I recently had the great pleasure of taking a road trip with
a favorite cousin. We drove eight hours
each way, and I can honestly say that the conversation never lagged on any leg
of that journey. We talked and talked
and talked, about anything and everything.
Cowans require black coffee, but we are otherwise self-starters when it
comes to the conversational arts.
Of course, we found our way to discussing matters of
faith. My cousin is a serious
Catholic. I use the word “serious”
rather than devout because we are either blessed or cursed with an arid,
acerbic wit that more or less precludes any of us from ever being categorized
as “devout”. I will just say that she
takes her faith quite seriously, and has admirably raised two seriously
Catholic offspring to boot.
In the course of her career, my cousin has been thrown much together
with mainstream Protestant and/or Evangelical co-workers. We discussed some interesting situations
and conversations that arose from her often being the lone Catholic outlier. And in the course of this discussion, she expressed
curiosity about my own particularly gloomy outlook in regards to general American
Christianity.
My cousin has perhaps not followed developments on this
subject as I have (and is no doubt better off for it). And so, I went off on one of my religious
harangues. As there were only the two of us
in the car, I inflicted it on no one but my cousin. I outlined what I saw as the sloughing-away of
our broad Christianity, all across the board—from the demographic implosion of
the mainline churches (primarily Episcopalians, Disciples and Presbyterians), to the
ever-leavening influences within Evangelicalism.
To avoid any taint of triumphalism, I posited that the same
factors would also decimate Catholic and Orthodox numbers. The only difference, I believe, is that the
apostolic churches have the historical legs to weather the storm and come out
on the other side. I envision no dystopian
apocalypse. The country will hum right
along nicely, with people pursuing the same things they are pursuing now, only more
so. They just won’t be particularly Christian, and probably will not even feel the loss.
Of course, many of the other churches will still be around. But in this country, you can apparently be
something simply by saying that you are—the final triumph of the Will over Reason. So, while many will no doubt still claim the
name, they may not be recognizably Christian in any historical sense of the word.
This accelerating declension is harder to spot down here in East
Texas and Dallas, where church is still big business. But if you look around, the signs are clearly there. The pool of adherents is
diminishing. Christianity is
increasingly seen as something quaint and peripheral, and not even generally
expected among people you know. And if
all anyone knew of the faith was the public face of it in this country, then
who could blame them? (Think Joel Osteen’s smiley-face on the Barnes and Noble
shelf, Mike Huckabee’s grandstanding with Kim Davis in Kentucky, or Robert
Jeffress’ cringe-inducing public prayer at the Trump rally in Dallas). If I didn’t know better myself and thought
this was all there was to it, then my attitude would be that of Flannery O’’Connor--“then to hell with it!”
To bolster this view, one need look no further than a recent article in our local
paper’s Religion section. If I did not
know that it was on the up and up, I would take it for a parody. A young preacher has been called as the new
pastor for a sizable Methodist church in our city.
To be honest about it, I have long harbored an illogical prejudice
against this particular congregation.
Many years ago I did a job for the church’s long-time pastor. He never made the slightest pretense of
paying my invoice for the service I provided him—not a dime. And so, when I would see him quoted in the
newspaper through the decades, this is what I remembered! And then about 30 years ago, I bumped into an
acquaintance at the coffee shop one morning.
He is about 20 years my senior and is a member of this
congregation. After talking about a play
or something they were hosting at this Methodist church, he asked me where I attended. After I told him, he proceeded to take me to
task for my church’s negligence when it came to women’s rights and the role of
women in the church. I was a bit
taken-aback by it and fortunately did not respond as I was inclined to do. Let’s just say that my personal knowledge of
his background led me to discount any advice he would give on this particular
subject. So, there they are—my ingrained
prejudices!
That said, I certainly wish them no ill will. The fresh young preacher from SMU’s Perkins
School of Theology desires “to lead the church in the direction it wants to go,” and states that “the grand plan is to reach out beyond the church walls to
strengthen the community…[by] sponsoring soccer and softball teams, putting on
block parties, partnering with local ministries and developing more
relationships with local schools. In
addition…there are plans to provide community workshops about issues such as
bullying, identity theft, financial planning and debt reduction….As part of
reaching out to the community, the church wants to bridge the gap between the
older and younger generations and minister to people in their 20s and 30s. Some of the plans to do this include having
free family movie nights with popcorn and drinks and a barbeque and bounce
house night for the neighborhood.”
The new pastor obviously felt a need to tag something at
least vaguely spiritual in all this community outreach. He expressed a desire to “really connect
with people and help them grow in their relationship with Christ…. ‘It’s what
Jesus did…Jesus went out and met with anyone and everyone. We need to do the same.’”
The services themselves ought to be fun, noting that “he
tries to make the services interactive and incorporate multiple senses. Some examples include using flash paper for a
Bible story that involved fire and passing out Fig Newtons for a story that involved
a fig tree.” No doubt he had to dig deep for that one.
You get the picture.
I have a prediction for the young pastor—none of this is going to
work. One thing that jumped out at me
from the story was the fact that they had canvassed the neighborhood in a
one-mile radius, finding that one half of the residents were unaffiliated with
any church and saw no need to be. A few
years from now, this thoroughly upper middle-class neighborhood’s statistics will be even worse. Nobody will be brought in by these tricks.
In my conversation with my cousin, I remembered commenting
that I had never not believed in God. I
had always believed and never gone through a period of doubt. Mind you, I have rarely lived as if I
believed, but that is a topic for another post.
What I did not mention to my cousin was that for as long as I can
remember I have also been convicted of my own need for repentance. I am blessed beyond measure to be in a place
(a Church) where I can work all that out.
But for the life of me, I do not see any room for it in the community center masquerading as a church outlined above.
