The Future of Christianity
(Intro to a series)
(Intro to a series)
“Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” Col 3 14
It was GK Chesterton who once remarked that: “At least five times the faith has to all appearances gone to the dogs. In each of the five cases it was the dog that died.”
The last two years have seen a number of significant books speculating on the future of Christianity. I suppose the Millennium is a good time to take stock; to look back over our modest successes (from 12 to over two billion in two thousand years) and some spectacular failures (100 Hymns for Today).
Over the coming year I have invited a number of Christian leaders to address us on the subject: The Future of Christianity. And today I want to set the scene and do a little public ruminating of my own.
Alastair McGrath is an Anglican priest, Professor of Historical Theology at Oxford and Principal of Wycliffe College. After a brief dalliance with liberal Christianity at theological college, he returned to his evangelical roots and has championed reasonable evangelicalism over the past 20 years.
Just over a year ago he published The Future of Christianity which was both scholarly, interesting and speculative: a rare combination.
He starts by looking at some of the human atrocities of the twentieth century; events like the Armenian genocide, the Communist persecutions, and the churches' failure to confront Nazism.
He argues that the liberal, ‘modernist’ Christianity of the 1960s grew out of these disasters and adjudges that it completely failed to bring people back to faith.
And I would agree that mainline liberalism, has suffered from what Gabriel Fackre calls “Christological heart-failure”. People returned to traditional forms of the faith, and to evangelicalism and fundamentalism.
He concludes that there are four branches of the church which, on the track record of the past 50 years, appear to have any hope for the future: Roman Catholicism, Pentecostalism, Evangelicalism and somewhat more speculatively, Eastern Orthodoxy.
McGrath is not all optimism and worries at the McDoladisation of the faith, whereby it is turned into a slick, easy-to-believe and shallow commodity which has lost most of its historic roots.
Dr Peter Ward, a lecturer at King’s London, takes the analysis of where we’re going several steps further on.
Last week his book came out, entitled, Liquid Church - I can see some of you are already keen to sign up...
You’ve heard of Modernity and the buzzword of the last decade or so, Postmodernity. Ziegmunt Bauman’s recent book, Liquid Modernity (2000), was a new way of looking at the globalisation which is affecting every area of our life together on the planet.
Pete has used this metaphor to look at what is happening in the church. He argues that there is still much solid church around - corresponding to solid modernity - buildings and congregations, parishes and church structures - all the things that have been part of Christianity for centuries.
But then there is a growing pool of Liquid Church - the loose networks of Christians who may or may not occasionally darken our doors, but who feel part of the Body of Christ, connected through informal fellowship, by TV, radio or internet, in alternative worship groups, or simply in association with other Christian friends.
They feel no loyalty to the structures. Some may think they are irrelevant. Others are happy to pop in from work for a lunchtime mass, or turn up on the major Feasts, or just look in out of interest from time to time.
They may go to a mums and toddlers’ group run by a church. They may be one of the tens of thousands who went to an Alpha course but then felt uncomfortable identifying too closely with the church.
Of course Anglo-Catholicism has always had it’s fair share of these. I’ve finally got round to reading Rose Macaulay’s book, The Towers of Trebizond, with that wonderful character ‘the Revd the Honorable Father Hugh Chantry-Pigg’ whom she describes as ‘an ancient bigot who had run a London church several feet higher than St Mary’s Bourne Street’.
The narrator says “I too am high, even extreme, but somewhat lapsed, which is a sound position, as you belong to the best section of the best branch of the Christian Church, but seldom attend its services.”
And then there is that great host of Anglo-agnostics who are out there in the liquid church and occasionally look in.
Pete illustrates three ways in which traditional, solid church, has mutated to try and adapt to the shifting certainties and moralities round about it.
There is ‘Church as Refuge’, where the congregation tries to become an all absorbing sub-culture, with lots of meetings, an emphasis on togetherness and family. This gives a sense of safety, and especially in the United States, mega-churches have grown up, with their own schools, restaurants, bowling allies, gyms, weightwatchers - I have seen the book ‘Slim for Him’.
Then there is ‘Church as Nostalgic Community’. It constantly laments over an imagined past, when rich and poor, young and old, flocked into church. Although there is some truth in this, the facts and figures of the past don’t generally bear it out.
Yet it is a powerful myth the church likes to believe about itself and by constant repetition it avoids having to take into account and act in the light of the very changed circumstances of today’s society.
Finally there is ‘Church as Heritage Site’. Pete Ward writes: “Far from being a turn-off, for some people the weekly visit to church is attractive precisely because it offers a slice of living history... As the tradition of the church is mutated by liquid modernity, the minister slowly turns into curator... Ministers and people are willing to see gradual change, but every effort is made to respect the weight of tradition.” (p.27)
Pete argues that although these islands of solid church will remain for some time yet, it is the liquid church that is growing in Europe and North America and many solid churches are melting into it. Alan Jamieson catalogued this process in his fascinating book, A Churchless Faith.
So what of the future of the church? Well my guess is that in the short-term, say the next 20 years or so, the solid core is going to get a little smaller but more significant. And the broad liquid aurora will become larger - I hope much larger - and slightly more coherent as a loose network, perhaps with solid church acting as nodes of information and tradition, and sustainers of the network.
And beyond that? I have no idea, but I am sure that God does not lose sleep over it.
Nevertheless, all the commentators and future-watchers draw some similar conclusions. Namely, the urgent need for all churches to grow through mission rather than by merely hoping to survive. In this respect all the books offer the same message: evangelise or die.
And another common conclusion is, that we need each other. Those who are spiritually hungry in our world are not particularly interested in denominational labels or styles of worship. If they go anywhere regularly, or drop in occasionally, they will go where they feel nurtured and loved. It is a very basic human need.
In the government guidelines for the relationship between school governors and the Head Teacher, they are described as ‘critical friends’. We cannot ignore differences or pretend we don’t hold opinions, but we must at the very least be critical friends. And this applies within a single congregation, as well as across the denominations and wider.
We have misunderstood the Gospel if we have made it a Gospel of exclusion. Our Lord always wants to include those who seek after God and truth. This is the message of today’s Gospel parable.
To demonise those with whom we disagree, in our own congregation or in another denomination, is frankly unchristian.
They drew a circle that shut me outThe Future of Christianity, our adventure into the unknown, can only be in following our Lord’s way of faith, hope and love.
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win
We drew a circle that took them in
(Edwin Markham)
“Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” Col 3 14
