Editorial
Mere Opposites
Fundamentals Can't Be Reduced by S. M. Hutchens
I recently watched a video recording of a conference at which the idea of mere Christianity was criticized as though it gave rise to the question, "How mere is our Christianity?" As one of the participants noted in passing, the mere Christianity theme does indeed appear to be adopted increasingly by those whose supposed devotion to the idea includes all sorts of things Christians have historically and unanimously denied.
This sort of person is becoming more numerous among those who clearly wish to have their Christianity and their egalitarianism, their women's ordination, their divorces, their ambivalence on sexual matters, and their general friendliness with the world, too—things that have always and everywhere been denied by the Church. This shabby, flaccid, and opportunistic concept of mere Christianity was not Baxter's, nor was it Lewis's, nor is it Touchstone's.
We call to witness our thirty-year unified and emphatic denial of these and other aberrations, in service of, and for the sake of, our mission "to provide a place where Christians of various backgrounds can speak with one another on the basis of shared belief in the fundamental doctrines of the faith as revealed in Holy Scripture and summarized in the ancient creeds of the Church." To conduct this mission effectively and conscientiously, we have found that there are things we not only must not affirm, but must deny together to fend off the Spirit of the Age.
But does our masthead or our content contain even the germ of calculation on how little we must believe to work this field? (All of us believe in the unity and wholeness of Truth, but also that the end is not yet.)
We would be grateful if those who rightly criticize "mere Christianity" used as a reductive concept would do us the courtesy of not tarring Touchstone with the same brush they use to daub those who employ it this way. All of us here believe in the unity and wholeness of Truth, and hope we are drawing together toward its full realization under the disciplines this requires.
S. M. Hutchens is a senior editor and longtime writer for Touchstone.
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