So I finished the Stealing Jesus book a while back. It was … interesting. Bawer had the ability to both push my buttons and make me think. I was alternately pumping and raising my fist throughout.

The basic premise of the book was this: there are two churches in America. The church of Law as he defines it is in essence what I would call Orthodox Christianity. They believe in a bodily resurrection of Christ. They believe in an eternal reward. The generally accept the entirety of the scripture as the revealed truth of God. They tend to place more importance on the great commission (spread the gospel) than the great commandment (love your neighbor). The Church of Love on the other hand is in essence any Christian of a more Unitarian bent, who views the great commandment as the end all of the faith and who at the very least doesn’t view any of the things that I mentioned about the church of Law as being either central or perhaps even important to their faith.

The Church of Law, he goes on to say, has essentially dominated American Christianity for the last hundred and fifty years or so and gives points as to how/why he believes that happened. That has lead us to the place today where this Church of Law has become a political/social powerhouse and has “betrayed Jesus” and his message. Here’s the thing. I don’t entirely disagree with him. There is a section of the church that focuses too much on the law. This is hardly anything new, though. Paul himself, a man that Bawer heaps a fair amount of hate/blame on, called these forces down in the second chapter of Romans.

As an example of the Church of Love he points to the Modernist movement of the early twentieth century, particularly the ministry of Harry Fosdick. Modernists were characterized by taking the Bible less as the directly received will/word of God. They also tended to focus on a “social gospel” not unlike the social justice movement that has gotten a lot of press recently. I consider myself to be more of a member of this so called Church of Love, but upon reading through the book, it’s clear to me that Bawer would disagree.

So here’s my take on the line in the sand that Bawer drew. It’s almost completely false.

Don’t get me wrong. There are certainly legalistic churches in this country. They want to deny evolution, burn books, fulfill every “negative” stereotype of Christianity that you can drum up. Some of those people have taken it upon themselves to politicize their faiths and try and make this the law of the land. On the opposite end of the spectrum there does exist a “Church of Love” as he would have it called. I think perhaps the Emergent movement is the 21st century equivalent of the Modernists. They infuse their faith with pop culture references and focus more on finding the next spiritual experience. While this latter group might not be as openly political as their more conservative fellows, I think that’s coming.

Overwhelmingly though, I believe that most believers in this country and in the world struggle to find some balance between law and grace. Both exist in the Bible and ignoring either one does damage to the overall message that the Bible and our faith carries. Taking a literal view of the creation or of Christ’s resurrection doesn’t make you a legalist. Believing that there’s a place in our churches for homosexuals or that we need to actively fight against poverty shouldn’t make you anathema. To paraphrase Fosdick’s sermon “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?”, I think that it’s unforgivable for either side to be pointing fingers in an effort to decide who’s Christian and who isn’t when there’s so much work to be done.

We don’t need to be the “Church of Law” or the “Church of Love”, we need to be the Church that is the body of Christ, undivided by denominational differences or petty bickering and united not just in the great commandment to love our neighbor but also in the great commission to share the good news of Christ with everyone around us.