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Always Losing, Never Lost: Christianity in America
Every few years somebody announces that Christianity in America is doomed. This time the excuse is a survey that does show a small decline in Christian self-identification, but that this decline has pretty much stopped. A one percent decline in just under a decade in Christian self-identification in a survey with a margin of error of half a percent is hailed as the latest piece of evidence.
When extremist secularists are not paranoid of an imminent American theocracy, whether because someone is singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic or saying the Pledge, they veer into triumphalism, because "all" the smart people or young people (take your pick) are going their way. Of course, religious gloom mongers benefit by overplaying the fears of traditional Christians and joining extreme secularists in seeing the end of the religious world as we have known it.
Pardon me, but Christians should feel fine. This is not the end of American Christian dominance, though it may mark the end of the religious left.
America remains a very religious nation. Liberal Christian groups with little purpose in existing beyond heavy endowments from dead faithful are vanishing, but this is to be expected. It is hard to get people to go out on Sunday morning to worship their bishop's latest new idea. Bronson Alcott's excuse to skip divine services and spend his day with himself, the "church of one," turns out to be much more appealing than the Church of Spong.
Signs of revival are everywhere amongst serious Christians.
Last week I spent time at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. Between discussing March Madness and Louisville's chances, intellectually serious students were planning mission trips to the deepest darkest places in Vermont. Al Mohler and Russell Moore represent the future of Church growth. They are eager for honest numbers regarding Southern Baptists who actually live their faith. This looks like bad news at first, but has provided a road map for missionary activity. Don't bet against them.
The enthronement of Metropolitan Jonah in the Orthodox Church of America is also encouraging to traditional Christians. The OCA has been mired in a leadership crisis, but Metropolitan Jonah has the moral authority to change things. His message attacking the "de-personalization" of our age and appealing for authentic community is exactly the right one. When combined with the elder statesman of an evangelical Orthodoxy Metropolitan Philip there is great hope for an Orthodoxy in America that transcends ethnic barriers and proclaims the Gospel to the lost.
Pope Benedict is the right person at the right time to lead the Roman faithful. He is methodically confronting problems in global Catholicism and his first-rate intellect is ideal for challenging the weary secularism of Western Europe. He rightly sees that the future of humanity and of Christendom is not in the moribund geographic West, but the rest of the world. In fact, the future of Western values may come from nations that learn to embrace them through Christianity. Missionaries and priests will soon be flooding the West from Africa and Asia.
If American history is any guide to the American present, we are on the edge of a great revival of traditional Christianity. Americans will reject the consumerism, whether secular or religious, that has marked so much of the last few decades. Anyone who cannot see that money and power cannot make a man happy now is willfully blind. Groups that have always said that this is so, like Reformed Southern Baptists, will do well because they have always done good theology.
Christianity that is anti-intellectual will die. Christianity that is in the grip of trendy intellectualism will remain irrelevant. The revival of Christian philosophy as seen in the careers of persons such as Eleonore Stump or Alvin Plantinga will continue to strengthen the church. New generations of students will build on their work.
This is not the main thing, however. Christianity will survive and thrive, not because of anything people do but because it is true. God exists and He is not silent. Any system that ignores that reality will fail. The better news is that God loves humankind and sent Jesus to reconcile the way we are with the way He is.
Christianity is not, after all, fundamentally about externals or even about cultivating virtue. Many of my secular friends, not gripped by extremism, show great virtue and compassion. What Christianity offers is deep inner healing of a broken relationship between God and humankind. It is not in the end about me, but about Him. I am lonely and isolated until I find my rest in Him.
Christians fail Christ continuously, but He does not leave humanity without a witness. For every failed televangelist or hypocrite, there are men like my father who faithfully serve Christ for years without much payment and with no fame. Even if I am wrong and Christianity is to die in America, it will not die globally. Christianity is always losing, just to something new.
It never really loses.
By
John Mark Reynolds
|
March 23, 2009; 2:20 PM ET
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Posted by: hosagruner | March 31, 2009 3:28 AM
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DITLD,
Here, I shall spell out my original thoughts:
Your comments were irrational and unfounded in evidence. Learn to debate actual people with actual arguments rather than playing with straw-men.
Posted by: Eustacio | March 25, 2009 6:11 PM
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Eustacio
I can tell you did not like my comments, but I did not see any original thoughts from you. And by the way, you forgot to bash the gays. Are you sure you are really a Conservative Christian?
Posted by: DanielintheLionsDen | March 25, 2009 6:54 AM
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Hey DITLD,
Conservative Christian here...posting a comment...since apparently the number of one's comments is an objective measure of the validity of one's arguments.
I'm not sure how one ought to respond to your critiques, aside from pointing out that the author really did not make any of the claims which you ascribe to him. Further, your claims show that you have a good idea of a caricature of Christianity but apparently are not familiar with actual Christian doctrine regarding sexuality.
"I think that Conservative Christians in America are not going to welcome their African "brothers and sisters" with open arms. Xenophobia and a sense of white supreriority are still entrenched in many Conservative Christian people. The Southern Baptist Church was born to defend slavery, and has never really gone back on that, but just seems to hope that people will forget or have forgotten."
Wow, not bigoted at all. I wish I had such an open mind!
"You seem to think Jesus is a Republican"?
My goodness. Wake up. Its not 2004 anymore.
Posted by: Eustacio | March 24, 2009 11:00 PM
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Christianity is personal. Therefore, questions about its political of cultural dominance or delcine are irrelevant to the way I feel personally.
There is much in what you call "traditional Christianity" which is very, very bad.
Persecution of gay people is an example. There is no justification or excuse for this. Using religion, God, and the name of Jesus to justify a predjudice against a group of people is what I would call an "abomination."
Also, the Christian promotion and celebration of sexual repression, prudery, and frigidity is wrong, and ruins lives. This point of view is not debauched, promiscuous, wicked, or sinful; it is not trendy; it is in fact, a profound shift in the way that people beleive and think. It is part of the modern mindset, and represents part of the progress of man. Christianity stubbornly persists in promoting a point of view that prevailed centuries ago and is now, more and more remote from the simple comon sense view that is now held by most people.
Divorce, teenage pregnancy, abortions, and the consumer viewing of internet pornography is the greatest in the "Bible belt" and is the least in the Liberal Northeast. Seeking to repress sexuality is futile and will not work, for we are sexual beings. That is one of the greatest failures of Christianity.
I think that Conservative Christians in America are not going to welcome their African "brothers and sisters" with open arms. Xenophobia and a sense of white supreriority are still entrenched in many Conservative Christian people. The Southern Baptist Church was born to defend slavery, and has never really gone back on that, but just seems to hope that people will forget or have forgotten.
You live in a world in which all good people and all good Christians are "consevative" possibly Republicans, and evertything that is wicked or bad is "liberal" and Democratic. Your continued expression of your thoughts in this simple idiom contintues to undermine all your arguments. You seem to believe that Jesus is a Republican.
That is laughable and absurd, even to most Conservative people. Even if you do not intend to convey this idea, you do. Perhaps that is why almost no one ever comments here, not even Conservative Christians.
Posted by: DanielintheLionsDen | March 24, 2009 7:09 PM
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Decline in Religion? The Catholic Church has reported a seventeen percent increase in the Catholic Religion.
Posted by: TTWSYFAMDGGAHJMJ2 | March 23, 2009 3:50 PM
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just dont f---k my brains now,i'm watching Tv ok,my favourite serial-Lassie,
let me concentrate