A Letter To The Southern Church
Bible Belt culture and orthodoxy desperately need a reunification - people's lives just may hang in the balance.
A reader recently pointed out that it seems I have a chip on my shoulder towards the southern Church. I’ve been taking an inward look recently, trying to wrestle through the murkiness of what I feel.
I’m truly thankful for the churches I grew up in and the people in those churches. No church is perfect and the Bible Belt’s churches are no different.
But the jury of my conscience has spoken. I still have a chip on my shoulder.
“Chip” would be the wrong term. It may imply that I have a certain level of contempt towards the church, which I have none of, especially towards the people.
So instead of chip, let’s just say I have a burden - a burden that passionately rages for the lost and confused which often translates into anger towards a certain set of cultural ideas.
I’ve seen too many people walk away from Jesus because their Bible Belt church made an unwritten list of non-crucial checkboxes they had to believe to be a Christian. They were told, often non-verbally via cultural cues and their church’s reaction to “no-no” questions, that in order to be saved they had to agree with the church’s ideas on politics, creation, sovereignty, heaven, hell, etc…
First, if you find yourself on the receiving end of these subtle cultural cues, before you leave Christ, the literal hope of the world, let me say:
You can believe in the Incarnation and believe in evolution.
You can believe in the Resurrection and believe that some people who never hear the gospel will be saved.
You can believe that sin exists and ask the hard questions about it.
You can believe in the Holy Spirit and be uncertain about the Bible’s authority.
Evolution, Inclusivism, and biblical criticism are not heresies.
I’m not even saying I hold to all of these somewhat controversial statements. I just don’t think they should be grouped in with orthodoxy.
And trust me, I won’t budge on orthodoxy. I’m no liberal Christian, explaining away miracles and sin and salvation until I’ve turned the Bible into something resembling Oprah’s latest bestseller.
But this is a letter to the church that I deeply know and care about - the southern church. So I’m addressing southern problems, not liberal ones.
But what is orthodoxy? What’s so important about the Incarnation, the Resurrection, and the Holy Spirit that they get a special “crucial” status?
Well, aside from the fact that I think truly believing orthodoxy actually changes you, there’s also a historical element to this.
Orthodoxy is the Latin word for “right belief” and was coined by the 4th century (300AD) early Church Fathers. They came together and said, “Alright folks, what’re the non-negotiables here? What must we believe to be a Christian?”
They weren’t just creating some random list so they could exclude certain people and be some mega-institution that dominated the world. No, they actually believed Jesus was God in the flesh and they believed that it mattered.
It’s important to note that “orthodoxy” has evolved to take on different meanings depending on the specific group that is using the word.
The Encyclopedia Britannica notes, “Because almost every Christian group believes that it holds the true faith (though not necessarily exclusively), the meaning of “orthodox” in a particular instance can be correctly determined only after examination of the context in which it appears.”1
Eager debaters chomp at the bits to argue over what means what for what why what blah blah blah, so for clarity, the context in which I use the word “orthodox” will be its most historical (and most commonly used) meaning:
Orthodoxy refers to those beliefs that are common to all Christianity, which if rejected place one outside of the Church.
What are those beliefs though? Isn’t that up for debate too? Well, yes - but the vast majority throughout church history and Christians today would agree that orthodox beliefs are those stated in the Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed, two of the oldest “statements of faith”.
Please read carefully.
The Apostles Creed
I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, God's only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again; he ascended into heaven, he is seated at the right hand of the Father, and he will come again to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic2 church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.
The Nicene Creed
We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the virgin Mary, and was made man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified.
He has spoken through the Prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic3 and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.
So What?
It’s not my intent to boor you. Quite the opposite.
Read over those creeds and note where the focus is - Christ, the Trinity, the mission of God…
But also notice what is missing.
We don’t see much on hell, predestination, creation, biblical innerancy, the fate of the un-evangelized, who’s saved and who’s not, politics, God’s sovereignty, the theology of evil and suffering, etc… yet these are many of the reasons people walk away from their faith.
I think that’s a tragedy.
One could certainly argue that anyone who falls away from the faith didn’t have “real” faith to begin with, but isn’t all of ours a bit shallow at first?
Maybe their faith wasn’t real… I don’t know. But it would be a shame if it was (or was about to become) real, and then the church’s strict stance on one of these secondary beliefs created severe cognitive dissonance in their truth-seeking mind… so they went with what seemed more true to them. Just food for thought.
I want people to cling to orthodoxy with all that they have and live a life that reflects that belief. I think it’s incredibly important. Like the church fathers, I don’t see how one can faithfully live in the Christian reality while denying these credal statements.
Just like an effective surgeon needs to know the body and be unwavering in his ability to discern tendon from artery, so does an effective follower of Jesus need to understand and believe orthodoxy - both risk making a bloody mess without the proper framework.
So orthodoxy is important not just for cerebral know-how, but for practical action and discipleship.
Faith in Jesus is not a list of mental checkboxes for you to get all ironed out before you die. No, it’s much harder than that. You have to be willing to drop everything to follow the voice of a living God, something that can’t be formulated, and nobody can do it for you.
Bible Belt, you don’t have to agree theologically with me on everything, and I’m encouraged by many of the things you do really well, but for the sake of the world and the salvation of the lost, please examine your own heart and ask what hill you’re willing to die on.
It would be a shame if we chose too demanding of a hill and someone rotted in the valley because of it.
If you enjoy my work, the only thing I ask is that you share it with people it may touch. Love y’all!
https://www.britannica.com/topic/orthodox
Catholic in this sense does not mean Roman Catholic. “The word Catholic is derived from the Greek adjective, katholikos, meaning "universal," and from the adverbial phrase, kath' holou, meaning "on the whole." The term was first used by St. Ignatius of Antioch (d.c.107) in his Letter to the Smyrnæans: "Where the bishop is to be seen, there let all his people be; just as wherever Jesus Christ is present, we have the catholic Church" (n.8). Ever since the Reformation, the word has commonly been used in opposition to Protestant, but its real opposite is sectarian, which pertains to a part of the Church that has separated itself off from the worldwide Church and, to some extent, from the world itself.” Source: McBrien, Richard. Catholicism. HarperCollins Publishers, 1994.
see footnote #2