Whither the West? A response to Christianity's decline

Western culture's rejection of Christianity is not entirely a bad thing. A certain amount of cultural Christianity was always fake.

I do not wholly accept the postmodernist idea that claims of truth are really clandestine attempts to get power over other people. But some percentage of truth claims work like that. The use of religion to manipulate is a danger. Some people try to use it that way.

So long as the culture saw adherence to Christianity as a virtue, some people played at Christianity for that reason,  sometimes not even seeing that they had missed the point.  Some, whether cynical or misguided, used Christianity as a road to their own prestige and influence. The point they missed: Christ's kingdom is not of this world and our view of it ought to rise above its secular manipulation to see its higher purpose.

Is the purpose of Christianity to make the world a better place? Some adherents of syncretic blends of culture and Christianity would say so. But it is not primarily that, though we hope to give good treatment to our fellowman. Christianity viewed entire is about calling people from this world to become citizens of the next world. Our involvement in the next world begins, and has implications, while we are still in this world. Our motives belong to that world, not this one.

Insofar as cultural Christianity missed the otherworldly parts and concentrated on worldly agendas, it was not fully Christian. Doing good is inherent in real Christianity, but notice the danger of mistaking part of the program for the whole of it. You know that has happened where people suppose that if their good deeds outweigh their bad ones, surely God will judge them favorably. It is a commonplace belief but not at all what our scriptures say.

Because a lot of cultural Christianity was not fully Christian in the first place, we can bid it farewell without overmuch regret. It is likely that the Christians who are left after the cultural advantages of Christianity are gone will be real Christians. The spiritual part will be central for them. The worldly works part, while important, will be secondary, a necessary outworking of the message, not the message itself.

Then we can make better headway on the spiritual unity Christ calls for among his followers. The worldly agendas will be seen by everyone to be secondary. Our divisive theologies will be seen as conflicting attempts to explain the spiritual reality we have in common. There will be no further advantage in maintaining them for the sake of holding onto power--in the sense that having a denomination separate from the others constitutes power. That will make it harder to see theological stances as important in themselves and worth going to war over.

Denominational theologies have at times been used to control people via truth claims. It has happened when they have been used to serve the purposes of worldly Christianity. This church believes this way, that church does not. Only this church has the right explanation, so you should reject that one, with scorn and opprobrium, and uphold this one. It is much more conducive to unity if we see theologies as things pointing to something beyond themselves, something seen in a glass darkly.

The decline of cultural Christianity is really the decline of worldly, carnal, secular Christianity. Let those who abide spiritually in the faith make the best of the opportunity that offers.