BY LINCOLN E. STEED

ACK IN THE HEADY days when the Soviet Union was collapsing and worldwide democracy seemed unstoppable, political analyst Francis Fukuyama drew kudos with his book The End of History and the Last Man. It was not a joke; it was hailed as visionary. Yet it was so wrong. And it was a perfect illustration of what the Bible characterizes as the call for "peace and safety" just before sudden destruction. Ellen White, in her descriptions of the end-time, described a society that hails the arrival of a "temporal millennium."

Fukuyama posited that with the fall of the Soviet system and the general embrace of democracy, humanity's social development had essentially reached its end point--a natural, ideal conclusion to a linear process.

In a certain way he was correct. We are now clearly on our way back to prehistory. We see the collapse or bankruptcy of many of the "isms" in the world. Communism is a spent ideology. Globalism might seem inevitable, but it is not a siren call for most of the world. Even capitalism, while functionally ascendant, is widely scorned in much of the world as a new imperialism that masquerades as democracy. And today's nationalism is essentially a nonstarter.

What we do have is a clear emergence of tribal or group identity, a retreat to the norms of prehistory. And the age-old tribal identifier is religion. It is no accident that in India Hindu violence is directed against Islam and Christianity. In once-Soviet areas with majority Eastern Orthodox communities, violence is directed against overseas churches, and laws are passed that favor the national church. It is no mere coincidence that in this new vacuum Islam emerges as a worldwide movement, with many extremists determined to establish a global caliphate. Even the United States is bubbling with a Christian identity movement that would equate religious adherence with patriotism and designate the government itself as a protector of religious identity.

A New Era
The events of September 11, 2001, which clearly ushered in a new era, have been called "a hinge of history." Of course, as with all such changes, that day was more of a revealer, a catalyst, than the cause. Liberty, including that greatest liberty, religious liberty, has long struggled against complacency, ideological rethinking, "other backyard" syndrome, and a seemingly functional irrelevance. But changed thinking has crept upon us. Writing in Le Monde, November 2, 2001, Jean Baudrillard observed: "We have reached the point that the idea of liberty, an idea relatively recent and new, is already in the process of fading from our consciences and our standards of morality."

We have been told the war against terrorism will last a lifetime. To many in our society it already seems necessary to give up significant freedoms to defeat the enemy, an enemy that is equated more and more with religious zealotry--not particularly Islamic, but any form of religious "fanaticism."

It should have been a wake-up call, for Adventists at least, to note that in the panicky days leading up to the accepted turn of the millennium, January 1, 2000, the FBI, in its task force report "Project Meggido" listed as potential troublemakers believers in the imminent, literal return of Jesus Christ.

Many dismiss our present state as a passing blip of history. yet what Ellen White wrote in the decade before the outbreak of World War I certainly applies even more today: "The calamities by land and sea, the unsettled state of society, the alarms of war, are portentous. They forecast approaching events of the greatest magnitude. The agencies of evil are combining their forces and consolidating. They are strengthening for the last great crisis. Great changes are soon to take place in our world, and the final movements will be rapid ones" (Testimonies for the Church, vol. 9, p. 11).

Adventists have long emphasized religious liberty, putting its urgency in the context of final events. At the first annual session of the National Religious Liberty Association, which had been organized earlier in 1889, the president summed up its charter this way: "A few men, believing in civil and religious liberty, organized for the purpose of combating anything and everything that has a tendency toward uniting church and state" (quoted in M. Ellsworth Olsen, Origin and Progress of Seventh-day Adventists, p. 461). Surely we are in the "anything and everything" phase foretold.

Today's trends that blur the separation of church and state include: faith-based initiative by presidential order, voucher funding of church schools approved by Supreme Court, calls for constitutional amendment to designate America a Christian nation, growing agitation to pass Houses of Worship legislation that would empower churches as political power bases, widespread dismissal of separation of church and state as an "outmoded metaphor" (Chief Justice William Rehnquist) and "evil" (the late Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ).

The Adventist Response
So far our Seventh-day Adventist response to the clear and present threat to religious liberty posed now and here is lethargic. Why? Perhaps part of the problem is a misunderstanding of the importance of--indeed, the theological basis for--our religious liberty emphasis. Doubtless, many have accepted religious liberty as merely a self-protective ministry, and in the face of a larger national threat from terrorism have been willing to sacrifice it for the sake of national security. If so, such inaction will eventually prepare the way for us to be deceived on many fronts, and cause us to forgo the proclamation of the three angels' messages of Revelation 14--central to who Adventists are and what they believe.

In Australia during the doctrinal wars of the 1970s and 1980s I once heard a certain reverend, who professed sympathy to a version of Adventism that rejected its prophetic interpretations, try to redefine eschatology. Eschatology, he pointed out, means "the study of end-time events." Then he quoted the words of Jesus from Revelation: "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end" (Rev. 22:13). "Aha," he said, proclaiming the obvious syllogism, "the study of eschatology is the study of Christ."

In a certain sense he was right. Jesus told us that He is revealed in the whole Bible. The three angels' messages are, of course, part of the overall proclamation of the person and coming power of Jesus. Just so, religious liberty is integral to that Jesus presentation. We are free from the enslaving power of sin because of what He taught and did on our behalf. Jesus' proclamation of "deliverance to the captives," taken from Isaiah and given at the beginning of His ministry, is religious liberty in a nutshell. His admonition to "render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's" (Matt. 22:21), coupled with the politically disengaged nature of His ministry, defines the separation of church and state for the Christian. "My kingdom is not of this world," stated our Lord, making it even plainer. "If my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight" (John 18:36), He continued, making it clear that violence and coercion have no place in the Christian economy.

Fundamental Faith
I recently reread an old book entitled The Christ We Forget, by Whitwell Wilson, written in 1917, as the world staggered through World War I. In the introduction Wilson mused on many of the same issues that challenge religious liberty today, and on our curiously passive response.

"Before the war," Wilson wrote, "it seemed almost unnecessary to find time for the Bible. Many of us were making money, others were busily earning it. Our children were getting on nicely at school. Certainly there were grave evils, like drink, and bitter social inequalities, and rancorous political quarrels, and reckless extravagances, which gave us uneasy twinges of conscience. But we drifted, in tens, hundreds of thousands, from public worship. We ceased to pray. We quietly laid aside the Bible.

"Then--suddenly--we were brought face to face with facts which we had forgotten. One of those facts was Death--another was Pain--another was Hatred. . . . We learnt that life is not a game, but a grim, heroic combat between good and evil.

"For this crisis, we found that we were unprepared. Men and women fled for refuge, in some cases, to spiritualism, crystal-gazing, and fortune-telling. Pleasure and Romance played their part as comforters. Lives that had been frivolous were consecrated to war work. . . . We are sure that Faith will return.

"Yes--but Faith in what? Faith in Whom?"

Here is revealed for the author's time, and again for ours, the hazard in this dynamic of an old world overturned. People seek solace in national purpose, in religion. But shotgun lifestyle changes historically lead to national disaster and a religion easily conscripted to the mood of the times. There is a road beckoning from here to the moral cleansing of a nation; the road from here to a rediscovery of Christ is not so sure. We must cast the issue in terms of the kingdom of God versus the kingdom of human beings. We need to contrast the freedom that Christ promises with the security sought through moral regulation and spiritual inhibition.

The Christ of History
Some months ago I was included in a group given an advance screening of the still-unreleased production The Passion of Jesus. The film is extremely true to the biblical narrative, to the point of using Aramaic dialogue with English subtitles. It is powerful to the point of shocking. Most of those with me in the viewing room were sobbing in anguish as the film portrayed the torture and crucifixion of our Lord.

Ellen White once advised a worker: "Spend a thoughtful hour each day reviewing the life of Christ. . . . Take it point by point and let the imagination vividly grasp each scene" (Testimonies for the Church, vol. 4, p. 374). This film brought home to me the power of a God dying to set me free.

Author/theologian and lawyer Keith Fournier wrote: "The Passion evoked more deep reflection, sorrow, and emotional reaction within me than anything since my wedding, my ordination, or the birth of my children. Frankly, I will never be the same."

The end of history must be seen as focused on Jesus Christ. Unless He is the consuming center to our proclamation, we will not be serious about religious liberty. More troubling, we will not see the issues of religious freedom for what they are. We'll not see false religious traditions exalting themselves against the coming King. We'll not understand the conflict between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of human beings. We'll not see history for what it is: the time line moving toward the day when our Liberator returns.

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Lincoln E. Steed is an associate director of the Public Affairs and Religious Liberty Department of the North American Division. He is also the editor of Liberty magazine.