Category Archives: Christians Confronting Global Changes

Christians Confronting Global Change

Secular Times: Best for Christians?

“Although some religious conservatives warn that the retreat from faith will lead to a collapse of social cohesion and public morality, the evidence doesn’t support this claim. As unexpected as it may seem, countries that are less religious actually tend to be less corrupt and have lower murder rates than the more religious ones.” (Ronald F. Inglehart, “Giving Up on God; The Global Decline of Religion,” Foreign Affairs, September/October 2020)

Inglehart cites several factors in the noticeable decline of religion in the United States and other developed societies.

One is the greater security people may feel when their material needs are more easily met. They don’t feel a need to depend on a divine being to protect them from material want.

Also, as gender and sexual norms are relaxed, religion becomes less important in enforcing those norms.

However, Christianity began in the more secular society of the Roman empire. The Roman empire was fairly moderate in terms of religious freedom, so long as no religion advocated the overthrow of Rome.

Jesus taught his disciples not to worry about material things but to be more concerned about seeking God’s kingdom and righteousness. He did not, however, seem to forbid wealth in itself and even enjoyed fellowship with some who were well-off.

Though the early Christian communities taught care of the poor, some of the early Christians were well-off and shared their wealth. They also included the learned, like the apostle Paul.

The attraction to the religion of Christ has, throughout the centuries, included those who care for the poor, such as many religious communities in the Middle Ages. Material support for these communities often came from the well-off.

Christianity often spreads through a minority, but a minority that encourages practices that benefit society as a whole. In America, some Christians advocated for the abolition of slavery. Others advocated for universal access to education. Still others began missionary societies that cared for the poor and the sick even as they evangelized.

A belief in the worth of all people also contributed to the growth of more democratic forms of government.

Christianity is not necessarily limited in ultimate results by being a minority.

Religion, including Christianity, can be corrupted. Yet, throughout the centuries, each failure within the Christian community has birthed a minority who not only overcame the failures but found new ways to grow.

Western Christians in a Post-Christian West

The road to Christ’s kingdom on earth is a decidedly bumpy one, including detours.

Looking back over history, we see a pattern: When Christianity appears on the cusp of spiritual world conquest, some failure snatches away the victory. Christ’s followers must regroup.

Perhaps most Christians in the first few centuries after Christ thought of the world where they spread the religion of Jesus as mostly or primarily the Roman world into which Jesus came. As then, Christians again and again have had to jettison their small world view for a larger one. This revelation often seems to happen during times of threat to Christianity.

The civil government of Rome collapsed, and Christian missionaries discovered, in the ruins of that world, the larger European world. That world continued its influence for many centuries. The world for Christians was mostly Europe and nearby areas: the Near East and North Africa.

When that world was shaken with stunning victories by tribes out of Arabia, the idea of a Christian world was put on hold while Europeans fought for survival.

However, during those dark times, Christianity continued to quietly spread—to the Anglo-Saxon world and Ireland and into the far north of Europe.

When Europeans defeated their enemies and began to claim power, the church, which had comforted and sustained its people during the dark times, was tempted toward power instead of seeking the way Jesus had walked. Even as Europeans began centuries of world conquest, Christians had to make choices. Some people calling themselves Christians too often sought domination rather than service. Horrible wars, surely an abomination to the spirit of Jesus, have left aftereffects in the repudiation of a Christianity by some who saw its adherents as seeking physical conquest, not spiritual.

Yet, despite the difficulties, some Europeans broke through the nationalistic wall and spread the religion of Jesus to the non-European world, just as their ancestors had spread it to the non-Roman world.

American Christians may have to choose between a religion which worships a nation and the one begun by Jesus for the entire world.

Inviting the Poor to Our Good Times

Apparently, Jesus enjoyed a good time. He was no killjoy rabbi but was often invited to feasts and gatherings.

His only rebuke about such gatherings had to do with who was invited: did invitations to the feasts include even the poor and unfortunate of society?

No one of us is wealthy enough to erase all poverty or hunger or sickness. As far as I can tell, that is not the point. The point is that, if we are following Christ, one of our tasks is ministering to people in need.

In fact, Jesus taught that those invited into the kingdom at the last judgement are those who ministered to the hungry, the thirsty, the strangers, the poorly clothed, the sick, and those in prison.

We aren’t just saved from our sins; we find a new vocation.

As we are blessed, so are we called to bless others.

Taming Culture Wars

The supposed clash between different political groups in the United States has been described as a “culture war.” The painter and author Makoto Fujimura has described such a war “as a polarized mindset, viewing culture as territory to dominate rather than a common space Christians share with their neighbors.” (Quoted in “Defiant Joy,” Cosper, Mike; Christianity Today, December 2022)

In fact, we are all subject to human frailties and incompleteness. Jesus may be “the answer,” but none of us completely comprehends that answer, much less lives it. Thinking that we do, that people must see things the way we do is to choose the way the religious critics of Jesus did during his time on earth.

They ended up collaborating with the Romans to kill Jesus, just as too many people calling themselves Christians have taken part in religious wars to slaughter their “enemies.”

Perhaps we start with gratitude that God gives us the ability to think and ponder and observe and learn. We are each imperfect but with wonderful possibilities. We can look at those with whom we disagree as possibilities for our own learning.

We listen to them and converse and examine ideas. If they ask questions, we answer them with compassion and humility, grateful that we are talking, not fighting. We look to learn from them as well as share our own convictions.

Jesus spent much of his time in conversation with people, listening to them and answering their questions. People followed him because he attracted them and inspired them and gave them hope of a better way. They talked to him and listened to his answers and sometimes were changed. Surely, if we’re going to follow his example, we are called to that same way of interacting with the world.

Blessed Be the Tie

I grew up in the segregated South, and churches were, for the most part, as segregated as any other gatherings. White Christians have much to repent of.

On the other hand, the civil rights movement of the 1960’s owes much of its success to Christian church leaders, the majority black but including white Christians as well.

My own church was segregated, although not purposely so. No sermon that I ever heard in that church preached segregation. It was a working class, lower middle class white church in a working class, lower middle class white neighborhood.

We can be faulted for not having questioned the culture in which we operated. We didn’t respond to racism when we should have. We didn’t think about abolishing nuclear weapons, either. Nor were we found in the ranks of those working for women’s equality.

Yet, in looking back, I find redemption in the love that permeated my church for those who were there, not a small thing. The greatest love I knew after the love of my family came from that church.

That love planted its seed and enabled me to grow and one day led to conviction for my own racial sins and to ask for forgiveness and to change.

Love indeed covers a multitude of sins. In an imperfect world, it also changes us and leads us toward overcoming those sins.

The Lost Sabbath

Uncomfortable Sunday best clothes. Curtailment of sports and recreational pastimes. Long, boring sermons.

These are pictures we retain of puritanical Sabbath laws. Trish Harrison Warren suggests a different purpose for a Sabbath rest. (“How to Fight Back Against Inhumanity at Modern Work,” The New York Times, October 16, 2022.)

Today, Warren suggests, we need to revisit the Sabbath again: “When a careerist culture meets a digital revolution that allows unlimited access to work, something’s got to give.”

For workers in the beginning of the industrial revolution, who often toiled from sunup to sundown six days a week, a day off was a much needed day of rest, a day to connect with family, and perhaps to think of a deeper meaning for life. After all, in many ancient cultures, slaves and menial workers had no days off. One day was very much like any other. Surely, the beginning of a Christian Sabbath would have been welcome.

For several years of my life, I worked as a computer programmer. Most of what I did was, to me, boring and without meaning. I commuted to the city, swiped my badge before entering the work place, and settled in to staring at a computer, making minute changes for hours to computer programs.

I can understand why workers, working more and more on remote computer stations, would prefer at least the benefit of doing their jobs in a comfortable home setting. They at least can wear comfortable clothes, eat their own meals, and forgo a time-consuming commute. But, of course, if work can be done at home, one is indeed not limited by commutes or a set number of hours.

Computer monitoring also may mean that those who work selling to the public can be tasked minutely even to the bathroom breaks they take. Forget stopping to chat with a fellow worker and fostering a human connection.

Writes Warren, “The labor movement fought to change both culture and policy to limit our work weeks, and the 40-hour work week eventually became a norm.”

Today, we’re again overdue for a humanizing of work practices in keeping with our latest machine revolution.

Non-practicing Christianity

Vladimir Putin’s campaign against Ukraine has apparently been blessed by the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox church, one example of political religion. Dying while part of Putin’s army of invasion into Ukraine is even said to wash away all sins.

Political religion in several forms has long been a part of conflicts in the Middle East as well. From Islamic forces spreading their religion throughout the region and beyond, to Crusader soldiers of the Middle Ages, the differences linger on in many of the area’s conflicts today.

Political Christianity appears to be growing in the United States, even as some churches close their doors due to dwindling membership. The growth of political Christianity seems in direct contrast to the growth of actual practicing Christians.

Russell Moore suggests it might be kin to saying “those who declare themselves employed but have no income.” (From Moore’s newsletter, “Christian Nationalism Cannot Save the World,” September 29, 2022)

As Moore points out, a national Christian may be one who uses the term to distinguish themselves from those they wish to exclude, such as today’s immigrants. It is used as a way to exclude, not to serve Christ.

The teachings of Jesus, whom Christians purport to worship, spoke often of what distinguished his followers from others. In one comment on the final judgement of nations, Jesus talked of a separation of nations. The division was based on who had ministered to the needy and who had not. Those who were accepted into God’s kingdom had fed the hungry, given water to the thirsty, welcomed the stranger, clothed the naked, ministered to the sick, and visited the prisoner.

Not mentioned was nationality or the origin of one’s ancestors or what culture one lived in. Despite the fact that Jesus was a practicing Hebrew, that was not a factor in being accepted into God’s kingdom. What mattered was how one lived out God’s love for those he had created.

America certainly needs citizens concerned about the country’s problems. To bless nationalism with Christian favor, however, is a serious misrepresentation of Christ’s teachings.

Divide and Fail

The United States doesn’t have a state religion. Freedom of religion is guaranteed in our Constitution.

The founders of the Republic, despite shortcomings, had learned one thing from the history of countries they or their recent ancestors had left, usually in Europe. Religion as a form of government was deadly. Groups fought, burned at the stake, beheaded, cut in pieces, and otherwise practiced atrocities in attempts to force their particular religious beliefs on society as a whole.

In fact, religious beliefs pertain to ultimate questions: What happens after death? Does life have meaning? What is my purpose for living?

How can answers to such questions be decided by a king or even one group of religious believers for everyone else?

Yet, some of our citizens now practice a kind of “no quarter” politics. It’s them or us, and if our side doesn’t win, it doesn’t just mean we loose for another two or four years, after which we get to try again.

No, it’s now between them and us to decide ultimate questions or the country is doomed: The elites and the true Americans. The other side is not just wrong. They are out to wreck Christian America.

Interesting that the early Christians spread their beliefs so widely in spite of outright opposition, even persecution, by the mighty Roman Empire.

And then Christians, after conquering that empire in a spiritual sense, somehow lost sight of how they had won. Some of them began to assume that this Jesus whom they worshiped needed political power.

Eventually, of course, this seeking after political power led to breakups among Christians and then to abandonment by many, disgusted by this un Christlike behavior.

When the United States was formed, leaders wisely saw what political religion had done to Europe and tried to avoid that mistake in this new country.

The attempt to separate religion and state led, not to an abandonment of religion, but to its unprecedented growth. The current attempt to change course and tie the country to a form of political religion may end up making religion as unimportant in the United States as it grew to be in Europe.

Blood and Soil Christianity

I grew up white in segregated Nashville, Tennessee. My neighborhood was white, my schools were white, and my church was white.

Along the way, my ideas about race and the segregated system were challenged. Why couldn’t black families enjoy traveling and motels like my family did? Why did a group of white boys jeer at an old black lady walking to the bus stop?

After a while, I no longer believed in the segregated system or that whites were a superior race. Eventually, the churches I joined as I moved around for job changes in the south and elsewhere were integrated.

However, I was an old woman when I read Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman.
At that moment, what I had not understood all my life came into focus. Every time a black American stepped out of their neighborhood, they had to remember what I rarely thought about—that they were likely to be noticed because of their skin color. Always, they must be on guard.

A country that, for most of its existence from early settlements until centuries later, treated a segment of its population as inferior has much baggage to unpack. Interestingly, some of the difficulty comes not so much from those now-integrated or willing-to-be-integrated churches, but from those who used to attend them but now don’t.

As we know, attendance at churches in the south and elsewhere has dropped and is dropping. Some of those who, in their youth attended white only churches, dropped out before many of their churches answered the altar call to change their ways.

Yes, Southern churches have changed, but, as Russell Moore commented in an interview with historian Daniel K. Williams, studies show “a fast-growing trend among white Southern Protestants who seldom or never attend church and yet self identify as evangelical Christians.” (Russell Moore “When the South Loosens its Bible Belt,” Christianity Today, postdated August 11, 2022.)

Some of these former churchgoers may become even more extreme. Says Russell: “The kind of cultural Christianity we now see often keeps everything about the Religious Right except the religion. . . . Cultural Christianity, as we once knew it, is largely being replaced by a kind of blood-and-soil sense of belonging and obligation not to a church but to a particular brand of white political and cultural identity.”

Moore calls for what, indeed, the church has always called for: reaching out to those in need.

“Yes, if all people see of ‘Christianity’ is the anger and loneliness of half-Christians, they will not see the real Jesus. But the converse is true, too. In a time of loneliness, separation, and boredom, we ought to see craving for what Jesus told us we all need.”

From slavery to women’s rights to civil rights and more, the needs have always called forth those who answered. Sometimes they seemed to have failed—Germany as a nation followed Hitler. However, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and others in the confessing church are the ones who inspire us today.

I can see the faults of my south only as one raised there can see them. I also know that people, black and white, are working to overcome those centuries of wrongdoing. May God have mercy and bless these efforts.

A Flapping of Wings

In the past century or so, Americans’ awareness of the world beyond our small communities grew as we fought in two world wars and endured the Cold War. Events opened our eyes to nations far beyond North America. The internet now overwhelms us with news of the world’s gigantic problems: ethnic warfare, global warming, pandemic, and Russia’s attempts to take over Ukraine.

Our own lack of power tempts us to give up. In a Facebook post, the writer Anne Lamott addresses this feeling of helplessness. She touches on the “butterfly effect”: the theory that big changes can begin with small changes: growth toward a hurricane set in motion with the flapping of wings by a small butterfly.

“Well, how does us appreciating spring help the people of Ukraine? If we believe in chaos theory, and the butterfly effect, that the flapping of a Monarch’s wings near my home can lead to a weather change in Tokyo, then maybe noticing beauty—flapping our wings with amazement—changes things in ways we cannot begin to imagine. It means goodness is quantum. Even to help the small world helps. Even prayer, which seems to do nothing. Everything is connected.” (Anne Lamott, in a Facebook post 4/5/22)

We still have the same callings as our ancestors. We are called to serve through the little and small ways given to us. We do the next thing. We shower the world with our own tiny bits of service and prayer and perhaps become part of a greater and better whole.

The Church Forever Decaying and Being Restored

Tom Holland, raised in the Christian tradition, but not, it would appear, a card-carrying Christian today, has written a unique history of Christianity’s journey: Dominion, How the Christian Revolution Remade the World. His book suggests that the main currents working for justice in the world today owe their power to the religion begun by a Jewish rabbi two thousand years ago.

Few today, including devout Christians, would claim a sinless Christianity. Yet the very people, Holland suggests, who malign it may themselves be carriers of the lessons of its founder.

Movements improving the lot of humankind have mostly occurred after Christianity began, and they often were begun by Christians. They include movements against slavery and for improving the status of women and children. They include the building of hospitals and measures to improve the lot of the poor.

Those who call out the sins of some calling themselves Christians—bigotry, support of slavery, and male dominance, to name a few—build on the lessons Jesus taught, also against the sins of religious leaders.

The gospel writer Luke records an incident of someone working in Jesus’ name who didn’t follow with the disciples: “‘Master, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he does not follow with us.’ But Jesus said to him, ‘Do not stop him, for whoever is not against you is for you.’” (Luke 9:49-50)

T.S. Eliot wrote in The Rock: “Of all that was done in the past, you eat the fruit, either rotten or ripe.
And the Church must be forever building, and always decaying, and always being restored.”

A Rekindling of Hope?

“. . . new coalitions are gradually forming, across many different kinds of Christians . . . who are rethinking old convictions, who are meeting, and mobilizing in the hopes of renewing the evangelical presence in America.”

So wrote David Brooks in an opinion piece for The New York Times, February 4, 2022: “The Dissenters Trying to Save Evangelicalism From Itself.”

Some would say that the nadir of American evangelicalism was on display in the support of Donald Trump for president by about eighty percent of American evangelicals in 2016. As Brooks pointed out, however, the election only displayed results of years of challenges faced by evangelicals. (Lately, some have questioned how many self-defining “evangelicals” actually are active church members.)

Brooks’ column reported on those evangelical leaders and lay people who are, in fact, appalled by the political decisions of evangelicals in 2020. It spotlighted efforts in opposite directions. “There are now many, many people who refused to be silent about abuses of power.”

This readjustment has resulted in denominational differences becoming less important. “These kinds of new connections constitute an important form of social capital that may turn out to be very powerful in the year ahead.”

American evangelicalism may owe any change in direction in some measure to its changing makeup—more “Korean, African and Hispanic” members, for example.

News stories are full of the decline of American Christianity. Stories of young people leaving the faith of their parents are legion.

But the history of two millennia of Christianity is full of dark nadirs when many calling themselves Christians failed to live up to the teachings of their founder. Yet, renewal always followed, sometimes arriving from the backwaters of civilization.

Perhaps the next renewal of Christianity may come from some combination of non-Western Christianity joining with a remnant of American evangelicals.

Where the Light Fell

When the author Philip Yancey was a baby, his father contracted polio and died. Today, few Americans give thought to that horrible disease, arriving without any seeming purpose, crippling some, killing others.

Yancey doesn’t remember his father’s death. He only learned as a young man of his parents’ decision to remove his father from the hospital and its life saving equipment “against medical advice.” The couple had planned to be missionaries. They believed God would heal Yancey’s father so the couple could carry out what they believed to be their mission.

When the father died instead, Yancey’s mother dealt with this crisis of faith by offering up her two sons to be missionaries in the couple’s place. Yancey comes to realize: “My brother and I are the atonement to compensate for a fatal error in belief.”

Yancey’s book is the story of the sons’ journeys through this awful blood sacrifice. His brother, a talented young man, chose a devastating route out of the destiny his mother planned for him.

Yancey also fought against the legalistic straight jacket placed on him by his mother and some of the churches and colleges he attended. He began his own study of books and writings that opened both his mind and his spirit. He fell in love and knew a joy he had never known before.

Unexpectedly, in a college prayer meeting, he opens up and actually prays—at first defiantly against a God he doesn’t care for—but something happens. His honest prayer begins what is perhaps his first true experience of God’s grace.

Yancey’s story (Where the Light Fell) and his other writings bridge the gap felt by many who struggle within legalistic churches that too often have failed to understand what Jesus lived and taught.

Culture and the Christian Faith

The Christian faith, over time, has refused to be bound by one culture. Beginning in the Middle East through a few Jewish followers, it broke the bounds of those who wanted it tied only to that nationality.

It refused to be bound by Greek speakers, spreading to the western Roman empire. When the new religion of Islam devastated Christian empires in the east, it grew in Europe.

Eventually, it burst the bounds of church/state unions in Europe. Kings tried to own it, but segments broke away from a church/state identity and spread, especially in the New World. Amazingly, Christianity began to grow in a new arena that refused any ties to state domination.

Over the centuries, Christianity keeps discovering new areas of growth: against slavery and racism and worship of money. Against nationalism.

Christians still struggle not to be dominated by outside interests: class, wealth, politics, power. In the United States, a too-close identification with American culture has led to declines in some groups.

But one of the faith’s strengths is that defeat leads it to find new arenas for growth.

Decline of Religion

According to one academic study, religious practice in the world appears to be declining:

“From about 2007 to 2019, the overwhelming majority of the countries we studied—43 out of 49—became less religious. The decline in belief was not confined to high-income countries and appeared across most of the world.” (Ronald F. Inglehart, University of Michigan, “Giving up on God; the Global Decline of Religion,” Foreign Affairs, September/October 2020)

A previous study analyzing 49 countries from 1981-2007 had found that 33 of the 49 countries had become more religious. The 33 countries included most former communist countries, most developing countries, and even a few high income countries.

The more recent study, however, showed that religion was practiced less even in many lower income countries.

Inglehart concluded: “Modern societies have become less religious in part because they no longer need to uphold the kinds of gender and sexual norms that the major world religions have instilled for centuries.”

What is interesting for me, however, in a personal look into Christianity’s place in the world today, is how it is, this moment, continuing its tradition of breaking new barriers.

In times past, religion in western societies usually revolved around families and communities. Schools, politics, and other forms of civic life tended to uphold norms held by the majority. Religion included a kind of civil religion, generally Christian or Jewish.

Mass migration of young people away from birth communities as well as modern inventions like social media have played havoc with community norms. The multi-generational family long ago gave way to the nuclear family which gave way to young people setting up single person households or with a significant other. Religion as encouraged by family suffered greatly.

Now, however, a next generation Christianity is proving that Christianity is not dead but evolving, perhaps closer to the model lived by Jesus.

A minority, but a significant minority, are espousing issues like racial reconciliation and care for the struggling—the homeless, the mentally ill, and the migrant, to name a few.

From the time the disciple Peter struggled to accept Gentiles into the Jewish Christian community, Christians have broken bounds, sometimes willingly, sometimes after fallow periods—but the conquest first named in a letter from the missionary preacher Paul continues today: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you all one in Christ Jesus.”

Greater America

The United States is fortunate in that the potential immigrants into our country on our southern border are from populations with whom we have known and interacted for centuries. Unlike other migration movements in the world, our cultures share many similarities.

The United States has not always proved helpful to Central Americans. In the past, we have supported dictatorships friendly to corporate interests taking advantage of poorly paid workers.

We can atone for some of those sins by pushing for reform by those Central American governments whose corruption we have often overlooked.

In an effort to deal with increased flows of migrants toward our borders, President Joe Biden has begun meetings with our Central American neighbors at various levels to develop programs around issues that connect us. These include migration but also economic development and climate change. Dealing with these issues might reduce the northward flow of immigrants.

Of course, this flow into our country is not necessarily bad. One of these days, we may look back with envy on those movements sending us the immigrants we needed for our birth-deficient nation.

Livestreaming Violence: Our Choice

Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s prime minister, has called for a global meeting to discuss measures to stop the livestreaming of violence. It’s set for this week in Paris. Ardern is co-chairing the Paris meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron.

New Zealand recently was the scene of another horrific mass murder, this time of Muslims. This massacre was planned by the killers to be beamed to the world on social media as they carried it out.

In the world of instantaneous broadcasts, the massacre was viewed, as the killers intended, millions of times. Social media sites attempted to shut it down, but humans can act only so fast—not nearly as fast as the internet.

It’s a safe bet that virtually everybody who downloaded that video did so by choice.
Whatever the legal changes, or lack of, to the practice of livestreaming, people watch such scenes by choice.

An unwatched video loses its power. Ultimately, it’s our choice to watch or not.

Ann Gaylia O'Barr

Culture and World Events from a Christian Perspective