Undoubtedly, a few of you read that headline and thought, "Well of course they are! This country is headed to hell on a three-wheeled skateboard. This is hardly news." And you are right; we are headed to hell on a skateboard, in a handcart, or via whatever your favorite mode of transportation may be. To the casual observer, Christianity may appear to be on the ropes. Depending on what news sites you visit during the day, you may be expecting your house of worship to be shut down by the DOJ or turned into a nightclub or mosque. While things look dire, it is important to remember that there are sites whose job is merely to get you to "panic click" as you ruin your day with the morning doom scroll.
As for Christians themselves? Many believe that Americans still view their faith in a positive light, but they also think that the good feelings may not last much longer.
Lifeway Research recently published the results of a poll of 1,008 Protestant churchgoers from last year. You can read the breakdown of the results here if you are interested in percentages by age, race, sex, and even denomination. In case you are not a data geek, here are the major takeaways:
53% of U.S. Protestant churchgoers say most Americans have a positive perception of Christians. Two in 5 (40%) disagree, and 8% aren’t sure.
More consensus exists on the direction public sentiment is headed. Around 7 in 10 (69%) believe people’s perceptions of Christians in the U.S. are getting worse, while 21% disagree. Another 10% say they aren’t sure.
The reasons for the anticipated decline? Sixty-six percent of respondents placed the blame on the fact that fewer Americans maintain that faith in God is still relevant. Forty-five percent hold that the decrease in popularity is because Christians do not act any differently than non-Christians. Forty percent said that Americans reject Christianity because of its claim to being the "only way." Thirty-eight percent fault Christians for "looking down" on non-Christians, while 29% think that the issue is related to the way Christians treat each other. Rounding out the bottom of the list, 25% said the dip in popularity was caused by the way Christians treat one another on social media. Finally, 22% blamed the fact that Christians are too political. Again, this was a survey of Protestant Christians. Had Lifeway polled non-Christians, atheists, secular humanists, etc., I suspect that the last entry would have ranked much higher.
The only answer that really intrigued me was the second one: Christians do not act any differently than anyone else. All other responses, except perhaps for the rather bizarre question about social media, are ones you could probably get from any other demographic. That answer shows a remarkable degree of self-awareness that outsiders may not anticipate from the Protestant faithful.
In “The Gay Science,” Nietzsche’s madman makes a poignant observation that rings true years later:
Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: "I seek God! I seek God!" — As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated? — Thus they yelled and laughed.
The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him -- you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.
Nietzsche was not merely discussing the death of God or even faith/religion. In another sense, he was acknowledging the abandonment of a "center" and contemplating the future of man set free on his own questionable recognizance. Christians recognize this center as God: the center from which all things—moral, philosophical, sexual, rational, etc.—must necessarily flow. God is not just the author of all things but also the owner. Without him, all things collapse.
The drift is evident enough in the secular world. One need only look at the pages of PJ Media or any other news site to see that man is all too happy to climb aboard his raft, put out to sea, and spend the entire time gazing at his navel. Or perhaps, more appropriately, his phone. But have American Christians not so much killed God but replaced him?
For Christians in persecuting countries, there is no such thing as a "cultural Christian." Often, the label "Christian" in such countries is practically an ethnic designation. In those places, Christians know that they could be minutes away from an arrest, followed by consignment to a cell. Or they may be brutalized and mutilated to the point that they are no longer recognizable or numbered among the living. In such countries, an entire village may have a single Bible that was smuggled in at great risk. That Bible is divided among the people who memorize each book so that in the event that the Bible is lost or confiscated, they will not lose the Word.
By contrast, in the West, a man might walk into a church looking forward to coffee, fellowship, entertainment, self-justification, or security. He enjoys the music and casually opens his Bible app as if the Word were written for him alone, with the same flippancy that a golfer draws a tee from his bag upon approaching the next hole. He enjoys the social experience and comfortably files it away for next week or his Tuesday Bible study.
In the United States, it is common for the various incarnations of Christianity to look at one another and say, "You're not doing it right." Evangelicals or others may look at the Roman Catholics or Orthodox Christians with our smells, bells, yells, saints, icons, statues, rosaries, and prayer ropes and mutter, "Behold those idolaters!" Conversely, we might look at the non-denominational churches or various Evangelical churches and turn our noses up at the music, lights, and 45-minute sermons on the premise that the church has been turned into little more than a circus with some biblical overtones. That is another topic for another time.
But no matter how much we cross ourselves or genuflect, or no matter how emphatically we may shout "Amen" and raise our hands listening to the worship music, if we have replaced the center that is God with self-aggrandizement in any form, then we may not have killed God, but we will have forsaken and replaced Him. If we give up the center for our own comfort or even to meet the world on its terms as "relevant," we are no different from the world. We are not centered, and we are by no means transformed. If the world sees this, it will know we have nothing to offer.
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