Jonathan Malesic, Secret Faith in the Public Square: An Argument for the Concealment of Christian Identity (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2009), 248 pages, ISBN 9781587432262.

From outward appearance the author, an assistant professor of Theology at King’s College in Pennsylvania, argues for non-public involvement in public affairs with nothing said of the participants’ Christian faith. His expressed concern is that Christian identity be protected from being exploited as a means for political gain. Malesic, in his introduction, writes that “too often in American public life, the light is used to illumine the Christians themselves, bringing glory to the wrong person”(p. 19). The light, in this sentence, refers to “Christian identity.” By concealing one’s own identity, it is easier to bring the identity of Jesus to bear in public life.

In developing his theme, Malesic first explains that what he does not want to do is to create a privacy of Christian life in opposition to anything public. “Most often ‘public’ is set in opposition to ‘privacy’” (p. 21). It is a false dichotomy. His proposal is to define what individual Christians should do “when non-Christian publics, especially the overarching and competitive public spheres of government, work, and the market pose danger to the integrity of the Christian public” (p.23).

The author’s basic premise is based upon Matthew 6:1,6 where Jesus enjoins those listening to him “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them …” The full quotation is printed on the page facing the table of contents. Malesic sets forth his argument in two parts. The first part sets forth both the biblical and the theological rationale for secrecy of identity in the public square. He not only cites Jesus but also the liturgical secrecy set forth by Cyril of Jerusalem in the late fourth century when the life of the church and the life of the empire appeared to be fusing. After discussing the position of Cyril, he moves on to discuss in two succeeding chapters later the contribution of Soren Kierkegaard’s Works of Love which appeared in the mid-nineteenth century. In chapters five and six Malesic devotes attention to Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his famous work, The Cost of Discipleship. Melasic’s explanation of Bonhoeffer’s view of discipleship is that “Christians confess their Christian identity in secret and conceal that identity in public” (p. 123). The distinctively Christian form of public life is that of “being for others.” While Christians’ works of love should bear visible fruits, the Christian identity of the one who lives for others need not be intentionally made known.

Part two of Secret Faith in the Public Square which comprises chapters seven through nine takes the arguments from Scripture, Cyril, Kierkegaard and Bonhoeffer and takes the idea of concealment of Christian identity as it may work out in contemporary America. Malesic does not rely exclusively on the three men just mentioned. He also relies upon models set forth by Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J. The church grew and had influence upon its pagan environment by offering an alternative more attractive: “Seeing the mutual love and support of the Christians and the high moral standards they observed, the pagans sought entrance into the Church.”[1] In this recognition, Malesic’s position is not one of withdrawal from the public square but a quiet lifestyle as opposed to a vocal or visible involvement. He also differs from Stanley Hauerwas, who is close to Malesic in sentiment but who challenges Christians “to stand as a visible social and political alternative to the violent ways of the world, bearing witness to the gospel in works of love and mercy” (p. 28). The key word is “visible” as opposed to “secret.” Yet in reading Secret Faith in the Public Square, it appears that what Malesic is advocating is not a secretive Christianity but a Christianity working “behind the scenes” rather “out front” advertising itself.

J. Budziszewski is professor of philosophy and government at the University of Texas at Austin, and has written a number of well-recognized books on political theory, politics and virtue ethics, tolerance and liberalism, and natural law ethics, among other topics. For the project which formed the backbone to this book, a conference was sponsored by the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Prouts Neck, Maine, in September of 2003, where initial drafts of the essays published here were presented. In this review, I will summarize the book’s structure and arguments, briefly explicate on the central dilemma plaguing the formation of an evangelical political theology, and comment on why these matters are of relevance also to Pentecostal and charismatic Christians today.

After a short introduction by Michael Cromartie of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, the two lead essays by Budziszewski, which constitute more than half of the book, lay out the basic issues and set the tone of discussion for the volume. In the first essay, Budziszewski suggests that one major reason why evangelicals have not yet developed a robust political theology is that their commitments to grounding any theological agenda biblically do not work well with the fact that there are insufficient biblical guidelines for such a task. In fact, political theology needs a more hearty acknowledgment of the role of general revelation precisely in order to provide a theological justification for evangelical engagement in matters related to the wider public square, as well as theological guidelines for how evangelicals might concretely proceed. But, as Budziszewski then attempts to show in his second longer essay on the four formative thinkers announced in the book’s subtitle–Carl F. H. Henry, Abraham Kuyper, Francis Schaeffer, and John Howard Yoder — evangelical hesitation about embracing this particular theological idea (of general revelation) further complicates their already difficult task. In Budziszewski’s analysis, the political theology each of these evangelical thinkers suffers because they falters at key points in their projects with regard to the doctrine of general revelation: Henry is hampered by a nagging premillennial and dispensationalist defeatism in addition to an ambivalence about the (perhaps all to Catholic) idea of general revelation; Kuyper by an underdevelopment of his ideas of common grace, sphere sovereignty (of the state, society, and the church), and principled pluralism; Schaeffer by an unbalanced emphasis on apologetics which in turn neglected the pragmatic dimensions of engaging the public square, as well as by his acceptance of the presuppositionalist school of apologetics along with its suspicion regarding general revelation; and Yoder by a sectarian and countercultural orientation which is not predisposed to exploring the continuities between Christians and non-Christians, even for the purposes of public engagement. As a result, these four evangelical theologians, as formative as any for evangelical thought and action, have been unable to bequeath to their descendents the much needed resources to more fully develop the kinds of orienting ideas, practical programs, and cultural apologetics needed for a more vibrant evangelical political theology today.

The remainder of the volume includes four essays by scholars responding to Budziszewski’s readings of these evangelical theologians and a concluding after word reflecting on the conference discussion as a whole. David Weeks, a Henry scholar and political science professor at Azusa Pacific University, attempts to provide a thicker description of Henry as an evangelical theologian as well as fill out, in dialogue with Henry, some of the details which Budziszewski has identified with regard to the formulation of an evangelical political theology. Similarly, John Bolt, a Kuyper scholar and systematician at Calvin Theological Seminary, basically agrees with Budziszewski’s remarks about Kuyper, but provides a further elaboration of how the Kuyperian theological vision can be reappropriated in the service of evangelical thought and political action. Not surprisingly, William Edgar, a presuppositionalist philosopher and theologian at Westminster Theological Seminary, responds to Budziszewski both by locating the larger socio-cultural, political, and theological framework of Schaeffer’s apologetics and by explicating how the logic of presuppositionalism leads to a different set of concerns that may be complementary rather than opposed to the logic derived from a commitment to the doctrine of general revelation. Finally, Ashley Woodiwiss, a political scientist at Wheaton College, responds that even if one cannot go all the way with Yoder, yet one must respect how his Anabaptist and Mennonite perspective informed his scholarship and produced vision of the gospel focuses on the church as an alternative politics, an distinctive praxis, and a subversive mode of cultural engagement, all of which combine to perhaps even undermine the received framework of questions concerning evangelicalism as well as political theology. The book concludes with Jean Bethke Elshtain’s (Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics at the University of Chicago “A Friendly Outsider’s Reflections” (her title) on the entire exchange.