Understanding “This Cultural Moment”
I am a heavy consumer of podcasts, but I don't think I have ever devoured 10 hours of content as quickly as when I discovered This Cultural Moment. Hosted by John Mark Comer of Bridgetown Church in Portland, USA and Mark Sayers of Red Church in Melbourne, Australia, this podcast unpacks key insights about the post-Christian cultural climate that shapes the metropolitan West today. I have rarely encountered such a thoroughly researched and intelligently articulated exposition of the serious challenges that Christianity faces today, while at the same time being so renewed with conviction that we have every reason to stand firm in hope for the Good News of Jesus to increase and deeply impact the world in which we live.
I won't attempt a complete summary of the content because there is far too much to cover. This article is a distillation of the particular points that have impacted me the most, along with some interpretations of my own and the inclusion of some outside voices. (Note: I am limiting most of my observations to the church experience in the United States). If you find this at all helpful, enlightening, or inspiring, I would encourage you to do yourself a favor and listen to the podcast yourself.
Here is a quick synopsis, which I will unfold throughout the rest of this article:
There are dangers Christianity is facing today that it has never faced before. With rates of religious affiliation and church participation on the decline, it's clear that “business as usual” is simply not an option. Understanding the nature of the post-Christian cultural climate that is fueling this decline is critical if we are to turn the tide. Yet there is also reason for great hope, for not giving in to the idea that this decline is somehow inevitable or some necessary evil. And if we look to the patterns of renewal in Christian history, we discover that we have every reason to believe that the time is ripe for a new awakening movement to be birthed in our midst.
DECLINE & RENEWAL
The number of people who have discarded any religious identity or affiliation is on the increase, while church attendance as a whole is on the decline. Secularism has been more or less setting the agenda in culture and politics for some time now. This secularism is accompanied by a particular narrative, one that paints the picture of a gradual and inevitable eroding of religious superstition from its heyday in Colonial America, giving way over time to science and rationalism which are finally enjoying their rightful ascendancy.
But that narrative is simply false. The period of our nation's founding was one of the lowest points in religious practice we have known, and history is dotted with waves of decline and renewal that result in a cumulative upward trend. Our present state of decline is happening after a boom period, and we remain close to all-time highs in terms of religious practice. This trend is reflected also in the number of Catholic priests in the United States. The book Catholic Parishes of the 21st Century reports that this number reached a high point in 1969 before entering into a period of decline. But even with the decline, today's priest-to-parishioner ratio in the United States remains one of the highest in the world. The perceived priest shortage turns out to be more of a normalization.
There are even ways in which the state of religious adherence in the United States remains exceptional. I recently attended a symposium hosted by the Diocese of Sacramento titled Going, Going, Gone: The Dynamics of Disaffiliation in Young Catholics, where Dr. Josh Packard of the Springtide Research Institute shared a stunning statistic. Across the world, there is a strong correlation between wealth and prayer — the poorer the nation, the more its people pray, and vice versa. The United States is an extraordinary outlier to this trend. Packard explained, “Of 102 countries, the U.S. is the only one with both above-average GDP per capita and above-average frequency of daily prayer.” In other words, the average American continues to maintain a fairly high level of prayer despite the wealth we enjoy, significantly bucking the worldwide trend.
What all of this says to me is that we should not allow ourselves to give in to a doom-and-gloom perspective of where things stand today, nor should we embrace hyperbolic slogans that claim this to be the worst period in history. That said, we should also not be blind to the very real dangers present in our culture, dangers which are genuinely new and unique to this time in history. I'll discuss each of these dangers through the lens of the results they tend to produce: nones, DIY-ers, and dones.
THE DANGERS WE FACE
Post-Christian Culture & the Nones
By now, most are familiar with the “nones.” This is the name that has emerged to represent those who no longer associate with a religious identity (those who would answer “none” to a survey question about their religious affiliation). The nones are a byproduct of the emergence of a post-Christian culture in the West, which the bulk of conversation in This Cultural Moment revolves around. Post-Christian culture shares some similarities with pre-Christian culture, but carries the distinction that it has been heavily shaped and influenced by Christian ideas and values.
So, for instance, pre-Christian Rome was polytheistic and viewed religion and the world through a lens of competing deities, currying favor with these deities in an attempt to get an edge. This is why it was so shocking – and so attractive – to the Romans that Christians took care of one another, and not only each other but the poor from whom they had nothing to gain! Christianity presents to pre-Christian cultures a radically different worldview and way to live.
Fast forward to today and the moral obligation to take care of the poor seems like a given in our culture. In fact, secularism's narrative of indomitable progress is itself rooted in a Christian worldview which perceives history as a march towards consummation in Christ in the Second Coming, contra the cyclical worldview of the East, for instance. Contemporary values like justice and equality have all been shaped by the Christian history of the West. And so post-Christian culture is unique in that it wants to retain the program of Christianity without the beliefs of Christianity; or as the podcast hosts put it, “It wants the kingdom without the King.”
The result of this is that post-Christianity has an uncanny tendency to absorb Christianity into itself, so to speak. When the message of Christianity is presented, it gets instantly reinterpreted through the lens of this post-Christian secular worldview. It sounds similar enough to what people already believe that it never dawns on the post-Christian mind that anything is being asserted other than secularism's status quo.
Globalization & the DIY-ers
The nones are casting off a religious identity, but the DIY-ers (do-it-yourself-ers) retain it. They are heavily influenced by the post-Christian culture and by another novelty of our present day and age: globalization. More than any time in history, it is possible to travel almost anywhere at almost any time. The mobile and transient lifestyle that many lead means that we are disconnected from community, relationship, and apprenticeship, which were the vehicles for passing on customs in the past. Uprooted, each person feels responsible to craft their own way of life, to piece together the lifehacks that will optimize their human experience. And where are these lifehacks to be found? The internet now provides unlimited access to information on any topic. There is an overwhelming abundance of options to choose from, not just the way of life you learned from your immediate community. And so the forces of both physical and digital globalization promote a tendency to build a customized life, including a customized religion.
On its own, the influence of globalization is not a bad thing. I even believe that it is having a purifying effect on the expression of Christian faith as a whole by creating a sort of public accountability. But combined with post-Christian influences, it has contributed to an increase in a DIY approach to religion. The presumption of Christianity has always been that its adherents are expected to adapt to the standards of Christianity. Today, the willingness to adapt the standards of Christianity to accommodate personal preference seems to be on the rise.
Institutional Fatigue & the Dones
In a very different category from the nones and the DIY-ers, we have the very intriguing phenomenon of the “dones.” I first learned about this group from the same Dr. Josh Packard mentioned above. Where the nones are parting ways with Christianity, the dones are simply parting ways with churches. They haven't lost faith in Jesus; they've lost faith in institutions. But what you have to understand about the dones is that they were not vacillating, flaky churchgoers before they left, but people who were deeply involved in and deeply committed to the church for many years. “They were integrated into leadership structures and church life, often organizing daily life around the church, attending some kind of church function two or more times a week” (“Meet the ‘Dones’” – Christianity Today). And it was not a single event that caused them to throw in the towel, but an accumulation of disappointments over time. Still, the dones retain a strong Christian identity which they live out in their personal lives apart from the institutional church.
The rise of the dones is certainly fueled by an overall societal trend of growing distrust in institutions (of all kinds, not just religious), along with some of the very public church scandals that have emerged in recent years. The danger that church leaders need to recognize in this moment is that trust is in very short supply, and it will require an extra effort to nurture ongoing trust among church members. Again, we are not talking about people on the fringe or C&E (Christmas and Easter) churchgoers, but the leaders in our midst, the ones we least expect are feeling burned out, used, and fed up.
POISED FOR THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING
The dangers we face today also present a great opportunity. The utopian optimism of secularism is not playing out as expected, and globalization's promise of greater connectedness has only increased our loneliness. Meanwhile, those burned out by institutional fatigue stand ready to re-engage for a worthy cause.
And not all churches are dying; many are thriving and growing. There are a number of common characteristics of such churches. In the face of secular, atheistic post-Christianity, these churches emphasize direct engagement with a real and present God. In the face of widespread loneliness and the shallowness of online interactions, these churches promote and foster authentic relationships. And in contrast to continually increasing the ask for people to serve within, these churches are actively empowering their members to have impact outside church walls.
For a great case study, take a look at how Grace Capital City in Washington, DC defines its three core values (Worship, Family, and Justice) and consider how these directly address the threats that we have been discussing.
Once we cast off the narrative of inevitable decline, there is every reason to believe that we may be standing on the edge of the next great awakening. But while revival is cyclical, it is not automatic. At the heart of each historical wave, you will find just a handful of courageous figures who are willing to pay a price to see the next move of God. On This Cultural Moment, they name these four common traits of such pioneers: they are (1) unlikely people (2) in key places (3) proclaiming the Gospel in uncomplicated ways (4) who are marked by contending prayer.
What does this mean for those of us who hunger to see this renewal come about? Ultimately, it means that there is nothing to prevent you and me from being one of those pioneers. In fact, if we feel disqualified because we don't quite fit in or don't hold an official position, that makes us all the more likely to be one of those unlikely people! Neither does our geography disqualify us, since the phenomenon of globalization is increasingly diminishing the importance that key places held in the past. On top of that, we need not have a complicated, much less original, message, just confidence in the simple Gospel, which is “the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.” (Rom 1:16)
And so the only wildcard seems to be our willingness to contend in prayer for a fresh move of God. I’ll be the first to admit that this podcast has challenged me in this area. But rather than dwell on my shortcomings, I will leave you with the image that has been stirring my own hunger to get on my knees before God. It is a story shared by the podcast hosts about one of history’s pioneers of revival, John Wesley, who was asked the secret to his success. To this he simply responded, “I set myself on fire and people come to watch me burn.”