Book Review: The Christian Mindset by Carl Henry
Many thanks to Carl Henry, but no thanks for pluralism.
The Christian Mindset in a Secular Society: Promoting Evangelical Renewal & National Righteousness. By Carl F. H. Henry. Portland, OR: Multnomah Press, 1984. 0-88070-041-6
Introduction
Carl Ferdinand Howard Henry (1913-2003) was a leading intellectual, representing public engagement by Evangelicals in America throughout the twentieth century. He was a graduate of Wheaton College (B.A. and M.A.), Northern Baptist Theological Seminary (B.D. and Th.D.), and Boston University (Ph.D.). He not only advocated for greater Evangelical involvement in academia and politics, he embodied it.
He was the founding editor of Christianity Today in 1956, and he wrote more than forty books, largely focused on Evangelical theology, practice, and activism. For about a decade, he was a professor at Fuller Theological Seminary, and he taught and spoke widely at other institutions and public conferences. It would be hard to overestimate Henry’s impact and influence on American Evangelicalism.
Summary
The Christian Mindset in a Secular Society is a quintessential volume, representing Henry’s lifelong desires and strategies. In this book, Henry described the political, social, and academic landscape of America during the third quarter of the twentieth century. Henry believed America had become morally relativistic and philosophically humanistic, thus turning hostile against the very principles and traditions that had given birth to such a society. A full-throated and comprehensive Christian worldview was what had produced America as Henry knew it, and he believed that a recovery of this perspective and posture was the only solution.
Henry was especially interested in defending and promoting the fundamental democratic freedoms of American life, particularly religious freedom, not only at home but abroad. In order to be a force for worldly good, however, Henry believed that America needed to get her own proverbial house in order. He presented the picture of American culture and politics without “unqualified allegiance” or highlighting only the “weaknesses and vices.”[1]
Instead, Henry made his case in the form of three “maneuvers.”[2] First, he said, “we [i.e., Evangelical Christians] need to voice a balanced judgment on our troubled nation.”[3] Second, “the rampant moral iniquity of our era brings us perilously near a civilizational endtime.”[4] Here he warned of societal decline and demise. Third, “we need to get on with more effective evangelical engagement in the public arena.”[5] This third admonition summarizes the substance of Henry’s design for this book.
Overall, Henry urged American Evangelicals to wholeheartedly embrace and vigorously pursue a biblically grounded, an intellectually engaged, and an unflinchingly bold witness in the world. He wanted Evangelicals to challenge the assumptions and actions of their secular society and to influence it for the better, based on unapologetically theological (some might say, fundamentalist) convictions. Henry assumed the existence and the good of a “pluralistic arena” for ethics, politics, and religion in America, and he made a case for an “adequate rationale” underpinning “public justice and the good” in American society.[6]
This, it seems to me, was Henry’s weakness and self-contradiction.
Evaluation
Henry said that “the metaphysical grounds on which citizens affirm the content of justice is of high theological, philosophical, and apologetic importance but it is not a matter of political interest” (emphasis added).[7] Further, he said, “adjudicating between religions and philosophies is not the task of the civil government… Moral justification in the public order must be civil rather than theological, even though the civil is privately informed by the theological” (emphasis added).[8] In summary, Henry said, “the commitment to pluralistic government and to religious pluralism implies that public morality can be determined apart from affirmation of a specific religious belief” (emphasis added).[9]
And yet, Henry went on to say, “civil law is not… merely a matter of public consensus. Law retains its divine origin and significance even where the public may not perceive this sanction” (emphasis added).[10] Moreover, Henry argued, “only the balancing of human rights and duties on an objective transcendent basis will effectively challenge the modern isolation and fragmentation of rights” (emphasis added).[11] And where is the only place Henry believed that an objective transcendent basis could be found? He wrote, “God’s New Covenant and principles of social ethics, both divinely revealed, supply the norms and criteria of public policy.”[12]
For Henry, “The Christian knows that only in light of scriptural controls can modern ethical perspectives escape relativism,” but “the church’s mission to the mind and motives of nonbelievers is… a matter… of voluntary inner persuasion of what is right” (emphasis added).[13] Henry advocated for an explicitly Christian effort for evangelism (i.e., persuasion), but he argued against an explicitly Christian attempt to establish state legislation (i.e., coercion). Such a dichotomy condemns Christians to a muted public argument amid a cacophony of secularists and pagans who experience no such restraint.
Conclusion
Carl Henry was a titanic figure of his time. American Evangelicals owe him a great debt of gratitude for his public efforts and example. Present-day Evangelicals in America would do well to recover most of Henry’s vigor and strategies for civil and academic engagement. However, many Evangelicals today are also experiencing the inevitable marginalization which results from avoiding explicitly Christian doctrine and ethics as the only true basis for a coherent and virtuous public policy.
True pluralism (politically and religiously) is only propped up temporarily by relativism, since a particular deity and transcendent ethic is abandoned for the sake of civil argument and state legislation. Such a pluralistic society will eventually be overtaken by those making coercive policies based on their transcendent truth-claims, be they secular (i.e., atheistic), pagan (i.e., non-Christian), or Christian. In the end, we all bring our gods to the public square and to the legislator’s chair, and we ought to reject all demands for a pluralistic government or religious pluralism.
[1] Henry, Carl Ferdinand Howard. Christian Mindset In A Secular Society: Promoting Evangelical Renewal & National Righteousness. Multnomah Press, 1984. p. 12.
[2] Henry. Christian Mindset In A Secular Society. p. 12.
[3] Henry. Christian Mindset In A Secular Society. p. 12.
[4] Henry. Christian Mindset In A Secular Society. p. 20.
[5] Henry. Christian Mindset In A Secular Society. p. 21.
[6] Henry. Christian Mindset In A Secular Society. p. 116.
[7] Henry. Christian Mindset In A Secular Society. p. 115.
[8] Henry. Christian Mindset In A Secular Society. p. 115.
[9] Henry. Christian Mindset In A Secular Society. p. 122.
[10] Henry. Christian Mindset In A Secular Society. p. 125.
[11] Henry. Christian Mindset In A Secular Society. p. 140.
[12] Henry. Christian Mindset In A Secular Society. p. 132.
[13] Henry. Christian Mindset In A Secular Society. p. 124.