So Things are Not Going So Well, What Next?

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 A recent article from Pew Research starts off:

Since the 1990s, large numbers of Americans have left Christianity to join the growing ranks of U.S. adults who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular.” This accelerating trend is reshaping the U.S. religious landscape, leading many people to wonder what the future of religion in America might look like.

This is a crisis. It’s destroying the shared morality that has made freedom possible in the USA. This will fuel tyrannical legislation to try to enforce morality, and we Christians will probably not like the morality that will be enforced. (See A Free People’s Suicide by Os Guinness)

How did we get into this mess?  I think especially the lack of apologetics at the level of the intellectual elites we have exhibited in the last two generations. Also, anti-intellectualism among evangelical Christians has lead us to abandon fields such as philosophy and college professorship. (See The Scandal Of the Evangelical Mind by Mark Noll)

It was an avoidable tragedy. As Os Guinness has said elsewhere, “It’s not that Christians were out thought; it’s just that they weren’t around when the thinking was being done.”

It doesn’t help to hide behind the self-authentication of Scripture (unless one takes a carefully nuanced approach to that as in A Peculiar Glory by John Piper). It doesn’t help that many Christian apologists that are predominant right now will tell you upfront that they don’t think their arguments ultimately prove anything (Tim Keller in his “Questioning Christianity” podcast or William Lane Craig in the book Reasonable Faith are examples).  

I miss the Cornelius Van Tills and the John Gerstners of the world, not to mention Greg Bahnsen and R. C. Sproul.  Those folks did claim rigorous, reasonable, and ultimate proof of something. 

 What do we do as Christian leaders?  I have some layman’s advice. It’s free advice and may be worth what you paid for it, but here goes. 

Stay the course for the most part. Keep doing apologetics but strengthen the endgame in mind to prove God’s existence and the truth of The Bible. Keep teaching in-depth theology in an understandable way. Keep answering people’s honest questions. Keep “teaching the gospel with the intent to persuade,” as J. Mack Stiles says in his book Evangelism.  Keep praying and instilling a desire to pray in others. 

I have a poor outlook for our culture over the next few decades. I’d recommend The Benedict Option by Rod Dreher for its cultural analysis, although it don’t think his solution is carefully thought out. We must strengthen our institutions, such as Christian schools, like Dreher says, but we must engage our culture in relevant ways by being involved in mercy ministry, our honest secular vocations, and even as a faithful presence in politics. 

It’s not time to ‘circle the wagons,’ although our institutions need strengthening and our religious freedoms need protecting. It’s not time to be passive or to retreat behind an overly strict Two Kingdoms Theology like Mike Horton. It’s time to pray and do what we can to make a difference in the culture and in the individual lives of non-Christians. 

Not to mention it’s time for us to teach people how to live the Christian life, because some of the people who abandon the faith do so because they try to live according to God’s laws and fail.  How does one live the Christian life?  Hopelessly and fully dependent on the grace of God in Jesus Christ.  From the perspective that we are new creations in Christ, and we have the ability to try again and again when we fail because we are fully forgiven and accepted by God.  

Teaching the "why" of the rules is important as well.  People have to know why in order to live out the "hows."  That is another task for apologetics.

May God strengthen us for the work.

Comments

Anonymous said…
This makes me sooooo happy to read! My 14 year old comments alluded to this trend and it's nice to be see it's fulfillment. It is honestly refreshing to see that your advice as a "Christian Leader" is to double and triple down on what you've always done and increase your efforts in driving thoughtful and kind people away from your religion. It reminds me of the old jokes about dead horses and work.

Say things like, "This is the way we always have ridden this horse"
Change Riders
Harness more dead horses together for more power
Buy a stronger whip to beat your dead horse.
Hire contractors to ride the dead horse
Appoint a committee to study the dead horse
Consider if the rider needs more assumptions/knowledge to ride the dead horse
Visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses
Revisit the performance requirements for horses
Develop an incentive program to encourage the dead horse to perform at acceptable levels.

What i expect you to eventually reach is to:
Change the definition of "dead" declaring that "This horse is not dead!"

Then console yourself while you slip off into irrelevance "that you tried, you really tried" and its the fault of others for not falling for a hurtful religion. Ignoring your claims they will suffer eternally if they don't send telepathic messages to a Jewish ghost who was his own father who will allow you live forever if you tell him that you will accept him as your master and ask him to remove a magical curse that was passed down to you because an old woman that was made from the rib of her partner ate a piece of magical fruit from a magic tree because a talking snake with legs told her to.
January 05, 2023
J. K. Jones said…
Anonymous,

Are you ever going to t ll us who you are? Is this Sunny D from all those years back? If so, good to hear from you again.

The decline of Christian profession in the West has been simultaneous with the growth of Christian profession in some of the least likely of places, such as Iran and China. The light has also come on in “Deepest, Darkest Africa.” You will be disappointed in the demise of the church whose found said, “…I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not stand against it.”

The rest of your biting and sarcastic comments depend on your rejection of a mountain of historical, experiential, and philosophical evidence that affirms Christianity, some of which is shared on this blog. They hold no weight since that is the case.

Lastly, you might consider working on your own caring and hateful attitude.
January 05, 2023
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