“American Christians, despite their endless blessings, prefer dark talk of late. But humanity as a whole is enjoying unprecedented reduction in extreme poverty, disease, child mortality, and countless once unavoidable torments and discomforts. War, despite several notably horrible conflicts, is at one of its lowest global levels. Global Christianity is growing astronomically.”

David Graham in The Atlantic thoughtfully responded to my affirmation of Christian confidence about history (reacting to his critique of secular “right side of history” political rhetoric) by quoting Anglican Bishop Tom Wright:

“The resurrection of Jesus is the only Christian guide to the question of where history is going,” Wright concludes. Any Christian interpretation of history that doesn’t speak to that destination seems beside the point — and risky, too. The examples Wright cites seem to demand humility. Even if “all designs against His plans [are] doomed to failure,” [Tooley quote] that leaves a great deal of uncertainty about what happens between now and the Second Coming. I’m willing to bet the path won’t be a straight, predictable, or always reassuring one.

Rod Dreher in American Conservative also responded with helpful reflection:

Remember too this wrinkle in Christian time: that according to Christian belief, just before the End of History and the Final Triumph of Jesus Christ, the world in general will be in unprecedented turmoil, and the church in particular will undergo the worst persecution in its history. Those who will die for their faith in those days will absolutely be on the right side of history, though it may not seem so at the time.

They are both right of course. Although God is Lord of history, and Christians know by faith the final victorious outcome, the path there is crooked and often full of suffering and martyrdom.

But should Christians simply defer their hopes about human destiny until the end times? Is there an overall discernible trajectory, positive or negative? Christian commentary, especially among English-speaking Protestants, about God’s perceived hand in the ebb and flow of momentous human events used to be far more common. This analysis seemed to become unfashionable after WWI. American conservative Evangelicals thereafter might speculate about fulfilled prophecies relating to the end times, especially after the founding of modern Israel. But even they were mostly silent about God’s role in history not related directly to impending apocalypse.

In earlier times, British Protestants found providential purpose in the triumphant reign of Queen Elizabeth I, her solidification of a Protestant established church, and her defense of the realm against Spanish Spain. Later many Protestants saw God moving as Parliament defeated Stuart attempts towards royal supremacy, climaxing with the 1688 Glorious Revolution.

American, especially New England divines, saw Providence in British defeat of French Catholics in Canada, and later in American independence from British rule. Many American Protestants saw the rise of the American republic as a divinely ordained harbinger of democracy for the common man. Northern Protestants often saw slavery as the precipitation of divine judgment on the land. Surging America after the Civil War, and the expansion of global American missions, were seen as God ordained for the globalization of democracy and Christianity.

By the early 20th century many in the great American Protestant denominations, in review of their own numbers, riches, institutions, and global reach, foresaw a new golden, Christian age towards which God was driving human history. A Methodist bishop preaching at the close of WWI discerned God’s purpose in the war to smash repressive autarchies like the German, Russian, Austrian and Ottoman empires to replace them with democracies. The Ottomon collapse also signified the implosion of Islam and the restoration of the Jews to their homeland.

This understanding of God’s political plans failed to materialize for much of the 20th century, obviously, although the bishop might feel vindication in Europe’s democracies and the founding of Israel, even if his hopes about Islam and Russia fell short. It’s difficult to find similar mainstream or even esoteric Christian historical analysis much after WWI, certainly little to nothing that was specifically hopeful about God’s intermediate purpose in history. Instead there were gloomy post WWII Evangelical prognostications about the European Community as The Beast, and Soviet or Chinese invasions of the Mideast for participation in Armageddon. God’s plans were all short term in anticipation of final judgment. Meanwhile liberal Protestants projected God’s purpose onto the United Nations and interfaith cooperation, with an impersonal deity largely relegated to the margins as a metaphor for humanitarian uplift.

It’s understandable why most serious Christians after WWI largely moved away from providential historical discernment. Many claims and assumptions about God in history had been parochial, nationalistic, self-serving and presumptuously optimistic. It was safer to ascribe divine purpose in a more limited fashion to acts of charity, to evangelism, perhaps to isolated but obvious advances in social justice.

Some conservative Protestants, reacting to the secularization of history, invested in proving America’s founders were thoroughly Christian, unable to accept that Providence can work through flawed and disbelieving human instruments. Liberal Protestants failed to see God at all in American or Western history, all of which was an uninterrupted nightmare of oppression, genocide and exploitation, for which Christianity was especially responsible. Succumbing to pantheism and syncretism, liberal Protestantism found and confined God to liberation movements, environmentalism, and celebration of indigenous peoples and other perceived victims of Christianity. Process Theology effectively denied a ruling Providence, demoting the deity to an evolving impersonal entity in constant struggle against undefeatable dark forces.

So how might orthodox Christians understand God’s role in history today? Interestingly, end-times theologies are receding in popularity, even as American Christians become more pessimistic. Focusing on God and church as ultimate victors in history but minimizing talk about Providence until then seems to have become the ruling preference.

This reticence respects divine mystery and is preferable to dogmatic, detailed claims about God’s historical interventions. But Christianity by its nature must allow that God has and will continue to govern human events after Bible times and before the end times. Christians will suffer in all times amid a wider suffering humanity. But divine plans certainly include more than only losses and martyrdoms not redeemed until the very end.

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