On “Churchification”

Reading Jürgen Moltmann is once again proving to be a rewarding experience. The following comes from a chapter entitled “Progress and Abyss: Remembrances of the Future of the Modern World,” found in The Future of Hope: Christian Tradition amid Modernity and Postmodernity. I found this especially interesting—and heartening!—to consider in light of the recent actions taken by religious authorities here in Vancouver to protect the right of a local church to serve the poor in their community:

It is the task of the Christian community to remind the civil community unceasingly, through word, act, and presence, of the righteousness and justice of God and of his coming kingdom. The church is not like a sect, separate, and there only for itself. It is there for all human beings, and for nature in this earthly creation. The future for which Christians hope is not the consummation of the church in the downfall of this world, nor the salvation of the redeemed at the world’s end; it is the kingdom of God, which will redeem everything and put all things to rights, the kingdom which will come “on earth as it is in heaven.”

The church has no “public claim” for itself, but only for the cause of the kingdom of God it propounds. Its task is not to “churchify” the world but to prepare the way for the coming kingdom. There is no such thing as a nonpolitical Christianity.

A good reminder, as I head off to church…