This new book is a much-needed challenge to our complacent Christianity:
I and many others have long been saying that the church in the West – be it America or Australia or wherever – is in many ways like the church in Germany in the 1930s. Great evil was everywhere back then as it is now, yet most Christians have been totally silent – even indifferent.
That is the theme of this brief but important new book by Metaxas. And he of course is well placed to write such a volume, having done a terrific job back in 2010 examining the life and legacy of the German Christian pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer who defied the Nazis and sought to awaken a sleeping church.
We all know the saying about ‘those who ignore the lessons of history being condemned to repeat its mistakes’. Here Metaxas makes it clear how important this is. While we did have prophetic voices like Bonhoeffer and others sounding the alarm back then, too many Westerners today have forgotten all about them. So we see history repeating itself right before our very eyes.
These great Christians of last century strongly made the case that the church has a solemn obligation to speak out about evil in all its forms, including government evil. And it also has a duty to resist the state at certain times for the sake of being true to biblical Christianity.
Believers are not just to speak against the state when it promotes great evil, but against the church as well when it has gotten too close to the state, and when it winks at evil and becomes complicit in it. The Christian’s prophetic task is to speak against both church and state at such times.
Bonhoeffer certainly did this. And he paid a heavy price for taking such a stance. Many Christians of course wanted nothing to do with him, and the Nazis wanted him silenced. So he was arrested and then executed. His was a costly Christianity. He had said no to cheap grace.
Like so many other observers, Metaxas is quite concerned about the gathering darkness here in the West, and how so many parallels with what occurred a century ago are now in view today. Will the church once again fail miserably to be a bold witness for Christ in such circumstances? Or will it decide that it must rise to the challenge and be the salt and light it was always meant to be? Says Metaxas:
If you do not speak, you are not being neutral, but are contributing to success of the thing you refuse to name and condemn. Contrarily, it follows that those who speak out make it easier for others to speak out. Just as cowardice begets cowardice, courage begets courage. When we speak out, we inevitably encourage others to speak out along with us, decreasing the price of speaking out. So there is no way to remain neutral in such situations. Either we help evil, or we fight evil. Either we speak and thereby help others to speak truth, or we cower in silence and thereby lead others to do the same.
He looks at various reasons why believers have tended to stay silent and not speak out. Four issues come to mind: the preaching of cheap grace; the idea that the church only should evangelise; the idea that Christians should not be involved in politics; and the idea that our faith is mainly a pietistic one in which we try to only avoid personal sin.
There are various versions of these shortcomings. For example, some believers spend all their time arguing about doctrine. Now doctrine is certainly very important, but it must not be divorced from the world we live in. As Metaxas writes:
“When the German Church in the 1930s and the American Church of our day focus on doctrinal statements but forget that we are obliged to live out what we claim to believe, we make a mockery of what God actually requires of us. This is what Bonhoeffer was calling the German Church to repent of in his Reformation Day sermon, and it is this that God is calling the American Church to repent of today.”
Letter to the American Churchby Metaxas, Eric (Author)
Or consider how most American – and Western – Christians view evangelism:
Because of this hypertrophied view of evangelism, there are many today who refuse to comment on anything controversial or political if they think it might conceivably interfere with the possibility of leading someone to salvation. They forget that God gives them other duties, including loving our neighbors by sometimes speaking the truth. We become so desperate to show those listening to us that we are exactly like them – and that we do not judge them – that we forget these are not the only things worth being concerned with.
We hear over and over of pastors who have taken this tack with tragic results. The tats and skinny jeans and smoke machines and celebrities in the green room – and all of our professions of “nonjudgmentalism” – are not quite enough to bring people to Jesus. At some point we may be required to say something that causes people to stop nodding along, and might even cause them to walk away.
Metaxas reminds us that times and circumstances change. Not all that long ago in the West one could be a good Christian by simply going to church on Sunday, being a good employee, and looking after one’s family. Those are all still important things to do of course, but times have changed.
We have moved from a culture that affirmed and more or less agreed with Christianity to one that is actively hostile to it. Things have changed, and so the church must change. Metaxas mentions one recent article in which the author speaks about how he has “Evolved on Tim Keller.” Says Metaxas:
“The problem is not at all that wonderful pastors like New York’s Tim Keller were wrong in their assessments that we should avoid politics and culture-warring, but that as circumstances in our own culture changed, they eventually became wrong by sticking to a script that was no longer right for the time in which we found ourselves.”
Bonhoeffer had known that things were changing radically and rapidly in Germany, and he tried to alert the church to this, so it might readjust as to how it responded. But most German Christians did not budge. As Metaxas writes, “Bonhoeffer was quite clear about Christians who ‘did business as usual.’ If one did not have the guts to speak against the evils being committed against the German Jews under Hitler, one had abdicated the right to worship God.”
Strong words, but true. It is just the same today, with millions of Western Christians thinking they are pleasing God in simply attending Sunday services while ignoring some of the most pressing evils of our age, such as the slaughter of the unborn. Yes, we must speak out with compassion and love, but we must speak out. Otherwise we are not really being the Church:
At what point does our silence encourage someone along in their sin and in their path away from God? Are we afraid to say that abortion is morally wrong, and that under no circumstances must we equivocate on it? Would we have spoken against slavery in 1850? Would we have spoken against the monstrously antisemitic actions of the Nazis in 1933? Why do we believe we would have spoken then if we are silent now?
And that is the real gist of this book. So often today we smugly look back and ask, ‘Why did not more German Christians speak out back then?’ Well, simply look at our deathly silence during two years of hardcore statist lockdowns. Most folks went right along with all of it, not saying a word, and actually hating on those who did. Nothing has changed.
Thus most folks are just the same today. And that includes most Christians. Their refusal to speak out on things like the horrors of abortion prove conclusively that they are the same sort of folks who remained silent last century. Metaxas closes his book by saying this: “Heaven looks to you and to me to do the right thing.”
We all must ask ourselves whether or not we are indeed doing the right thing. And a book like this helps us greatly as we think and pray about this very matter.
13 Replies to “A Review of Letter to the American Church. By Eric Metaxas.”
Hello
Wealth and comfort is the problem. If you examine where the church has become weak it is often in the wealthy countries. This is not to say I am against wealth but it can bring problems for the church. Even in the bible Israel went astray when it grew in wealth and power.
Christianity involves:
1. Love and compassion. Even to those who are wicked and have power over us. Don’t get love confused with the worldly love that brings death. Love also requires us to speak up when we witness something wrong to prevent further damage occurring while worldly love says acceptance even if it brings destruction.
2. Obedience to God no matter what.
3. Denying ourselves and following Christ.
4. Pray often. You are a stranger to God if you do not pray.
5. Serving one another.
There are many more things I could say but even what I have said so far is difficult and brings discomfort.
We have grown to want a church that fits in with our lifestyle but God wants our lifestyle to fit into God’s church.
We have two choices.
Change to how God wants us to live or God will allow problems to come against us so that we learn to change.
My concern is that I believe the time to change was in the last twenty years and we are now living in 1939 again.
Never too late to start changing even if it is 1939
Thanks Stuart.
Well written and to the very core of what Christianity should be and do. Thanks Bill – very helpful.
John Abbott
Watched a you tube sermon he gave to a church on the book. Very challenging message to give and very convicting to those who have a heart to hear. Summed it up beautifully when he said ” Silence in the face of evil, is itself evil”.
I see in my own denomination the left-wards trend: uncritical compliance with government edicts, indeed support for them, while young people suffered incredible deprivation and psychological harm (not to mention their parents) at being under house arrest for months on end to no real purpose; cheering on ‘The Voice’ as though its politics of division and grifting are invisible; and fully absorbing the materialism that thinks the idea that the mute world created itself is compatible with the God who is love speaking it into existence by his sovereign word. The mainstream church has nothing to say to society because it has been swallowed by it and is now being digested.
Another factor which does not seem to be mentioned is Biblical authority. In the late 1800’s Germany led the world in dismantling the historical integrity of the Bible – notably with the claim that Genesis was fiction assembled during the exile and based on Babylonian stories. Remove Biblical authority and the rest of Christianity will tumble down eventually. So, this would also explain why we are now like Germany in the 1930’s.
Thanks for this one Bill. I had seen a few of Eric Metaxas videos and interviews with others prior to this. But I was not aware his Christian faith, although I may have guessed. Thanks for your review of Eric Metaxas’s “Letter to the American Church”. It is timely. Over the last 3 years I have often reflected on our current situation and compared it with the German Church. There are some big lessons for us here. May the Lord give us grace to awaken more people to what is actually going on. Things have changed so much in just a few years. We never could do much without the Lord. The good thing is now we know how much we need Him; how utterly dependent we are. There are so many that I respect, big names in Christian teaching ministries, who sadly completely blind and ignorant to what is going on. I agree with Eric Metaxas’s call to speak prophetically to the world and the church. Before that however, a significant amount of intercessory prayer is required. One thing gives me courage (there are a number of things) but this one in particular I wish to mention here. It is that God is in charge of the battle. May He find us willing sons and daughters in work of the ministry. It is to a ministry which is quite radically and suddenly different to all that has gone before. Here is one example. Isn’t it is strange that there are so many people who are not Christians, (and need to be saved) yet are awake to what is going on around us? compared to many of our old Christian friends who don’t even want to know. The old order of things is being changed. There are new tasks and new opportunities. I believe a new church will emerge from this. It must. Perhaps we will be called like in Ezekiel’s vision to speak to the dry bones. Yesterday I was listening to an old Larry Norman song: Without love we are nothing; without love. It is true.
God help us all be salt and light in this decaying and dark world.
The great evil in Germany in the 1930’s was extremeist right wing German white Nationalism. Hitler used the conservative church to spread antisemitism, and Nationalist propaganda.
» “In his best-selling biography, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, Metaxas generated wide interest in German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Written at a popular level, the book appealed especially to evangelicals who found in Bonhoeffer a new hero whose costly discipleship compelled a courageous stand against an evil government.”
“At the academic level, pastors should be aware the reviews were not as generous. Bonhoeffer scholars noted the book’s historical inaccuracies and revisionism. By overlooking key doctrinal deficiencies, Metaxas presented a Bonhoeffer whom evangelicals could nearly call one of their own. In Letter, Metaxas presents the same Bonhoeffer—but with an ironic twist that readers may not notice.”
“Here’s the irony: While Metaxas wants us to find in Bonhoeffer an inspiration to resist the church’s enemies on the political left, Bonhoeffer was actually resisting the church’s enemies on the political right. Far from promoting what Metaxas calls “Marxist atheist philosophy”, Hitler opposed it as a Jewish conspiracy. Metaxas knows this.”
…….
“Metaxas believes desperate times call for desperate measures. To put candidates in power who will “enact policies to help people”, Christ-followers may need to “vote for someone whom others may criticize for being guilty of this or that”. He intimates that Christians may even need to “tell a lie for the larger good”. Christians can do these things because we serve “a God who has a wildness and unpredictability to him”. And like Bonhoeffer in opposition to Hitler, violence may be necessary.
– “Are we willing to sacrifice the church’s mandate to be a pillar of truth by trafficking in lies for political gain?”
“While Metaxas often acknowledges the influence of the “great Charles Colson”, he seems to reject the counsel of Colson, who wrote, –
“If we have learned anything in recent decades, it is that we should not roll out heavy-handed political movements that recklessly toss around God-and-country clichés and scare off our secular neighbors. Our goal is not to grab power and impose our views. Instead, we should act through principled persuasion and responsible participation..”
………
“If a pastor faithfully preaches the Word—wisely tackling tough issues from the horror of abortion to the incoherence of transgenderism to the pitfalls of nationalism—but doesn’t publicly engage in partisan politics the way Metaxas calls for, does that pastor really lack courage?”
“Since our nation’s inception, a common and effective strategy on both left and right has been to praise and pressure American pastors into serving a partisan political agenda. Letter to the American Church is swept up in that strategy. In many evangelical churches, it will require great pastoral courage to say so.”
Thanks Brian. But over recent years I have become less and less happy with TGA, and an article like this is a prime example of why this is the case. I will not here go through all of its shortcomings, but let me mention just one issue. Many have rightly argued that Hitler and the Nazis were not conservatives and right wingers, but liberals and leftists in so many aspects instead. See especially the very important 2007 work by Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism for documentation on this.
I am currently listening to an interview between Eric and Jordan Peterson and it was so fascinating (and worrying) that I looked this book up and your review came up. I’ve met you and heard you speak, and knowing where your heart lies I am thankful for your review and am going to buy a copy to read
I used to be involved in a large CBD church but I can’t bring myself to attend anymore even though there are dear friends theee because the people have been seduced by the left, hear from the bible and yet and support Andrews even after his attacks on Christianity. Then again, when the phrase “the responsibilities of global warming and climate change, systematic racism..” and other leftist catch phrases are said from the pulpit you can’t but feel the pandering, in spite of what they say.
I have friends I have known at church for many years suddenly start to spout Marxist soundbites and then turn around a few breaths later and say they are struggling in their faith. When you serve two masters that will happen, you are trying to meld Christianity and the new world religion together, in the end you end up following the world.
They have been seduced by the left, or scared by the campaign’s to gain more power over the world. All this instead of having faith
The world is declining so rapidly, and the church refusing to be a beacon of light in fear of being attacked or tiptoeing around activists they have allowed to grow and infiltrate their own congregations shows that the issues in America aren’t that far removed from here.
The Andrew Thorburn saga shows that even tiptoeing doesn’t save you from the wrath of an anti Christian premier, activists and enemies will drag things up from your past
Hello
Wealth and comfort is the problem. If you examine where the church has become weak it is often in the wealthy countries. This is not to say I am against wealth but it can bring problems for the church. Even in the bible Israel went astray when it grew in wealth and power.
Christianity involves:
1. Love and compassion. Even to those who are wicked and have power over us. Don’t get love confused with the worldly love that brings death. Love also requires us to speak up when we witness something wrong to prevent further damage occurring while worldly love says acceptance even if it brings destruction.
2. Obedience to God no matter what.
3. Denying ourselves and following Christ.
4. Pray often. You are a stranger to God if you do not pray.
5. Serving one another.
There are many more things I could say but even what I have said so far is difficult and brings discomfort.
We have grown to want a church that fits in with our lifestyle but God wants our lifestyle to fit into God’s church.
We have two choices.
Change to how God wants us to live or God will allow problems to come against us so that we learn to change.
My concern is that I believe the time to change was in the last twenty years and we are now living in 1939 again.
Never too late to start changing even if it is 1939
Thanks Stuart.
Well written and to the very core of what Christianity should be and do. Thanks Bill – very helpful.
John Abbott
Watched a you tube sermon he gave to a church on the book. Very challenging message to give and very convicting to those who have a heart to hear. Summed it up beautifully when he said ” Silence in the face of evil, is itself evil”.
I see in my own denomination the left-wards trend: uncritical compliance with government edicts, indeed support for them, while young people suffered incredible deprivation and psychological harm (not to mention their parents) at being under house arrest for months on end to no real purpose; cheering on ‘The Voice’ as though its politics of division and grifting are invisible; and fully absorbing the materialism that thinks the idea that the mute world created itself is compatible with the God who is love speaking it into existence by his sovereign word. The mainstream church has nothing to say to society because it has been swallowed by it and is now being digested.
Another factor which does not seem to be mentioned is Biblical authority. In the late 1800’s Germany led the world in dismantling the historical integrity of the Bible – notably with the claim that Genesis was fiction assembled during the exile and based on Babylonian stories. Remove Biblical authority and the rest of Christianity will tumble down eventually. So, this would also explain why we are now like Germany in the 1930’s.
Eric Metaxas interviewed by Dinesh D’Souza
https://rumble.com/v1m2fno-eric-metaxas-urges-the-church-not-to-be-like-the-german-church-in-the-early.html
Thanks for this one Bill. I had seen a few of Eric Metaxas videos and interviews with others prior to this. But I was not aware his Christian faith, although I may have guessed. Thanks for your review of Eric Metaxas’s “Letter to the American Church”. It is timely. Over the last 3 years I have often reflected on our current situation and compared it with the German Church. There are some big lessons for us here. May the Lord give us grace to awaken more people to what is actually going on. Things have changed so much in just a few years. We never could do much without the Lord. The good thing is now we know how much we need Him; how utterly dependent we are. There are so many that I respect, big names in Christian teaching ministries, who sadly completely blind and ignorant to what is going on. I agree with Eric Metaxas’s call to speak prophetically to the world and the church. Before that however, a significant amount of intercessory prayer is required. One thing gives me courage (there are a number of things) but this one in particular I wish to mention here. It is that God is in charge of the battle. May He find us willing sons and daughters in work of the ministry. It is to a ministry which is quite radically and suddenly different to all that has gone before. Here is one example. Isn’t it is strange that there are so many people who are not Christians, (and need to be saved) yet are awake to what is going on around us? compared to many of our old Christian friends who don’t even want to know. The old order of things is being changed. There are new tasks and new opportunities. I believe a new church will emerge from this. It must. Perhaps we will be called like in Ezekiel’s vision to speak to the dry bones. Yesterday I was listening to an old Larry Norman song: Without love we are nothing; without love. It is true.
God help us all be salt and light in this decaying and dark world.
The great evil in Germany in the 1930’s was extremeist right wing German white Nationalism. Hitler used the conservative church to spread antisemitism, and Nationalist propaganda.
» “In his best-selling biography, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, Metaxas generated wide interest in German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Written at a popular level, the book appealed especially to evangelicals who found in Bonhoeffer a new hero whose costly discipleship compelled a courageous stand against an evil government.”
“At the academic level, pastors should be aware the reviews were not as generous. Bonhoeffer scholars noted the book’s historical inaccuracies and revisionism. By overlooking key doctrinal deficiencies, Metaxas presented a Bonhoeffer whom evangelicals could nearly call one of their own. In Letter, Metaxas presents the same Bonhoeffer—but with an ironic twist that readers may not notice.”
“Here’s the irony: While Metaxas wants us to find in Bonhoeffer an inspiration to resist the church’s enemies on the political left, Bonhoeffer was actually resisting the church’s enemies on the political right. Far from promoting what Metaxas calls “Marxist atheist philosophy”, Hitler opposed it as a Jewish conspiracy. Metaxas knows this.”
…….
“Metaxas believes desperate times call for desperate measures. To put candidates in power who will “enact policies to help people”, Christ-followers may need to “vote for someone whom others may criticize for being guilty of this or that”. He intimates that Christians may even need to “tell a lie for the larger good”. Christians can do these things because we serve “a God who has a wildness and unpredictability to him”. And like Bonhoeffer in opposition to Hitler, violence may be necessary.
– “Are we willing to sacrifice the church’s mandate to be a pillar of truth by trafficking in lies for political gain?”
“While Metaxas often acknowledges the influence of the “great Charles Colson”, he seems to reject the counsel of Colson, who wrote, –
“If we have learned anything in recent decades, it is that we should not roll out heavy-handed political movements that recklessly toss around God-and-country clichés and scare off our secular neighbors. Our goal is not to grab power and impose our views. Instead, we should act through principled persuasion and responsible participation..”
………
“If a pastor faithfully preaches the Word—wisely tackling tough issues from the horror of abortion to the incoherence of transgenderism to the pitfalls of nationalism—but doesn’t publicly engage in partisan politics the way Metaxas calls for, does that pastor really lack courage?”
“Since our nation’s inception, a common and effective strategy on both left and right has been to praise and pressure American pastors into serving a partisan political agenda. Letter to the American Church is swept up in that strategy. In many evangelical churches, it will require great pastoral courage to say so.”
“Pastors, preach the Word and don’t get played.”
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/reviews/letter-american-church-eric-metaxas/
Thanks Brian. But over recent years I have become less and less happy with TGA, and an article like this is a prime example of why this is the case. I will not here go through all of its shortcomings, but let me mention just one issue. Many have rightly argued that Hitler and the Nazis were not conservatives and right wingers, but liberals and leftists in so many aspects instead. See especially the very important 2007 work by Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism for documentation on this.
And a good article rebutting the stuff found in the article you sent, and the ‘let’s just be nice and winsome and let’s wink at totalitarianism’ mindset of TGA is found here. I much prefer his take on things: https://spectator.org/totalitarianism-not-lack-of-tolerance-bipartisanship-or-winsomeness-most-threatens-the-church-and-the-nation
Thanks Bill for sharing
I am currently listening to an interview between Eric and Jordan Peterson and it was so fascinating (and worrying) that I looked this book up and your review came up. I’ve met you and heard you speak, and knowing where your heart lies I am thankful for your review and am going to buy a copy to read
I used to be involved in a large CBD church but I can’t bring myself to attend anymore even though there are dear friends theee because the people have been seduced by the left, hear from the bible and yet and support Andrews even after his attacks on Christianity. Then again, when the phrase “the responsibilities of global warming and climate change, systematic racism..” and other leftist catch phrases are said from the pulpit you can’t but feel the pandering, in spite of what they say.
I have friends I have known at church for many years suddenly start to spout Marxist soundbites and then turn around a few breaths later and say they are struggling in their faith. When you serve two masters that will happen, you are trying to meld Christianity and the new world religion together, in the end you end up following the world.
They have been seduced by the left, or scared by the campaign’s to gain more power over the world. All this instead of having faith
The world is declining so rapidly, and the church refusing to be a beacon of light in fear of being attacked or tiptoeing around activists they have allowed to grow and infiltrate their own congregations shows that the issues in America aren’t that far removed from here.
The Andrew Thorburn saga shows that even tiptoeing doesn’t save you from the wrath of an anti Christian premier, activists and enemies will drag things up from your past
Thanks Matt.