×

On Sunday nights, I’ve been teaching through Counterfeit Gospels at church. A few weeks ago, a college student who attends the class showed me an article from The Baptist Student back in April 1956. A. Roy Eckhardt had contributed an article called “Down With This New Religion” in which he identified several ways that Christians seemed to be drifting from the gospel. I was surprised to note how well Eckhardt’s article from 55 years ago corresponded to several of the counterfeits I chose to write about in 2011.

Eckhardt begins by pointing out the fact that religious affiliation can be pragmatic and popular without being true to Christian teaching:

In the United States today nothing is more popular than religion – much more so than when you and I were small. Pick up a magazine, turn on the radio or television, go to a movie; no matter what we do, we are bound to be told how useful religion is.

If people can be popular without being Christian, the same is true with religion. How Christian is the religious revival now spreading like wildfire across America?

I would be the last to say that there is nothing Christian about it. Many people now boarding the show wagon of piety are undoubtedly sincere. Then, too, God may have a role in the performance. But it is right here that the new religion goes off the beam. How much of a part is God being given?

He then points out three developments that should cause concern for Christian young persons. The first is the prototype of “positive thinking” and health/wealth teaching. Notice the reference to God as “Errand Boy,” which resembles Christian Smith’s description of God as “divine butler” according to the mindset of moralistic therapeutic deists:

One of these I call success-story religion. Its spokesmen in the churches promise that religion can make us a “whiz-bang” success. As William Miller puts it, this new gospel tells us that we can have money, health, friends, peace of mind, self-confidence, and vacations on Waikiki Beach. The trick is simply to cast out unhealthy, gloomy thoughts and put in their place positive, happy thoughts – with the help of God, who, in this preaching, becomes a sort of heavenly Errand Boy. If you just take the trouble to push the button of prayer regularly, God will cater to every wish.

I am not interested at the moment in running down money or success. I could use a couple of weeks on the beach at Waikiki. The point is: how Christian is this new gospel?

The trouble lies in its direct appeal to the self interests of its countless disciples. A Christian minister was correct recently in describing a noted representative of success-story religion as an “urbane witch-doctor advocating a modern magic in Christ’s name.” This new gospel is magic, not Christianity…

There is nothing in true Christian faith to promise us success. The Bible reminds us that Christ’s devoted followers are to expect hardship in this world. Christ never became a bank president or a leading businessman. He ended up on a cross. And when the love of Christ gets hold of a man or woman, cross-bearing becomes a privilege.

When we quit the hocus-pocus of success-story religion and surrender ourselves humbly to Christ as our Redeemer, we come to see that nothing fails so much as success.

Eckhardt next turns his attention to “juke-box religion,” which he claims waters down the holiness of God and the seriousness of our sin:

As a Christian clergyman, I believe strongly in prayer and in God’s forgiveness. But the new juke-box religion perverts both of these. It does so by deliberately leaving out of the picture the Christian fact that to come into the presence of God is a fearsome, tremendous thing. The relation a Christian young person may have with God is certainly not a chummy one. Why not? Because God is God, and measured against his majesty you and I are little pieces of nothing. As the prophet Isaiah saw long ago, the nations of the world before the Lord are a drop in the bucket. Where does that leave you and me? Hardly with God just one short flight up from us!

In short, juke-box religion makes God our Entertainer rather than our Judge. The Holiness of the Lord, which should leave people humbled and abashed, is drowned out by the refrain, “Everybody’s Gonna Have a Wonderful Time Up There.”

Finally, Eckhardt goes after “Hooray Religion,” which is similar to what I’ve identified as the “Activist Gospel.” (It’s interesting to read his remark about “under God” recently being added to the pledge.)

A third type of current religion is more dangerous than either of the others. We might call it hooray-for-our-side religion. What makes it particularly dangerous is the explosive international situation.

Hooray-for-our-side religion has its headquarters in Washington, D.C. You have probably heard how fashionable it has become for our law makers to wave the flag for religion. We have a new postage stamp bearing the words, “In God We Trust.” Prayer breakfasts and prayer groups (without breakfast) for congressmen are the rage. And of course, you know about the recent addition of the words, “under God,” to the pledge of allegiance.

There is certainly nothing automatically bad in a nation being religious. But once again we must ask: What kind of religion is being proclaimed? How Christian is it? How sincere is it?

Dennis Borgan correctly points out that the dominant mood in the nationalistic religion of contemporary America involves looking upon God as an ally rather than a master. 

Then Eckhardt decries the “take back America” lingo that was prominent in the struggle against Communism:

A new outfit is now operating out of Washington with the announced purpose of developing Christian leadership. Recently, one of its spokesmen came to our university campus. The gist of his message was this: America has fallen upon evil days. Due to a grave failure at the moral and spiritual level, our country is losing the fight with world communism. What we must do is rediscover our Christian heritage, strengthen ourselves through faith in God, and so save the world from communism.

I believe that we must do all in our power to oppose communism. But when the speaker went on to support his argument by saying that we should “follow the teachings of the prophets of the Bible,” I was ready to blow a fuse. You know that the prophets insist again and again that the enemies of Israel are raised up by God in judgment against His people. Apply the prophets to today’s situation and you will see immediately the Christian reply to the speaker of the day: God may have his own ideas on the subject. He does not appreciate the assumption that any nation’s enemies must be his enemies.

Eckhardt concludes by noticing the common thread in each of these three counterfeit gospels: using God for human ends. Take a look:

The three kinds of religion we have been discussing add up to the foolish notion that God is a means to human ends. Maybe this is why the Bible is so suspicious of religion! The Bible says that we are means to God’s ends. The attempt to use God for our purposes is blasphemy.

After reading the article, I told my friend, “There really is nothing new under the sun!” It’s encouraging to know that our forefathers in the faith were saying similar things back in the 1950s and that those who follow in our footsteps will inevitably meet similar challenges 50 years from now. The Evil One’s bag of tricks is surprisingly small.

LOAD MORE
Loading