This article has been adapted from “Priority Reading for 2022: Jon Harris’s Christianity and Social Justice: Religions in Conflict,” a Word Foundations article that is available here.

In his excellent book titled Christianity and Social Justice: Religions in Conflict, podcaster and author Jon Harris includes an extremely helpful appendix titled “Woke Evangelical Tactics,” In it, Jon explores several important slight-of-hand maneuvers on the part of social justice advocates of which Christians need to be wary. One of these is that “conservative views conflict with public witness.”¹ Apparently having embraced this assumption, many churches are going out of their way not to offend, and even to attract, unchurched people into the “fold.” Certainly we need to be friendly toward unbelievers and Christlike in our relationships with others, including those outside the church. However, the effort I’m speaking of here is an effort to be liked without necessarily being respected. The effect is to essentially abandon conservative values, even those that are solidly biblical, to increase the church’s numbers.

The modern evangelical church has an identity crisis. It is obsessed with being liked, even at the expense of being respected.…The truth is that bending over backwards to be “winsome” ultimately is alienating many. 

Have we forgotten that the gospel itself is offensive? Have we forgotten that at one point, Jesus turned to His own disciples and asked, “You do not want to leave too, do you?” The truth is that bending over backwards to be “winsome” ultimately is alienating many. If the tenets of the Christian faith mean so little to us, then why in the world would anyone outside the church think they are worth adopting as principles to live by? Mr. Harris makes this powerful statement on the matter:

It is important to remember that in the face of political movements forcing evil agendas there is a place for anger and uncompromising fortitude.

David certainly did not approach Goliath in a “winsome way.” Rather, he declared: “Who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should taunt the armies of the living God?” Neither was Elijah winsome when he mocked the prophets of Baal. John the Baptist called King Herod a fox. Jesus…said the Pharisees were “whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness.” Paul expressed his desire for false teachers to “mutilate themselves.” The Bible is filled with examples of men who were not very winsome and would definitely be considered angry today. Yet Scripture teaches that while there is never a time to sin, there is a time to be angry about sin. Righteous indignation is sometimes appropriate.²

Men are are drawn to leaders like Jesus. Jesus led with clarity. He never licked his finger and held it up in the air to determine from which direction the cultural winds were blowing. He led with conviction rooted in bedrock truth. He was confident in who He was.

Herein, I believe, Mr. Harris has uncovered a reason many men have abandoned the church and Christianity. Men hunger for a cause for which to stand, one that challenges them and that even makes demands of them. Men are are drawn to leaders like Jesus.

Jesus led with clarity. He never licked his finger and held it up in the air to determine from which direction the cultural winds were blowing. This is not to say the Master wasn’t aware of what what was happening in the culture; we need only read Matthew 23, where He pronounced seven “woes” on the teachers of the law and the Pharisees, to realize He knew exactly what was happening. Yet, often despite cultural trends, Jesus led with conviction rooted in bedrock truth. He was confident in who He was. By contrast, unfortunately, today’s church and her leaders appear to have an “obsession” with “cultural engagement,” almost an insatiable desire to understand

The [church’s] assumption seems to be that Christians are on the outside of culture and need to strategically manufacture a culture of their own capable of competing with the outside culture and drawing outsiders in the least offensive way possible.
—Jon Harris—

how modern people think and their preferences so as to effectively persuade them toward Christianity. The assumption seems to be that Christians are on the outside of culture and need to strategically manufacture a culture of their own capable of competing with the outside culture and drawing outsiders in the least offensive way possible. This is the history of neo-evangelicalism over the past several decades. In order to keep up with the times, evangelical industries reinvent themselves almost every 10 years. Yet nowhere is this thinking represented in Scripture.³

The Bottom Line

If you haven’t yet read Christianity and Social Justice, you need to read it. You can order a copy of the book from Amazon, but its also available at WalMart, and various other retail locations as well, including Books-a-Million and Barnes and Noble.

Copyright © 2021 by B. Nathaniel Sullivan. All rights reserved.

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture passages have been taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations embedded within quotes from Christianity and Social Justice have been taken from the New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Notes:

¹Jon Harris, Christianity and Social Justice: Religions in Conflict (Reformation Zion Publishing, 2021), 125.

²Harris, 129.