So if idolatry is more than just manmade figurines like we saw in National Geographic when we were kids and profanity is more than just using swear words, what are they?
In Jesus’ day, there were plenty of people walking around saying they were fully devoted to God. They spent lots of time doing spiritual things, like praying and going to synagogue (their equivalent of our modern-day church meetings) and even giving to the poor. They were careful not to break any of the Ten Commandments, including and especially the two commandments dealing with making “graven images” or idols and with taking God’s name in vain.
And, yet, after all that, Jesus tells these religious people that their righteousness is as filthy rags (which has a rather vulgar connotation, I might add) and that God won’t even recognize them when they try to get into heaven, thus implying that they won’t be able to do so.
Now, why are their attempts at doing right so wrong? Much of it has to do with motive, with intent. You can do all the right things for all the wrong reasons. Their righteous behavior was actually a form of idolatry.
Today there is much talk in the secular world about spirituality. By “spirituality” people mean something that is other than material, but also other than religious. There is a great recognition in our day and age that materialism in all its many forms is wholly inadequate for satisfying the spiritual hunger of us mortals. So people are returning to a search for spiritual fulfillment. But in doing so they are looking for avenues other than the traditional religious ones, recognizing, rightly so, that these routes can be as useless as material pursuits.
The problem such people are having is that they are attempting to build a spiritual “house” without a God-foundation, something that cannot be done. For any attempt to be other-focused apart from God will inevitably turn into self-focus, which as we’ve said is the spiritual equivalent of a black hole in outer space.
Oddly enough, religious people are attempting the same thing. They are trying to use the secular spiritual terminology to appear contemporary, but it feels very inauthentic to their nonbelieving neighbors, and sometimes rightly so. For that secular spirituality is a spirituality that tries to bypass God and you can’t have a God-centered spirituality that at the same time bypasses God. Such is the definition of a non sequitor, something that doesn’t line up.
So these attempts at spirituality, by religious or by nonreligious people, are just as idolatrous as the attempts by religious people to appear religious for selfish reasons. The least that can be said for the nonreligous attempt at spirituality is that it can at times be a more honest attempt.
An honest nonbeliever is a whole lot more pleasing to God than a dishonest believer. An agnostic who says she really doesn’t know and yet is earnestly seeking to know is headed in the right direction. A self-proclaimed atheist and a smug Believer are two peas in the same pod. They’ve stopped asking questions and in so doing are deeply dishonest and have fallen into the worst form of self-deception – idolatry.
Smugness, by the way, is a very intense form of idolatry, for it says that I am right beyond all doubt. In other words, it is a rightness which cannot be questioned. By removing my rightness from questioning, I put myself in grave danger of being very wrong and not having any awareness to reverse direction. I therefore damn myself beyond hope. Thus the reason Jesus says that some very highly devoted religious people will lose it all in the end.
2009-05-27
Authenticity, Idols and Profanity – Part II
Let’s make it clear from the start. God is not threatened in the least by our human attempts at idolatry and profanity. Why, even the devil himself is no match for God, for God has no equal. When Satan rebels against God or we as mere mortals take God’s name in vain or build temples in our own likenesses, the Kingdom of God is not shaken one iota. Contrary to what we might hope or fear, nothing created can disturb God’s rule.
Then why all the fuss about idols and profanity in the Ten Commandments? Because they shake our own confidence and trust in God. They disturb our faith and thus ruin our own identity and security in God. God is not thrown by human or angelic rebellion. But we are. God, while desiring a healthy relationship with each one of us, also knows that we need that relationship with Him far more desperately. We, who were created for holy and holistic purpose, are destroyed when that divine-human relationship is thrown out of alignment.
Years ago a friend borrowed my car for a quick errand. On sheer ice, he hit a curb, causing no visible damage. His apologies were honest as they were profuse. A thousand miles and a few days later on a cross-country trip, I blew both front tires after they quickly deteriorated from being out of line. My friend, a couple more thousand miles and some tires later, wholeheartedly covered the cost of repairs and tire replacements. It was a great lesson in how a little misalignment can make such a big mess. God knows we are made with a God-oriented center and when that center is missing or off-balance, we are in very bad shape.
Okay, if exalting God is so healthy for us, why are we all that easily inclined to do just the opposite, to worship other than the One True God, to make gods in our own likeness, to misuse God’s name? Inasmuch as we are made in God’s image, we have the ability to think, to reason, to focus our energies and thoughts freely and fully on whatever we choose. The heart of the universe is love, which means other-focused. God is love, for He is totally other focused.
What makes that love possible is that God as One is a Trinity, a Three-in-One Being. In Scripture, God the Father is described as devoting Himself entirely toward the Son, who in turn devotes Himself entirely toward the Father, and the Spirit is utterly focused on the Father and Son. We, as beings created in God’s likeness, find our true identity in being outwardly devoted or focused, first to God and then to those outside of ourselves.
At a basic level, idolatry and profanity alter that divine-human alignment. That focus, what we call worship, is taken off of God and placed on ourselves or some facsimile thereof. We choose not to worship God or deceive ourselves by thinking we are worshipping God when we are not.
Now we may think that in “worshipping” or focusing our energies on something or someone other than God, we are not being self-focused. But there is a fundamental problem with this attempt. For any attempt at love that bypasses the source of love becomes self-love. Can a person who does not know God truly express love? Yes, to the extent that he or she still retains that likeness of God, albeit a fallen or imperfect likeness. But the more that we are devoted to God, the more we can truly devote ourselves to others.
When we hoard who we are or what we possess it turns rancid. In a classic line from the movie, “Little Women”, the mother says of the aunt, “her blessings became a burden because she couldn’t share them.” This is the essence of black holes in science. Unlike a sun or star which gives off energy, thus radiating light and fostering life, a black hole sucks everything in, creating darkness and death. In the sphere of relationships, people absorbed in self-worship are the spiritual and relational equivalents of black holes.
Then why all the fuss about idols and profanity in the Ten Commandments? Because they shake our own confidence and trust in God. They disturb our faith and thus ruin our own identity and security in God. God is not thrown by human or angelic rebellion. But we are. God, while desiring a healthy relationship with each one of us, also knows that we need that relationship with Him far more desperately. We, who were created for holy and holistic purpose, are destroyed when that divine-human relationship is thrown out of alignment.
Years ago a friend borrowed my car for a quick errand. On sheer ice, he hit a curb, causing no visible damage. His apologies were honest as they were profuse. A thousand miles and a few days later on a cross-country trip, I blew both front tires after they quickly deteriorated from being out of line. My friend, a couple more thousand miles and some tires later, wholeheartedly covered the cost of repairs and tire replacements. It was a great lesson in how a little misalignment can make such a big mess. God knows we are made with a God-oriented center and when that center is missing or off-balance, we are in very bad shape.
Okay, if exalting God is so healthy for us, why are we all that easily inclined to do just the opposite, to worship other than the One True God, to make gods in our own likeness, to misuse God’s name? Inasmuch as we are made in God’s image, we have the ability to think, to reason, to focus our energies and thoughts freely and fully on whatever we choose. The heart of the universe is love, which means other-focused. God is love, for He is totally other focused.
What makes that love possible is that God as One is a Trinity, a Three-in-One Being. In Scripture, God the Father is described as devoting Himself entirely toward the Son, who in turn devotes Himself entirely toward the Father, and the Spirit is utterly focused on the Father and Son. We, as beings created in God’s likeness, find our true identity in being outwardly devoted or focused, first to God and then to those outside of ourselves.
At a basic level, idolatry and profanity alter that divine-human alignment. That focus, what we call worship, is taken off of God and placed on ourselves or some facsimile thereof. We choose not to worship God or deceive ourselves by thinking we are worshipping God when we are not.
Now we may think that in “worshipping” or focusing our energies on something or someone other than God, we are not being self-focused. But there is a fundamental problem with this attempt. For any attempt at love that bypasses the source of love becomes self-love. Can a person who does not know God truly express love? Yes, to the extent that he or she still retains that likeness of God, albeit a fallen or imperfect likeness. But the more that we are devoted to God, the more we can truly devote ourselves to others.
When we hoard who we are or what we possess it turns rancid. In a classic line from the movie, “Little Women”, the mother says of the aunt, “her blessings became a burden because she couldn’t share them.” This is the essence of black holes in science. Unlike a sun or star which gives off energy, thus radiating light and fostering life, a black hole sucks everything in, creating darkness and death. In the sphere of relationships, people absorbed in self-worship are the spiritual and relational equivalents of black holes.
2009-05-20
Authenticity, Idols and Profanity – Part I
“It may sound strange, but I've always thought of myself as an ‘agnostic’ on a lot of issues.” Those words are taken directly from an email response I recently made to someone who was commenting on my blogging in “Authenticity and the Decline of American Christianity.”
There are, I believe, some very definite absolutes, but they are fewer than is often assumed and they can only be clung to by faith. Yet even as items obtained by faith, they will hold up to a high degree of honest human reasonableness, being that human reasonableness even in its fallen state still has the Imago Dei impression, particularly when it is honest. Beyond that, a healthy dose of skepticism is the order of the day. “Agnostic” essentially means you don’t know, a rather honest admission.
Jesus spent as much time knocking down supposed absolutes as he did establishing the few key ones needed in this life. In one of my other blogs, “The Gatekeeper’s Key,” I am taking a slow and steady pace through the Gospel of Luke. At this point we are early in the book (chapters 5 & 6) where Jesus deals extensively with the assumed absolutes of the religious leaders of his day and knocks them off their feet one by one.
When a person (or organization) stops questioning his or her own "absolute" positions, he or she falls into idolatry, something that we humans are so inclined to do, it is put right up at Number Two on the Top Ten of God’s laws. Number Three (“Don’t take God’s name in vain”) is closely related. Something we generally fail to notice, profanity and Idolatry are two forms of the same deceit.
The deceit is that somehow we can either create our own gods or we can fashion the one true God into one of our own liking, thus becoming in ourselves Lord of the gods, or god for ourselves. In this, the second and third commandments follow the first, which states that we are not to have any other gods but THE God, the God Abraham worshipped.
Nowadays, whenever Believers talk about these first three commandments and the breaking of them, reference is usually made to the ways unbelievers disobey these commands. There was a day when idolatry was seemingly easier to spot – images, crude or elaborately crafted, pleasantly or grotesquely fashioned, the stuff of National Geographic photos and missionary slides. In today’s increasingly secular world, the imagery is harder to spot, less material.
Likewise, the 3rd commandment is reduced to simple, concrete substance, as in profanity, swearing by God’s name and the like. When I was a kid, my grandmother wouldn’t even let me say “Mercy”. Words had to have direct purpose to the context and they certainly couldn’t mimic obvious profanity or vulgarity, something to which I find ironic in the now commonly accepted use of the military slang “Snafu.” My daughter came home from school recently muttering “Holy Shoe” as she tried to avoid saying what she’d been hearing all day long. We advised her to drop the “holy” at least.
The greatest danger in dishonoring these Commandments is not in flagrantly violating them like some drunken sailor or a pagan witchdoctor. The clear and present danger is in trivializing them, something that we as Believers are ever so inclined to do. Idolatry is not just about tribal images made of wood or stone and profanity is not just about using the name of God as some casual verbal ejaculation.
It is wise to remember that the Ten Commandments were given first and foremost to those who already believed in God, to the spiritually faithful. At their most essential level these commands speak directly to the temptations of Believers in all ages. That somehow we will, in our own minds, ascend to the throne that God alone can inhabit.
There are, I believe, some very definite absolutes, but they are fewer than is often assumed and they can only be clung to by faith. Yet even as items obtained by faith, they will hold up to a high degree of honest human reasonableness, being that human reasonableness even in its fallen state still has the Imago Dei impression, particularly when it is honest. Beyond that, a healthy dose of skepticism is the order of the day. “Agnostic” essentially means you don’t know, a rather honest admission.
Jesus spent as much time knocking down supposed absolutes as he did establishing the few key ones needed in this life. In one of my other blogs, “The Gatekeeper’s Key,” I am taking a slow and steady pace through the Gospel of Luke. At this point we are early in the book (chapters 5 & 6) where Jesus deals extensively with the assumed absolutes of the religious leaders of his day and knocks them off their feet one by one.
When a person (or organization) stops questioning his or her own "absolute" positions, he or she falls into idolatry, something that we humans are so inclined to do, it is put right up at Number Two on the Top Ten of God’s laws. Number Three (“Don’t take God’s name in vain”) is closely related. Something we generally fail to notice, profanity and Idolatry are two forms of the same deceit.
The deceit is that somehow we can either create our own gods or we can fashion the one true God into one of our own liking, thus becoming in ourselves Lord of the gods, or god for ourselves. In this, the second and third commandments follow the first, which states that we are not to have any other gods but THE God, the God Abraham worshipped.
Nowadays, whenever Believers talk about these first three commandments and the breaking of them, reference is usually made to the ways unbelievers disobey these commands. There was a day when idolatry was seemingly easier to spot – images, crude or elaborately crafted, pleasantly or grotesquely fashioned, the stuff of National Geographic photos and missionary slides. In today’s increasingly secular world, the imagery is harder to spot, less material.
Likewise, the 3rd commandment is reduced to simple, concrete substance, as in profanity, swearing by God’s name and the like. When I was a kid, my grandmother wouldn’t even let me say “Mercy”. Words had to have direct purpose to the context and they certainly couldn’t mimic obvious profanity or vulgarity, something to which I find ironic in the now commonly accepted use of the military slang “Snafu.” My daughter came home from school recently muttering “Holy Shoe” as she tried to avoid saying what she’d been hearing all day long. We advised her to drop the “holy” at least.
The greatest danger in dishonoring these Commandments is not in flagrantly violating them like some drunken sailor or a pagan witchdoctor. The clear and present danger is in trivializing them, something that we as Believers are ever so inclined to do. Idolatry is not just about tribal images made of wood or stone and profanity is not just about using the name of God as some casual verbal ejaculation.
It is wise to remember that the Ten Commandments were given first and foremost to those who already believed in God, to the spiritually faithful. At their most essential level these commands speak directly to the temptations of Believers in all ages. That somehow we will, in our own minds, ascend to the throne that God alone can inhabit.
2009-05-13
Authenticity & the decline of American Christianity – Part V
As I mentioned in my last posting, the American “faith” of the 1950s ran smack dab into the turbulence of the 60s and 70s fully unprepared, a sleeping giant awakened in a reactionary and contrary mood.
For a decade starting sometime around 1974, I was in a spiritual turmoil of my own. It is something that most children who’ve grown up in the faith experience – or should experience in order for the faith of their fathers and mothers to become their own faith. What they accepted as a child they must wrestle with as adults. If they do not wrestle, they will either lose that faith or be left with an impotent second-hand faith that makes them little more than loyal church attenders, certainly nothing that will scare off any devils.
What was the outcome of my own faith wrestling? To make a very long story fit this blog, I came to the point where either I had to take my faith very, very seriously or give it up completely as not worth taking at all. A Christianity that only produces church-goers does little more than inoculate people to the true and radical claims of the gospel. An honest nonbeliever is less of a threat to the future of the church than a dishonest believer.
I can’t say I’ve been perfect in taking my faith as seriously as I set out to do as a Twenty-something. But in the past three years, I’ve come to a fresh conclusion that the choices I made back then were the right ones, choices that are still worth pursuing, perhaps now more than ever before.
Among the things I’ve been reaffirming is that God hasn’t called us to preserve some pseudo-faith notion of a Christian nation. God has called us to declare and demonstrate the Good News of Jesus Christ to all nations. The Kingdom of God is not found in a particular country or political party or a so-called “Christian” social agenda. Instead, we are to pursue the unique agenda of the Kingdom of God in all arenas of life, including the political and the social.
I submit that until we truly fess up about our immorality as Believers in the first half of the Twentieth Century we will not be able to confront the societal decay we are facing today. I speak particularly of the way we as Christians participated in or ignored the overt and violent racial oppression in our midst and then refused to involve ourselves in its dismantling, at first fighting racial healing, then embracing it only after that healing had become the accepted norm among the heathen around us.
More than any single sin, this collective racial injustice has muted our prophetic voice, making it almost impossible for the world to hear what we have to say. How can we speak to others about preserving the lives of those yet unborn when we have not done our utmost to preserve the lives of the already born?
In the end, the worst thing we can do is obsess over our declining percentage figure. What difference does it make whether 86% or 16% of us call ourselves Christians if the world goes to hell in a hand basket while we bemoan our fading figure in the mirror? Time to stop counting heads and start pursuing God’s righteousness and justice on all fronts. Time to be honest with God, our neighbors and ourselves. Authentic faith demands no less.
For a decade starting sometime around 1974, I was in a spiritual turmoil of my own. It is something that most children who’ve grown up in the faith experience – or should experience in order for the faith of their fathers and mothers to become their own faith. What they accepted as a child they must wrestle with as adults. If they do not wrestle, they will either lose that faith or be left with an impotent second-hand faith that makes them little more than loyal church attenders, certainly nothing that will scare off any devils.
What was the outcome of my own faith wrestling? To make a very long story fit this blog, I came to the point where either I had to take my faith very, very seriously or give it up completely as not worth taking at all. A Christianity that only produces church-goers does little more than inoculate people to the true and radical claims of the gospel. An honest nonbeliever is less of a threat to the future of the church than a dishonest believer.
I can’t say I’ve been perfect in taking my faith as seriously as I set out to do as a Twenty-something. But in the past three years, I’ve come to a fresh conclusion that the choices I made back then were the right ones, choices that are still worth pursuing, perhaps now more than ever before.
Among the things I’ve been reaffirming is that God hasn’t called us to preserve some pseudo-faith notion of a Christian nation. God has called us to declare and demonstrate the Good News of Jesus Christ to all nations. The Kingdom of God is not found in a particular country or political party or a so-called “Christian” social agenda. Instead, we are to pursue the unique agenda of the Kingdom of God in all arenas of life, including the political and the social.
I submit that until we truly fess up about our immorality as Believers in the first half of the Twentieth Century we will not be able to confront the societal decay we are facing today. I speak particularly of the way we as Christians participated in or ignored the overt and violent racial oppression in our midst and then refused to involve ourselves in its dismantling, at first fighting racial healing, then embracing it only after that healing had become the accepted norm among the heathen around us.
More than any single sin, this collective racial injustice has muted our prophetic voice, making it almost impossible for the world to hear what we have to say. How can we speak to others about preserving the lives of those yet unborn when we have not done our utmost to preserve the lives of the already born?
In the end, the worst thing we can do is obsess over our declining percentage figure. What difference does it make whether 86% or 16% of us call ourselves Christians if the world goes to hell in a hand basket while we bemoan our fading figure in the mirror? Time to stop counting heads and start pursuing God’s righteousness and justice on all fronts. Time to be honest with God, our neighbors and ourselves. Authentic faith demands no less.
2009-05-06
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.
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.
2009-04-29
Authenticity & the decline of American Christianity – Part III
Modern Christians often refer to the decline and fall of the Roman Empire as an example of what happens to a nation consumed by moral decay. When that historic example of national degeneration is brought up, what we fail to notice is that Rome’s greatest decline and its eventual fall came after the Imperial Cult (that is, the worship of the Emperor) was replaced by Christianity. The decline of the Roman Empire and the rise of the Christian faith progressed in tandem. Things are not always as they seem or as we would like for them to be.
So to get back to my original question: Why is the percentage of Believers shrinking in America on such a dramatic scale? The first question that should be asked is, what is shrinking? Two decades ago, was it really true that 86% of Americans were Christians? By what definition?
I do not want to go around using a litmus test to determine who among my neighbors is a bona fide Believer in Jesus Christ. I will leave that to God’s discretion in the final judgment. As Jesus said, don’t mess up the wheat crop by tearing the tares out now – wait until the wheat is harvested and then sort them out.
Without saying who is and who is not a true Christian, it is possible to extrapolate that, of the number of people who call themselves Christians, a high percentage are so in name only. As the overall numbers decline and Christianity loses its popularity, we will see an even greater decline in the number of claimants. True believers will always acknowledge their faith. But those who are “Christians” for cultural identification purposes or for convenience sake only will find it less culturally appropriate and convenient to be so identified. As a result, we will likely see an even more rapid decline in the percentage in the coming decades.
Does that mean that the Christian faith is really declining? No, it only means that Christianity as the dominant culture is declining. But what might seem bad for the faith could be a very good thing. The bloated, controlling burden that being a culture’s faith requires of us has left us as Believers far adrift from the robust faith of the New Testament Church.
I have never advocated abandoning our culture and moving into Christian ghettoes as some promote. But at the same time, the American Civil Religion of the 1950s was, I firmly believe, a significant contributing factor in any impotence we as a People of Faith have experienced in the half-century since.
Go back to the first half of the Twentieth Century. It was a time of great cultural and economic progress in America on many fronts. The Church, as is always true, had its strengths and weaknesses. But on the whole the American Church was, sadly, in a time of retreat.
From the time of Finney’s revivals until late in the 19th Century, American Evangelicalism had been experiencing great revival and was in the forefront of much social change, including the abolition of slavery, the right of women to vote, the priority of serving the poor, and the promotion of child labor laws. Finney’s revivals in particular greatly fueled and funded the antislavery cause and women’s rights.
But then around 1900, the devastating Fundamentalist-Modernist split occurred, the great divide in which some Evangelicals took correct doctrine and went into defense mode on every front. For decades after, theologically conservative Christians fled the public square, reversing their fight to liberate blacks and women, for example. When we talk about that 1950s “Christian nation” feeling, what we are really talking about is a theologically liberal or lukewarm faith that had as its defining feature a very low common denominator of “God and Country” and usually not in that order. What we look back at as a moral high ground in American history was neither morally high nor very solid ground when it came to faith.
So to get back to my original question: Why is the percentage of Believers shrinking in America on such a dramatic scale? The first question that should be asked is, what is shrinking? Two decades ago, was it really true that 86% of Americans were Christians? By what definition?
I do not want to go around using a litmus test to determine who among my neighbors is a bona fide Believer in Jesus Christ. I will leave that to God’s discretion in the final judgment. As Jesus said, don’t mess up the wheat crop by tearing the tares out now – wait until the wheat is harvested and then sort them out.
Without saying who is and who is not a true Christian, it is possible to extrapolate that, of the number of people who call themselves Christians, a high percentage are so in name only. As the overall numbers decline and Christianity loses its popularity, we will see an even greater decline in the number of claimants. True believers will always acknowledge their faith. But those who are “Christians” for cultural identification purposes or for convenience sake only will find it less culturally appropriate and convenient to be so identified. As a result, we will likely see an even more rapid decline in the percentage in the coming decades.
Does that mean that the Christian faith is really declining? No, it only means that Christianity as the dominant culture is declining. But what might seem bad for the faith could be a very good thing. The bloated, controlling burden that being a culture’s faith requires of us has left us as Believers far adrift from the robust faith of the New Testament Church.
I have never advocated abandoning our culture and moving into Christian ghettoes as some promote. But at the same time, the American Civil Religion of the 1950s was, I firmly believe, a significant contributing factor in any impotence we as a People of Faith have experienced in the half-century since.
Go back to the first half of the Twentieth Century. It was a time of great cultural and economic progress in America on many fronts. The Church, as is always true, had its strengths and weaknesses. But on the whole the American Church was, sadly, in a time of retreat.
From the time of Finney’s revivals until late in the 19th Century, American Evangelicalism had been experiencing great revival and was in the forefront of much social change, including the abolition of slavery, the right of women to vote, the priority of serving the poor, and the promotion of child labor laws. Finney’s revivals in particular greatly fueled and funded the antislavery cause and women’s rights.
But then around 1900, the devastating Fundamentalist-Modernist split occurred, the great divide in which some Evangelicals took correct doctrine and went into defense mode on every front. For decades after, theologically conservative Christians fled the public square, reversing their fight to liberate blacks and women, for example. When we talk about that 1950s “Christian nation” feeling, what we are really talking about is a theologically liberal or lukewarm faith that had as its defining feature a very low common denominator of “God and Country” and usually not in that order. What we look back at as a moral high ground in American history was neither morally high nor very solid ground when it came to faith.
2009-04-22
Authenticity & the decline of American Christianity – Part II
What are we to make of the recent study showing that Americans who claim to be Christian have declined from 86% to 76% of the total population? If anything, the report of such a decline in Christian faith in America is very helpful news indeed.
Much energy has been consumed by American Evangelicals in trying to shore up and preserve an American Christian culture that in many ways was anything but Christian. Perhaps if we lose something not wholly legitimate, we will learn to refocus our energies on advancing the true faith instead of preserving an unreasonable facsimile thereof.
Take for example the very popular notion that crime and violence have increased dramatically in America since the “Golden Age” of the 1950s. Increased for whom? The other day I was sitting in a meeting of white Christian men and someone brought up the race riots of the latter 1960s. No question they actually did happen. Many urban blacks, for a variety of reasons, had by the mid-1960s begun to give up on the nonviolent reforms and methods extolled by Martin Luther King Jr. and in the process destroyed many of American’s inner cities over a couple of short, hot summers. It was a scary time for whites and blacks alike.
But why is it that this gentleman in my meeting did not also mention the race riots of the 1950s and early 1960s? Is it of any significance that the perpetrators of those earlier riots were white? Those race riots are lost to the collective white American memory. How quickly we forget.
Here is the historical catch. There was a strong culture of crime and violence in our nation for years leading up to the Civil Rights movement of the mid-Twentieth Century. Over long and wearying decades, thousands upon thousands of blacks were lynched, raped and abused; homes, businesses and churches were destroyed; and nonwhites were denied even the simple gospel message, a crime of eternal significance perpetrated by mostly “Godly” or at least church-going white Believers. On this last point, major US denominations purposefully chose to neglect American black neighborhoods while they were mounting foreign missions efforts to reach “darkest Africa.”
We talk about rule of law today particularly in the context of illegal immigration. If we don’t adhere to the principle of rule of law, so goes the reasoning, our nation will be destroyed. Tell that to any person of color over the age of 50 who cannot wipe out the scary memories of an endemic lack of rule of law that festered in this nation for generations, often under the sign of the cross and the sanction of the church.
The other day coming out of Sunday service, I drove to an exit of the parking lot where a sign stated, “No left turn.” My daughter pointed out that the car in front of us, which was also leaving the church service, was turning left. And then we noticed that a bumper sticker on the car promoted rule of law in regards to illegal aliens. My thirteen year old immediate saw the blatant hypocrisy in that situation. I jokingly told her the driver must be an unbeliever. Rule of law is a selectively applied principle by even the most devout among us.
Slavery, whatever we think about it in regards to our own national history, was constitutionally legal for the 80 years prior to its being abolished in the mid-1860s. The widespread lynchings, torture, rape and oppression of blacks from the Civil War down through the Twentieth Century, a century of lawlessness, were not. So when I hear someone say that American society is deteriorating, I always want to ask, “For whom?”
Yes, there are signs of decay in our nation, but there are also signs of great moral progress. Blacks still live in fear in some neighborhoods, but whites generally no longer terrorize blacks as they did for centuries in this nation. A man of color was just elected President of the United States without incident – a feat that would have been considered inconceivable fifty years ago.
Much energy has been consumed by American Evangelicals in trying to shore up and preserve an American Christian culture that in many ways was anything but Christian. Perhaps if we lose something not wholly legitimate, we will learn to refocus our energies on advancing the true faith instead of preserving an unreasonable facsimile thereof.
Take for example the very popular notion that crime and violence have increased dramatically in America since the “Golden Age” of the 1950s. Increased for whom? The other day I was sitting in a meeting of white Christian men and someone brought up the race riots of the latter 1960s. No question they actually did happen. Many urban blacks, for a variety of reasons, had by the mid-1960s begun to give up on the nonviolent reforms and methods extolled by Martin Luther King Jr. and in the process destroyed many of American’s inner cities over a couple of short, hot summers. It was a scary time for whites and blacks alike.
But why is it that this gentleman in my meeting did not also mention the race riots of the 1950s and early 1960s? Is it of any significance that the perpetrators of those earlier riots were white? Those race riots are lost to the collective white American memory. How quickly we forget.
Here is the historical catch. There was a strong culture of crime and violence in our nation for years leading up to the Civil Rights movement of the mid-Twentieth Century. Over long and wearying decades, thousands upon thousands of blacks were lynched, raped and abused; homes, businesses and churches were destroyed; and nonwhites were denied even the simple gospel message, a crime of eternal significance perpetrated by mostly “Godly” or at least church-going white Believers. On this last point, major US denominations purposefully chose to neglect American black neighborhoods while they were mounting foreign missions efforts to reach “darkest Africa.”
We talk about rule of law today particularly in the context of illegal immigration. If we don’t adhere to the principle of rule of law, so goes the reasoning, our nation will be destroyed. Tell that to any person of color over the age of 50 who cannot wipe out the scary memories of an endemic lack of rule of law that festered in this nation for generations, often under the sign of the cross and the sanction of the church.
The other day coming out of Sunday service, I drove to an exit of the parking lot where a sign stated, “No left turn.” My daughter pointed out that the car in front of us, which was also leaving the church service, was turning left. And then we noticed that a bumper sticker on the car promoted rule of law in regards to illegal aliens. My thirteen year old immediate saw the blatant hypocrisy in that situation. I jokingly told her the driver must be an unbeliever. Rule of law is a selectively applied principle by even the most devout among us.
Slavery, whatever we think about it in regards to our own national history, was constitutionally legal for the 80 years prior to its being abolished in the mid-1860s. The widespread lynchings, torture, rape and oppression of blacks from the Civil War down through the Twentieth Century, a century of lawlessness, were not. So when I hear someone say that American society is deteriorating, I always want to ask, “For whom?”
Yes, there are signs of decay in our nation, but there are also signs of great moral progress. Blacks still live in fear in some neighborhoods, but whites generally no longer terrorize blacks as they did for centuries in this nation. A man of color was just elected President of the United States without incident – a feat that would have been considered inconceivable fifty years ago.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)