It looks like the United States is (as it always has been) a mission field. In the December issue of First Things, R. R. Reno comments on what he calls the “new secular moral majority.”
In a 1957 government survey, only 3 percent of respondents checked the “none” box. Now they’re a fifth of all Americans. From one in thirty-three to one in five, and the number is likely to grow. . . . And it’s making a difference in culture and politics. The unchurched exhibit a remarkably united front when it comes to controversial moral issues.
But Reno wonders if the rise of “nones” represents something new:
Even in the 1950s (and, for that matter, in the 1900s), a fairly substantial number of Americans were either believers or unchurched. True, the sensibilities of a mostly Protestant Christianity shaped them, and for the most part they thought of themselves as Methodists or Baptists or Presbyterians or just “Christians,” but they were functionally secular in many ways.
For Reno this means that churched in America are “battle-tested.” We’ve been here before and perhaps the secularists will not really “inherit the earth.”
But I wonder what it says about the churches and their members that they may be willing to live with a stand-off between the churched and “nones,” with the latter having a slight upper hand because they reproduce and even like children. During this whole period, from the 1880s to the present, Protestants (and post-Vatican II Roman Catholics) have tried to win the culture through politics rather than evangelism and discipleship. Discipleship seems especially pertinent for keeping people who once thought themselves churched within the church. From the Social Gospel, through the Cold War, to the Religious Right, politics was supposed to save the nation. Not.
Could it be that religiously-inspired politics have actually done more to hurt the name of Christ and to push Americans away from churches than the offense of the cross itself? And what would happen if instead of spending so much time on political activism and the culture wars, Christians in the United States actually tried to explain to their neighbors the enormity of sin (Christians’ included), the hope of forgiveness in Christ, and the importance of word and sacraments for finding ongoing comfort amid human suffering and weakness? It might not mean a decrease in the number of “nones” since the wind blows where it will. But it sure seems like a better strategy than invoking biblical norms for people who don’t believe the Bible.
Old Life 
“And what would happen if instead of spending so much time on political activism and the culture wars, Christians in the United States actually tried to explain to their neighbors the enormity of sin (Christians’ included), the hope of forgiveness in Christ, and the importance of word and sacraments for finding ongoing comfort amid human suffering and weakness?”
Some might hear, and actually come to faith (by the grace of God). For so many, thanks to the religious right and free-will decision type Christians banging people over the head to “make a decision for Jesus”, they have been hardened and view Christians (rightfully so in many cases) as judgmental and hateful.
Get to them, one on one. Find out where they are being had by the world (tell them your story as well if you’d like), and then speak into that pain and loss of the One who has done something about it…for them.
Thanks, D.G. Hart.
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Well, it seems “free will” and the fetishisation of “choice” is turning church attendance and religious commitments into the one of many choices one can have in a consumer society, to signal cultural stances. Someone’s attendance at a pro-gay, anti-abortion, multi-cultural church will say something about them like purchasing a Prius or wearing Prada. Just as someone’s non-church attendance, but commitment to “spirituality” and the 2nd amendment, will say something like libertarian free thinker, and so on..
“It’s all about choice!” So I’ve heard before the alter call.
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Or could it be that the ever growing gap between the the secular and the sacred is increasingly polarizing the believer and the non-believer?
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Don, then how do you account for the increasing polarization of neo-Cals and 2kers? To borrow a line from Erik, I dare you, double dare you, to claim that one of those groups is comprised of unbelievers.
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Darryl,
No way. I so don’t want to be the target of Erik’s wrath.
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Like D.G.’s cats I’m de-clawed so there’s not much to fear.
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Hiss! – Hiss! – wave an impotent paw in the air – run and hide under the bed…
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It just seems to me that prior to the mid 20th century, the unchurched had no alternative spirituality to claim. As secular institutions, including the church (albeit the false church), increaingly provide an alternative spirituality to Christianity, people are more comfortable with checking “none.”
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“Discipleship seems especially pertinent for keeping people who once thought themselves churched within the church.”
Dr. Hart,
What should Christian discipleship look like in a healthy reformed church? Accountability in the form of church elders asking members probing personal questions?
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Jhansen, probing within limits. Let’s get to know each other, let’s have some family visits, see how you’re doing with the sermons, see what you understand about the catechism, see how life is going. Let’s have coffee and a relationship.
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