Chuck's Column - 07/06/08

I have just read a fascinating book by Christine Wicker, former religion reporter for the Dallas Morning News entitled, The Fall of the Evangelical Nation: The Surprising Crisis Inside the Church. She charts the decline of conservative, evangelical Christianity and offers some insights as to why. Here are a few quotes from the book.

"Evangelicals' version of Christianity has been losing ground in the United States since 1900. By one measure, they have declined from 42 percent of the population to 15 percent. One rough estimate shows perhaps one thousand evangelicals leaving the faith each day, most of whom leave Christianity altogether and never return."

"Losing young people is an old story, but dissenters I was meeting were of a different, even more alarming kind. They were not lightweight kids trying out different ways of being, as I had been when I left evangelical faith. These were church stalwarts whose Bibles were so well thumbed that the pages curled, midlife Christians being drawn out of evangelical faith by their own, Bible-inspired, deepest values, sometimes ones they hadn't realized they had. They were leaving evangelical faith for the same reason outsiders sometimes say they won't join the evangelicals- because they seem un-Christian. These departing evangelicals could outquote, outtestimony, outshout me anytime, anyplace. Some were leaving altogether, foreswearing the faith totally. Others were keeping their memberships intact but quietly pulling back. Some were still going to church, staying quiet but disagreeing on more and more until they could hardly be counted as evangelicals at all. Others were quietly changing their beliefs, working for a new kind of Christianity."

The final quote comes from her last chapter entitled, "What Happens Next?"

"If evangelicals give up the idea that only they are saved and that hell doesn't await everyone who disagrees with them, they will be a very different faith group. It will be a struggle to keep religious passion high without the threat of hell to spark it, a struggle to keep devotion steady without the allure of being the only ones whom God favors. But some of these new-style followers of Jesus believe they have something to offer that transcends such doctrine, something that has changed them, something that is with them still, something that can change the earth."

We do have a message that can change the earth. It's the message that Jesus embodied, taught, and gave his life for- the kingdom of God on earth. It's not a message of how God will take us out of this world when we die. We do have a life beyond this life in Christ, but it does not pertain to some other world. It still pertains to this world. It's a message of how God will change this world when we follow Jesus in the way of the cross- the way of suffering love for the good of others. The message of Jesus is not that we will escape hell by believing in Jesus. The message of Jesus is that God is at work in our world to transform it into a world of justice and peace and abundance for all. There are powers that oppose this transformation. They crucified Jesus; they may crucify us. But the kingdom of love and goodness will eventually win the day. Christ's resurrection is God's vindication that love will win.

Servants together,
Chuck