MODERN DAY MARTHAS
                                    
                 Author: Mark J. Dixon (mjdixon@aol.com)

   A powerful new undercurrent began pulsing through the Protestant church in
America in the early 1970s, growing and building until its effects could be
felt almost as strongly outside the church as within.  Its name, if it needs
one, could be the contemporary Christian culture.
   Christian broadcasting, the flagship of the new culture, became a potent
new force, and held the promise of creating an electronic bridge between the
church and the "real world" around us, a bridge over which the Gospel could be
communicated to millions of Americans.  It didn't happen.
   By the 1980s, Christian broadcasting had become synonymous with Bible Belt
televangelists raising millions of dollars weekly from their electronic
congregations, and those outside our stained glass walls continued to tune
out.  We had forgotten that building bridges to the world outside also means
tearing down the walls that keep our culture closed.
   As we moved through the 1980s, middle-class ideals and traditional family
values began to steal the spotlight from the Gospel of Jesus in this new
culture.  Ronald Reagan's "morning in America" began to dawn on the Moral
Majority as conservative evangelicals became a political force to be reckoned
with.  Refusing to recognize that we share a pluralistic society with
Americans of diverse backgrounds and beliefs, we assumed the prerogative of
imposing our values on society at large, and in the process have alienated
many of our neighbors from the Gospel, possibly forever.
   Politically moderate believers began to lose their voice as the notion
arose that there could be only one acceptable Christian position on any
political, moral or social issue.  Turning hearts toward home became more
needful than turning hearts toward Him, and pressuring non-Christians to live
by traditional values that are powerless to save became more urgent than
leading them to the One who alone can save.
   Our Christian airwaves have become little more than a closed forum for the
evangelical culture to talk to itself; the walls that separate our suburban
churches from the mission field at their door are now reinforced with security
bars, perhaps to keep at bay the dreaded secular humanists outside.  I am
convinced that the escalating urban violence, lawlessness and moral decay of
our society is a direct result of a large portion of Christ's church having
abandoned its natural function in our society (messengers of the Good News,
salt and light in our cities, and God's outstretched hand to the poor) for
twenty years while we worked to build temporal political power instead of
pointing toward eternity.
   We are sadly like Martha of Bethany in Luke 10:38-42, so busy with our own
agenda that we have missed the only thing that is truly important.  It is my
conviction that the political and cultural baggage of the popular Christian
culture needs to be laid aside for a time, while we refocus our lives and our
churches on the life and teachings of one Jesus of Nazareth.  It is my prayer
that the evangelical church in America might consecrate a season to "know
among you only Christ, and Him crucified."
   More than at any time in the past twenty years, the evangelical church in
America today stands in need of renewal, revival and a return to the simple
Gospel of Jesus.  Let us now call for a return to a basic Christianity, that
centers in the life and person of Jesus and demands a personal relationship
with Him, placing a renewed emphasis on radical discipleship, evangelism and
Bible study.
   Perhaps then we can, like Mary, Martha's sister, find our place again at
His feet.  Perhaps then we can heal the painful divisions that these highly
charged issues have brought to the Christian community.  Perhaps then we can
repair the tarnished image that two decades of the "religious right" have
earned us.  Perhaps then, at last, we can start to build the bridges we set
out to build almost twenty years ago, and begin once more to humbly take the
Good News of His unconditional love to a torn and hurting nation.
   Maranatha.

Originally published in my quarterly journal WILD OLIVES, Autumn 1992.