Tim Keller:

• There is a shift in the evangelical population that used to be more blue collar. More are going to college and  have dveloped a different take on the Christian faith.
• Many people of faith want to take their faith beyond just two issues into the public sphere of the academy, Hollywood, and even wall street.
• Some peopleof faith see all of life as being a part of faith

Meachem:

•  The political recent experiment of Christian America in the political sphere has failed.
• There is a difference between Christianity and Christianized America
• More people of faith have less allegiance and trust in religious institutions, so the church has to figure out what to with that.
• Many people of faith have become more seeks that religious adherents

So American is becoming less religious but not necessarily less Christian?  Last September at the religious news writers association I shared during a panel discussion that I thought American culture was decidedly less religious but still very open to the Christian faith.  More prominent authors like Greg Boyd Myth of a Christian Nation has written about this. Julia Duin in her book Quitting Church also speaks to the shifting tide that Meachem addresses.

Other people of faith are convinced this shift means the end of Christianity as we know it in America.They may be right. It may be the end of the practice of the Christian faith as we have known it.  But it does not mean the end of  the Christians faith. We can no longer do business as usual. But changing our approach to practicing the Christian faith does not mean the death of the christian message.

So are we in a post-christian era or a post religious era?

First, there is the knee jerk reaction and immediate assumption by some of us Christians that if people are not religious they are anti-Christian. (Oh and by the way if you are anti-Christian you are also anti-American). In fact the article suggested that all religions and religious tribes are losing ground.  Instead of looking at the context and seeing that though these folks are not interested in religious institutions (and remembering that Jesus was not either)  they are spiritual ; there is the immediate defensive posture that they are hostile to religion and so hostile to us and so hostile to God. There is no consideration of the idea behind Dan Kimball’s book that they might like Jesus but not the church (i.e institutional religion) .

Secondly there is what seems to me to be a weak confidence in God’s word and Jesus message that feeds the fixation on personal salvation as all that matters. I need to get heaven and the rest be damned. Religion is the ticket to heaven. Not faith mind you religion. So if we are losing our religion then we are shaking the very foundations of the faith. Never mind that Jesus said the gates of hell will not prevail against the the church. I believe that God in control and will ways be in control and though the church or religion may be shaken, the faith of Abraham, Jesus and Paul will not no matter what craziness we mixed up messed up human beings get into.

So I don’t blame the average pew sitter in this. it is some of our religious leaders that truly worry and scare. Watch the video that was sent to me to rebut my thoughts about living faithfully in a post-religious world.

[youtube OH1yOmij7Q4 nolink]

john mcarthur’s religious views on the emergent church

But there is blame to go around on all sides there are some folks with new perspectives on the faith that seem intent on disconnecting from the historical biblical Christian faith.  It gives dogmatic people fodder for their views and lets them paint anyone not agreeing their dogmatic views with the same brush and leads to responses like the one below to my above thoughts.

Either or propositions? What? Are we all Hindus now too? Truth is ALWAYS an “either or proposition.” You yourself cannot follow your own line when you refer to truth as being Scripture. (No relativist ever can live his own propositions.) I do agree that salvation is “holistic” (I really hate all these goopy trendy words) – spirit, soul, body. But the great, overwhelming emphasis in Scripture was on the spiritual, the eternal, the Kingdom that flesh and blood cannot inherit.

Years ago church consultant Bill Easum suggested to a group of church leaders that one of the biggest challenges for Jesus followers moving into the future was going to be the question how can I follow Jesus without being a bigot. I think he was asking us to consider how can we stand for Jesus without blowing off the very people Jesus calls us to reach.

So I wonder what will faith look like in post-religious world? Will there be a church for the post-religious or will we all be heading to hell in an hand basket?

I wonder if defenders of the truth will descend on this blog to prove their point and share their view, we will see.

The insights Roxburgh shares from the book reinforces the though I have ad for some time that we don’t need to go do 2.0 churches right now in America. Churches that bear not resemblance to the historic church. What we need are 1.5 church churches that link back to the future. An ancient future church (that Webber wrote about) that  that re-imagines the church of today based on the church of yesterday including but not limited to the new testament church.

I am intrigued by Roxburgh’s comment about all the new Church gurus. I think these are the people who want to draw a line in the sand and do a new church that has no connection with what has come before.  I think he is right is saying that these folks look at the world only through their (all too often elite) lens,  usually white male academic. They ignore all the contributions of people outside they world view and experience have made to the church. They propose this new church based on their own cultural biases to the exclusion of all else. This is why I am post emergent. Stark research seems to bear this out.

Roxburgh ends by saying if we want to have a missional transformational church we will need to go to the center of where the culture is. I think we need to take a preliminary stil. Across the board we the church need to stop acting as if we are at the center of our culture and the universe. We are not. God is, it is God’s mission not ours. So as Roxburgh suggests we need to where God is and that is where the work of the Church is to be found.

Alan Roxburgh – Vlog #2 : The Missional Journey.

i wonder as i wander: what is the emerging/missional/monastic/ multicultural/postmodern church anyway?.

Here is a great blog addressing some of the issues I have about the way some proponents of new church movements approach what they do in relation to people of color. The perspective and experience of people of color is most often ignored, dismissed or trivialized. Race and racism as a shaping force in America is not acknowledged. May it is because they have no experienced the ills of personal racism up close. I don’t know ,but Chanequa Walker-Barnes hit the nail the head with here analysis. glad to know that tere is another voice adding a loving critique.

Thanks to my friend Joe for sending me in to the link

BREAKOUT PANEL #2: Whither Congregations?
The big wooden doors are closing as graying churches and synagogues can no longer sustain themselves in changing neighborhoods. This panel will look at why some neighborhood congregations are dying and how others are reinventing themselves to reach out to new flocks of faithful in coffeehouses, warehouses and homes. Moderated by Cecile Holmes, University of South Carolina.

Speakers:
• Diana Butler Bass, author, speaker and independent scholar specializing in American religion and culture
• Andre Daley, leader, Mosaic Life (Christian faith community)
• Julia Duin, assistant national editor of religion, The Washington Times, and author of the book, “Quitting Church”

Now on to Hirsch. I read the shaping of things to come a couple years ago and used it when I taught a class on the missional church at GRTS a year ago. I own but have not finished reading Hirsch book the Forgotten Ways. It was helpful to hear him share his thoughts first hand. Hirsch talked about four critical shifts for the church to stay relevant and not die in the current context for ministry

• recovery of the centrality of Jesus
• recovery of discipleship
• recovery of  incarnational missional impulse
• recovery of apostolic ethos and movement

I think I have heard or read most of this stuff before. Some of it I have been saying myself for years. (Not that that means anything.) But what was interesting to me is how different his perspective on these issues were as opposed to whatI have heard coming from those who love his writing. The people who have talked to me about Hirsch’s SOTOK approached it in such an either or manner that I got the feeling that if I didn’t buy into every he said and follow is right now I was part and parcel of the death of the church.

Don’t get me wrong there is a prophetic urgency to Hirsch voice but he presents it with a much broader fuller, perspective and graciousness than many of his adherents (at least the ones I know) have. Maybe this is the way that books on this subject have to be written so that people will buy them. But after listening to Hirsch I didn’t get the same eiither or feeling about what he is proposing that I got reading the book. Instead I find myself in agreement with Hirsch that we need to learn how to rediscover what it means to be fully Christian fully human, and fully the church.

I beilieve he is correct when he challenges us to appreciate the fullness of the gospel and Jesus message and not simply attach to the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus like  some kind of a “cosmic fire insurance”. Or place so much emphasis on the ethos of Jesus that we make him into a nice example for good living. As Hirsch said many times in his talk that is not the whole picture of Jesus. Jesus is lord. he is lord of the church, Lord of our lives, and the author and finisher of our faith.

In this regard I find Hirsch to be completely orthodox in his thinking, His methodology my be radically different but we are in radically different times. It was refreshing to hear him talk about the way the evangelical church has subverged the message and minstry of Jesus with our subjective interpretation of Pauline theology. This amounts to what he calls Paulism not Christianity. If we are to be Christians then Christ/Jesus  must be at the center of everything we do. As Hirsch said Paul would be disturbed by what we have done since he specifically taught that this faith we live was not about him but about Jesus. I think our emphasis on Pauline theology and only the death and resurrection of Jesus rather than his whole life and mission provided a convenient means to fit the Christian faith in a western North American US box. Buy my ticket follow the rules and I will be home free. The reign and kingdom of God is much more than that.

Now in case you think that I have become a Hirsch groupie let me say that I was a little disappointed in his response to my question which followed some others about how all this translates into a multi-racial pluralistic culture. He basically said the US was another animal all together because of the long history of segregation and slavery. Yep knew that. He also said the kingdom of God is multi-racial/multi-cultural. Then he asked I thought. So here goes.

Writes like Hirsch must challenge their readers to a broader cultural and contextual understanding of their thoughts. The readers especially anglo readers to must learn to see the implementation of these thoughts those lens other than their own discomfort and disconnect the the modern western church. We all must learn to ask what if their are perspectives other that those I am familiar that shape the way that I think about how church looks feels, tastes and smells. Finally we must avoid at all costs taking our interpretation of any writer and elevating it to an absolute (by doing this we avoid the cult of personality that seems to be developing in much of the emerging/missional church conversation) . More on this to come in another post.

One of the recent challenges of around church planting and growth has been the growing sense that bigger isn’t always better. But how to stay committed to growing the church for the kingdom? I have never felt comfortable the either being a large church or a house church which are the two options that are most commonly presented. So this mustard seed church which grows to a certain size and then propagates itself through multiplication is intriguing. As much as I hate the idea of another adjective based church, this is definitely worthy of further exploration.

His bio reads

I  am a professional speaker and aspiring author. I am contributing the chapter “Reading the Prophets for Justice: How can we read the prophets to learn justice?” to An Emergent Manifesto of Justice [Baker Publishing: Emersion Books, February 2009]. I am seeking to broaden my audience with my regular contributions to God’s Politics blog (beyond those blogs I manage myself).

He has commented several times on the EV blog post on race. I am really interested to hear more of his perspective.

• Last week a judge acquitted NYC police officers black and white people of power in the case of the shooting of a young man fifty times because they thought they were in danger. The witnesses (all black and some of whom were also shot) the judge said were not credible.
• Jeremiah Wright former pastor of Barack Obama’s church has been reviled and called everything from unpatriotic to a loon and even worse. This because he expressed a perspective of the black community on a national tragedy. Remember black folks died that day along with people of other races. While white pastors who support current presidential candidates express their extreme opinions without impunity.
• Hillary Clinton wins a primary based on the notion that she (who was raised with privilege and has been in the highest seat of power in this country) has more credibility with working class folks than a black man raised by a single parent who worked his way through college and passed up a big time law office for working with the very class of people he now has no credibility with.

The thing is that Jesus brought credibility to the incredible. He brought God’s credibility to a poor and oppressed. He brought God’s credibility to disenfranchised. He brought God’s credibility to those who were outside of the status quo. He brought God’s credibility to people on the margins. He brought God’s credibility to an pregnant young girl, a motley crew of twelve followers, an adulterous woman asking spiritual questions. He brought God’s credibility to all human beings by breaking down the barrier between us and calling us to reconcile to God and each other. His first followers though they stumbled initially followed his pattern (after being prompted more than once by the Holy Spirit.)

So how will the church today, the church emerging deal with the credibility gap? I am fast losing hope that the church emerging or has the guts to take on this critical issue. We will tackle gays rights, worship wars, poverty in other countries and gender equality but race and by virtue of our cultural reality class right here in the USA, not so much.

Check out this post on the EV blog

The church not speaking out strains its credibility but then this is the church which increasing has less and less credibility anyway.