May Column

May 2008 ElPasoFishNet column
(c) 2008 El Paso Scene

In a popularity contest, Christ beats Christians every time. That’s what I’ve learned browsing some recent research by various sources. One of the leading resources on church trends and religious attitudes is The Barna Group, which last fall reported that 16- to 29-year-olds are much more skeptical of Christianity than were their counterparts ten years ago. The term “Christian” increasingly is associated with intolerance, self-righteousness and other negative characteristics.
Yet even those who are skeptical of Christianity still hold its namesake in high regard. Barna’s research noted that a common attitude was “Christianity in today’s society no longer looks like Jesus.”
In fact, Jesus remains quite popular in every segment of American society.
In a panel discussion at Stanford University, Boston University religion professor Stephen Prothero pointed out the high esteem in which Jesus is held among adherents of different faiths.
Prothero is author of “American Jesus,” which he wrote after observing American Hindus who celebrated Christmas and hearing Buddhists refer to Jesus as a bodhisattva. He even noticed a painting of Jesus seated in a lotus position when visiting a Buddhist center. Muslims, and Jews rarely have anything bad to say about Jesus, he adds, and instead may elevate him to the status of major prophet and teacher.
Prothero calls the U.S. a “Jesus nation,” in which nearly everyone reveres Jesus — although each person seems to revere him in his or her own way.
So apparently lots of people hold a high opinion of Jesus but an increasing number of people, particularly the younger generation, hold a low opinion of the religion associated with him and its adherents.
One church in the Chicago area came up with a unique strategy to deal with the “I love Jesus, it’s the Christians I can’t stand” attitude. They developed a series of videos that mimicked the “I’m a PC, I’m a Mac” commercials. The characters in these videos (used as teaching tools at worship) looked remarkably like the two men in the Apple ads, but they identified themselves as “I’m a Christian” and “I’m a Christ-follower.” (Google “christian vs. christ-follower” to get all the links.)
The Christian is a King James-toting guy in a suit while the Christ-follower is a born-again slacker. The message is that you can dig Christ even if you don’t dig traditional Christians. Of course, the irony is that replacing one self-righteous attitude with another doesn’t show much spiritual maturity.
The evidence remains, however, that the term “Christian” has fallen into disrepute. The problem isn’t just how some people behave who call themselves “Christian.” Part of the problem is that Christians lost control of the word itself.
In the New Testament, the term is used only three times. The first reference is Acts 11:26, when it is mentioned that the church in Antioch was the first to be called Christians; this probably was a label that outsiders applied to “followers of The Way.” King Agrippa uses the term derisively in Acts 26:28. The only time the word is purposefully used to describe followers of the faith is I Peter 4:16 (“However, if you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but praise God that you bear that name.”)
While Christians willingly embraced that name for 2,000 years, it is still a word that the world uses as it wants to, whether it makes any theological sense or not. The word in fact has become rather useless because most of the time its meaning is quite removed from Christ himself.
If someone says, for example, “I consider myself a good Christian,” you can almost bet they aren’t. That’s because such a self-description usually means that the person thinks he or she follows the right rules or values most of the time — but doesn’t really think in term of following Christ. Likewise, someone who says the United States is or was a “Christian nation” simply means that it is (or was) guided by principles that stem from religious belief — but is not saying that Americans are by and large sincere disciples of Jesus.
In the Rome-governed world of the first century, calling yourself a Christian would have guaranteed sincere belief because it would have risked persecution, including torture and death. Twenty centuries later, it might risk ridicule because the world associates it more with hypocrisy than with sincerity.
That’s why the term has fallen into disfavor even in what might otherwise be called Christian circles. I first recall reading “Christ follower” as an alternative term in Gordon MacDonald’s 1991 book “Christ Followers in the Real World.” Since then, I’ve noticed it’s become increasingly more popular as a replacement for “Christian” among younger evangelicals. “Christ follower” focuses on who you believe in and an active response to that belief, while “Christian” focuses on yourself and sounds quite passive by comparison.
I was listening to a sermon recently in which the preacher used the term “Christ-like” and it struck me how much powerful that was an adjective, in the same way that “Christ follower” is more powerful as a noun. Describing someone as Christ-like means that person actually reflects qualities associated with Jesus.
By comparison, if someone calls you Christian that may just mean you remind them of other Christians. Wouldn’t you rather be told you remind them of Christ?

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Randy Limbird is editor
and publisher of El Paso Scene.