21st century Amish? No.

Since the Supreme Court’s ruling last Friday, more evangelicals are suggesting that Christians should drop out of American society and attempt to build a separate culture. Glimmerings of escapism were already appearing just before Thanksgiving 1997, when I wrote about “great pressure on evangelicals to be dainty and docile.” Please forgive me for republishing now part of my 18-year-old column, but the message does seem relevant:

In a secular liberal culture, we often get along better with our neighbors, in the short term, if we do not in any way seem threatening. If we play our cards right we might even become the 21st-century Amish, perceived as dainty, docile, and quaint. If we move quickly, we can even pick up the franchise for tour buses!

As Thanksgiving approaches this year, I am thankful first, last, and always to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who (as the first question of the Heidelberg Catechism states) with his precious blood has fully satisfied for all our sins, and delivered us from all the power of the devil.

Secondarily, I am thankful for God’s faithful servants at WORLD who this year fought, as saints nobly fought of old, against those who would twist Scripture or otherwise give in to cultural pressures. No one on our staff is ready to go gently into a cultural night.

We need to remember that, if some men and women of the Bible had been dainty and docile the way some say we should be now, Moses would have followed the crowd and worshiped the golden calf. David would have offered to play his harp for Goliath. Elijah would have become associate pastor at the church of Baal.

I am not, let me emphasize, proposing that we fight for fighting’s sake. We are not to be quarrelsome. We are to turn the other cheek concerning personal offenses. But when basic biblical principles are at stake, we must not be reluctant to fight as saints nobly fought of old.

When people whisper, “Did God really say … ?” as the serpent insinuated in Eden, we need to say, “Yes, he did.” When people want us to go with the flow, to meet “halfway,” we need to stand our ground whenever it is good ground, high ground, God’s ground.

I thank God that the WORLD staff, sometimes under terrific pressure, stood its ground this past year. If there are battles in the year ahead, I pray that all of us and our dedicated subscribers will remember the fifth and sixth stanzas of “For All the Saints”: “And when the fight is fierce, the warfare long, / Steals on the ear the distant triumph song, / And hearts are brave again, and arms are strong, / Alleluia! / From earth’s wide bounds, from ocean’s farthest coast, / Through gates of pearl streams in the countless host, / Singing to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, / Alleluia!”