Some Think What
You Preach Matters More
Than What You Do.
Some Think What
You Preach Matters More
Than What You Do.
It Doesn’t.
It Doesn’t.
in which we asked Times columnists
what
everyone else is wrong about.
What is it that will define the destiny of the American church? Will it be the beliefs of the church or the conduct of the church? The two concepts are so distinct within Christianity that they have different names — orthodoxy (right belief) and orthopraxy (right conduct).
Ideally, the two concepts shouldn’t be that distinct. Right conduct should flow from right belief. For example, honesty should flow naturally from the belief that lying is wrong. In reality, however, we know that people are much more complex, that theology does not always dictate morality and that sometimes the most religious people are among the most immoral — in direct defiance of the beliefs they proclaim.
Let’s make this less abstract. In 1998, the Southern Baptist Convention issued a bold statement of belief — it passed a resolution on the moral character of public officials that clearly stated, in no uncertain terms, “Tolerance of serious wrong by leaders sears the conscience of the culture, spawns unrestrained immorality and lawlessness in the society and surely results in God’s judgment.”
Yet in 2016 and 2020, Southern Baptists were a key part of the evangelical coalition that overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump, one of the lowest-character men ever to run for president. They’re expected to do so again in 2024. In this case, the denomination declared an orthodoxy, but utterly failed at orthopraxy, and its compromised conduct is now, sadly, far more relevant to American life than its lofty ideal.
Don’t Tell My Friends, But… New York Times Opinion columnists burst
bubbles, overturn conventional wisdom and question the assumptions — both
big and small — of the people they usually agree with.
New York Times Opinion columnists burst
bubbles, overturn conventional wisdom and
question the assumptions — both big and
small — of the people they usually agree with.
Christians aren't the only ones who are tempted to act like what you believe is more important than what you do, of course. They're following a broader cultural trend that's the result of polarization: a tendency to ignore their own side’s hypocrisies for political reasons.
The person who prioritizes orthodoxy says, “Hear my voice.” The person who prioritizes orthopraxy says, “Watch my life,” and the competing emphases can play out in concrete political ways. Let’s look at two of the more important recent developments in American Christianity. First, Robert Morris, the senior pastor of Gateway Church — one of the largest churches in the United States — resigned after he confessed to engaging in “sexual behavior” with a child in the 1980s. Second, the state of Louisiana enacted a law requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools.
The person who prioritizes orthodoxy will tend to look at the Morris scandal as unfortunate but largely irrelevant and the Ten Commandments legislation as momentous. No one said the church is perfect, after all, and there will always be bad apples, even in the best of orchards. The Ten Commandments, on the other hand, teach universal truths, and exposing children to those truths will change their lives.
By contrast, the person who prioritizes orthopraxy has the opposite inclination. He or she looks at the Morris scandal as devastating and the Ten Commandments legislation as frivolous. The bad apples expose the rot in the orchard.
In the fundamentalist tradition of my youth in rural Kentucky, there was an enormous longing for the alleged better days of the past. I can’t count the number of times I heard an older member of my congregation shake his or her head at a news report about sex or crime and say, “We didn’t have those problems when there was prayer and Bible reading in schools.”
But history teaches a different lesson. I recently had the privilege of hearing Sybil Jordan Hampton tell the story of what it was like to be one of only five Black children in her high school in Little Rock, Ark., in 1959, deep in the heart of the Bible Belt. It’s a truly harrowing tale.
Classmates wouldn’t speak to her, and when they did, they’d sometimes hiss the n-word at her. The atmosphere was frightening enough that the only time she spoke was when it was her turn to read the Bible in class. She always chose Psalm 121, repeating its cry for God’s help in times of distress: “I lift my eyes toward the mountains. Where will my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.”
Her classmates were unmoved. Orthodoxy didn’t inculcate orthopraxy. Instead, their public religiosity blinded them to their own sin.
In 2023, I read my friend Russell Moore’s powerful book “Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America.” He tells the story of the decline of Catholicism in Ireland after a horrifying sex abuse scandal damaged the church far more than any theological disagreement over Catholic teaching. As Moore notes in his book, faith declined “because people who once revered the church came to believe that the church did not itself believe what it taught.”
Prioritizing orthopraxy isn’t a revolutionary or secular thought. It’s thoroughly biblical. The Apostle Paul declares that “If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.” And when Paul listed the “fruit” of God’s presence in a believer’s life, he did not list a set of theological propositions, but rather a collection of virtues: “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”
The American church is torn apart by conflict over theology. It should be united by a pursuit of virtue, and the church that truly influences a nation will be one that focuses on doing good more than on being right.
