Authenticity & the decline of American Christianity – Part IV

We’ve been talking about the recent report that the Christian faith is in decline in America. As I’ve been saying this report leaves us with some very skewed impressions. And in some ways, maybe the decline is good news. Truth is, faith has experienced some very troubling times throughout American history, particularly during the middle of the last century.

When American Christianity hit the wild 1960s, it was with a watered down faith in the forefront and a navel-gazing conservative faith holding the rear guard. Unlike the robust Evangelicalism of the 19th Century, the Believers of the 1960s were by and large AWOL on the moral issues of the day.

Two things stirred the sleeping giant of American Evangelicalism in the late 1960s and into the 1970s. The first was a reawakening of faith as seen in the rise of a much more socially involved movement known as the “Young Evangelicals” and the whole sweep of the Jesus and Charismatic movements which brought fresh life in droves into the Church, shaking up whole congregations for the better. This was the bright side.

The second, and much more negative influence, was the reaction to a series of social issues which galvanized the sleeping giant into Moral Majority action. Or shall I say, reaction, for, unlike the positive thrust of the Young Evangelical, Jesus and Charismatic movements, the Moral Majority kind of energy only fueled an increase in the reactionary, hold-the-crumbling-fort mentality of the earlier Fundamentalists. Forget trying to find creative solutions to new issues and problems – we preferred to hold the line and stick our collective heads in the proverbial sand.

These social issues were the Civil Rights movement, the ban on school prayer, the War on Poverty, the Vietnam War, the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973 and other moral markers right up to the gay rights and marriage battle of today. Communism had been a threat in the 1950s, but it didn’t really impact the everyday life of the average American, at least not like prayers being silenced and blacks moving in and abortions being legalized.

What the Young Evangelicals and the Jesus and Charismatic movements did to faith was to drive people back to the Bible and to God. What the Moral Majority did was to get people to defend their homes with guns instead of advancing in creative energy under the leading of the Spirit to win the lost and bless the poor.

While white preachers guarded the doors of their churches so that blacks and atheists and abortionists and eventually gays couldn’t get in, their children were slipping out the back door to see where the spiritual life had gone. A faith that looks back instead of forward is a faith that has nothing to offer the next generation. Christians were being galvanized to preserve a culture, not to advance a faith. The theological mantras of an earlier day felt increasingly dry and meaningless on the parched lips of the faithful.

When we work to preserve a Christian culture, we better make sure the culture we are working to preserve is truly Christian. Unfortunately the culture of the 1950s American Civil Religion was not all that reflective of Jesus. Some causes were worth fighting for, but others were far more cultural than they were Christian.