an interesting confluence of input and reflections happened for me this week. I just finished teaching a course at Tyndale Seminary entitled "Faith and the Marketplace." I finished reading Robert & Julia Banks', The Church Comes Home, and I started reading James Choung's True Story: a Christianity worth believing in. Then Grant sent me link to a Toronto Star article, "Christianity arguably the most persecuted religion in the world" and Mark sent me a link to a Globe & Mail series, "Future of Faith" (5 articles), starting with "Canada marching from religion to secularization."
The persecution article tells the story of almost 50 Christians who were killed in a church building in Baghdad on Nov 1 -- just over a month ago. Did you hear about that? No? No kidding, neither did anybody else -- the Western press doesn't tell these stories. Or the stories of my colleagues in Sri Lanka being beaten and church buildings burned down.
The article on Canadian secularization tells us that in 1971, only 1% of Canadians ticked 'no religion' on their census form, today 23% say they aren't religious. No kidding, is it really that low!! Another article in the series says that more than 50% of Canadians ages 15-29 have no religion and never attend a worship service.
OK, for those of us who pay attention to this stuff, this really isn't new news! But now it is news -- meaning, even the secular press knows something dramatic is shifting in our society.
Hendrik Kraemer has this comment about traditional evangelism:
The direct approach has no great promise, because the de-religionizing of vast sectors of people in modern society has deep-seated and long-range historical causes. The indirect approach, by really being communities of mutual upbuilding, of witness and service, by building in the desert of modern life genuine Christian cells, is the one indicated... For the world wants to see redemption. It is not interested in its being talked about. [written in 1958!!, more than 50 years ago -- and still we wonder :(]
Whatever we are doing in the name of 'church' is having very limited impact on our Canadian society, [evangelicals weren't even consulted for the G&M articles] so maybe this will push us to consider alternative forms of Christian community and witness, that more clearly identify with core biblical notions of ecclesia as a transforming 'household', 'people of God', inter-connected 'body,' rather than a voluntary religious association maintained by Mad Men advertising techniques.
Comments