Psalm 33
A Sermon by Reginald McLelland

I've "tweaked" this a bit, adding a bit more to my exegesis of Psalm 33, footnoting the quotes, and strengthening a point here and there.  You must realize, however, that if I were presenting this in a more formal and academic setting, I would give much more argument and clarification.  My sermon was intended to make an important point, but a limited one, and to get Christians (especially political conservative ones) to think more carefully about the "cultural wars" mentality.  So, it is important that you see this "sermon-essay" as a conversation starter and not as a final word on the matter, especially theologically.

Reg McLelland

Introduction:

When University Church was founded back in 1969, its mission statement was “bringing first century Christianity into the 20th century.”  As some of you might remember, the late 60’s and early 70’s were “heady” days; it was indeed, the Age of Aquarius with the civil rights movement, the war in Vietnam, a reaction against a corporate materialistic culture, and unfortunately an assault on traditional moral values regarding sexuality as well.  There was an emphasis on “the making of a counter-culture,” the creation of a new order, “when the moon would be in the second house, and Jupiter would align with Sermon Mars, and peace would rule the planets, and love would guide the stars.”  And, many Evangelical Christians were not indifferent to such a cause.

University Church was a unique campus voice in those days in an ecclesiastical climate (at least among theologically conservative churches) that more often than not ignored what was going on in the larger society and constituted a world unto itself.  U.C. was led by a pastor with a seminary degree, an M.A. in Theology, and an M.A. in Classics, who was working on his Ph.D. in history.  He wore an army field jacket (he had been in the army in Korea), he had long hair (but who didn’t), wore love beads, and drove a little Volkswagon at breakneck speed around Athens.  Our church leaders had beards, protested the war in Vietnam on Prince Avenue, held hands in black churches singing, “We Shall Overcome.”  We devoted entire Sundays to theological and cultural lectures that were directed to thinking undergraduates and graduate students and the larger UGA community.  We argued, a la Francis Schaeffer, that knowledge, especially of spiritual truth was possible, and that God was there and not silent.  We were, indeed, “the first church of what’s happening now.” 

The Christian college where I have taught for the past 20 years has as its “mantra” an academic commitment to “the integration of faith and life” in the life of the Christian in fullest sense of this expression, not only in the immediate personal sense but in its application to a larger cultural engagement.  This mission goal was an initial preaching and teaching and activist focus of University Church and I trust it continues to be.

However, as I trust we are all aware, the renewed emphasis on integration of the Christian faith with cultural and social structures eventually made its impact on mainstream conservative, historically evangelical, Christianity in American society.  It had already been a part of the “social gospel” view of liberal Christianity, but there was a “neo-Evanglical” perspective development that began to work toward, if not the redemption of, at least the “reformation” of fallen social and cultural structures.  And, not a bad agenda at that.  There were numerous strains of this endeavor at work in the new Evangelical response to the integration of the Christian faith and cultural life.  The view of this endeavor that I have been involved in over the years has been the perspective first suggested by the Dutch Calvinist thinker, Abraham Kuyper and the views of another Dutch social and cultural philosopher, Herman Dooyeweerd.  There is a study center in Toronto, Canada, that has been devoted to working out the theological implications of this position in social and cultural theory. 

However, as you no doubt are also aware, there have been more popular approaches such as Jerry Falwell’s “Moral Majority” movement, James Kennedy’s “Christian America” approach, and the eschatological triumphalist, dominionist theory of society known as “Theonomy.”  And a more recent and even more vocal development in this regard has been The Focus on the Family movement led by James Dobson.  And, there are other contributors to this integration effort that we could add to this list.  The more vocal and adversarial expressions of this attempt at faith integration with the various structures of our culture and society has been characterized as the “Culture Wars.”

Transition:

However, at this point, you might justifiably ask, “But McLelland, what does all this have to do with our biblical text this morning?”  Well, it is my judgment that in the past 20 years or so, well-meaning Evangelicals in their attempts to integrate their Christian faith with, not only their personal lives (e.g., Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life), but even more, with the larger life of American culture and society as well, have embraced a perspective that Psalm 33 warns against.  And, in embracing this perspective, I would argue that Evangelicals have not done justice to our Christ-commanded task “to be salt and light” and cultural reformers or redeemers in the increasingly secular society we find ourselves in.  Indeed, it can be argued that in the zeal to bring, and the manner of this bringing, the truth of Christ to bear on the cultural expressions of our American society, we have inadvertently hurt our cause.  I think Psalm 33 offers us a way of thinking about this matter.

The Psalm:

In Psalm 33, the psalmist joyfully praises God for his righteous character (vv. 1-5), for his creation of the world (vv. 6-11), and for entering history to save his people (vv. 16-19).  While the occasion for the poem is not obvious, it would, however, be an appropriate model prayer in a war situation as the people of God waited on God for deliverance.” 

One thing that is clear from the text is that God not only “creates,” he also “elects” or “chooses.”  In verses 6-9, the psalmist speaks of God as Creator.  In verses 10ff, he refers to God as having made a choice of one people to be his inheritance.  And, as this electing God considers humankind, the psalmist emphasizes in verses 16 and 17 the uselessness of worldly provisions for the security of his chosen people.  Neither position (king), nor power (army), neither prowess or ability (warrior), strength or equipment (horse) can save his chosen ones.  Indeed, the psalmist tells us that rather than the power of the State, the armed force and material of the ability to wage war, God’s provision actually consists of his omniscient and omnipotent oversight and his love for his elected nation.  God’s manner of provision for the perseverance of his elect is sufficient for dealing with the reality of death and temporal threat of which the psalmist gives famine as an instance.

Thus it is not the State and/or its military power that sustains God’s elected people (nation), but it is their trust and hope in God that is their “help and shield” (verse 20).

It is also important to keep in mind in looking at Psalm 33 that verse 12 “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord the people he chose for his inheritance,” can be normative in a sense, and yet significantly not normative in its application.  It certainly can be said that if a “nation” as a political entity grounded its political, judicial, and social views in the God of Christian Theism, it would no doubt derive definite benefits from such a grounding, e.g., in matters having to do with public justice.  However, the “nation” that the Psalmist has in mind here is Israel as “the people” God has chosen as for his inheritance.  Thus, to consider any other political entity as having been “chosen” by God for his inheritance is an inappropriate reading of this poem.  One can, however, see the Church of Jesus Christ as the New Testament equivalent of the people of Israel as God’s chosen “nation.”  If so, and obviously there are sound theological/biblical reasons for claiming this equivalency, then the application of Psalm 33 to the argument I make in my following remarks is justified. 

Application:

And, again, here, you might ask, “Well, O.K., Mclelland, but your point is ….? 

I must confess this is a delicate matter to address in a short sermon, and as Alexander Pope says, “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”  But, as a Christian seeking to be culturally relevant, seeking to be Christ’s commanded “salt and light” in the historical moment in the world in which God has placed me, I have experienced some anxiety and uneasiness for some years now with the stance and attitude of a certain number of the Evangelical Christian community in their style and understanding of engagement with secular culture.  I would argue that the teaching of Psalm 33 that we have looked at pointedly speaks to this stance, attitude, style, and understanding.

During the Vietnam era, Senator William Fulbright wrote a book entitled The Arrogance of Power.  Whatever Fulbright specifically meant by this expression, it is a telling one for the Evangelical community, in our response to secular culture.  Let me work out how I think this is so.

Above I referred to the popular expression, “Culture Wars.”  This expression is a translation of the German term Kulturkampf, first used in 19th century Germany to describe the conflict between the Bismarck government and the Catholic Church.  The term was introduced into American thought in 1991 with the publication of John Davidson Hunter’s Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America.  Hunter argued that American politics and culture were pervasively characterized by a substantial polarization of values, differing world-views advanced by warring groups.

Conservative Evangelicals embraced the Cultural Wars interpretation and identified with it such that they came to see themselves as an increasingly disenfranchised, beleaguered, and threatened group for which the time had come to take a stand and “fight back” against a value opposing oppressive secular culture.  Much like the Cold War that followed WWII, Conservative Evangelicalism was engaged in a war of opposing world views and alarmingly, the secular culture had seemed to gain the upper hand.  Thus, the cry went out to respond to the situation with a more militant reaction.  And, the way to do this, it was argued, was to re-gain control of political, judicial, and social structures.  And, as we know, variations on this theme have characterized the recent history of a goodly portion of the Evangelical church in the U.S.

And, before going any further, I think we would agree that this analysis of the current American scene has considerable merit and that Christians’ concern over their secular opposition ought to translate into action.  The movement led by William Wilberforce which caused the British Parliament to outlaw in 1807 the English slave trade is a considerable case in point.  The “salt and light” command of Christ is not just a matter of social and political theory but a call to act, to reflect in our engagement with culture, the healing, the justice, the truth, the compassion, of Jesus Christ.  We are to transform fallen social structures as much as we are able in a pluralistic society in the anticipation of the New Heavens and the New Earth.  I do not think that one can biblically argue against this agenda for the New Testament Church.

However, and this is a significant caution that Psalm 33 forces us to consider here, it is not the agenda I have described that is at issue, but what is to be the strategy for bringing it about?  Even a cursory study of Evangelical cultural engagement for a good number of years now, shows that a the strategy of the a good portion of the Evangelical community has been to embrace the strategy of political and structural power as the means to win the culture wars. 

As one advocate of this strategy has said:

If people aren’t involved in helping godly men in getting elected then we’re going to have a nature of secular laws.  That’s not what our founding fathers intended and that’s certainly isn’t what God intended … we need to take back this country …. And if we don’t get involved as Christians then how can we possibly take this back? … If you’re not electing Christians, tried and true, under public scrutiny and pressure, if you’re not electing Christians then in essence you are going to legislate sin.[1]

Again, the issue here isn’t whether or not Christian involvement in the political arena is or is not a good idea.  Rather, the issue is if this sort of “dominionist” thinking will indeed serve the rightly biblically ordered Evangelical cultural agenda, not to mention whether or not it is even a biblical perspective in the first place.  Further it is about “tone,” or the manner of the sound of our Evangelical voice in the public square.  And it has to do with the questionable identity of the church and the Kingdom of God with a given nationalistic entity such as the United States.

As I observe a good bit of Evangelical vocal and written reaction to secular expressions in our society and culture, all too often I hear an angry, strident, smug, even arrogant attitude that “we” are going to gain control of the State, the courts, etc. and make this a “Christian” nation again, as if such control could bring about the reality of the Kingdom of God in America.  Indeed, there is often the frustrating confusion of the cause of Christ and the cause of the United States such that Evangelicals ignore their prophetic responsibility to critique even their own cultural efforts in opposition to secularism in the light biblical criteria.  As a result, when Evangelical human frailty and failure are brought out into the public, our credibility regarding such prophetic critique is seriously compromised.

It is interesting to note that since the 70’s, Evangelical Christians have significantly aligned themselves with the Republican Party, trusting that party to instantiate their value system in the political and social order.  However, it is an interesting fact that in the last 40 years, Republican presidents have made all but two of the appointments to the Supreme Court.  And, it is quite clear that the cultural results that conservatives in the Culture War effort envisioned would unfold with the power to appoint those who serve in the courts, have been less than favorable to their cause.  Indeed, “history tells us that all presidents get blindsided by their court choices.  It is ironical that Richard Nixon thought Harry Blackmun would be a reliable conservative, not the guy who wrote Roe v. Wade.”[3]

Another irony that I have observed among certain Evangelicals in their political militancy, is that while they tend to be strict constructionists in their interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, they forget that Article VI of that Constitution says quite pointedly that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”  It seems that the founding fathers certainly did not help the Evangelical Culture War agenda in this article.

Closing:

My son is very politically conservative and is an ardent Culture Warrior.  This past Christmas he was passionately upset over the fact that clerks in stores were being told they could not wish their customers a “Merry Christmas.”  Once, when he was expressing his anger at this new cultural attitude, I asked “why does it matter?” He said, “What?”  I said, “How does it hurt the cause of Christ’s Kingdom or infringe upon your freedom to be a Christian in America society to be restrained in wishing non-Christians a “Merry Christmas?”  We didn’t get far in this line of discussion, but I went on to point out that maybe it would be a good thing in the celebration of the Incarnation if it were not trivialized by making it into nothing more than a mid-winter holiday with everyone going around mindlessly wishing individuals a merry Christmas who have no particular metaphysics about the Incarnation as the basis for the greeting.  Christmas, then, would truly be a Christian celebration and not profaned by those who have no understanding or regard for what Christians consider it to be.

When Bill Clinton was elected President of the U.S. in 1993, many students at my college wore black armbands and could not believe that God had allowed this to happen.  They literally anticipated the end of Western Civilization and the ultimate defeat in the culture wars.  In response, one of my colleagues rebuked them in a Chapel address in which he presented the biblical position, that the Kingdom of God does not depend upon who is president of the U.S., or who serves on the Supreme Court or the nationalistic interests of the United States.  God, in the advance of his Kingdom, may indeed use the secondary causes of the civil and social order, but this advance is not logically dependent upon them.  God’s Kingdom has come, is coming, and will come.

Consequently, as Evangelicals we need to be careful not to discredit our cultural engagement as an expression of our Kingdom involvement and in our identity as Christ’s servants, by an arrogant, angry, smug, self-satisfied attitude in which our trust is kings, warriors, and horses.  We must be careful not to let the name of God be blasphemed among the Gentiles because of misguided public agendas and a contemptuous, superior attitude that we are going to “take back America” for Christ as if this were purely human effort and not a spiritual one in the final analysis.

Our hope is ultimately in the Lord, not the provisions of this materialist world.  “In God, whose word I praise.  In God I trust; I will not be afraid.  What can mortal man do to me?” (Psalm 56).  As Evangelical Christians we must see that “neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers [political or otherwise], neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8: 38-39).

Amen
 

[1] Quoted in Craig Unger’s The Fall of the House of Bush, Scribner’s, 2007. pp. 178-179.  While Katherine Harris might not be the most thoughtful advocate of this position, her remarks here pointedly capture the general thesis of the “reclaiming America” position.

[2] Unger.  The rest of this statement made by D. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge, “World conquest.  That’s what Christ has commissioned us to accomplish.  And we must never settle for anything else.  Of course, Kennedy’s view is that the “conquest” is not just a spiritual one but a political and structural one.

[3] Newsweek, closing essay.