LOCAL ANGLES: AMERICA NEEDS A RENAISSANCE IN APOLOGETICS

Apologetics, the branch of theology concerned with the defense or proof of Christianity, has suffered from neglect in the past few decades.

In an era when art is dominated by impressionist paintings that resemble a 2-year-old's place mat after an enthusiastic meal of spaghetti, peas and lime jello, homo-erotic photographs and performance artists who make political statements by standing on a stage, their bodies covered with anything but clothing, it should come as no surprise that apologetics is a lost art.

The great apologist C.S. Lewis would be hard-pressed today to find an audience for his vigorous defense of the truth of Christianity. Unfortunately, many people today would rather form their opinions from People magazine or 30-second sound bites on the news than to embrace a seminal book like Lewis's "Mere Christianity."

Recent events on the front lines of the culture war, however, justify a renaissance in apologetics of the kind so succinctly espoused by Lewis.

In the past couple of years, the culture war has pitted Norman Rockwell conservatives against big government, moral relativist liberals. But when Democratic members of Congress and of the Clinton administration began lobbing bombs at the so-called religious right, battle lines in the culture war were redrawn. Suddenly, moderate Republicans -- who never felt comfortable in the bloody business of dueling over issues like abortion, gay rights, and the prodigious growth of government at the expense of individual liberty -- were distancing themselves from more conservative Republicans stuck with the religious right label.

Like anti-communists and cold warriors of the past, Christian conservatives are the left's new bogeyman. What has been the response of conservatives? Forty-four GOP Senators signed a letter to President Clinton asking him to reject attacks on religious conservatives as bigotry, and many Christian leaders also have denounced the attacks.

So what do these attacks have to do with apologetics? Well, part of the problem in defending the religious right is their own religiousness. Given the hodgepodge of doctrines that comprise religion in America today, it's not difficult to see why those in the public arena would recoil from the prospect of one group exerting its influence at the expense of others.

Would the same 44 Republicans come to the defense of nature-worshiping pantheists who attempted to outlaw fly-swatting? Of course not. But what claims do the religious right have that their doctrines are any more sound than pantheists? That's a question answered best through apologetics.

"Mere Christianity," Josh McDowell's "Evidence that Demands a Verdict," Francis Schaffer's "Christian Manifesto," and other books make the claim that belief in and devotion to the God of the Jews and of those grafted into Judaism, Christians, is not merely a religion, but truth.

Politics and religion is a volatile mixture. Politics and truth ought not be. But in a nation that has lost its story -- the story of how Creator God redeemed fallen mankind through the atonement of the cross and resurrection of Christ -- Christian conservatives are just another special interest group with unfounded opinions.

There are apologists out there, but far too many Christians are content to faithfully follow a handful of creeds, put some money in the collection plate when it's passed and abide by the golden rule. They wrongly separate their faith -- something they do with their family on Sunday -- from their being -- what happens the rest of the week.

Such people are rudderless and easily manipulated by the changing currents of opinion. I don't want them influencing lawmakers any more than I want a nature-worshipping tree-hugger influencing lawmakers.

An apologist asks: If an atheist says water is wet and a Bible-believing Christian claims otherwise, who makes the more Christian statement? Why the atheist, of course, because he speaks the truth. And truth is what apologetics seeks above all else.

If Christian conservatives realize this and can influence government not on the basis of their religious pedigree but on the basis of truth, there won't be any need to defend themselves from "religious bigotry," for the only attacks they'll have to endure will come only from enemies of truth.

~Jay Eastlick is night editor of the Southeast Missourian.