More than two centuries ago, Søren Kierkegaard attacked the established church of his native Denmark. He denounced it for encouraging outward “Christian” behavior rather than authentic belief. People identified as Christian out of a desire for social respectability, and the pressure to conform produced complacent, inauthentic Christians. “Where all are Christians,” argues Kierkegaard in Attack Upon Christendom, “the situation is this: to call oneself a Christian is the means whereby one secures oneself against all sorts of inconveniences and discomforts, and the means whereby one secures worldly goods, comforts, profits, etc., etc.” Christianity becomes a “game” one “play[s].” Rather than marking its triumph, “Christendom” midwifes Christianity’s demise.
Figures such as David French and Russell Moore appeal to Kierkegaard when they celebrate the decline of “Christendom” and “Bible Belt near-Christianity”—euphemisms for a culture that promotes Christian faith and practice. In the summer of 2024, French penned an op-ed against the placement of the Ten Commandments in public-school classrooms, a staple of an older American civil religion. According to French, such measures merely produced hypocrites who mouthed the words but failed to change their character. Moore, meanwhile, argues that cultural Christianity produces “nominal” Christians and drives non-Christians into the closet. Social forces might pressure individuals to attend church or remain in their marriages and take care of their kids. “But that’s hardly revival,” says Moore.
Rather than lament the death of cultural Christianity, Moore argues, we should celebrate it as a boon for evangelism. He claims: “It is easier to speak a gospel to the lost than it is to speak a gospel to the kind-of-saved.” Those who keep Judgment Day in view will find that “cultural Christianity is worse than no Christianity at all.” In an essay occasioned by the cultural “conversions” of former New Atheists, Moore echoes Kierkegaard: Appreciation for the civilizational benefits of Christianity co-opts the faith and hollows it out. The sentiment is shared by John Piper, who invokes the words of Christ in Matthew 23 against those “who think outward conformity to religious tradition without the inward reality of faith is a Christian aim.”
Until very recently, cultural Christianity was at its lowest ebb in American history. Whence the urgency of today’s critics?
It is noteworthy that French and Moore frequently target those on the right who identify in polls as “evangelical,” vote for Trump, and resist radical progressivism and other anti-Christian trends in the broader culture. Rarely in view are self-identified Christians on the left, including Democratic officials, who align with the dominant moral ideology of elite cultural institutions and champion abortion and sexual liberation, which violate Christian moral doctrine. No, the villains are people in places like the “Bible Belt.” Our contemporary elites regard this cohort of Americans as “deplorable.” This hostile attitude toward evangelical Christians is one of many reasons the Kierkegaardian critique of Christendom cannot be applied straightforwardly to contemporary America: In most institutions and social settings, especially those of cultural prominence and influence, public identification as a Christian is more often a liability than a boon.
Notwithstanding the “vibe shift,” most of the prominent figures who have embraced the label of “cultural Christian”—figures such as Tom Holland, Joe Rogan, Richard Dawkins, and Elon Musk—have done so reluctantly, with all sorts of qualifications. They know it doesn’t bring social benefits. Far from angling for prestige, which no longer attaches to Christianity, they simply recognize that the great achievements of the West arose from Christianity and cannot long survive apart from it. And they represent a growing constituency that is recoiling from the social wreckage caused by progressivism and turning to Christianity in the hope of finding resources for reconstruction. Though they cannot yet bring themselves to believe, they encourage others to recognize the good of a culture shaped by Christianity. Is this hypocrisy? And would such a culture merely produce hypocrites?
We should first define our terms. “Cultural Christianity” refers either to the relationship of “cultural Christians” to the Christian faith, or to the broader social phenomenon of a “Christian culture.”
A “Christian culture” is one in which public institutions and the balance of social power encourage Christian behavior and promote Christian ideas of the true, good, and beautiful. In The Idea of a Christian Society, T. S. Eliot explains that “the Christian can be satisfied with nothing less than a Christian organization of society—which is not the same thing as a society consisting exclusively of devout Christians.” Such a society should, according to Eliot, make Christian behavior more common and attainable. At minimum, the social conditions should not oppose Christian conduct. Decades earlier, the Dutch Reformed theologian and statesman Abraham Kuyper emphasized that to call a culture “Christian” is not to say that it consists entirely of regenerate Christians, or that it has been transformed into the kingdom of heaven. Rather, the adjective “Christian” adjoined to “culture” simply witnesses to “the fact that public opinion, the general mindset, the ruling ideas, the moral norms, the laws and customs there . . . clearly betoken the influence of the Christian faith.” Signs of this influence might include things like posting the Ten Commandments in schools and courthouses to honor the biblical foundations of our public morality and system of justice. The civic calendar, though accommodating other religions, will emphasize Christian holy days. A Christian culture is one in which identifying as a Christian is “normal,” and civil and social instruments promote conformity to biblical morality and patterns of thought.
“Cultural Christians” are those who appreciate the civilizational benefits of Christianity without embracing faith. Cultural Christians prize Christian culture. They want the civilizational fruit without the religious root. Does this make them hypocrites?
At this point, an important distinction must be drawn. Not every appeal to “Christian identity” qualifies as cultural Christianity. To appreciate Christianity as a civilizational inheritance, to desire a culture that is shaped by its moral vision, or even to identify publicly with its symbols while one’s faith remains unsettled, is categorically different from invoking Christianity as a mere tribal marker or ideological weapon. The former acknowledges, however imperfectly, Christianity’s authority and normative claims; the latter turns the faith into pagan identitarianism adorned with Christian symbols. Where Christianity is abused to baptize sectarian resentment and racial animus, the problem is not hypocrisy but sacrilege.
The charge of hypocrisy commonly directed at cultural Christianity is a red herring. Its framing discounts the possibility that many “cultural Christians” are on the path to genuine faith. No responsible believer would accuse a spiritual seeker of hypocrisy for attending his church before converting.
We may compare cultural Christians to early-Church catechumens. Out of appreciation for the positive effects of the Christian faith on society, they draw near to the Church without fully entering in. Their opposition to the establishment’s progressive worldview makes them open to a fuller vision of reality. As was the case in the second and third centuries, the countercultural reaction to the dominant and decadent ethos may lead to genuine faith. As Gerhard Lohfink argues, in the first century Judaism was the functional catechumenate of the primitive church. It inculcated potential converts in a worldview that made the gospel comprehensible. However, by the second and third centuries, connections with Judaism had loosened; increasingly, prospective Christians were ordinary pagans whose theological frameworks and moral reflexes were alien to the gospel. The church thus developed a counter-formative program tailored to their needs.
Today, the pagans who warm to Christianity for anti-woke reasons are akin to the catechumens of the second and third centuries, whereas those who grow up in hubs like the “Bible Belt” are analogous to first-century converts from Judaism. Each group undergoes a praeparatio evangelica, a process of socialization that disposes them favorably toward the gospel. This dynamic does not guarantee conversion, but it makes genuine faith more likely.
Many revivalists, including some critics of cultural Christianity, either overlook or reject the significance of praeparatio evangelica. Moore opposes “revival” to cultural Christianity. But the Great Awakenings in America emerged from a society that broadly (if imperfectly) supported Christianity and promoted biblical morality. What was “revived” was, according to revivalists, a latent faith that had been nurtured by broader social forces. Though I generally reject revivalist presuppositions about what constitutes genuine faith and its cultivation, it is evident that revivalist ministers appealed to and built on assumptions that their audience already possessed, and that those assumptions were effects of cultural Christianity.
Cultural Christianity was again at work in the third quarter of the twentieth century, when American religious adherence peaked. After years of religious decline, postwar America embraced its Christian identity, especially as it positioned itself against atheistic communism during the Cold War. In 1954, the phrase “under God” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance and “In God We Trust” was put on postage stamps, and then on all American currency the following year. The evangelism of the 1950s through the 1970s operated in this environment. Billy Graham launched his evangelistic “crusades” in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1947. They really took off in the mid-to-late 1950s. His longest crusade took place in New York City over sixteen weeks in 1957; in 1962, D. James Kennedy launched his “Evangelism Explosion” project; and in 1965, Bill Bright released his wildly successful “Four Laws” evangelism tract. These efforts triggered a massive number of conversions.
Christian culture primes people for belief by providing what Peter Berger terms a “plausibility structure.” As praeparatio evangelica, it makes the gospel not just comprehensible but plausible. The famous “Kennedy questions,” for instance, employed to good effect in the “Evangelism Explosion” campaign, only made sense to people who assumed the existence of a God, a moral order, and an afterlife.
We can no longer take such a shared framework for granted. However, the wreckage of the post-Christian world functions as a negative plausibility structure. Anti-woke cultural Christians recognize that the West’s secular trajectory is unsustainable. Their appreciation of the civilizational goods of Christianity, their longing for a return to some form of “Christian culture,” has the potential to lead many nearer to genuine Christian faith. This is one reason I reject the presumption that cultural Christianity is promoted by hypocrites and produces only hypocrites. This is obviously not true.
Take the former New Atheist Ayaan Hirsi Ali. In a widely ready essay about her conversion, she explains that she initially reconsidered Christianity in reaction against authoritarian, Islamic, and woke threats to Western civilization. In her estimation, “the legacy of the Judeo-Christian tradition” provided the only viable bulwark against these forces. But unlike Richard Dawkins, whom she recently debated, Ali appears to have genuinely embraced the faith. Brad Littlejohn compares her conversion to Constantine’s. Both may initially have been drawn to Christianity for utilitarian reasons, but neither appears to have remained in that mode. (Littlejohn takes for granted that Constantine’s conversion was genuine.) The recognition that Christianity is good led them eventually to embrace it as true.
A similar process can be seen in the conversion of sex-realist feminist Louise Perry. As she criticized contemporary feminism and defended gender essentialism, Perry found that her most consistent allies were Christians—the only major group, it seemed, willing to affirm the profound and enduring differences between men and women. This fact prompted a reconsideration. “Observing how sociologically true [Christianity] is was very persuasive to me,” she says, and it led her to wonder whether Christianity might also be “supernaturally true.” This was “one of the reasons I ended up becoming a Christian.” The reality-respecter-to-Christian pipeline is real, just as God-fearer-to-Christian was a common pathway in the early Church. We should not be surprised if many more genuine conversions follow a similar path in the years ahead.
The charge of hypocrisy can be rebutted from another angle: External behavior and identification need not result in false religion but can, and often do, serve as a foundation for faith.
Here I draw on Yale ethics professor Jennifer Herdt’s helpful book on moral formation, Putting on Virtue. Herdt argues that a great deal of Western thought, both Christian and non-Christian, suffers from a distorted view of virtue due to a “hyper-Augustinian” suspicion of habituation. She traces this distortion to Augustine’s ambivalence about pagan virtue and his concerns about moral striving, particularly through imitation. The skepticism he expressed in his works deepened over the centuries. Luther and the Puritans, for instance, were preoccupied with the gap between inner and outer life and viewed hypocrisy as one of the chief vices. To them, “putting on” virtue was mere pretense, for true faith required radical dependence on divine agency. Paradoxically, the emphasis on dependence on God’s grace led to an anxious obsession with inner motives, especially among the Puritans, who promoted relentless self-examination. The Jansenists echoed this concern and added a suspicion of social influence, which Rousseau radicalized by making authenticity, so easily compromised by society, the highest virtue. Kant, in turn, rejected any notion of virtue formed through external influence, deeming it incompatible with moral autonomy. What unites these thinkers, according to Herdt, is their denial that virtue may be acquired through social processes that train our desires, attitudes, and actions.
Christians shaped by these hyper-Augustinian anxieties worry that “putting on” virtue—imitating others or submitting to social pressures without inner transformation—leads to pride and false assurance. They are concerned that anything that encourages outward conformity to Christian behavior fosters inauthentic faith. Herdt argues otherwise: Habituation is not hypocrisy; it can open the way to genuine faith. This shouldn’t surprise Christians who know their Bibles. Paul instructed the erring and confused Corinthians to “follow him” (1 Cor. 4:16, 11:1) so as to grow in Christian virtue. Herdt urges us to embrace imitation and habituation, free from anxieties about hypocrisy. We should recognize that adopting virtuous habits can lead to the theological virtue of faith.
Applying this insight to contemporary discussions, we can extend Herdt’s argument: Cultural pressures toward Christian behavior are not necessarily obstacles to belief but may facilitate it. Many missiologists have observed that people often need to belong before they believe; similarly, they may need to behave before they believe. Christian traditions that emphasize the theme of covenant and provide catechetical formation have long affirmed similar reasoning. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes in The Cost of Discipleship, “Only those who believe obey . . . and only those who obey believe.”
But what if it doesn’t work? What if many who act in accord with cultural Christianity never become believers, and thus behave publicly in ways that they don’t themselves take seriously? Is this entirely bad? No. Though hypocrisy is spiritually perilous for the individual, it is far from the worst thing for society.
The Reformed tradition accords great value to the “second use” of the law. The first use of the law reveals our sin so that we might turn to Christ. The third use guides believers in their behavior. The second use operates outside the Church. It constrains sin and wickedness in society, protecting the righteous from the unjust. The law performs this role, says John Calvin, “by means of its fearful denunciations and the consequent dread of punishment,” curbing those who “have no regard for rectitude and justice.” Martin Bucer, the first-generation Reformer who mentored Calvin, contends that the “impious may be compelled” by public forces “to contain their impiety within themselves and to feign piety” so that their ungodliness does not damage the piety of others. Though such persons “make hypocrites out of themselves, rejecting in their hearts the piety which they publicly profess,” Bucer argues that “they will only harm themselves, not others.” Bucer believes it is a duty of civil rulers to preserve the social conditions for faith by suppressing public impiety, “rather than permit [the impious] to pour out the virulence of their impiety upon others, and to draw away in this manner many who are weak.” Bucer’s rulers in a sense inflict “hypocrisy” on the ungodly, and in so doing they perform a “pious” service for society by restraining public vice and preventing the corruption of the impressionable.
Viewing the matter in these terms, we can draw a clear line between the encouragement of public conformity to Christian norms and the instrumentalization of Christianity to justify vice. Figures such as Nick Fuentes—often cited by critics of cultural Christianity as a representation of its dangers—illustrate this misuse. They refashion Christianity itself as a vehicle of ethnic or racial identity. This is not “feigned piety” in Bucer’s sense—publicly submitting to a moral order one does not yet love—but a form of blasphemy: the taking of God’s name in vain to sanctify passions that Christianity seeks to discipline. As such, this use of Christianity lies entirely outside the scope of cultural Christianity as discussed here.
But what about situations in which the rulers themselves are hypocrites? How should we think about political leaders, civil authorities, and so forth, who might not personally believe in Christianity—and who privately don’t live up to their espoused values—but who publicly invoke Christian symbols and promote biblical morality? Is this bad?
Well, compared to what? Yes, the best scenario would be a world in which all public leaders are godly and wise. Unfortunately, we don’t live in that world. So, would we rather have leaders who publicly support Christianity, even if hypocritically, or leaders who openly attack Christianity and biblical moral norms and flaunt their degeneracy?
I contend that the former is preferable. As the old adage goes: “Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue.” To feel that certain views or behaviors should be hidden is implicitly to accept society’s disapproval, and to hide them is to minimize their influence. Leaders should feel compelled to hide their disdain for Christianity and biblical morality. They may suffer the moral corruption of masked private vice, but the social norms that require their hypocrisy redound to the good of the broader public by aiding the inculcation of respect for God, true religion, and moral decency.
Cambridge professor of politics David Runciman reinforces this point in Political Hypocrisy. Drawing on Thomas Hobbes, Bernard Mandeville, and John Adams, among other figures, Runciman argues that hypocrisy is inevitable in politics, and that it can, in fact, serve some social good. Because political authority depends on public justification and the maintenance of legitimacy, leaders must keep up appearances; as a practical matter, noble white lies are unavoidable. Runciman argues that we too readily judge political leaders by whether they practice what they preach, rather than by whether their actions and policies actually promote the common good. Even an outward display of virtue, he contends, can shape expectations and encourage virtuous behavior in society, irrespective of the private failings of those who model it.
These arguments are difficult for many Christians to countenance. Contemporary evangelicals, in particular, struggle to account for goods other than conversion, goods that matter in this world rather than in the next. Moore, for instance, dismisses a culture of marital fidelity as “hardly revival,” and similar voices suggest that restraining evil or encouraging public virtue may even prevent people from receiving the gospel with a saving faith. Everything is judged by whether it conduces to conversion.
A spiritual egalitarianism has long animated Protestantism, and it skews evangelicals’ assessment of hypocrisy. According to Charles Taylor, late-medieval and early-modern Reform movements sought to abolish hierarchies of moral and spiritual vocation. As a result, all who identified as “Christian” were expected to “show the same degree of personal commitment and devotion which had hitherto been the stance of a dedicated élite.” In the wake of these reforms, everyone “was called on to live their faith to the full,” to be “a real, 100 percent Christian.” The imperative of zeal makes it difficult to accept anyone other than a wholly sincere believer as a legitimate proponent of Christian norms and beliefs.
Scripture offers a different perspective. Jesus pronounces woes on scribes and Pharisees who “preach but do not practice”—and yet he instructs his audience to follow their teaching, having set aside their example (Matt. 23:3). Paul rejoices that Christ is preached even when some proclaim him with wrong motives (Phil. 1:15–18). Hypocrites can, therefore, serve Christian ends. Ideally, they would repent and embrace true faith—but short of that, their public conformity to virtue can limit the harm of unbelief and pay tribute to the good.
The real difficulty, then, is not that Christian language or norms are endorsed and promoted without perfect sincerity, but rather that late-modern observers struggle to distinguish partial submission to the good from outright rejection. Evangelicals, shaped by revivalist and voluntarist assumptions, too often dismiss as worthless any good that is not clearly linked to inward regeneration. By contrast, Scripture and the larger Christian tradition are patient and supple, able to recognize incomplete but sincere conformity, weigh multiple goods, and attend to both the spiritual and the social effects of outward practice. External conformity can restrain evil, inculcate virtue, and render the gospel intelligible within a common moral world. Hypocrisy remains spiritually perilous for the hypocrite—but it is hardly the gravest threat to society. The greater danger is a culture that no longer expects even public allegiance to the true, the good, and the beautiful, thereby depriving itself of the formative conditions in which faith has historically flourished.
Image by Gandalf’s Gallery, licensed via Creative Commons. Image cropped.
