Is Church decline the fault of evangelicals?
Concluding week Mark Forest posted an intriguing commodity request whether evangelicals are to blame for the decline in people claiming to be 'religious'. He is responding to a new survey conducted on behalf of Linda Woodhead which shows that, for those nether twoscore, 'no religion' is the new religion. In a strange way, this might be a reflection of just what evangelicals take claimed for some time.
During the last few years evangelicalism has become the dominant force in UK Christianity. One of its key distinctives is the need for the individual to cull to become a disciple of Jesus. For evangelicals, no one is born a Christian. It is a personal decision, to exist marked in the lively and flourishing charismatic-type churches by baptism, the rite of initiation into the Church. Churches might have a "fringe" of people who attend parents and toddler groups and other social-type meetings – and they might even turn up to services occasionally – but they aren't part of the "real" church unless they're committed believers.
On this understanding, the reluctance of people to say that they are Christians is an inevitable part of the evangelical narrative: "We know we aren't Christians, because you tell us we aren't."
Wood here brings to the rather two-dimensional sociological analysis the tertiary dimension of theology. The hidden question underlying the Church of England's 'Reform and Renewal' programme is exactly this question: what is the church, and what does information technology mean to exist a leader of this church? At a briefing last week on 'The Church in Crisis: panic or denial?' Richard Bauckham addressed simply this question. What are we here for as a church?
For the Church of England, as the established church, in that location has been the accretion of all sorts of things which are not essential to its identity equally a church—including, we might suggest, a contribution to the definition of national identity every bit 'English'. These things might be useful in certain contexts, but they are not what the church essentially is. Rather than being an innocuous purveyor of pomp and circumstance, theologically speaking the church is defined by its relationship with God. This might seems obvious simply it is not always the example in practise in many of its discussions, including the discussions past Linda Woodhead and Andrew Brownish. Then Bauckham 4 key understandings from the New Attestation of what the church is.
1. The people of God.
This is the idea behind the New Testament linguistic communication of ekklesia. This is a continuation of the language of the Greek Old Testament (the Septuagint, 70) used regarding Israel. The church building is the renewed Israel in these cease times. This term as well has a background in Greek understandings of the democratic authorities of the city (polis), referring to the citizens' assembly. In the New Attestation it is the assembly—but of God'southward people. It is the ekklesia of God. Well-nigh often it refers to the people who assemble together in a item place, even when they are not really doing it. Implicit in this perspective is the reality that the church would not be if God had not created it; 1 Peter 2.ten expresses this most clearly, where Peter notes (citing the OT) that those he writes to 'in one case you were not a people' until God formed them every bit a people past means of Jesus' act of redemption.
two. The Temple of God
This kind of language is besides institute in one Peter 2.v, where Peter's addressees are 'living stones, a temple congenital past God' but the language is also used explicitly in Paul, both in relation to believers corporately (1 Cor 3.16) and individually (1 Cor 6.19). But, springing from Jesus' own claim to be the true temple (John 1.fourteen, ii.21) and Paul's theology of church building as body of Christ, it underlies many other aspects of Paul'south thinking. The temple is the place where God promises that his presence will dwell; it is the place where you lot worship; where God is to be found.
There is a key challenge hither: tin can we retrieve of this thought of church building as temple without thinking well-nigh church buildings? In the NT, information technology is an image of the people, not the buildings—and in fact, it is about people in contradistinction to buildings, and one building in particular. God is present wherever this people gather. God makes himself accessible more fully than he could possibly have done in the Jerusalem temple.
3. The Torso of Christ
This is an idea that we do not observe in the OT nor anywhere outside the Pauline messages. (I am convinced that is springs from Paul'south see on the Damascus Route in Acts 9, and Jesus' revelation that whatever is washed to his followers is done to him. This notion is found, in other terms, in the gospels, particularly in Matthew 25 and in Johannine ideas of the disciples being 'ane' with Jesus and being incorporated into him, e.k. in the image of the vine in John 15.) In the Corinthian correspondence, this thought is more about relationships with ane another; in Eph iv.15–sixteen (and its rather startling metaphor of the torso 'growing up into' the head, whatever we make of that) it is about our relationship with God. Information technology is non concerned with the 'divinisation' of the church, but emphasising that this is where the risen and ascended Christ makes himself visible in the globe.
4. Disciples of Jesus
As I accept explored previously, this linguistic communication is but used in gospels and Acts. Information technology is an interesting puzzle to encounter this in but one office of the NT—but it is a pretty meaning part, and and then hard to ignore. Luke'south use of the term in Acts emphasises continuity between pre and post-Easter religion; much has changed, simply non everything. If in the gospels, disciples are people who accept spent time with Jesus himself, in Acts disciples are being who have spent time with disciples of Jesus, and then themselves get disciple-making disciples. This is, in effect, Luke's way of expounding Matthew's unique termmatheteuo in Matt 28.19.
The language of 'disciple(ship)' (though the NT never uses the abstruse substantive) highlights personal commitment to a way of living. The church building is a community of people who intentionally fashion their life subsequently the example of Jesus. It is about living the whole of one'due south life in the way that Jesus taught and exemplified.
Having outlined these four aspects, Bauckham then added a note of caution. The recurrent impulse in the Protestant tradition that nosotros ought to exist going back to NT in how we practise everything. This is trying to have besides much of a good thing. There are things about the church in NT which are historical and contextual. Some things took time; some things are unclear. They are instructive merely they are not instructions. Nevertheless, these iv things give u.s.a. some of import markers in our thinking most church and religion in England and the UK. They mean that some ways of thinking about numerical decline are alien to the NT—in detail, worry that information technology signals a reduction in the power of the establishment, or concern almost keeping evidence on the road. We should be concerned about numbers, just these four ideas analyze why: because we desire people to come to organized religion in Jesus Christ.
This takes us back to the opening question: what are we to make of both the refuse of 'organized religion' in the nation, and the parallel decline in church attendance? A friend of a friend posted concluding week on Facebook some sobering statistics:
Past way of comparison, the English Football Premier League has an Average Weekly Attendance throughout the year of 264,300. The combined membership of all political parties in the Britain is effectually 850,000 (which includes 180,000 who accept joined Labour as part of the Corbyn surge), a figure which includes many who but pay a membership fee but don't turn upward to anything. While the direction of C of E church attendance is an issue to be concerned about, C of East weekly attendance is still something that dwarfs many other evidently thriving institutions.
In other words, nosotros now live in a society that elementary doesn't opt in. Social media (amongst other things) has made us all into trenchant individualists.
The analysis of Woodhead and Brown doesn't appear to pay whatever attention to this—and information technology collapses any theological perspective under the weight of (naive) sociological business. Thus Brown can conclude:
But at the same time equally people have been growing less religious, the Church building of England has been growing more than religious: more exclusive, more of a club for self-witting believers, prouder of being out of pace with the people it once served…Under those circumstances, information technology's non really surprising that no religion has go the new religion, while "religion" has get something that other people exercise. The interesting question is whether Christianity in this country tin can ever recover, or whether some kind of organised humanism could actually supercede information technology.
In this arroyo, Christianity is simply an aggregate expression of whatever the nation happens to believe—a hard definition to justify on whatsoever set of assumptions.
Even Mark Woods analysis is in danger of collapsing iii distinct but related issues:
- Should the Christian church have a set of core, distinctive beliefs that set information technology apart from wider civilisation?
- Should the Christian church be engaged in social and communal activity in the order effectually information technology?
- Should the actual gatherings of people equally church include a broad fringe of the sympathetic, the supporting or the inquisitive rather than being sharply defined by affirmation of belief?
The sociological approach answers these questions 'No, yes, yes.' Some conservative churches reply 'Yes, no, no'—they are clear nigh the gospel, clear almost the demand for commitment, and have frequently seen social involvement as an unwanted distraction from 'proclaiming the gospel.' Many of the new churches have changed this to 'Yes, aye, maybe', as they accept added social activeness to an otherwise 'bourgeois' theological outlook—simply all the same emphasise the importance of commitment and discipleship. Historically, the Church of England has oftentimes answered 'Maybe, maybe, no'—they accept been reluctant to spell out core beliefs, oftentimes not very intentional well-nigh active social engagement, but very relaxed about who turns upwards and why. Every bit an evangelical Anglican, my answer is 'Yep, yes, aye'—historically, the Church building has at times been very clear about what it believes; at that place is a compelling argument for expressing the gospel in activity as well as words; and people need time and space to explore faith if the church is to grow or exist effective.
But without answering 'yes' to the first question, and answering it forth the lines that Richard Bauckham suggests, it is difficult to see in what way nosotros are talking almost 'church' at all.
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