What I Write About

I write about the infinite number of intersections between every day life and the good news of the God who has come to get us.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Irreligious-izing of America

Yesterday I read a story about a recent survey showing that America is becoming less and less religious. Specifically, less Christian. A couple of thoughts in response:

1. I think that the overall trend is true: Christianity is moving to the global South and East. America has only to look to Europe to see its religious future: a small band of faithful among a largely post-Christian, secular culture. I think that this might happen within the next 50 to 100 years.

2. The survey finds that the biggest losers are the mainline churches: Methodists, PC-USA, United Church of Christ, the Episcopal and Lutheran churches and others. Many of these churches have drifted so far away from historically faithful Christianity that they can barely be called Christian any more. Good riddance.

And so from this perspective, I think that this shift to a less culturally "Christian Nation" is a good thing. There are fewer people living a lie. There's more integrity in saying that you don't believe something than to go through the motions of some Sunday morning ritual that is done mostly out of habit or to gain social and/or business contacts.

It also sometimes makes for easier conversations about Jesus. One evangelism specialist I talked to said that his response rates in the more secularized, less churched North is way higher than his response rates in the more culturally-churched South.

People have been inoculated in the South with a weakened form of Christianity. They know the words but have all the wrong definitions. They think they know Jesus, but they don't. They have a truncated picture of him but they don't realize it.

3. Of course, the flip side of the good thing is that there is an experience of grace even in cultural Christianity. For example, to know the ten commandments and to somewhat live by them has a blessing innately woven into it. To attempt to live life cut off from our Source and our Purpose or the operating instructions given to us has innate consequences.

4. In the end, the article notes that evangelical churches, particularly mega-churches, are the ones that buck the trend and are booming. This makes sense as the corollary to point 3 above: as people grow tired of religious stuff that means nothing (as generally exercised in the mainline church), they either leave the church or they search for the real thing.

I think that that this is a unique time for the church in America. There is so much shifting ground both within the church and in the broader culture.

Evangelical Christianity is uniquely wired to respond to these changes because we've always believed that we had a message worth communicating to the culture, no matter what the cost. It remains to be seen if we've got what it takes to deal with the incredibly complex challenges coming at us right now.

One (Christian) commentator thinks that evangelicalism in the U.S. will collapse in the next 10 years along with the mainline churches. Some of it--maybe much of it--needs to die. It'll be interesting to see how it all unfolds.

3 comments:

Amanda said...

good post. i definitely agree with #2. Maybe not so much about the specific denominations mentioned, but I definitely think that the death of the mainline churches can be a very good thing. So much of our Christianized culture seems to be nothing more than noise that is simply getting in the way of real, intimate, radical, and often counter-cultural Christianity. I hate to see people leaving the Church, and will certainly hate to see so many churches bite the dust; pruning is an ugly process. But I think the result just might produce a Church more intimately connected to Christ, and possibly a Church more beautiful than we could ever imagine.

Alex said...

amanda,

thanks for chiming in--someone on my facebook note said that they thought i was over-stating the "good" evangelicals v. "evil" mainliners.

which i was. i'm just trying to make a point--obviously there's real believers in all these churches and plenty of folks who are just going through the motions!

i agree that the process is ugly, but i like your image of pruning to apply here--i think that's something of what's going on.

Amanda said...

somewhat related, I thought you might find this interesting:

http://www.soulpancake.com/view_post/204942/what-is-soulpancake.html