Once upon a time I was in a Christian youth group. No, I’m not referring to my time as a volunteer leader or later an actual youth pastor, but my own high school heydays. As a typically impressionable teen, much of what I heard from both my peers and leaders went unexamined; and I could probably write a book on the many things I’ve had to unlearn from those years. However, in this post I want to pick on something another teen once told me, with marked relish: Jesus spent days preparing his whip to drive the traders and loansharks out of the temple.

Let me save you turning up the passages to prove my peer wrong (Matthew 21:12-17; John 2:13-22), because there’s no such detail in the Gospels. True, Jesus made a whip to chase opportunistic traders from the temple (John 2:15). But my disagreement in hindsight isn’t with that teen’s imposed specifics. It’s with the spirit behind it. You see, my peer—let’s call him Louis—cited Jesus’ deliberate, time intensive labour to emphasise our Lord’s commitment to aggressive confrontation and conflict. These actions apparently dispel the myth of the mollifying, ‘meek and mild’ Jesus of the contemporary church. Taking days to prepare the whip for his temple showdown demonstrated that Jesus was a manly kind of confrontational—more muscle, less nice.

Muscular Rather Than Meek Christianity

Some two decades later we’re hearing renewed and rallying calls for a more muscular, uncompromising Christianity. The biblical exegesis in support of this contemporary mood is marginally better than my teenage peer’s, with appeals being made to the New Testament language of fighting the good fight (1 Timothy 1:18; 6:12), turning the world upside down (Acts 17:6), and Jesus’ promise of a sword rather than peace (Matthew 10:34). However, these scriptural appeals are still strikingly poor—and I’d wager that most of my 1st year seminarians would do a better job of handling them. Only, I’m more interested in the spirit behind these aggressive postures and movements. Why are Christians trading in meekness for muscle?

Recently I wondered why so many find the strident tone of John MacArthur so alluring. Similarly, I’ve wondered about the self-styled Christian strong-man, Doug Wilson’s popularity. To him we could add Rosaria Butterfield’s notable shift towards a combative view of culture and the public square. A few years back Dane Ortlund’s Gentle and Lowly was lampooned because—among other things—it made God out to be too nice. Remarkably, these moods have unnervingly similarities with the Nietzschean disdain for Christian weakness and pity. But I’ll write more on that another time. Returning to the question at hand: what is the impetus behind this spirit? How do we make sense of these increasingly popular calls for a more muscular Christianity?

Donald Miller on Muscular Christianity’s Mood

One answer, at least, was written in the early 2000s meaning this mood isn’t new. In Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller identified this combative posture and attempted to explain it. He writes, “The church is like a wounded animal these days. We used to have power and influence, but now we don’t, and so many of our leaders are upset about this and acting like spoiled children, mad because they can’t have their way. They disguise their actions to look as though they are standing on principle, but it isn’t that, it’s bitterness. They want to take their ball and go home because they have to sit the bench.”

Miller lands some great points. I’ll highlight just two, each with its own metaphor. Firstly, Christian influence is waning rapidly across the West. “We used to have power,” whether through ties with the state or by simple fact that it’s almost impossible to disentangle Christianity from Western culture. Of course all of this is changing and the church’s stock has plummeted. And honest Christians will admit that it’s hard not to nostalgically long for those days when the church seemed triumphant on earth, when those outside of the church cared for its opinion and platforms were readily afforded to Christian voices. So “the church is like a wounded animal,” cornered and afraid—and I’m sure there’s a proverb about such creatures being the most dangerous.

Secondly, we easily disguise bitterness about the church’s changing reality with “standing on principle,” righteousness. Picking up Miller’s second metaphor, Christians have lost game time to sitting the bench. Only, we haven’t taken it well; in fact, “many of our leaders are upset about this and acting like spoiled children, mad because they can’t have their way.” Now Paul does permit anger without sin (Ephesians 4:26). Only, to adapt something Richard J. Mouw writes in Called to the Life of the Mind, anger is understandable for a moment but should never be a way of life. Nor is it an appropriate mood for going about the Christian life, public engagement or cultural critique. 

The Spirit or a Spirit of Fear?

With a prescience we can only attribute to the Force, Yoda perfectly summed up Miller’s two points when he said: “Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate.” Yes, Christianity has seen a dramatically downward turn in its social and cultural stock. Not only has its power and influence been fractured by internecine squabbling, but Western culture is becoming less hospitable, sometimes more antagonistic towards the church. Declining stock is stoking fear, especially among those who believe Christians dominate public dialogue or the culture at large. And as the ever wise Yoda reminds us, fear leads to anger.

There’s another side to this conversation. I know that. I’m not suggesting we withdraw from the public square. But I would like to put a question to those who’re calling for us to reprise the supposed warrior spirit of Christianity: what lies at the heart of your desire for a more muscular and combative public-facing Christianity? Is it the the Spirit whose fruit is love, patience, kindness, and gentleness (Galatians 5:22-23)? Or is it the spirit of fear?