Christian sociologists, Christian Smith and Amy Adamczyk, have just published an important book, Handing Down the Faith: How Parents Pass Their Religion on to the Next Generation. They validate what the Bible says so clearly in Deuteronomy 6—parents shape the religious worldview and spearhead the moral and spiritual formation of their children.

Since we are in the early weeks of 2022, it is important for us who name Christ’s name, to remind ourselves of the priorities of our God and Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. To that end, let’s give focus to the church, the most important institution God created for the proclamation and living out of His rescue plan for lost humanity. At conversion we are placed into the body of Christ, the church, which, among other things, is the family of God. “I” becomes “we” and it is in the local church where we begin to live out this family name. We are now free in Christ; the bondage to sin has been broken and selfishness, self-centeredness and self-indulgence are replaced with an other-centered love for people. We are willing to surrender our rights and liberties in Christ for the common good—for our families, for our local church and for our communities. How does the church relate to key biblical concepts?

Sometime during the 2021 Christmas season, you have no doubt heard the reverberating words from George Friderich Handel’s imposing oratorio, Messiah. Written in just twenty-four days in 1741, Messiah has three distinct sections: part one, the “Christmas Story;” part two, “The Redemption Story”; and part three, “The Resurrection and Future Reign of Christ on Heaven and Earth.” Initially, Handel’s oratorio was performed more during the Easter holiday, but gradually it became associated with Christmas, such that today it is almost always performed sometime in December by community, church and college choirs throughout the nation.

The Economist, a conservative British publication (in the historic British “liberal” tradition of Edmund Burke and Walter Bagehot), first made the case for assisted dying in 2015. It argued that freedom should include the right to choose the manner and timing of one’s own death, while also cautioning that the practice should be carefully monitored and regulated to avoid abuses.

The Northwest Ordinance of 1785 and the subsequent Land Ordinance organized the territory the United States gained by the 1783 Treaty of Paris, which ended the Revolutionary War. Among other things, these acts organized the territories into townships and set aside one section in each township for a public school. In the early decades of the new republic called the United States, it was understood that public schools would be a cooperative effort between the parents, the church and the school itself. Indeed, in these early decades well into the 19th century, schools were often held in the churches.

In the 1992 Supreme Court case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Justice Anthony Kennedy penned his famous “mystery passage”: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” Robert Bork called the phrase indicative of “New Age jurisprudence”; William Bennett derided it as an “open-ended validation of subjectivism” that paves the way for drug abuse, assisted suicide, prostitution, and “virtually anything else”; George Will said it was “gaseously” written; Michael Uhlman labeled it a “thing of almost infinite plasticity”; the editors of First Things called it the “notorious mystery passage.” What seems clear is Kennedy’s underlying conception of human beings as autonomous individuals, choosing their own values and mapping out their own life courses.

In 1923 German historian and philosopher, Oswald Spengler (1880-1936), published his famous two-volume historical analysis in one volume, entitled The Decline of the West. Spengler analyzed the various civilizations of world history, arguing that each went through a time of flourishing followed by a period of decline. His central argument was that Western civilization was in a period of decline. [He wrote in German and the term translated “decline” could actually be translated “downfall.”] As civilizations decline, they gravitate to dictatorial power that preserves what they cherish (e.g., stability, order, security). What once marked the core defining elements of the civilization (e.g., religious beliefs, ethical standards) are abandoned as the civilization embraces raw rationalism, skepticism and power.

In 1933 a group of thirty-four liberal US humanists drafted the “Humanist Manifesto I,” which for its time was a radical document. Committed to reason, science and democracy, the document rejected orthodox and dogmatic positions and argued for a “new statement of the means and purposes of religion.” [Paul Kurtz, ed., The Humanist Manifesto I and II, Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1973, p. 8] The Manifesto maintained that the universe is “self-existing and not created,” explained only by the evolutionary hypothesis. The Manifesto affirmed that the human race is the center of all things and that religion must be redefined in these terms. Finally, the Manifesto rejected capitalism and affirmed some kind of socialist order as the wave of the future.

The “image” and “likeness” of God is not a human achievement, but a gift conferred on all humans through God’s creative act. According to Genesis 1, God’s creative activity reached its apex on Day 6, when the divine counsel determined to create man in God’s “image” (tselem) and “likeness” (demut). [Theologians call this the imago Dei.] These two terms define the first and fundamental truth about the human race: That humanity was created in God’s “image”, which means that humans represent God. Humans have the capacity to mirror God in everything—and are commanded to do so.

When the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy of the early 20th century was brewing, one of Christianity’s greatest minds, J. Gresham Machen, published a book in 1921 entitled Christianity and Liberalism. In my judgment, it remains one of the most important books of the 20th century. It is relevant today for we who name the name of Christ believe that the Christian faith is not only a faith commitment to Jesus Christ, but is also a set of doctrinal beliefs.