Category Archives: Christians Confronting Global Changes

Christians Confronting Global Change

Where the Light Fell

When the author Philip Yancey was a baby, his father contracted polio and died. Today, few Americans give thought to that horrible disease, arriving without any seeming purpose, crippling some, killing others.

Yancey doesn’t remember his father’s death. He only learned as a young man of his parents’ decision to remove his father from the hospital and its life saving equipment “against medical advice.” The couple had planned to be missionaries. They believed God would heal Yancey’s father so the couple could carry out what they believed to be their mission.

When the father died instead, Yancey’s mother dealt with this crisis of faith by offering up her two sons to be missionaries in the couple’s place. Yancey comes to realize: “My brother and I are the atonement to compensate for a fatal error in belief.”

Yancey’s book is the story of the sons’ journeys through this awful blood sacrifice. His brother, a talented young man, chose a devastating route out of the destiny his mother planned for him.

Yancey also fought against the legalistic straight jacket placed on him by his mother and some of the churches and colleges he attended. He began his own study of books and writings that opened both his mind and his spirit. He fell in love and knew a joy he had never known before.

Unexpectedly, in a college prayer meeting, he opens up and actually prays—at first defiantly against a God he doesn’t care for—but something happens. His honest prayer begins what is perhaps his first true experience of God’s grace.

Yancey’s story (Where the Light Fell) and his other writings bridge the gap felt by many who struggle within legalistic churches that too often have failed to understand what Jesus lived and taught.

 

Culture and the Christian Faith

The Christian faith, over time, has refused to be bound by one culture. Beginning in the Middle East through a few Jewish followers, it broke the bounds of those who wanted it tied only to that nationality.

It refused to be bound by Greek speakers, spreading to the western Roman empire. When the new religion of Islam devastated Christian empires in the east, it grew in Europe.

Eventually, it burst the bounds of church/state unions in Europe. Kings tried to own it, but segments broke away from a church/state identity and spread, especially in the New World. Amazingly, Christianity began to grow in a new arena that refused any ties to state domination.

Over the centuries, Christianity keeps discovering new areas of growth: against slavery and racism and worship of money. Against nationalism.

Christians still struggle not to be dominated by outside interests: class, wealth, politics, power. In the United States, a too-close identification with American culture has led to declines in some groups.

But one of the faith’s strengths is that defeat leads it to find new arenas for growth.

Decline of Religion

According to one academic study, religious practice in the world appears to be declining:

“From about 2007 to 2019, the overwhelming majority of the countries we studied—43 out of 49—became less religious. The decline in belief was not confined to high-income countries and appeared across most of the world.” (Ronald F. Inglehart, University of Michigan, “Giving up on God; the Global Decline of Religion,” Foreign Affairs, September/October 2020)

A previous study analyzing 49 countries from 1981-2007 had found that 33 of the 49 countries had become more religious. The 33 countries included most former communist countries, most developing countries, and even a few high income countries.

The more recent study, however, showed that religion was practiced less even in many lower income countries.

Inglehart concluded: “Modern societies have become less religious in part because they no longer need to uphold the kinds of gender and sexual norms that the major world religions have instilled for centuries.”

What is interesting for me, however, in a personal look into Christianity’s place in the world today, is how it is, this moment, continuing its tradition of breaking new barriers.

In times past, religion in western societies usually revolved around families and communities. Schools, politics, and other forms of civic life tended to uphold norms held by the majority. Religion included a kind of civil religion, generally Christian or Jewish.

Mass migration of young people away from birth communities as well as modern inventions like social media have played havoc with community norms. The multi-generational family long ago gave way to the nuclear family which gave way to young people setting up single person households or with a significant other. Religion as encouraged by family suffered greatly.

Now, however, a next generation Christianity is proving that Christianity is not dead but evolving, perhaps closer to the model lived by Jesus.

A minority, but a significant minority, are espousing issues like racial reconciliation and care for the struggling—the homeless, the mentally ill, and the migrant, to name a few.

From the time the disciple Peter struggled to accept Gentiles into the Jewish Christian community, Christians have broken bounds, sometimes willingly, sometimes after fallow periods—but the conquest first named in a letter from the missionary preacher Paul continues today: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you all one in Christ Jesus.”

Greater America

The United States is fortunate in that the potential immigrants into our country on our southern border are from populations with whom we have known and interacted for centuries. Unlike other migration movements in the world, our cultures share many similarities.

The United States has not always proved helpful to Central Americans. In the past, we have supported dictatorships friendly to corporate interests taking advantage of poorly paid workers.

We can atone for some of those sins by pushing for reform by those Central American governments whose corruption we have often overlooked.

In an effort to deal with increased flows of migrants toward our borders, President Joe Biden has begun meetings with our Central American neighbors at various levels to develop programs around issues that connect us. These include migration but also economic development and climate change. Dealing with these issues might reduce the northward flow of immigrants.

Of course, this flow into our country is not necessarily bad. One of these days, we may look back with envy on those movements sending us the immigrants we needed for our birth-deficient nation.

Livestreaming Violence: Our Choice

Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s prime minister, has called for a global meeting to discuss measures to stop the livestreaming of violence. It’s set for this week in Paris. Ardern is co-chairing the Paris meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron.

New Zealand recently was the scene of another horrific mass murder, this time of Muslims. This massacre was planned by the killers to be beamed to the world on social media as they carried it out.

In the world of instantaneous broadcasts, the massacre was viewed, as the killers intended, millions of times. Social media sites attempted to shut it down, but humans can act only so fast—not nearly as fast as the internet.

It’s a safe bet that virtually everybody who downloaded that video did so by choice.
Whatever the legal changes, or lack of, to the practice of livestreaming, people watch such scenes by choice.

An unwatched video loses its power. Ultimately, it’s our choice to watch or not.