“The hardened heart of Boston was at least chipped at this past weekend,” wrote a student at Emerson College in Boston who attended the conference, “and only God knows if this is really the beginning of a long-awaited thaw.”

These are the best of times for Christians in New England. The body of Christ in the northeastern United States is seeking unity, pursuing mission, enjoying growth, and tasting the goodness of God. No one person or institution has planned this work. No single church or theological camp can claim credit for it. But you will find throughout much of New England today thriving college ministries, fledgling church plants, and revitalized colonial-era congregations renewed in their zeal to love their neighbors and spread the gospel.

I don’t mean to underestimate the ongoing challenges. In fact, I heard an interesting argument while returning to the airport on Sunday morning following a wonderful week in New England meeting with students and faculty at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and rejoicing over an anointed TGC New England Regional Conference in Boston. On the radio in my cab, a gay host explained how any religion that does not tolerate homosexuality must be crushed. There is no room in democracy, he explained, for such intolerance: gay rights and biblical Christianity cannot co-exist in America, let alone liberal New England. He told believers something we already know: Christians will continue to face a stark choice. We can capitulate on biblical teaching or incur the wrath of society’s self-appointed arbiters of tolerance. Many have already chosen the path of least resistance.

Even so, these are the best of times in New England—after all, there has never been a golden era free of temptation to love self more than God and neighbor. Revival experts might cite the Pilgrim landing or the First Great Awakening as more blessed times in New England’s past. Yet we somehow forget that Unitarianism is no new fad in this part of the country. Jonathan Edwards might enjoy a resurgence today, but he was hardly beloved in Boston, a city even then torn between Old Light pastors like Charles Chauncy who denounced the revival and New Light allies like Thomas Prince who published testimonies to the outpouring of God’s grace. We ignore in our nostalgic remembrance the self-serving ministers like James Davenport who brought shame on the revival by supposing his antics had been blessed by the Holy Spirit. Then as now, tares grow among the wheat.

Reputation and Revelation

These are the best of times in New England because we wrongly suppose that Christianity depends on the comfort of a moral majority who live out biblical values even if they don’t quite grasp the biblical gospel. We give thanks for such common grace, but we dare not invest outward appearance with salvific significance. A book like Revelation comes alive in New England, where Christians often feel the palpable hostility toward God and brazen disregard for his Word. Christians in New England must be prepared that their reputation with family, neighbors, and co-workers may not survive revelation of their faith.

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