In my last post, I acknowledged the admittedly hard, cold
fact that the American Church is on the decline. In my personal experience as a
Christian minister, I can tell you that this is not a blow to my pride that I
must try to soften as much as I possibly can. Instead, it is a saddening fact
that I feel I must expose if there is any hope for the future, not just for the
church, but for those the church is supposed to impact. We are the salt and
light in a tasteless and dark world. Christians must be concerned for our own
health, not for the sake of self, but for the sake of others.
A few days after writing my previous post, “Why is the American Church Losing Traction,” a friend of mine sent me a link on Facebook to an
article in the Huffington Post. We had been discussing the issue from our own
differing perspectives, and here was yet another perspective from a differing
point-of-view. While we all disagree on the “why,” we all acknowledge the “what,”
the American Church is spiraling downward.
The title of this particular article read: “The End of Church.”* The author, Diana Bass, was also acknowledging the current tendencies
of our American culture to move away from “religion.” Yet, per my last blog, I
believe Bass’s title to be a bit premature. First of all, while the church in
America is certainly on the decline and will be on the margins by the year 2050
if current tendencies hold, certainly we cannot assume that we are seeing
outright extinction. Moving from the social norm to a small minority is one
thing; total nonexistence is another. Now, this might be a Christian minister’s
attempt to be optimistic. I hope not.
Second, and perhaps more pertinent, I must once again note,
mainstream writers are intent on focusing on the decline here, while failing to
acknowledge Christianity’s exponential growth elsewhere. Even while the
Christian community is losing numbers in one area of the world, namely here in
the United States, it is growing at such a rate elsewhere that the faith as a
whole is actually increasing. Let me be clear, this is not just “church talk.”
I am not just repeating some cliché idea you hear bantered about the halls of
church, “Well, you’ve heard of the conversions in Africa haven’t you. Thousands
a day!” While this might sound like ungrounded Christian optimism, according to
peer-reviewed research in the realm of academia, the hard numbers demonstrate a
growth. Thems the facts, as they say.
In other words, the terms “end” and “death,” which are used
throughout this article, are a bit premature at best, and can be very
misleading at worst. Yet, this does not negate that the church has a problem
right here right now, and Bass has some very interesting comments to make that
we should consider. While I assume Bass and I would almost certainly disagree upon many
topics such as the nature of Christianity and the direction in which the faith
should move, we are seeing the same data, and some of the information she
brings to light helps shed light upon my last post. So, let’s dig in.
The first statement that caught my attention was spot-on and rife with
irony: “For decades, mainline Protestants have watched helplessly as their
membership rolls dwindled, employing program after program to try to stop the
decline.” I would only add to this that, along with programs, the church is
also resorting to marketing. The United Methodist Church, the denomination that
I officially belong to as a lay man (not my ordaining body), has for some years
now tried to regain its status in America through commercials and sloganeering:
“Open Hearts, Open Doors, Open Minds.” Such attempts have not proven fruitful.
It is not that the church has just not figured out the right marketing strategy
or program, it is that people are not looking for such. In fact, it is the
programming of which persons are so annoyed. Persons do not want programs;
programs that came to replace church education and practice, are the exact
problems that have caused our decline in the first place. So using such
programs in order to draw persons in is quite ironic. People are looking for a
faith that changes life, a point Bass makes and one that we will discuss
presently. Speaking about labels, Bass states:
Americans are extremely warm toward "spiritual
but not religious" (30 percent) and, even more interestingly (and perhaps
paradoxically), the term "spiritual and religious" (48 percent).
While "religion" means institutional religion,
"spirituality" means an experience of faith. Large numbers of
Americans are hankering for experiential faith whereby they can connect with
God.
While the tenor of Bass’s entire article seems to suggest that the movements of American sensibilities upon
religion are new, exciting, and evolutionary, I would argue that the want for
“experiential faith” is nothing new. Moving back only a few centuries, we can
note that John Wesley often spoke of Christianity, at its core, as being an “experimental
faith.” While there is no need to examine the full etymology of the term
“experimental,” it is obvious from its use by this 18th century
thinker that the word he would use today would be “experiential.” The New
Testament clearly demonstrates Christianity as a new way of life. The movement
of the church to devolve into merely an institution of programs and marketing
is the emerging church. If we do move towards a more experiential faith, it
will not be an evolving, but purification from “progress.”
In the above quote Bass also demonstrates that the average American is
not simply becoming irreligious and naturalistic. It is not as if Americans
have a sense of evolving as persons who understand faith as outmoded and
academically inferior. In fact, there is a large faction of persons who still
want for spiritual connection. It is not simply that Americans are through with
faith in things unseen. If it were the case that deepening knowledge has made
our want for faith superfluous, pluralism would not be on the rise. Instead,
the trend would simply be a shift to atheism and naturalistic thought: “But,”
as Bass points out, “nearly half of Americans appear to hope for a spiritual
reformation -- or even revolution -- in their faith traditions and
denominations.” Instead of leaving
belief in a deeper reality behind post-modern persons are simply dabbling in
various faiths, trying to fill their need for a deeper connection, and where
the church is more attentive to real needs, instead of denominational concerns,
progress is made.
There are successful individual
congregations -- Catholic or Protestant, mainline or evangelical, liberal or
conservative, small or large -- everywhere. But the institutional structures of
American religion -- denominations of all theological sorts -- are in a freefall…They
are still trying to fix institutional problems and flex political muscle
instead of tending to the spiritual longings of regular Americans…Americans are
not rejecting faith -- they are, however, rejecting self-serving religious
institutions.
Bass seems to point out an interesting fact, and I wonder if there is
another possible outcome that this could produce beyond Bass’s assumption of an
ending of the church. While I do not believe Christian-based faith communities
that have a deep desire for experiential faith are new, they might be relatively
new in America, although, as I alluded to earlier in mentioning Wesley, such a
presence has existed in America before, at least during the early Methodist
movement. Maybe, instead of an end, some persons are leaving denominationalism
in hopes that “self-serving” church institutions will catch a hint that people
are hungering for something much more authentic, and the church will remerge
stronger than before. This has happened in Australia. According to a
conversation I had with Brian Edgar, a Christian ethicist in Australia, while
denominations still exist in Australia, persons do not decide on attending a
church based on the name over the door. Instead, persons test the churches on
an individual basis. In other words, people go to churches that promote true
Christian life, not denominationalism. Perhaps, and I simply say perhaps, if
the church in America can realize this truth, that it is not about marketing or
programs, but about experience, then maybe there is hope for the church. I do
not think this is absolutely outside the realm of possibility. As Bass points
out, there are individual churches within many traditions that are successful.
In the end, Bass suggests that our present culture “expresses a
grassroots desire for new kinds of faith communities.” In one way, I find this
statement oxymoronic, especially when the author seems to be simply equating
the American church with Christianity as a whole. How can we be expressing a
“grassroots” desire for something “new”? On the other hand, I can agree that
many American persons are craving something that can be largely unavailable in
many mainline churches today, a promotion of experiential faith. As I stated in
my last blog, one of our biggest problems is our lack of want to theologically
educate our communities on what it means to be a Christian. Instead, we just
give them things to do, programs as it were. This is entirely lacking. Persons
do not inherently know how to live within a culture. They must be taught. The
church has an ontological responsibility to teach others what it means to live
out the faith.
*Bass, Diana.(Feb.
18, 2012). “The End of Church.” Huff Post Religion, Retrieved from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diana-butler-bass/the-end-of-church_b_1284954.html
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