If our
church history begins with Billy Graham, we’ve probably forgotten something
important.
In his new
book, “The American Spirit,” David McCullough observes, “We are raising a
generation of young Americans who are by and large historically illiterate.”
And in her Wall Street Journal review of the book, Peggy Noonan recounts
McCullough’s description of “a bright Missouri college student who thanked him
for coming to the campus, because, she said, ‘until now I never understood that
the original 13 colonies were all on the East Coast.’”
While it’s
tempting to laugh at the state of history education, and it is really abysmal
among most Americans, we should first look in the mirror. And by we, I mean
Christians, those of us who follow a historical figure, who actually lived in
history, who was born as part of the story of a nation that played a central
role in human history, and who lived and died and rose again, in obedience to
God the Father who, from all indications in Scripture, is a God concerned with
time and place.
In
particular, we evangelicals need to take history more seriously. As Mark Noll
wrote in his book, “The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind,” “American
evangelicals display many virtues and do many things well,” he writes, “but
built-in barriers to careful and constructive thinking remain substantial.”
Now what
barriers is he talking about? Some are obvious when we look carefully at
our own history. As many, including Noll, have described,
evangelicalism began as a tiny reform movement away from larger institutions
such as the state-supported Catholic and Anglican churches. Early evangelical
leaders stressed things like individual conversion, small groups, and the
evangelizing of young people, Native Americans, and slaves. And Evangelicalism
innovated means to grow in faith that were outside of established, traditional
channels.
“In
general throughout the 18th and on to the 19th century,” Noll explained in an
interview with Christian History, “the whole of the English-speaking world
[was] moving away from traditional religion defined by respect for authority,
respect for the past, respect for the tradition, and moving toward a more
individualistic, pragmatic, and practical practice of Christianity.”
What all
this means is that the greatest strength of evangelicalism—the emphasis on the
personal aspect of faith—may also have become a weakness. In our personal zeal
for Jesus, Noll suggests that we’ve neglected deeper, more historically rooted
education in the Christian faith and the development of a public theology that
can speak broadly to the culture. Or as one of my history teaching friends
often likes to say, some of us suffer from evangelical Alzheimer’s.
All of
this suggests that we do, in fact, have much to learn from our Christian
forebears. A robust study of church history will not only ground us in the rich
story of our faith, it will allow us to learn from those who have gone before.
After all, we didn’t invent the gospel or the church. And the Bible is not a
collection of moral maxims or principles isolated from history. No, it contains
the overarching story of God’s interaction with humanity. And God’s concern
with time and place means He has historically situated His people, while
breaking into history in such a way as to bring about its conclusion and
consummation.
And though
we find in Scripture saints and heroes, we shouldn’t stop at the end of the New
Testament. Two-thousand years of church history has given us believers like
Polycarp, Augustine, Francis, Teresa, Carey, Wilberforce, Chesterton, Lewis,
Bonhoeffer, Ten Boom, and my friend and hero, Chuck Colson, all of whom modeled
the Christian life and left records of their journey.
John
Stonestreet is President of The Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview and
BreakPoint co-host.
