By now the term "post-Christian" is common to most people in America. We're quite often referred to as a "post-Chriatian nation." This term means that America, a naiton traditionally and historically of the Christian persuasion, is now a place where the Faith no longer dominates. Christianity has had its time in the American sun, as it were. It is a time when young people can longer be assumed to know any basic information whatsoever about the Bible, and the vast majority have never heard the Gospel. Whereas jokes and referencers regarding Bible characters were commonplace and understood at one point, that's just no longer the case.
I was watching a video yesterday on Youtube of a presentation by Tim Keller, author of best-seller "The Reason for God," a bit of a modern day popular apologet like "Mere Christianity. He was speaking in a church in London and during the introduction the pastor of the church asked Dr. Keller a few questions, and during that interview the pastor said something fascinating. He said that London and other such places around the world have been post-Christian long enough now that they are actually pre-Christian.
The biblical-Christian voice has so died out or been shut up so long that, not only has it lost its influence, its influence has been forgotten! While this is not the case in many places throughout the world, it is very evident in the major cities like New York (where Tim Keller ministers as a church pastor) and London. According to Keller, this phenomenon is a leading contributer to the growth of his church, which he founded. It began as a church plant in 1989 with a handful of people and now has 5500 members over several campuses througout Manhattan. He said that the older generation has seen Christianity and has decided "it's just a bad idea," but the younger generation (being told it's a bad idea but not experiencing it for themselves) is actually curious about it.
Our once Christian-majority nation is becoming an unreached mission field. Without going off on a tangent of trying to point fingers at who to blame, I can't help be reminded of Israel just prior to the days of the judges.
Judges 2:7-10 says, "The people served the LORD all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who survived Joshua, who had seen all the great work of the LORD which He had done for Israel. Then Joshua, the son of Nun, the servant of the LORD, died at the age of one hundred and ten. And they buried him in the territory of his inheritance in Timnath-heres, in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash. And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers; and there arose another generation after them who did not know the LORD, nor yet the work which He had done for Israel." (NASB)
Author and professor of New Testament Studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, D.A. Carson, has been quoted explaining this same phenomenon as it has occurred throughout history. He says, "The first generation has the gospel; the second generation assumes the gospel; the third generation loses the gospel." It seems this is what has happened in America. Somewhere along the line something broke down. Somewhere along the road someone couldn't fix a flat.
So what happened?
I've studied this text a number of times and preached on it (I will be preaching on it again this coming Sunday at 5-Mile Community Church), and everything that I find points to one common mistake that causes this breakdown in communicaton of the truth from one generation to the next: incomplete obedience of the heart.
"Do as I say and not as I do" never works, because given the option children will ALWAYS do what parents do and not as they say. At the end of the book of Joshua is his famous last speech to Israel before his death, and in that speech he says that Israel should put away all traces of false religion. With the exception of the golden calf, Israel had not had much of a problem with idolatry at that point in time, so what most scholars believe is that Joshua is referring to traces of religions in their homes in the form of folklore and superstition. Not idols per se in the home, but just traces of their influence on an almost purely cultural level, just little traces of things that had crept into their homes and lives. Such skirting of full obedience is as good as full disobedience.
Incomplete obedience sows the seeds of disaster in the next generation. God's desire is for us to be holy inside and out. Inside down into the innermost parts of our being, those places no one ever sees. But most of us are more concerned with our reputations than God's evaluation of our holiness.
So it's up to those of us who are true believers now to ensure the gospel is passed to the next generation, and most of that will happen in the home from parent to child. That's the way it's supposed to happen. It's on us to ensure that America, if it is indeed pre-Christian, does not remain that way, and that the Great Commission is carried on.
Global evangelism will be unsuccessful on the whole until generational evangelism is successful in the home.
A very interesting article, and I enjoyed it. I would only challenge it to say that describing America as "Post Christian" (Or "Pre-Christian," or "Non-Christian") is, in my opinion. Somewhat overstating the case. I cite this survey: http://religions.pewforum.org/reports/
ReplyDeleteAt our most broad definition of Christian, (which I admit is too broad if we're throwing the mormons and the jehova's witnesses in,) Christians are the vast majority of the country. Even just looking at the protestant numbers only though, we're still the majority, even if only just.
That said, the demographics do indicate doubt rapidly rising among younger people, so in sense your point still stands. If we are not yet post Christian like Europe, it looks like we are heading their.
That said, perhaps I don't have as broad a perspective as I should, but I'm not sure a society can ever really be so "post Christian" as to be "Pre Christian." Christianity really has been the bedrock foundation of western civilization for 2000 years. Even amongst non believers or non-confirmed believers, it is the foundation of most western peoples concepts of things like God, The Afterlife, Morality, and History in General. Nonbelievers may reject the Christian interpretation of the above, but they are at least familiar with it enough to reject.
Great Blog by the way, I discovered it last week and have slowly been getting caught up!
Thanks, Scott. It's nice to get some feedback on here.
DeleteI appreciate your point, and I would like to be as optimistic, but the problem with religious affiliation surveys is that, as the article says, they are done by phone and based solely on what the person says their affiliation is. All a person has to say is that they're Christian and the surveyor adds one to the Christian tally. Many people will call themselves Chrsitian or Catholic or whatever simply because their parents were even if they've never seen the inside of a church.
Any survey method is going to be flawed because no one can know the state of a person's soul, but there are some more accurate survey methods done within the church that shows the percentage of people who are actually Christian believers, as in born-again, regenerated Saints, is about 3% of the nation, which is staggeringly low. Unfortunately I don't have a citation for you. That's a figure I heard in a lecture a while back from a credible source.
The vast majority of America has never heard the true gospel. A lot of what you said is correct, that Christianity has been the foundation of western civilization's concept of God, afterlife, etc., but in a way that points even more toward America being post and borderline pre-Christian. It's been around so long, and not taken seriously by so many people for long enough, that it's become folklore, legend or myth and the idea that it could be real is laughable.
Compare the country now with what it was 100 years ago. I know neither one of us were there, but I think we know enough about America to know that it was probably hard to find a family who wasn't seen in chruch any given Sunday. Now, I realize I'm using the same bad survey methods, but compare that to America today where it's almost hard to find a family who IS in church on Sunday. And of course some cities are more "religious" than others (Spokane is the 2nd most unchurched city in the U.S. with a Christian population out of just a couple thousand out of a quarter million in population.
I suppose in a way none of us will ever know the real numbers, and it's not like there's a set number to constitute a made-up term, but the youth in America make up a group of people that I believe does constitute a generally unreached mission field.