Blogger extraordinaire Lane Denson wrote a somewhat morose piece yesterday on the future of the Church, specifically the mainline denominations which includes the Episcopal Church. He cited statistics that were staggering, chronicling the rapidly declining numbers of churched people since the nineteen fifties. The average decline among denominations according to one pundit is sixty percent over the past forty years. The average age of an Episcopalian is fifty seven, so the church is aging as well. The greatest loss in membership is among the young, those under the age of thirty five. Denson’s last line was that the undertaker is coming.
My two sons and daughter (who don’t go to church) voted for the first time in the last presidential election at ages twenty seven, twenty five and twenty two respectively, and all of them said the reason they voted is that they felt they could make a difference. As institutional Christians we would do well to hear that. The days of church being a polite social gathering, a place for “solace only” as we say in Eucharistic prayer C, a place wherein we are able to escape the troubles and challenges of our world…those days are over, or else in truth we will die. The Church is the gathering place for energy and imagination….a place in which we join forces…in the Spirit, to make a difference in our world…and to praise God that we are so called, and to do it beautifully, because we know that beauty changes things.
Today is the feast day of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He was one who believed that people of faith could change the world….and he was right. He was well read, well versed in Liberation Theology….He was an avid follower of Gutierrez, Boff, Elizondo and James Cone (who still teaches at Union Theological Seminary in New York)…all pioneers in rearticulating the Gospel imperative that salvation is not something to possess as an individual….but work to do for the good of the whole….to bear God’s life to the world in enlightened practice and to do it peaceably, so that all live in the freedom that is God’s commonweal in earth. I believe there is life in us yet.
Perhaps the church is not dying, but is in the midst of a marvelous remaking….some things indeed must die, but only in order to make way for the renewal of what we are in truth here for….a renewed relevancy that will be about the work of remaking the world for the better….I believe my sons and daughter would go for that, and yours too.
The mainline denominations have their work cut out for them. There are simply too many stumbling blocks for the postmodern mind. If the Church’s theology doesn’t make sense to people anymore, then people will seek community elsewhere. The mainline churches have been at best maddeningly inarticulate, and at worst notoriously cheesy, over the last few decades trying to speak from within their traditions in ways that their own members, let alone the rest of the world, can understand. As for liberation theology and the social justice movement: people can perform acts of charity and work for justice through secular organizations and agencies. So what’s the Church got to offer except those same opportunities with a bunch of unintelligible Bronze Age myths and esoteric rituals tacked on? There are scholars out there – process theologians – doing excellent work. Unfortunately that good work hasn’t seemed to reach the average pew sitter, couch potato, or bar fly. Maybe Nietzsche, arguing the point in a slightly different context, was right: God is dead, and we have killed him.