Post-Christian?

This isn’t going to win me a lot of friends here, but this is what I think. I’m basing this on no more evidence than a little history, a lot of experience and an actor’s knowledge of human nature.

The world is getting smaller every day. Every day we learn a little bit more that explains the world around us, inside us and beyond us. To children being born today (maybe their children, but almost certainly no later), the interactive connection to foreign people, lands and ideas will be a given, much like TV is to us, and the concept of “foreign” will seem backwards and anachronistic. Ancient rules and customs will have little power over a mind that can soar thousands of miles at the speed of light. One can already see the beginnings of this as our own children reject the prejudices of the past. As humans become ever more advanced, abstract ideas of religion, god and the soul will be transformed into something we can only begin to comprehend. Maybe not rejected in their entirety, but different than they are.

Simply put, Christianity as the Western world has known it since the Reformation is dying. Instead of adapting to the changes around them, fundamentalist Christians (and others, but I’m just talking about Christians) are wildly attacking everything that comes close to contradicting an increasingly narrow worldview. The vicious fight we’re seeing right now over evolution may seem like a resurgence of creationism, but it’s a last gasp. The ever more desperate attempts to force the world into the shape of a text has been translated and mistranslated a million times into as many languages over thousands of years are the vicious attacks of a cornered animal.

In the last 20 years, a despised Catholic church has become allies with those who less than a century ago would have gladly snuffed them out. Judeo-Christian has become a common term to imply a relationship that has never existed with another people who would recently have been publicly reviled. Even Mormons have been invited to the party, such is their desperation.

The more they rail against the world, the more the world will fight back. Christians are losing the struggle and it’s making them angry. You simply cannot fight the future. It is necessary to adapt or die. Even the Catholics recognized this and tried to adapt with the Vatican Councils. This was either too late or too soon, because it has reverted from what was an increasingly accepting body right back into the tyrranical monster of old.

In the near future I think the word fundamentalist will become so dirty that we will see Orthodox Christians emerge. Quite a turn of events in a world where Protestants were once the rebellious freethinkers trying to escape Rome’s backwards and corrupt regime. And as all groups that refuse to accept the world moving on, they will be marginalized, just as the Hasids and Quakers are today.

To paraphrase one of the defining icons of my generation, “The more you tighten your grasp, the more will slip through your fingers.”

This is not simply a Christian problem. The Muslims are having a hard time of it, too.

So – more or less Christian? It’s that kind of thinking that will doom you.

Or, more simply, I agree with you. Maybe I should read that book.

I wanted to refine my comment.

I’m not saying Christianity won’t survive, it just won’t survive in its current incarnation. I think to be successful in the 21st century and beyond, Christianity will have to become a religion of philosophy and not ideology. One that is in search of Wisdom and Truth and not one convinced that it has already found them.

Does that make sense?

Bullet,

I’m reading a book now called “The Forgotten Ways” and it’s as if he looked forward in time and read your first comment, then wrote a whole book about it!

Have you ever thought about writing a book on how Christianity can move forward in the future? Ha ha.

Kyle,

Nice analogy! Ha ha. I’ve been trying to learn the art of analogy and metaphor myself. I stink at both.

I also stink at answering your questions. And actually, your question is an ancient one – which many books have been written about: How should the church respond to culture? I’m not about to try to tackle such a question here. Sorry! (Ha ha)

But my basic answer to your specific question is that in a day when families and communities are disintegrating, one of the best things a church can do is be a family and a community to those who won’t get it anywhere else. This means being authentic, open, honest, loving, forgiving, truly gracious, kind, compassionate, etc., etc., etc.

Jeremy, I found a link to the 1st chapter of that book. It sounds exactly like the principles of the movement I am in (or at least what it’s agenda began as – and was very successful for a time) but I’ve discovered Hirsh, in fact, disapproves of our movement. He’s from the “mainline” Church of Christ – while we are often referred to as the “Boston” movement. Our two groups have been in the midst of a reconciliation in the time period that he has been in a leading role of Mission and Revitalization of the CofC (beginning around 2003). I’ve heard rumors that they have a desire to reproduce the missional aspect we have been successful at, and we’ve been trying out the autonomous structure they’ve been successful with. I’ll have to ask our evangelist if he’s read the book. We’ve been re-arranging our seating similar to Hirsh’s diagrams of late.

Much of what I am reading in this first chapter seems almost identical to the information I first studied with the group 7 years ago – and even then it was from a 20 year-old study guide. The hard part of it, and Hirsh seems to lean this way, is that the model really relies on a committed congregation. With the experience of living through the nasty consequences, we’ve learned that kind of commitment takes one right up to the line of Lordship Salvation, and it requires an incredible amount of restraint and humility not to cross that line.

I agree with what I read so far – on principle if not logistically. Didn’t know I was missional – just thought I was following Jesus!