I have called myself “ecclesiocentric” but I think the meaning of the label often gets confused with other things.
If ecclesiocentrism means cultural and political retreat (eg, pietism), I want no part of it. An ecclesiocentric church will assume the center. An ecclesiocentric church will operate out of and build upon the reality that Jesus is the King of the universe and the church is his bride, the Queen of the universe.
Ecclesiocentrism is not retreat; rather, it’s a way of fighting that uses weapons for which the world has no counter-measures. What ecclesiocentrism *should* mean is that worship is warfare – the *first* form of warfare we are called to fight, but not the *only* form of warfare we are called to engage in as Christians. Ecclesiocentrism recognizes we have to contend with principalities and powers – not merely human enemies of the gospel, but dark and demonic powers that seek to corrupt and destroy. Ecclesiocentrism refuses to demythologize the culture war.
Liturgy (at least a fully biblical liturgy) is political but it is not a substitute for other forms of political action. Churches should apply the Word of God to the wider culture, even speaking directly to magistrates.
An ecclesiocentric church is prophetic. Fulfilling the prophetic role of the church means speaking to the King in heaven in prayer but also speaking to kings on earth in preaching. We are ambassadors of the King of kings to lesser kings. We are an embassy of a heavenly kingdom to earthly kingdoms. A Christian nation is (at least in part) a nation that recognizes the church as the body and bride of Christ. There can never be a Christian nation without the church in some way at the center.
This does NOT mean pastors need to be experts in public policy or political philosophy. If pastors simply point out the “big E” on the eye chart to magistrates, that should be sufficient. And any pastor who preaches his way through God’s Word will have plenty of opportunities to do this. Pastors do not need to address every political issue, just the major ones that are clearly defined by God’s Word.
Ecclesiocentrism does not mean retreating to the four walls of the church to hold on tight. It is not the Benedict Option by another name. It is not pietism in disguise. Ecclesiocentrism converted the Roman Empire. Ecclesiocentrism built Western Christendom in the medieval period, and then reformed it in the 16th and 17th centuries. Medieval Christians built churches in the center of the town square for a reason – this sacred geography was symbolic, revealing they believed the church to be the hub of the whole Christian community. During the Reformation, the church’s proclamation of the whole counsel of God not only transformed individual lives, it transformed families, cities, and nations. The church can bring about this kind of transformation again if she will only act as salt and light.
This is my ecclesiocentrism. Here I stand.
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A quick follow up to someopne asking questions:
I don’t think ecclesiocentrism means the church should not speak to social and political issues – just the opposite. The church drives comprehensive discipleship by applying the word of God to everything that matters and praying about everything that matters.
I think there 2 varieties of ecclesiocentrism, one more passive, the other more active:
There is a version that says the church should just “be the church” and that will eventually bring about social change. Focus on worship, chant psalms, pray, and everything else will take care of itself. The church can be political by being non-political. Because the church is already intrinsically political, she does not need to do anything political to be political.
There is another version of ecclesiocentrism that views the church as central to history and society because her teaching ministry applies the word of God to all of life. In this version of ecclesiocentrism, the church will “be the church” but what it means to be the church is more expansive. The church is the model institution, the hub of the godly commonwealth. She transforms the world through liturgy, yes, but that includes applying God’s Word as it is preached to everything under heaven. As Van Til put it, “The Bible is thought of as authoritative on everything of which it speaks. Moreover, it speaks of everything. We do not mean that it speaks of football games, of atoms, etc., directly, but we do mean that it speaks of everything either directly or by implication.”
I subscribe to the latter view.
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An ecclesiocentric reponse to Jamie Brambrick’s video:
There are some good thoughts here, not only on how the LGBTQ movement became so culturally powerful, but also how cultures in general change. We often say, “politics is downstream from culture,” and in nations that are more republican or democratic in nature, that make some sense. People shape or get shaped by their culture, then vote accordingly. But the reality is more complex.
It’s a bit odd to separate out politics and culture – as the video points out, politics is really an aspect of culture. Even more significantly, both culture and politics tend to be shaped more by elites than by populism, more from the top down than the bottom up. Obviously, change can happen in both directions, but leadership always matters and leaders are called leaders precisely because they lead the way. Egalitarianism is a myth; society is always hierarchical. The ruling class will always be at the forefront of both cultural and political shifts. An empirical survey of history bears this out.
The one thing I think is missing from the video’s analysis of cultural change is the role of the church. Obviously, in one sense, the church can be considered part of the culture since culture includes religion and culture is religious. The church can even be considered political, insofar as the church is a “holy nation” (1 Peter 2) confessing “another king, Jesus” (Acts 17). But I still think it’s important for us to recognize the church’s role as the church in cultural and political transformation. Jesus gave the church the Great Commission, the calling to disciple the nations. But discipling the nations means transforming the nations. It means changing the nations. In Matthew, Jesus basically tells his disciples, “Go change the world.” Through teaching the nations all that Christ commanded, the church makes the nations into what Jesus wants them to be, so they can each bring their peculiar treasures into his kingdom. Perhaps many Christians today have accepted a truncated view of what the Great Commission entails, but in reality it’s an incredibly ambitious and audacious mission.
Biblically and historically, the church is a deeply influential player in social life. Jesus commanded his people to be salt and light – agents of preservation and transformation. When the church is faithful in this task, the land is blessed and rejoices. When the church is unfaithful in this task, the land languishes in darkness. But either way, the church exerts influence. She is a leading institution for better or worse.
In a very real sense we can say, “as the church goes, so society goes.” With some qualifications, we can truly say, “The culture is the church’s report card.” Faithful churches produce holy commonwealths, and ultimately Christendom (Christian civilization). Compromised liberal, progressive churches cause society to rot and decay.
Certainly John Calvin and his English successors, the Puritans, understood this. Like medieval Christians, they situated the church at the center of society – if not literally and geographically, as had been done in medieval cities, where the church occupied the town center, at least theologically and sociologically, they were ecclesiocentric. They understood the church to be the hub of Christian culture, the alpha-form of Christianization, the fount of culture-wide discipleship. So our theories and theologies of cultural change are not complete if they don’t take into account the church. We can debate populism versus elitism, or politics versus culture, as the source of cultural change, but our understanding of cultural transformation will be incomplete unless we reckon with the power and mission God has given to his church. The church is the head of society in a very real sense. God has made the church an elite, aristocratic institution. The church often fails in her calling, but even her failures have a ripple effect through society. The church’s power and influence are often subtle and even hidden, but they are very real.
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A response to Howerton on political preaching:
I think this is largely correct re: how we lost political preaching. But I think it happened long before the rise of the seeker sensitive movement. In fact, the seeker movement was a *response* to a culture that was already drifting politically and otherwise. Privatized, pietistic Christianity that seeks to escape from public/social/political application of the faith can be traced back to the influence of the Second Great Awakening and the eventual rise of Dispensationalism.
I also think the effect of the seeker movement, along with things like the “gospel-centered” movement, was to eviscerate preaching of ALL application – since application of the Bible even to personal and family life tends to stifle expressive individualism and feel legalistic/heavy-handed to people who aren’t that serious about pursuing holiness (which is much of the church these days).
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Ecclesiocentrism is basically a theology of the place of the church in history and society. It’s about unpacking Ephesians 1:22: Christ is “head over all things for [the sake of] the church.” If Christ is king, his bride is queen. Modern liberalism presents an alternative ecclesiology in which the church is essentially a privatized institution, a kind of “Jesus fan club” that does not intersect with politics or take up any public space. It’s interesting to me that so many rightwing men today decry liberalism but do not challenge one of its most fundamental tenets, namely the privatizing of the church. One of the most fundamental ways liberalism atomized society and deracinated us has been through the maginalization of the church. The history of America’s decline is basically the story of downgrading the church. It’s the story of moving from a thick Reformed ecclesiology to a thin evangelical ecclesiology.
It’s impossible to recover historic Reformed political theology without also recovering historic Reformed ecclesiology. They are a pair. Any Christian nationalist movement not working to also strengthen and reform the church is not going to make much progress. There will never be a strong, healthy nation without strong, healthy churches at the core. It’s very odd that some Christian nationalists have a very low view of the church and a very high view of the state. I can sympathize with their frustrations with pastors — but do they really think civil rulers have fared better and are deserving of trust?
Ecclesiocentrism is not ecclesiocracy. Perhaps some popes and theologians advocated eccleisocracy in the medieval era, but that’s not part of the Reformed tradition. We are in no danger of churches taking over other institutions. My point is not that the church should absorb other spheres, much less control them, but the church does have a central role in discipling the other spheres by teaching them all that Jesus commanded (Matthew 28).
A good illustration is Presbyterian Pastor John Witherspoon. Without Witherspoon there would be no American founding and no American founding fathers. Good Christian statesmen don’t grow on trees. They are are formed and shaped in many ways, but historically pastors and liturgy have played a key role in their formation. The faithful clergyman is a prophet to the Christian statesman.
Another good illustration is Calvin’s Geneva. Ronald Wallace’s book Calvin, Geneva, and the Reformation is one of many that gives a solid synopsis. Calvin believed in comprehensive social and cultural and political reformation, all flowing through the ministry of the church. Calvin saw the pastorate as a quasi-political office, with a calling not only to his congregation but the wider community. In Calvin’s case that meant part of his role as a pastor was sometimes tangling with the city council. The pastor spoke not just to private believers but to public officials and magistrates.
Biblically, we see ecclesiocentrism all over the place. The book of Judges is structured to show us that at the root of Israel’s struggles in that era were unfaithful Levites who did not teach the people YHWH is their king. As the priests, so the people. In Israel’s monarchial period, the test of every king was whether or not he would listen to YHWH’s prophets. Haggai explains to the people that all their efforts and culture-building and dominion-taking are in vain so long as God’s house (= the church) lies in ruins. Ecclesiastical reformation paves the way for cultural and political transformation. Jesus commanded his community of disciples ( = the church) to be the model city, to be preserving salt, and to be transforming light in the world. The Great Commission not only requires the church to baptize and disciple individuals but also nations as nations. Etc. Again, if the goal is Christian nations, there’s no getting there without the church in a certain sense leading the way. The only large scale Christian civilization that has ever existed (Western Christendom) was ecclesiocentric. There’s no other recipe or formula for getting what we want. Christian nationalists who despise the church will spin their wheels but never get much traction. The church seems weak compared to the state — but isn’t hiding strength in weakness often God’s way? Doesn’t the sword of the Spirit have a power the sword of the state lacks? When the church is faithful at being the church God has called her to be, she exerts great power and influence in the world over time.
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Ecclesiocentrism in one verse:
“I will bless those who bless you, And I will curse him who curses you; And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Genesis 12:3)
Christian political theology one verse:
“Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD.” (Psalm 33:12).
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Nations are judged by God according to two basic criteria: how they treat the Son (Psalm 2:10-12) and how they treat the church (Genesis 12:3).
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We can do x, y, and z politically, all good things, but without God’s favor and blessing, they will not accomplish much. (Haggai is all about this.) It’s good and necessary to treat symptoms — but we also have to get to the root of the problem if we want real healing. I am arguing for both/and, but I’m also pointing out that policy change is not the same as heart change, and political reform is no substitute for repentance. We need both, but what we need most, and most urgently, is what will bring God’s favor upon our people. Repentance will obviously mean all kinds of cultural change downstream because that what repentance is — a change of ways. Repentance bears fruit. But its also possible to change some things without repenting and still not get the results we want because the deeper issues have gone unaddressed. The *real* threat to America is not debt or immigration but Jesus’ rod of iron. It doesn’t matter what laws you pass or what candidates you elect, if Jesus is angry with us, we are still headed for disaster.
At this point, America has tried pretty much everything *except* repentance. So maybe we should try repenting too.
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Because we would not have mother church, we got the nanny state.
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“It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged.”
— G.K. Chesterton
Personally, I would settle for having a few more politicians excommunicated. It’s terrible to contemplate how few politicians have ever been disciplined by their churches.
Most of the civil rulers and judges who have done great harm to America over the years were (and are) church members. But their pastors and elders did nothing as they pursued evil policies and rulings. If a Christian carpenter could be disciplined by his church for ripping off customers, surely a Christian politician could be disciplined by his church for promoting laws that lead to the ripping apart of babies in the womb.
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Just as most of the civil rulers and judges who have done the most harm to America have been church members, so in the history of Western philosophy, most of the men who have done the greatest harm were baptized and were church members. Virtually none were excommunicated. The downfall of Western civilization can be traced back to a failure of church discipline.
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On X someone responded to my ecclesiocentic posts, and cited Sandlin in opposition to ecclesiocentrism:
Andrew Sandlin, reviewing “The Impulse of Power,” described the phenomenon well: “The architects of patristic and medieval ecclesiocentrism were interested in employing the church as an instrument in giving meaning to life. Not so much God and the Bible, but the institutional church itself, furnished life’s meaning. God and His Word were remote and proximate, while the church was near and immediate.”
A few notes in reponse:
1. I like Sandlin in general, but that quote sounds like an Anabaptist reading of history. The early church was ecclesiocentric by default. They had no access to political power. But they still conquered and transformed the Roman Empire. The medieval period had faults, but it was a glorious and beautiful manifestation of Christian culture. There were times in the medieval period when the church (mainly through popes) overstepped her bounds, but, of course, there were times when kings did the same. Remember, the gist of the Magna Carta was to carve out freedom for for the church to be and act as the church. It was about freeing the church from state control. It was not about freedom for individuals per se (the way modern liberals think of religious liberty), but freedom for the church to fulfill her calling and commission as a public and visible body in the world. The text of the Magna Carta reads:
FIRST, THAT WE HAVE GRANTED TO GOD, and by this present charter have confirmed for us and our heirs in perpetuity, that the English Church shall be free, and shall have its rights undiminished, and its liberties unimpaired . . .
At its conclusion, the charter reads:
(63) IT IS ACCORDINGLY OUR WISH AND COMMAND that the English Church shall be free, and that men in our kingdom shall have and keep all these liberties, rights, and concessions, well and peaceably in their fulness and entirety for them and their heirs, of us and our heirs, in all things and all places for ever.
Of course, in the medieval period at its best, we see a Christian church and a Christian magistrate working together, promoting true freedom and righteousness.
2. The point is not that the church tries to remake all of society into her image or swallow up all of society into herself; different spheres have different roles and responsibilities, and that must be respected. The point is that the church disciples other institutions through her teaching ministry. Where are fathers going to be taught how the Word of God applies to their role as fathers? Where are magistrates going to learn what the Word of God says to them as rulers? The Bible addresses these matters over and over, but the Bible is also clear that the Word is to be taught by duly ordained and appointed teachers in the church. What I am arguing for is exactly what de Tocqueville observed:
“I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers, and it was not there. I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her fertile fields and boundless forests, and it was not there. I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her rich mines and her vast world commerce, and it was not there. I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her public school system and her institutions of learning, and it was not there. I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her democratic Congress and her matchless Constitution, and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.“
That’s my ecclesiocentrism. Great churches made America great. There’s obviously more to national greatness than that, but never less.
3. Yes, liberals (especially of the woke variety) have cherry-picked a handful of Bible verses they think they can twist to suit their political purposes. Wokeness uses Bible verses to undermine the Bible, just as it uses appeals to compassion to undermine truth. But that’s an entirely different issue than what I am addressing. A faithful church would inoculate its people against such Scripture twisting. A faithful church knows the liberty of Galatians 5:1 is an ordered liberty. A faithful church lives by Galatians 3:28 but still knows what a woman is because the verse is not about androgyny but our judicial status is Christ. I do not think liberalism is trying to turn society into the body of Christ, but replace the body of Christ. That’s why I say liberalism is best thought of as a heretical ecclesiology. If liberalism had its way, there would be no church at all because the faithful church is a rival to liberalism. The rise of liberalism as a political force absolutely corresponds to the decline of the church’s public role — nothing is more obvious from Western and American history than this fact. This is why O’Donnovan said the first amendment was the symbolic death of Christendom. The privatization of the church means the privatizing of the truth she proclaims, the privatization of the gospel, the privatization of biblical law and ethics. Privatization leaves elites to secularize all of public life and fill it with whatever content they choose. Privatization has been used as a stick to drive Christians out of the public square, to tell Christians “you cannot bring your faith to bear on politics.” Privatization results in “every man doing what is right in his own eyes.” Privatization removes the church as a buffer against statist tyranny and deracination. Again, go back to the Magna Carta: religious freedom in the West originally meant freedom for the church to be the church — it was an ecclesial, even ecclesiocentric, doctrine of liberty. Liberalism turned religious freedom into freedom for the individual. Ecclesiocentrism is the best and last bulwark against liberalism. Without ecclesiocentrism, all you will ever have is the state and the individual — and who do you think is going to win that contest? In order to reign in the state and push the state in the direction we want it to go, we simply must have other institutions that exert influence in the public square and speak/act with real authority.
Here’s a test case for ecclesiocentrism vs liberalism: How do liberals view church discipline? There is absolutely nothing that threatens liberalism more than the reality of excommunication. The way we know liberalism has the upper hand is that church’s do not discipline according to the Matthew 18 pattern. When churches once again begin to practice discipline on a wide scale, we will know we are gaining ground against liberalism.
4. Churches can become synagogues of Satan. Churches can become rivals to Christ instead of servants of Christ. Churches can become deeply corrupt. We see this with the mainline Protestant denominations, for example. Churches can imbibe worldly philosophies, they can compromise themselves by cowardly leadership, and so on. Jesus told us what would happen when the salt loses its saltiness — and it’s exactly what’s played out in America.
5. The most important thing for any nation is not who it elects or what laws it passes, but whether or not it has God’s favor. And God has told us the criteria he uses to evaluate nations. Do the rulers and people of the nation kiss the Son (Psalm 2)? And do they bless the people of God, the true family of Abraham (Genesis 12)? A nation that marginalizes or even mocks the church, much less one that persecutes the faithful, is inviting judgment. If America wants to be blessed, we will have to recognize the church for what she is — the body and bride of Christ. And we will have to give her proper space to carry out her mission — baptizing the nations and teaching them all that Christ the king has commanded. Any social analysis that leaves the church out of the picture is functionally atheistic. Any plan for social and political transformation that ignores the role of the church is functionally atheistic. This includes movements that go by the label “Christian nationalism.”
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Nothing threatens liberalism more than a church that is willing to carry out a faithful process of church discipline and practice excommunication.
What if the one excommunicated doesn’t think it matters? Even if the one excommunicated laughs at it, it matters to God. And that’s what’s really important.
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Ecclesial greatness and national greatness are a pair.
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The historic doctrine of Christian liberty as it arose in the West was liberty for the church to be the church. The Magna Carta begins:
“FIRST, THAT WE HAVE GRANTED TO GOD, and by this present charter have confirmed for us and our heirs in perpetuity, that the English Church shall be free, and shall have its rights undiminished, and its liberties unimpaired . . .”
The modern liberal form of religious liberty is about the freedom of the individual. Liberalism relocates liberty from the institution of the church to the conscience of the individual. Liberalism privatizes religious liberty.
This is why liberalism is rightly understood as a heretical ecclesiology, indeed, an alternative ecclesiology. Liberalism wants to construct a society without a church, at least, without any visible, public church.
We will never defeat liberalism unless we return to this more ecclesial doctrine of religious liberty.
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Liberalism wants the church to be invisible, and only invisible.
If there’s one thing liberalism can’t stand, it’s a strong visible church.
A strong and faithful visible church is a bulwark against liberalism.
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It’s interesting to me that the some Christian Nationalists are rabidly anti-liberal, but still oblivious to how liberalism has reconfigured and deformed ecclesiology. They tend to hold a low view of the church, and treat her like she’s dead weight their movement would have to drag around.
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