“We shouldn’t reconstruct the Christian faith into an advancement of the American way of life, which I feel is the great sin of the American church today.” –Gordon Fee (Professor Emeritus, Regent College, Vancouver) [source]

I remember listening to Gordon Fee during a Chi Alpha Fellowship retreat years ago when I was working in campus ministry.  Frankly, I don’t remember anything he said, but we all liked his book.

This quote is very timely.  I concur with Fee concerning the idea
that the American church of both the religious right and the religious
left has allowed itself (themselves) to be co-opted by American
socio-political systems and agendas. This has produced an institutional
church that to the general public, particularly among younger
generations, looks more like the crass American political system rather
than the “love your neighbor as yourself” ideal of Christianity – at
least as Jesus summed up in his two great commandments.  This has also
produced a deficient Christian experience in this country among too many
adherents.

We cease to be the imago Dei (the image of God) within our
surrounding society when we allow ourselves to be so diminished and
corrupted.  We experience a deficient form of the life in Christ when we
do so.  The question may well be:

When are we, individually and in the aggregate, going to reclaim the
relational experience promised by the texts of the Christian faith so
that we are re-formed in humility into to the imago Dei in order to be a
compelling witness of an alternative for the people we encounter
everyday?