letter from America
Several recent statistics, as well as trends, paint a sobering but also exciting picture. It’s an interesting combination. The challenge is for us to face reality, but not lack faith thereby, and also not be Chicken Littles who cannot see the encouraging developments too.
For instance, a recent Barna survey, shared with the team here at College Church by our Director of Communication, essentially says that across all generations in America (from Boomers to Gen Z), there is a still a very high positive association with all things spiritual, Jesus, and the Bible. In every cohort there is an above 70% reporting that Americans want to know more about Jesus and study the Bible. This is encouraging!
On the other hand, it is also gleaned from the same survey that across all generations of Americans, positive association with the church has dipped significantly. What does this mean? For us, it means we need to think creatively about using our church space to help people outside the church connect the dots between their desire for a transcendent encounter with God, and the physical church buildings down the street. Creativity, and clarity, are needed.
Another recent, privately funded, survey purports to raise the alarm bells by saying that, if current trends continue, over 40 million young Americans who were raised in the Christian faith could walk away from Christianity by 2050. The gold in that claim is the little word ‘could’ (and also the guesstimate behind the elaboration of current trends). I think it was the inimical baseball icon Yogi Berra who once quipped ‘It’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future’. I think we need to exercise prudence and caution about extrapolating from past developments to future certainty. That survey mentioned certainly is quite right to be sounding the alarm bell, and is positive in its call for action. But, as a historian by training, it has always struck me as amusing to observe how certain we moderns are about our future. If you read in context the postulations about the future from people hundreds of years ago about their future five years ahead of their time – and how wrong they were – you realise Yogi Berra had a point.
In that regard, how encouraging it was to read an article sent to me be a friend from The Spectator. It described how Tom Holland, after writing his book Dominion charting his surprising discovery that it was Christianity that was the root cause of the moral values he holds so dear, is now attending church again. Others are following suit. The neo-atheistic fruits of culture war, mental health crisis, and more, are helping people to realise that Christianity may work after all. Even Richard Dawkins has recently said he is a cultural Christian. Be assured, reader, that is not (yet) conversion. But it does mean (to quote Gandalf) that we stand not at the endless downward spiral but close to and maybe at the turning of the tide.
Finally, to be practical, it means evangelism needs to be again front and centre in the life of our local churches, and our own lives. Another irony that continues to be like grit in my shell is that while church attendance rates have dipped, churches themselves have de-emphasised evangelism, putting the onus instead on sound doctrine and polity. I believe in those things too. But priorities matter. And doesn’t the word priority mean you can only have one?
