We have been observing for at least two decades that Christianity is being pushed to the fringes of our society and culture. Beginning as early as the publication of Newbigin’s Foolishness to the Greeks, the removal of Christianity from the public sphere to the private has been observed and documented. One result of the privatization of religion has been the development of a subjective religion in which every person independently develops their own “religion” with little concern for what others think or what the Bible says.
This week the continued efforts to push Christianity to the fringes have been emphasized by our President’s decision to eliminate a a formal observance of the National Day of Prayer from the White House agenda. Our nation is struggling with the difference between the separation of church and state and the elimination of religion from the state. In response to the statement from the President’s office that all presidents pray, one atheistic organization was quoted as saying they wish the President wouldn’t pray at all.
At the beginning of the 21st century, the church goes outside its walls into a mission field that exists immediately around it. We live in a mission field. We must recognize that our nation is no longer a Christian nation (or at best, is minimally Christian). We are a nation where 80% or more of those who claim Christianity as their religion are casual Christians who irregularly or seldom attend worship assemblies. On any given Sunday, as few as 15% of the population is in church.
Missional living requires that we rethink the shape of Christian faith. In 2003, I wrote about Philip Jenkins’ book, The New Christendom. The challenge is perhaps more obvious today than it was then.
(1) We must preach the necessity of personal faith in Christianity, connecting personal experience and faith. (2) We must preach the demand for personal morality in Christianity. (3) We must preach personal responsibility in Christianity, understanding the autonomy of believers. (4) We must preach the power for personal change in Christianity, to save eternally and change lives here. (5) We must preach the necessity of personal application in Christianity in the context of culture, recognizing that Christianity is independent of culture.
While some may see all of this as bad news, historically the church has been strongest when it had to function missionally, when the world around it was a challenge rather than a support, when it understood clearly its role as strangers and pilgrims in a hostile world.