{"id":199,"date":"2014-03-22T12:20:25","date_gmt":"2014-03-22T12:20:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beta.dminlgp.com\/?p=199"},"modified":"2014-08-11T22:17:02","modified_gmt":"2014-08-11T22:17:02","slug":"the-prodigal-church-the-end-or-a-new-beginning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/the-prodigal-church-the-end-or-a-new-beginning\/","title":{"rendered":"The Prodigal Church: The End or A New Beginning?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Church in America is in decline.\u00a0 The question many recent books have asked is why and if there is any hope? \u00a0Diana Butler Bass\u2019s Christianity After Religion<\/em> provides a generous dose of statistics to illustrate the extent of this crisis.\u00a0 She points out that in 1970, \u201csome 95 percent of Americans said they were certain God existed, and 99 percent believed in God.\u201d[i]<\/a> \u00a0By 2008, a Pew Research Center poll determined that only 71 percent of Americans were certain that God or \u201ca universal spirit\u201d existed (note the much broader definition of God than found in 1960 surveys).[ii]<\/a>\u00a0 Another telling number is \u201c44 percent of Americans have left their childhood faith in favor of another denomination or religion or by dropping any religious affiliation at all\u2026.\u201d[iii]<\/a> In short, Christianity in America is not doing well.<\/p>\n

Ross Douthat presents an interesting thesis for cause of the decline of the Church in Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics.\u00a0 <\/em>He finds the culprit in what he calls \u201cbad<\/em> religion: the slow-motion collapse of traditional Christianity and the rise of a variety of destructive pseudo-Christianities in its place.\u201d[iv]<\/a>\u00a0 It is the lose of orthodox Christianity since the 1960s that allowed other Christianities to come into play, warping traditional Christian teaching, which resulted in the \u201cjustification for solipsism and anti-intellectualism, jingoism and utopianism, and selfishness and greed.\u201d[v]<\/a> The book is whirlwind journey through the social and political changes over last fifty years, outlining the forces at play that moved the church away from orthodoxy.\u00a0 \u201cEach crisis in American life, from our foreign policy disasters to the housing bubble to the rate of out-of-wedlock births, can be traced to the impulse to emphasis one particular element of traditional Christianity \u2013 one insight, one doctrine, one teaching or tradition \u2013 at the expense of the others. The goal is always progress: a belief system that\u2019s simpler or more reasonable, more authentic or more up-to date.\u201d[vi]<\/a>\u00a0 Each of these steps, Douthat claims, was a betrayal of historical, orthodox Christianity, suggesting that what society today finds unattractive and disdainful in Christianity is not really true Christianity but a \u201cpseudo-Christianity\u201d shorn of its roots.<\/p>\n

What then this \u201corthodoxy river\u201d that the Church has lost?\u00a0 It is beliefs that have been handed down from the apostles but are \u201c(n)ot the orthodoxy of any specific church\u2026but the shared theological commitments that have defined the parameters of Christianity since the early Church.\u201d[vii]<\/a> \u00a0He goes on to claim that this \u201cChristian center still exists\u2014one that dates to the earliest centuries of the faith and that\u2019s still shared by most of the divided churches of Christendom today.\u201d[viii]<\/a><\/p>\n

The tale told by Douthat is a rather sad story, much of it all too familiar, as I lived through and personally witnessed much of it.\u00a0 However, in the end, Douthat is not without hope. His emphasis on a \u201cChristian center\u201d provides a hopeful outlook and a way forward. \u00a0His story suggests a wayward, prodigal Church but not the end of the Christian faith.\u00a0 He sees the disaffection of many is aimed at a Church that has not lived up to being the Church.<\/em> Because of the existence and strength of this orthodox river, there is hope yet for the Church to rise out of the ashes and become what she was \u00a0meant to be. \u00a0To do this, he suggests four areas that Christianity that must be recaptured to regain its balance and effectiveness. <\/em>He suggest that a renewed Christianity should be:<\/p>\n