Commentary: The value of Christian centrism for society

This article is 4 of 9 in the Leading from the Center series by three writers.

How may Christ-followers best relate to ambient culture? This perennially pertinent question animates H. Richard Niebuhr’s now classic volume Christ and Culture, first published in 1951.

As it happens, my copy of the book, which I first read during a Christian ethics course in seminary in the late 1980s, now has yellowing pages—and I graying hair. I continue to find the work to be valuable and helpful in posing and puzzling over the pressing question of how believers might best exude and extend Christ to a watching, wounded yet wonderful world.

Five ways of relating to the world

In Christ and Culture, Niebuhr offers five “typical” ways Christians have sought to negotiate this ongoing nettle.

According to Niebuhr, the five prevailing paradigms Christ-followers have employed over the sweep of Christian history to interpret and to interact with the world surrounding them are:

1. Christ against culture,
2. Christ of culture—or Christ in culture,
3. Christ above culture,
4. Christ and culture in paradox, and
5. Christ the transformer of culture.

If the first response opposes culture and the second more than less baptizes it, the third attempts to synthesize the two. Meanwhile, the fourth approach recognizes an inherent tension between Christ and culture, while the fifth aches and advocates for the transformation of culture for the greater and common good.

Niebuhr regarded the third, fourth and fifth approaches to be related, if distinct, and described them as “median” or “mediating” responses. These three ways of engaging and interacting with culture simultaneously recognize the decided differences between Christ and culture even as they explore and examine possible links between the two.

For whatever combination of reasons—and I would like to think it involved more than simply my temperament or being the “middle child” in my family of origin—from my first exposure to Niebuhr’s volume until now, I have resonated with and gravitated toward the three mediating or centrist positions he outlines.

While believing “Christ is all and in all” (Colossians 3:11)—“Christ above culture”—it seems both unnecessary and foolhardy to deny the tension between “the already and the not yet”—“Christ and culture in paradox”—even as it seems altogether necessary and salutary for Christians to “seek the welfare of the city” (Jeremiah 29:7), “to do good to all people” (Galatians 6:10), and to be “the salt of the earth” and “light of the world” (Matthew 5:13-14) in the time between times—“Christ the transformer of culture.”

What good is Christian centrism?

Setting Niebuhrian categories and concerns to one side, an important and relevant question remains: If one’s habit of heart, frame of mind and way of being in the world is that of a Christian centrist, what difference, if any, might it make for society writ large? What good, if any, is Christian centrism?

If one is disinclined to declare either, “The world is going to hell in a handbasket,” on the one hand or to intone, “It just doesn’t get any better than this,” on the other hand, why is such a “middle way” both a profitable and advisable path? Why might this be a way of wisdom and reason?

At best, those who self-identity and self-describe as “Christian centrists” seek to perceive and to preserve a balance between comparatively extreme views. In a day as polarized and bifurcated as our own, this is arguably no small gift. The center may well not hold—so William Butler Yeats—but it will certainly not hold if no one is seeking to hold it.

Suffer me a football analogy. Centrists tend to think life lived “between the lines” where the laces may be found is preferable—and ultimately more beneficial and impactful—than life lived at either extreme.

I once heard it suggested, “A balanced life is a radical life.” This still rings true to me.

If Christian centrists can bring a semblance of balance to cultural conversations and culture wars, they also—when given opportunity and occasion—can build bridges, as opposed to blowing them up.

Not a few people at present have lamented the incivility and hostility that mark and mar current (un)civil discourse and concourse. How can this lamentable state of affairs be reversed, centrists wonder?

By developing friendships across various divides and by facilitating conversations among people of good will who sincerely hold to differing and diverse views, centrists answer.

Christian centrism’s posture

At its best, Christian centrism does not succumb to either a numbing pessimism or to a triumphal optimism. Rather, it embraces a hopeful realism that “rolls up its sleeves and gets to work” toward a good, if fraught, future.

Furthermore, Christian centrists value humility, magnanimity, listening carefully and plain, old-fashioned kindness.

Some of us grew up hearing the following admonition from Ephesians 4:32, in the King James Version, of course: “Be ye kind one to another.” There are worse ways to live and move and have one’s being in the world, and we are experimenting presently with no small number of them.

As it happens, I was in the throes of finalizing this essay when I learned of the death of Russell Dilday, Baptist statesman and servant par excellence.

I do not know if Dr. Dilday would have seen himself as a Christian centrist, and I never asked him as much. This much I do know: He modeled a Christian civility and decency desperately needed, if not always wanted, today. I, for one, want to tend to and extend such a legacy. I both welcome and want your company.

Todd Still is dean and professor of Christian Scriptures at Baylor University’s Truett Theological Seminary. This article is 4 of 9 in the Leading from the Center series by three writers.