At last month’s annual polity conference, Neal Presa, moderator of the 2012 General Assembly, shared his hope of calling a summit conference (or two or three) in the next year. He aims to bring together voices of contending viewpoints to establish protocols for engagement to help us live together in greater mutual respect and, ideally, Christian community.
On a global scale, Pope Benedict XVI has marked the 50th anniversary of the gathering of the Second Vatican Council by convening in early October a three-week summit of 262 bishops. His hope: to confront the “tsunami” of secularism spreading across the world, especially in the West.
Meanwhile, the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life has published its findings that 46 million Americans, nearly 20 percent of us, now hold no religious affiliation or preference. They are either atheist (2.4 percent), agnostic (3.3 percent) — both up 50 percent in just the past five years — or “nothing in particular” (13.9 percent). The “Nones,” as they’ve been dubbed, have nearly tripled in the past 40 years as a percentage of the population. In those three decades Protestant and Evangelical Christians have shrunk from 62 percent to 48. Today the “Nones” actually outnumber all those identifying as mainline Protestant (18 percent).
Much of the rapid growth of this group arises from young people: 32 percent of U.S. adults under age 30 call themselves atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular.”
Sounds like cause for calling another summit conference — this one to include Christian leaders of all stripes, with the aim of stemming our nationwide “tsunami” of secularism.
Of course the churches themselves are as much a cause of their own demise as are the waves of non-religious competition. The protective exclusivists among us repel more folks than Sunday morning Little League games preclude. The iconoclastic John Spong types within the church push more out the door than atheistic Richard Dawkin types draw away. The internecine fight-promoting ecclesiasts dismantle Christ’s credibility more than cable TV comedians. All of us Christians have become our churches’ worst enemies.
That’s ALL of us. According to this new Pew study, in the past five years, evangelical churches’ net loss of 2 percent has nearly matched mainline churches’ net loss of 3 percent. Growing congregations are rare from sea to shining sea.
What’s extra-disturbing is how silent the powers-that-be are when confronted with these losses. Yes, our steadily waning membership has dulled our Presbyterian ears from listening to screeds of self-loathing and across-the-aisle blaming. And leaders’ do need to portray a non-anxious presence. But, a plunge in Christian faith participation of European dimensions has befallen us, and unless Christians of all stripes “humble [our]selves, and pray and seek God’s face, and turn from our wicked ways” — and covenant together to be the body of Christ in and for the world — our descent into foreclosure will only accelerate.
Some are heralding the “Nones,” aka “spiritual but not religious” (SBNR), as the beginning of a new awakening of faith. Sounds wonderful. But as the TV commercial asked, “Where’s the beef?” Four-fifths of the “Nones” say they are not even searching for an active faith. Apathy has never an awakening launched. What’s more, the SBNR spirituality the happy prophets tout is a comfortable mixture of good feelings with no moral expectations, affirmations of God’s unconditional positive regard with no redemption for sins, and nice ideals for service to the poor but no Savior to bear the weight of people’s burdens. It is yet another version of the charade Richard Niebuhr identified 75 years ago as “a God without wrath who brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”
It’s one thing to reject the pulpit and pew that define today’s church. It’s another thing to dismiss the manger and cross, the empty tomb and upper room of God’s Son.
Kudos to the moderator for calling a summit to help us Presbyterians recalibrate our protocols. More kudos to the Pope for naming a bigger reason for a summit. Might some other leader of American Christianity convene a summit to tackle the biggest issue of faith in our time and place?
