Today’s Church has turned its calling inside out, seeking to become a place for Christians to escape from the world and into a "pseudo-Christian subculture," rather than a place to worship, pray and learn with fellow disciples, as preparation for loving and serving the world. According to Michael S. Horton, professor of apologetics and theology at Westminster Seminary California, author and editor, Christians should instead heed a dual call to contribute to their culture at large without creating a subculture.

Horton’s was the first in a series of contemplative essays on the counter-cultural calling of Christ’s Church. Published this month in Christianity Today magazine, as part of a three-year project to explore the role of evangelicalism for the next 50 years, Horton’s essay explores the conundrum of being in the world but not of the world.

He asserts that there is no such thing as Christian politics, Christian art or Christian literature, anymore than there is Christian plumbing. Of course marketing experts would disagree and point to the success of niche products, or platforms, created and sold exclusively for the faithful. Horton seems to hold that all of this is a distraction from the purpose of the Church, however. I agree.

"The Church has no authority to bind Christian (much less non-Christian) consciences beyond Scripture," Horton writes. "When it does, the church as ‘counterculture’ is really just another subculture, an auxiliary of one faction of the current culture wars, distracted from its proper ministry of witnessing to Christ and the new society that he is forming around himself. (Gal. 3:26-29). This new society neither ignores nor is consumed by the cultural conflicts of the day."

Horton also asserts that churches that think they are counter-cultural because they promote moral choices, endorse movies with Christian themes, or wholesome (though usually b-grade Christian literature) etc., in reality continue to buy into American culture’s obsessions with "religion as individual spirituality, therapy, and sentimentalism."

Again, I agree. But this is a hard assessment for church leaders who may be inclined to cite scientific studies on the benefits of prayer, marriage, or church attendance; or for Christians who continue to speak of serving in terms of what they got out of it.

Unfortunately, Horton provides little remedy beyond his observations about the plight of the American Church as he pictures it, lying prostrate in abeyance to the "me" culture of suburban sprawl, franchises, anonymity and tourism (among other things). The end of his essay leaves me wanting. Perhaps the true conclusion can only come in another 50 years of ministry as the American church wades its way through American culture praying for God’s Kingdom to come.

Anyway, it’s worth a good think.