Threat

"The early church was seen as a threat to the social order since it wouldn’t honor all deities; the church today is seen as a threat to the social order since it won’t honor all identities."

     - Tim Keller

No Longer the Majority

This is an extremely inciteful analysis by Dr. Russell Moore of where our culture is and is going regarding Christian influence and religious liberty. Please read it with thoughtful consideration. I think he is right. I fear he is right. Maybe I should be excited that he is right? Read it for yourself, and decide.

As a child growing up in a Southern Baptist church, I learned my place in American culture through rapture movies. These films—based on a pop-dispensationalist reading of prophecy—pictured a time when the church would be suddenly ripped from the earth, sailing through the air to be with the invisible (to the viewer) Jesus Christ. These films would always then picture the panic of those who were “left behind” and depict the societal chaos that would emerge once the “salt and light” of the culture had disappeared. We never considered that if such a rapture were to happen, American culture might be relieved to be rid of us.

Historian Rick Perlstein notes the “culture wars” that ignited in the 1960s and 1970s were really about dueling secular prophecy charts. “What one side saw as liberation, the other side saw as apocalypse,” and vice-versa, he writes. It’s hard to argue with his thesis. The scenes of LSD-intoxicated college students frolicking nude in the mud of the Woodstock Festival in New York would seem horrifying to the salt-of-the-earth folk in Middle America for whom “the dawning of the Age of Aquarius” would seem like a threat. At the same time, Merle Haggard’s counter-revolutionary anthem would have the same effect, in reverse. The words, “We don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee,” must seem like hell, if you’re in Woodstock.

From Majority to Minority

The problem with American Christianity is that we always assumed there were more of “us” than there were of “them.” And we were sometimes confused about who we meant when we said “us.”

The idea of the church as part of a “moral majority” was not started, or ended, by the political movement by that name. The idea was that most Americans shared common goals with Christianity, at least at the level of morality. This perception was helped along by the fact that it was, at least in some ways, true. Most Americans did identify with Christianity, and the goods of Christianity such as churchgoing and moral self-restraint were approved of by the culture as means toward molding good citizens, the kind who could withstand the ravages of the frontier or the challenges of global Communism. Mainstream American culture did aspire to at least the ideal of many of the things the Christian church talked about: healthy marriages, stable families, and strong communities bound together by prayer.

'God and Country' or 'Christ and Him Crucified'?

Politically and socially speaking, this is what a group is supposed to do: to attach itself to a broad coalition and to speak as part of a majority. The problem was that, from the beginning, Christian values were always more popular than the Christian gospel in American culture. That’s why one could speak with great acclaim, in almost any era of the nation’s history, of “God and country,” but then create cultural distance as soon as one mentioned “Christ and him crucified.” God was always welcome in American culture as the deity charged with blessing America. But the God who must be approached through the mediation of the blood of Christ was much more difficult to set to patriotic music or to “amen” in a prayer at the Rotary Club.

Now, however, it is increasingly clear that American culture doesn’t just reject the particularities of orthodox, evangelical Christianity but also rejects key aspects of “traditional values.” This is seen politically in the way that the “wedge issues” of the “culture wars,” which once benefited social conservatives, now benefit moral libertarians—from questions of sexuality to drug laws to public expressions of religion to the definition of the family. Turns out, they do smoke marijuana in Muskogee.

Four Trends: The End of Cultural Christianity

A very interesting and thought-provoking article  - 4 Trends in American Christianity by Ed Stezer. I think he is right on all four.

Despite what many think, the church in America is not dying (and no serious researcher thinks that). However, there are some challenges and changes to be considered.

When we consider missiology, part of the discipline includes considering how churches relate to their culture. Since we live in changing times, it's worth thinking through what current cultural changes mean for future church engagement of that culture.

Here are four trends that are already evident, but will become even more important in days to come:

1. The word "Christian" will become less used and more clear. There are three broad categories that make up the approximately 75 percent of Americans who refer to themselves as Christians. I wrote about this earlier in The State of the Church In America: Hint: It's Not Dying, but it is worth keeping in our minds moving forward. The fact is that not everyone who uses the word "Christian" is using it the same way.

Cultural Christians, about 25 percent of the U.S. population, are simply those who, when asked, say they are a Christian rather than say they are an atheist or Jewish. They are "Christian" for no other reason than they are from America and don't consider themselves something else.

The second type is what I call a congregational Christian. They account for roughly another 25 percent of the population. This person generally does not really have a deep commitment, but they will refer to themselves as a Christian because they have some loose connection to a church—perhaps through a family member, maybe an infant baptism, or some holiday attendance.

Convictional Christians, also about 25 percent of the population, are those people who self-identify as Christian who orient their life around their faith in Christ. This includes a wide range of what Christian is—not just evangelicals, for example. It means someone says they are a Christian and it is meaningful to them.

So, what's the trend?

Well, first, the trend is that less people are calling themselves Christians and those who are will take it more seriously. In other words, cultural and congregational Christians, or the "squishy middle," is collapsing while convictional Christians are staying relatively steady.

In the future, the word Christian will mean more to those who would be considered convictional Christians. However, it will mean—and will be used—less to those who were nominal Christians in the first place. The word will be less used and more clear.

2. The nominals will increasingly become nones. Basically, type one (cultural) and two (congregational) are what we would generally call nominal Christians. Nominal comes from the Latin, meaning "name" or "name only." A growing number of people are name only Christians. They claim "Christianity" for survey reasons, but rarely attend church or give any consistent consideration to their faith identification.

They're simply calling themselves Christians because that's who they consider themselves to be, not because of any life change or ongoing commitment. Those types of Christians, about half of the population now, will become a minority in a few decades.We are now experiencing a collapse of nominalism.

It is fair to say we are now experiencing a collapse of nominalism. Many of these who have been labeling themselves as Christians are starting to feel free to be honest about their religious affiliation, or lack thereof. The "Nones," those who give say they have no religious preference, could potentially represent as many as half of the population in the next 20 to 30 years—it's already over 30% among college students (with a third of college students still being religious).

The nominal Christians in the squishy middle (cultural and congregational Christians) are becoming those who now answer "none of the above" on religious surveys. In other words, the "nominals are becoming the nones."

As the Nones rise in their number, Christian influence on culture will begin to wane. The minority of Christians in a culture will begin to feel even more like a minority when more nominals become Nones. As people no longer claim to be Christians, Christianity will be further marginalized, which should change the way we think about engaging culture.

Tugging Hard

“Throughout American history, the most successful church movements have not been the ones that kept up with contemporary culture, but the ones that were confident enough to tug hard against it.”

                   -Russell Moore

Hat Tip: Tim Challies

The Jesus Movement Turns 40

The Jesus Movement Turns 40 @ Thinking Out Loud
Christian Festivals and the Jesus Movement: @ Tall Skinny Kiwi
We Need Another Jesus Movement - J. Lee Grady
A New Jesus People Movement - The Journeyman's Files

40 years ago this week.  I remember that magazine cover! 

Jesus became real to me in 1970, during the youth revival known as the "Jesus Movement." Those were exciting and heady days. Sometimes it seemed like you could just walk down the hall at many high schools and just breathe on people and they would get saved.

Ocean baptisms, giant rallies, concerts from the early days of contemporary Christian music (before the "suits" from the record companies took it over) - I saw it all. Most of the Christian leaders in American churches who are now in their 50's and even 60's got their spiritual start in the Jesus Movement of the 1970's.

As a veteran of the "Jesus Movement,"  I now officially feel old - but grateful for all God did in my life back in those days. May he do it again with a new generation!