Eric Metaxas - Letter to the American Church

Letter to the American Church

Eric Metaxas

Author of Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy

Even though Dietrich Bonhoeffer is dead, like Abel, he still speaks. In Letter to the American Church, Eric Metaxas has given him a megaphone. We would do well to heed this five-bell alarm.

Anne Graham Lotz, author of eleven books, including Just Give Me Jesus

This book is like a bucket of cold water thrown into the face of a sleeping church. I found myself arguing with Eric over some points, but I was struck with the uncanny parallels he draws between the compliant churches in Nazi Germany and our churches today. If you are inclined to think you might disagree with what he has to say, here is my challenge: read this book and ask yourself, Where does Eric have it wrong? I think you will find that question more difficult to answer than you expected. I personally think this is Eric Metaxass most important book for us today.

Erwin W. Lutzer, pastor emeritus, The Moody Church, Chicago

Eric Metaxas has spent years researching and writing about giants of our faith; from that wealth of insight and understanding he has taken a new step. In Letter to the American Church, he has issued a call to action. The message is historically informed, biblically sound, andI believeSpirit-directed. I pray every Christian in our nation will take the time to read and consider what Eric has presented.

Allen Jackson, senior pastor of World Outreach Church, Murfreesboro, Tennessee

Back in the 60s when I escaped with my life from the socialist dictatorship of President Nasser of Egypt, I only wanted to come to America. Why America? Because its system of government has never been duplicated. The founders ensured that the ultimate authority under God is not the President, nor the Congress, but We the people. Thus, they drafted the greatest political document in all human history, the U.S. Constitution. Yet many of my fellow pastors who claim to relevantly and contextually interpret the word of God fail to take this unique blessing of We the people as the governing authority to heart. They sold out this blessing and exchanged it for selective silence against the modern scourge of the evils of wokeness. Nay, some of them even baptized this evil into their churchs catechism. Unbeknownst to them, they are handing over the keys of their own freedom to preach the Gospel to the enemy of their souls. Perhaps there is no modern writer who can draw the comparison of this selective silence on the part of many American pastors to the German church in the 1920s and 1930s like Eric Metaxas. In the pages of this book you now hold in your hands, there is a solemn warning. Read it and heed it and pass it on to many others.

Michael Youssef, Ph.D., senior pastor of the Church of the Apostles in Atlanta, Georgia, and executive president of Leading the Way

This is a bold and insightful book with a deeply troubling message. Eric Metaxas calls for pastors (and other Christian leaders) who, like Bonhoeffer in Germany in the 1930s, will be courageous enough to speak unambiguously against the massive anti-Christian forces that now threaten to permanently transform American society and bring to an end Americas role as a beacon of freedom for the world.

Wayne Grudem, distinguished research professor of theology and biblical studies, Phoenix Seminary

A prophetic trumpet blast warning of the parallels between the darkness of a previous era and the coming darkness of our own, Letter to the American Church lingers in the chambers of the heart and pleads with the hearer to reckon with this message of a modern watchman on the wall.

David Engelhardt, senior pastor of Kings Church NYC and author of Good Kills

I have written this book because I am convinced the American Church is at an impossiblyand almost unbearablyimportant inflection point. The parallels to where the German Church was in the 1930s are unavoidable and grim. So the only questionand what concerns us in this slim volumeis whether we might understand those parallels, and thereby avoid the fatal mistakes the German Church made during that time, and their superlatively catastrophic results. If we do not, I am convinced we will reap a whirlwind greater even than the one they did.

The German Church of the 1930s was silent in the face of evil; but can there be any question whether the American Church of our own time is guilty of the same silence? Because of this, I am compelled to speak out, and to say whatonly by Gods graceI might say to make plain where we find ourselves at this moment, at our own unavoidably crucial crossroads in history.

It is for good or for ill that America plays an inescapably central role in the world. If you have not read Alexis de Tocqueville on this subject, you likely nonetheless understand that the extent to which that central role has been used for good and for Gods purposes has had everything to do with our churches, or with the American Church, as we may call her. So if America is in any way exceptional, it has nothing to do with the blood that runs through American veins and everything to do with the blood shed for us on Calvary, and the extent to which we have acknowledged this. America has led the world in making religious liberty paramount, knowing that is only with a deep regard for it that we may speak of liberty at all. It was this that made Tocqueville marvel most: that while in other nationsand especially in his own nation of Francethe Church was adamantly opposed to the idea of political liberty, in America it was the churches that helped encourage, create, and sustain a culture of liberty.

Because of the outsized role America plays in the world today, the importance of whether we learn the lesson of what happened to the German Church ninety years ago cannot be overstated. Though it may be a gruesome thing to consider, the monstrous evil that befell the civilized world precisely because of the German Churchs failure is likely a mere foretaste of what will befall the world if the American Church fails in a similar way at this hour.

And at present we are indeed failing.

We should underscore the idea that the centrality of our nation in the world does not mean that we are intrinsically exceptional, but rather that God has sovereignly chosen us to hold the torch of liberty for all the world, and that the Church is central to our doing this. So the idea that He has charged us with this most solemn duty should make us tremble. Nonetheless, we must carry out that duty in a way that is the opposite of prideful and that is meant to be an invitation to all beyond our shores. If we should aspirein the words of Jesus as quoted by John Winthropto be a shining city on a hill, the idea is that we should exist and shine for the sake of others and not for ourselves alone. President Abraham Lincoln said that we in America were Gods almost chosen people, and acknowledged that this placed upon us an almost unbearable burden. It is a certainty from the Scriptures and from our experience over the centuries that apart from God we can do nothing. So if God has chosen us for some task, we must do all we can to shoulder that task, and must know more than anything that unless we lean on Him and acknowledge Him in all our ways, we are guaranteed to fail.

We must also remind ourselves that when God chooses anyonewhether the nation of Israel or a single personto perform any role or any task, it is never something to be celebrated, as though the one chosen has won a contest. Quite to the contrary: it is a grave and fearsome responsibility. So if the Lord has chosen America and the American Church to stand against the evils and deceptions of this present darkness, we had better be sure we understand what is required of us, and had better make sure we do all that is possible to fulfill our charge.