Yesterday Rachel Held Evans posted this thought provoking
piece. Especially intriguing to me
was Diana Butler Bass’s response to New York Times author Ross Douthat’s
article "Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?". Evans posted this summary of Bass’s response on her blog:
Diana Butler Bass responded with an article entitled
“Can
Christianity be Saved?” in which she reminds Douthat that
conservative churches are also in decline. “In the last decade,” she writes,
“as conservative denominations lost members, their leaders have not equated the
loss with unfaithfulness. Instead, they refer to declines as demographic
"blips," waning evangelism, or the impact of secular culture.
Membership decline has no inherent theological meaning for either liberals or
conservatives. Decline only means, as Gallup pointed out in a just-released
survey, that Americans have lost confidence in all forms of institutional
religion. The real question is not 'Can liberal Christianity be saved?'
The real question is:'Can Christianity be saved?'
Intriguing because I did not know this (the decline of
conservative churches) was the case.
Recently I finished reading Rodney Stark’s The Triumph of Christianity. In his chapter on “Pluralism and
American Piety,” Stark makes an interesting suggestion. “As is evident in most consumer
markets, people do not usually rush to purchase the cheapest model or variety,
but attempt to maximize by selecting the item that offers the most for their
money—that offers the best value. (359)”
Crass language to describe the religion business, I know, but consider a
few of his examples.
Stark points out that the American religious landscape was
dominated by traditional denominational options at the country’s outset in
1776, but then the far stricter Methodists moved in becoming the largest
denomination in America by 1850.
Then by the dawn of the 20th century, the Methodists had
greatly reduced the moral requirements to be a member in good standing and
their decline already had begun. (359-60).
This pattern, Stark points out, shows up in the data below:
The denominations at the top of the list have “discarded
traditional Christian teachings and ask little of its clergy and members—the
Episcopalians long tolerated Josh Shelby Spong, an extremely vocal atheist, as
a bishop. (360)”
One might be tempted to point to the Catholic Church as
anomaly in some way or form, given the relative absence of shift in data, but
this is not the indicative of the whole story. After the amendments of Vatican II the number of monks and
nuns plummeted. Why? Stark argues it was because the
sacrifices required of people to be in these orders was reduced. “Fore example, many orders of nuns were
allowed to abandon their elaborate garb and wear clothing that does not
identify them as members of a religious order. Other council actions revoked rules requiring many hours of
daily prayer and meditation in convents and monasteries. (362)” Within a year there began a rapid
decline in the number of nuns. In
the U.S. the number of nuns went from 176,671 in 1966 to 71,487 in 2004 (363).
Stark’s conclusion: competition does not reward “cheap”
religion.
One of my friends recently called Stark “bombastic” in some
of his claims. I know that we
should always be wary of statistics and that generalizations are never
completely correct so I will share this anecdotal evidence.
I recently received a phone call from a prospective Truett
(Baylor’s seminary) student. He
became a Christian at a Passion event.
As a result he has developed deep affinities with that movement and
wanted to know if, since this was the church David Crowder helped start, we
were a church like that?
I will now make some of my own generalizations. The Passion movement seems to be
distantly connected with the neo-reformed movement. I say "distantly" because I don’t think it is explicitly
so. Louie Giglio, though a
Calvinist, is seeking to make Christians, not just Calvinists. And though John Piper is a frequent
speaker I would guess the masses have a Christian faith more akin to Francis Chan or Beth Moore, at least in expression. I say that because my suspicion was that this student was
really wanting to know if we were a neo-reformed church.
Wanting to be articulate in my response to this student I
began asking what a church like “this,” was like. We chatted extensively about atonement, providence,
salvation and a bunch of other theological issues that I thought might help him
make a decision. Some issues made
it clear how divergent our views were, some issues made clear how much we had
in common. At one point we got to
a “so what’s really important for you about church,” question. His answer surprised me. It was essentially that he wanted a
church that partner with him in sharing the gospel at whatever the cost, even
if it meant death like the early martyrs died.
I follow John Piper on Twitter. Occasionally I’ll click on a link as I did when this was
posted on the Desiring God blog.
For all my theological objections, I can agree with neo-reformers on
this: the gospel demands our life … all of it.
I’ve said this much about the neo-reformers for two
reasons. 1. As far as I can tell,
they are the fasting growing religious movement in this country. 2. They understand that the gospel is
costly.
Dietrich Bonheoffer understood better than most of us that
grace is not cheap. Because grace
is not cheap, neither should our ecclesiology be.
My favorite David Crowder Band song is “I’m Trying To Make
You Sing.”
The song, just two verses, remind me of the profound and
haunting nature of the gospel:
And I'm trying to make you sing
From inside where you believe
Like it's something that you need
Like it means everything
And I'm trying to make you feel that
This is for real, that life is happening
That it means everything
I'm just trying to make you sing
I think the churches that will grow will be those that cost
you something to be a part of.
