In my local church, I’ve been preaching a series on “Mantras of the Modern Evangelical Church.” Mantras are short sayings that are said over and over again, and that capture a core belief. For example, “You only live once,” or “Live your best life now.” In our series, we began by looking at the mantras “We’re all sinners” and “It’s all about love.” But this past Sunday, we considered the mantra, “It’s not a religion, it’s a relationship.”
The mantra that “it’s not a religion, it’s a relationship,” means essentially the same thing as another popular mantra: “It’s all about a personal relationship with God.” The words “all about” are not just meant to emphasize a personal relationship, but to minimize or exclude other things—namely the things that have to do with “religion.” At the very heart and core of modern evangelical Christianity is this idea: “It’s not a religion, it’s all about a personal relationship with God.”
This saying can be found on t-shirts, sweatshirts, bumper stickers, and all over social media, in sermons, and on the lips of literally millions of evangelical Christians. But is it true? Is it biblical?
Relationship Essential
As Christians, we should of course affirm that a real relationship with God is absolutely crucial to authentic faith. Throughout the Bible, Old and New Testament, we see a consistent emphasis on relationship with God, and it’s a beautiful theme. The Bible teaches the astounding truth that God who is infinite, eternal, incorporeal, and transcendent has created us to know him, and that because “God is love”—an eternal communion of loving persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—he has created us to share in fellowship with him.
God walked with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day in the garden of Eden. That’s a relationship. Enoch and Noah and many others are said to have “walked with God.” That’s relationship language. One of my favorite verses in the Bible, James 2:23, says that “Abraham was called a friend of God.” That phrase has touched my heart many times—that the God before whom cherubim and seraphim cry day and night, “Holy, Holy, Holy!” would identify himself as a friend. When God came in the person of Jesus Christ, Jesus told his disciples, “No longer do I call you servants … but I have called you friends.” That’s intimate relationship.
And implicit in all of these passages is that this is what God wants for all of us. God wants us to walk with him—to know him as a friend. God cares about you and me as individuals, and all of our hurt and sin and brokenness doesn’t stop him from wanting to know us and walk with us. He is always drawing and inviting us into a real, authentic, spiritual connection with him through his Son Jesus Christ by the grace of the Holy Spirit. There is nothing that can replace a real relationship with God.
However, the mantra at hand does not just emphasize relationship with God. It downplays and in fact outright denies the role of religion: “It’s not a religion, it is (instead) a relationship.” So, what is religion?
What About Religion?
The word religion comes from a Latin word which means “to bind,” and originally it referred to an oath or vow to God. It carried the sense of devotion and duty. Throughout history we see that idea running through most of the uses of the word “religion.” The 1828 Webster’s Dictionary defines religion as “godliness or real piety in practice, consisting in the performance of all known duties to God and our fellow men, in obedience to divine command, or from love to God and his law.” Webster cites James 1:26: “If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” Notice that wanting to be religious and embracing religion are not downplayed in James 1:26. The problem is not with religion but with the wrong kind of religion. James emphasizes religion that is both compassionate and holy—engaged in ministry to the world and separate from the sin of the world.
The problem is not with religion but with the wrong kind of religion.
If we look at the way that the word “religion” is often used today, “religion” most often carries the idea of organization. The current Webster’s Dictionary defines religion with the phrase “an organized system.” People often speak disparagingly about “organized religion.” I’ve heard people say things like, “I believe in God, but I don’t want anything to do with organized religion.” And so we could define religion as an organized system of beliefs, practices, and rites that are dutifully observed out of a sense of genuine devotion to God and one’s fellow man.
“Religion” refers to things like established beliefs like creeds or statements of faith which are considered binding and authoritative; established rites of initiation and belonging; fixed forms and modes of worship; structured polity, with formal membership and governance; and so on.
Is Religion “Just the Dressing”?
Bear Grylls of “Man vs. Wild” was interviewed last year, and he was asked about religion. Grylls responded, “Jesus said, ‘Come to me’—not ‘come to church,’ not ‘come to a set of rules,’ not ‘a set of behaviors,’ just ‘come to me.’ You don’t need a church, you don’t need a building, you don’t need a song or a sermon. I’m not saying they’re wrong, but they’re just the dressing around it.”
This encapsulates the way that many evangelicals think. They have the main thing right: Jesus is salvation and life and our all in all. But they view the church and established rules and behaviors as merely “dressing.” They drastically downplay these things as merely optional. Religion is pitted against relationship as if it’s somehow a threat to it. And so there’s a real effort to strip away anything organized, structured, and fixed.
Many churches now do not have formal church membership at all. Baptism is optional and the Lord’s Supper is rare and extremely informal—a little cup and wafer combo that you grab on the way in. There are no creeds. If there’s a statement of faith, it’s written somewhere in a church file that no one ever sees. Pastors dress more and more casually, words like “clergy” and “ordained minister” are avoided. People come and go as they please with no formal expectations or accountability. And everything from the building design to the decorations to the graphic design says “this is a cool, casual, relaxed place where you can just come as you are and hang out with zero expectations, because Christianity is all about your personal relationship with God, and we’re just here to help with that if you’re interested.”
And frankly, this is what a lot of people like and want. These kinds of churches have often been successful at reaching hundreds or even thousands or tens of thousands of come-and-go attenders. I recently saw a social media clip where a well-known pastor said, “When I see a person who has left our church at the grocery store and they begin confessing about why they left, I think to myself, ‘I didn’t know you were there. We don’t take roll. It’s a lot of people.’” The pastor and his interviewer thought it was funny. I don’t.
Even if a church like this is preaching some good, solid truth, and making a difference in people’s lives, it falls drastically short of the biblical expectations for a church. Church is treated like a show or a performance that one voluntarily takes in, and maybe a social club that one enjoys, but there is very little sense of the church as an institution with authority to uphold fixed statements of belief or require formal rites and hold members accountable. Because even in many churches, you can find pastors saying, “It’s not a religion, it is a relationship.”
Religion and Relationship
And as I’ve already suggested, I don’t believe that this view of religion is true or biblical. Consider just a few Scripture verses and judge for yourselves:
- Mt. 16:18, Jesus said, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
- 1 Tim. 3:15, the church of the living God is “a pillar and buttress of the truth.”
- Ephesians 4:11, Jesus gave certain officers to the church including “apostles.”
- Philippians 1:11, Local churches have officers called “elders” or “overseers” as well as officers called “deacons.”
- 1 Tim. 5:22, church officers are appointed through a formal rite of the laying on of hands.
- 1 Tim. 3:1–13, church officers are only to be appointed after being tested by a list of qualifications.
- 2 Cor. 10:8, the Lord has given authority to church leaders.
- Heb. 13:17, church leaders are to be obeyed and submitted to (assuming that they are faithful leaders acting with integrity of course).
- Mt. 16:18 and Mt. 18:18, the apostles and by extension the church, overseen by its leaders, is given “the keys of the kingdom” to bind and lose, to formally include and exclude people from being recognized as members of God’s people
- Mt. 18:15–20, the church is given a formal, step-by-step process, with witnesses, drawing from the principles of the legal system in Old Testament Israel, to judge an unrepentant church member
- 1 Cor. 5:12, there are, quote, “outsiders” and “those inside the church,” and “insiders” are subject to quote “judgment” by the church.
- Matthew 28:19, baptism is instituted by Christ and the apostles are authorized to baptize
- Acts 2:38–41, all who received the word from the church’s hands were commanded by the church to be baptized, were baptized by the church’s officers, and were counted and added to the church’s number
- Acts 2:47, those initiated and then continued in a visible community of people bound by four acts of common devotion: the apostles’ doctrine, sharing in common to care for one another’s needs, corporate prayer, and the Lord’s Supper.
- Acts 13:2–3, Christians joined in corporate worship and fasting
- 1 Corinthians 11:23–26, the Lord’s Supper was instituted by Christ, delivered to the apostles, and then delivered to the churches.
- 2 Thessalonians 2:15, the apostolic traditions are to be upheld in all the churches
- 1 Corinthians 11:2, the church at Corinth is praised for upholding the apostolic traditions
- Matthew 28:20, the church is to teach disciples to observe all of Christ’s commands
We could go on and on, but here’s the point: The Christianity that Jesus founded has a fixed body of authoritative doctrine, prescribed practices, corporate worship, formal rites of initiation and unity, ordinances and sacraments, authoritative moral commandments, religious leadership and order, traditions to be received and preserved, and a visible community with boundaries and formal accountability. That’s religion.
Is it sometimes abused? Yes. Do merely manmade traditions sometimes creep in that actually contradict the Bible? Yes. Do some people have the form of godliness but deny the power thereof? Yes. Do they embrace the formal system but have no real spiritual life inside—no real relationship with God? Yes. Are church leaders sometimes careless or corrupt or domineering? Yes, and that’s horrible and needs to be rigorously confronted.
But while all of that is true—while abuse is a real possibility and needs to be guarded against—abuse doesn’t take away proper use. (That’s one of my favorite mantras, because it’s true and applies to so many issues in the contemporary church.)
Where we are in much of the modern evangelical church world today is that we’ve thrown the baby out with the bathwater. We’ve reacted to abuses by becoming suspicious of all institutions, all authority, and anything that’s prescribed or expected of us as a duty.
We’ve believed the lie that if we strip it all away and just focus on people having a personal relationship with Jesus, then people will be better off.
But here’s the problem: To have a relationship with Jesus is to have a relationship with the Lord of all, the King of the Universe, the Head of the Church. And the Lord Jesus, not you and me, gets to define the shape and structure of our relationship with him. Jesus, not you and me, knows what is best for that relationship.
We should not claim to have a relationship with Jesus while undermining, downplaying, or outright rejecting the religion and religious beliefs, practices, and structures which Jesus himself commanded and ordained.
We should not claim to have a relationship with Jesus while undermining, downplaying, or outright rejecting the religion and religious beliefs, practices, and structures which Jesus himself commanded and ordained. True Christianity is a relationship and a religion. Properly understood, religion is not the enemy of relationship; religion provides the space, structure, and means for real relationship with God to flourish. Without religion, our relationship with God ends up being shallow, individualistic, short-sighted, and self-focused.
Conclusion
What modern evangelicals need to hear is that we must have a personal relationship with God; we must have a living faith; we must be born again; we must compassionately love and serve our neighbors; and also:
- Find a healthy, biblical church to formally belong to.
- Ask to be baptized and become a member.
- Submit to the processes.
- Embrace accountability.
- Study the creeds and your church’s catechism and/or church manual.
- Be a fully engaged, passionate participant in corporate worship.
- Come to the Lord’s Supper as often as it’s offered with reverence and joy.
- Look to your pastors as spiritual fathers who like earthly fathers are fallible but are given for our good, and seek out their care and advice.
- Don’t be defensive if someone tries to speak into your life (don’t act as if no one has the right to question or exhort you).
- Lean into community and make a real effort to connect with other members of the body.
- Confess your sins to other believers, as James 5:16 commands.
- Embrace corporate activities, like special times of prayer or fasting.
- Learn to love the church with all her flaws like Christ loves the church.
- Study to understand even those widely or universally held traditions of the church which embody biblical wisdom or biblical principles.
- Be a churchman or a churchwoman.
- Devote yourself to the corporate good, not just your own good.
- And always do your duty.
God is pleased with such a man or woman.
