We're not born right with God. The logic goes something like this. The message of the gospel was entrusted to the Holy Catholic Church.
Anyone who becomes a member of the Roman Catholic Church is therefore a Christian. Roman Catholicism is the guardian of Polish culture and therefore, everyone who is truly Polish is Roman Catholic.
Therefore, if you are born in Poland, you are a Roman Catholic and stand justified before God. This story line is deeply rooted in Polish culture and is the greatest barrier to the proclamation of justification by personal faith in Jesus Christ.
It is so deeply rooted that years ago, a Polish friend that confessed Christ as her personal savior in a Protestant church and was baptized a believer was renounced by her family.
The Problem with the Combination of Religion and Nationalism
One of the most fascinating observations that I have made in twenty years of cross-cultural ministry is the number of cultures where religion and nationalism has been woven together.
We first observed this in Poland when we learned that to be Polish was to be Roman Catholic. If a Polish person became a Protestant, they forfeited their "Polishness".
Over the centuries, the Catholic Church made Catholicism and Polish ethnicity, synonymous. Years later we discovered the same thing in many of the Latin American countries.
It is clearly the case in the Middle East that being Arabic means being Muslim. Similarly, in India Hinduism has been wed with Indian nationalism.
Having been raised in the Protestant tradition, I have been deeply schooled in the Reformation and to protest any doctrine of justification by works as opposed to justification by faith.
However, it is now apparent to me that equally important is the notion that we are not justified by birth (John 3). We do not inherit eternal life as a birth right.
Justification is by faith in Christ alone and not through nationality or ethnicity. It is apparent to me that one of the greatest challenges facing the gospel, is the doctrine that you are right before God based on your nationality.
It is this nationalistic view of religion that has been used for decades to impugn the gospel message, labeling it a "cult" or "foreign sect".
For years, the Orthodox Church in Belarus labelled the Baptists a "cult". They even went so far as to be involved in producing a television program that showed Nazi party rallies with the "Heil Hitler" salute and then showed Pentecostal worship services. They tried to correlate the Nazi salute with charismatic worship.
Adding fuel to the fire, our preaching along the old reformation themes of salvation by grace and not by works has accentuated the problem. Christianity is viewed as an import product from the United States that encourages moral licentiousness.
Evangelical Christianity is portrayed as a threat to the cultural and national life of the people. Without examining the truth claims of Christ, Christianity is dismissed as foreign.
Compounded by the language and financial issues mentioned above it gives a kind of spiritual, religious foundation to viral national religion.
This is clearly the case with Islam where Evangelical Christianity is portrayed as the enemy of Islamic culture. In some cases, this kind of vitriolic teaching has created an environment of genuine hatred towards the people of God.
5 Strategies to Deflect the Nationalistic Claims and to Bring the Message of Salvation
Let me suggest that there are strategies that can be employed in this area to deflect the nationalistic claims and bring the message of salvation into the open.
1. Empower the culture's Christian community and express the gospel
We need to come alongside the Christian community within a culture and join God in expressing the gospel through that community.
This needs to be done with care, particularly in light of the language and financial issues mentioned in the two previous articles. With wisdom and discernment we need to empower the culturally relevant Christian community and the message of the gospel preached.
2. Focus on biblical preaching and avoid American cultural examples
In the event that we are entering into a culture with the gospel we need to disassociate the message of the gospel from American nationalism.
Like many other cultures, we have allowed the gospel to be associated with our own nationality. Being American does not make one a genuine Christ follower.
When we take the message of the gospel into other cultures, we need to take care to focus on Biblical preaching and avoid American cultural examples.
3. Emphasize the message of salvation by grace
We need to continue to emphasize the message of salvation by grace and not by works of the law.
However, we need to place more emphasis on teaching that encourages the fruits of the Spirit (Galatians), obedience to the teaching of Christ, and moral uprightness of God's people.
We need to help change the notion that evangelicals are teaching a cheap grace with no virtue.
4. Be prepared to partner with the church, in third cultures as they seek to minister cross-culturally
A ministry colleague related to me the Chilean church planting team he met in Baghdad, sent, supported, and funded from Chile. The Second Baptist church in Poland was planted by a three-man team including an American, Pole and Brazilian missionary. One of our most effective ministry partnerships with churches in Hungary is being spearheaded by a Romanian Christian leader. He is better positioned to serve and relate to the Hungarian Christian community than an American.
5. Mobilize the spiritual resources needed to battle against the spiritual lie that is religious nationalism
We need more prayer against the lies that give people a false sense of spiritual security based on a birthright. Our message of justification by faith remains the battle cry, but we need to realize that the opposition is often religious nationalism.
Closing Thoughts
All of the great religions of the world are associated with some piece of land somewhere, except Christianity: Islam in Mecca, Judaism in the Holy Land, Hinduism and Varanasi on the Ganges, Confucianism in China, Shintoism, and Japan.
They are also closely related to specific languages (Arabic, Hindi, Mandarin, Japanese and Hebrew) except Christianity.
From its very inception Christianity was the announcement of Jesus as the Messiah of the Nations and the King of a Kingdom not confined to a land or language. Efforts continue to dismiss Evangelical Christianity as a foreign religion.
Pray that we might join Him in the Great Commission to make disciples of Jesus Christ among every people group in the world.