Christian witness in a new public square

Reflections from the first Presbyterian and Reformed Public Theology Conference

In a warm, inviting church tucked away in Washington D.C.’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, nearly seventy people gathered for the inaugural Presbyterian and Reformed Public Theology Conference. The event was co-hosted by the Institute on Religion and Democracy and Ministry to State, the Presbyterian Church in America’s discipleship ministry to people working in government.

The attendees included pastors, professors, pundits, and policymakers, each one interested in the central question of the conference: What answers can the Presbyterian and Reformed tradition provide to questions about the common good and national flourishing?

Noticeably absent, however, was any mention of Donald Trump or Joe Biden. The overall indifference to an election cycle currently dominating the media landscape was an implicit acknowledgement that the issues facing our culture are bigger than who wins in November. Ironically, such a dire diagnosis mostly came as a great relief. Unburdened by the noxious debates that fill our social media feeds, the conference was free to address weightier themes like secularization, liberalism, and transhumanism with more time and nuance than is allowed in a typical tweet.

The speakers all seemed to agree that something new is happening in the public square. Each of them identified marriage law and transgenderism as the primary cultural concerns for Christians today. Greater attention to the natural order represents a real development in the public square. Since the Modernist-Fundamentalist controversy of the early twentieth century, American evangelicals have felt the most tension with the culture over their beliefs about the supernatural. Whether by free choice or institutional barrier, affirming things like creationism and the historical resurrection of Jesus increasingly prevented many Christians from participating in elite circles of government, academia, and the fine arts. 

Today, however, it is not what Christians believe about the supernatural that ostracizes them from the public square but what they believe about nature. Go tell someone today that you believe Jesus was born of a virgin and you might be dismissed with a polite nod. Tell him you believe God made man and woman in his image, distinct, and complementary for union in marriage and you might lose your job.

Recognizing this real change in Christian public witness, most speakers focused their remarks on creation. Jennifer Patterson discussed incorporating the “grammar of creation” into public policy. Dr. Scott Redd similarly argued for “creation theory” as a more biblical account for what the classics often described in terms of natural law. Dr. James Wood, though more sympathetic to natural law, reminded us of God’s ordered relationship between church and state as revealed in Scripture and exposited by the best in the Presbyterian and Reformed tradition. Jake Meador of Mere Orthodoxy represented something of a middle ground, wanting to appropriate the best of natural law but reminding us that Christian views about marriage and gender are based in God’s love for his creation. In other words, we believe these things not simply because they’re natural but because God tells us they’re good.

Even amidst so much agreement, the conference still featured major differences between speakers and the camps within the Presbyterian and Reformed world they represent. 

In his survey of Presbyterian political thought, Wood emphasized the doctrine of circa sacra, a recognition that the civil magistrate, while not holding immediate authority over spiritual things, is responsible for upholding the conditions in which the church can flourish. Wood frequently invoked the idea of civil magistrates as “nursing fathers,” a theme Calvin pulled from Isaiah 49:23 and and the Westminster Divines confessionalized in 1643.

What implications does circa sacra have on matters like establishment, law, and religious liberty? While the tradition largely attests to the civil magistrate’s obligation to enforce both tables of the Decalogue, how does he or she do that in a pluralistic society like the one we have today? Equally important, noted Redd, was the Bible’s normative proscription against coercing faith. So what exactly constitutes coercion in modern America remains one of the major questions of our time. Are Sabbath laws coercive? What about prayers in public schools? Or, perhaps getting really practical, should Satanist statues be protected under first amendment law?

The conference also frequently returned to the issue of strategy. Patterson made the case for an “intrinsic” approach to public theology. Christians, gifted by God in particular ways, need to become experts in their fields and re-enter the public policy ecosystem. This she purposefully pitted against the “extrinsic” approach reminiscent of a certain type of mid-twentieth century evangelicalism. One might reasonably ask whether Patterson’s strategy can work in an increasingly hostile and ideological public sphere. Still, there is overlap with Aaron Renn’s hope for a new generation of Christians adequately equipped to do excellent work in the institutions and industries they once filled. 

Similarly, Meador focused most of his remarks on strategies for overcoming the deleterious effects of modern liberalism. Especially insightful was his penetrating dissection of both left-wing woke-ism (what Meador prefers to call the “successor ideology”) and Christian Nationalism. In Meador’s opinion, the two are simply different sides of the same coin. While Christian Nationalism promises to overcome the successor ideology, it will ultimately fail as it grows increasingly authoritarian and intolerant. Instead, argued Meador, Christians should resist the temptation to trade one illiberal ideology for another and focus on rigorous Christian formation and institutional management.

Despite these substantive–and sometimes pointed–critiques, the conference never once mirrored the frustration, impatience, and ad hominem attacks emblematic of similar debates online. Certainly, the event’s cordiality speaks to the character of the speakers and the attendees as well as the negative nature of online discourse. But the decision to return periodically to devotionals and the doxology also gave the conference a certain pastoral mood.

On Friday night, Rev. Porter Harlow, a PCA minister in the Washington suburbs opened the conference with remarks on the spirituality of the church, a doctrine hotly debated but undeniably true. Yes, the institutional church ought to speak on ethical issues like slavery, abortion, and gender-assignment surgery. It cannot, however, write the laws and enforce them. Those are not its duties. 

Yet, God has called many in his church into offices and vocations that directly engage the public square–elected officials, policy experts, teachers, soldiers, laborers, artists, and academics. It is imperative, Harlow argued, that Christians perform their vocational duties as obedient servants of God’s Word. There is no escaping the fact that each of us is to be like a city set on a hill wherever God has placed us.

And perhaps we have finally arrived at a more personal, existential impulse for the conference and the need for further reflection on public theology: Being a Christian is really hard right now.

Questions still need creative answering. Strategy remains a priority. But ultimately, we need the hope that flows from the grace of the Gospel. God has not given up on his creation nor his church. There is no Plan B. With his grace and the encouragement that comes from Christian fellowship may we continue to be salt and light in the public square whatever may come our way.