right, but more importantly what makes them feel good. Again, this change of “thought gears” is something Schaeffer predicted in the 60s as a consequence of the shift away from “True truth.” Feelings and experience set the conversation for the public square.
Christians who believe in a God who reveals himself and inspired men to write down revelation in a common language that is true are strangers speaking another language in the public square. People will say, “Sure, I believe in God.” But do they believe in a God who is both “There” and communicates in propositions and revelation in a common language that can be understood as Schaeffer said? Is that word of God true? Does it speak to all of life? The corruption of language in the public square makes common conversations almost impossible, but not completely impossible. Schaeffer taught that we should listen to people before we respond to people. Listening before responding is to enable us to understand what they are saying. For many people, God does not define himself; instead, men or women create a god in an image that comforts them and is controlled by the words and prayers of the worshiper. Have you heard of the IKEA god? – some assembly required? This human exercise is what the Bible calls idolatry, false gods. Yet in our age, the public square has made the crowd or individual the judge of what is true and false for any individual at any given time. We still have so much to understand about our neighbors and how they view the world. The good news is that the creator still sends his Holy Spirit to use his word and people to change hearts from stone to flesh, from enemies of God to children of God by saving faith.
In looking at the public square of the past through the works and lives of CS Lewis and Francis Schaeffer and seeing their examples as Christian voices in the public square we should first acknowledge that there will always be voices – plural – not one Christian voice. Second, those voices will be diverse, as were the published – and still available – works of Lewis and Schaeffer. Third, Christian voices in the public square will be global Christian voices because the public square is now a global square. Just as Lewis and Schaeffer’s books and other works are translated into other languages and cultures, so must we listen to Christians who are African-American, Spanish, Asian, African, Middle Eastern, and more.
So, to conclude, what should we do? First, get to know our neighbors and neighborhood, even the new ones and the ones not like us. Have a passion for the next generation. Get the biographies of Lewis and Schaeffer and read about that. Second, learn to listen. Schaeffer said, “Listen for 50 minutes for every 10 minutes of talking or answering a question.” To quote the title of Sherry Turkle’s book, we need to be about “Reclaiming the conversation.” If the issue is the Christian voice in the Public Square, what public do we think will listen to the Christian voice if we have not listened first? Third, we have much to say. But we need to say it in a way that – if they reject what we say – they will have understood what we were saying when they reject it. Learn to talk in a language our neighbors will understand, not some insider’s Christian jargon. Yes, there are important words people need to understand. Just as some of us need a translator to understand the internet, it’s the same for people not raised on the Bible – they need a guide. And, yes, much of Christianity is going to be offensive. The cross and atonement is almost impossible for many to understand or accept, as is the resurrection or the need for faith in Jesus as the only way of salvation. On the crowded and noisy public square today, these non-negotiable “one-ways” seem like a throw-back to another time. Fourth and finally, pray. Prayer is not a fall-back activity or strategy but it is the family language of the Father who has adopted us and taught us, to say “Abba.” The public square is global, but prayer, my friends, is cosmic. We pray before the creator of all and the redeemer of a global people. Now listen and join in with the global voices in the global public square.
