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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Western Church Decline
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Mudfrog
Shipmate
# 8116
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Posted
There are two threads on the decline or otherwise of Evangelicalism and Catholicism.
In this thread I would like to discuss the possible reasons for the across-the-board, consistent and seemingly terminal decline of all Christian groups in Western Europe.
Possible explanations / discussion startes:
- Two world wars in Europe.
- Liberal theology (mostly German)
- Increased prosperity since the end of the war.
- eschatologically expected?
The answer might also include the question why the church that is in freefall in the west is actually blossoming elsewhere. Why is it the case that in other countries the church is growing and growing?
Just a brief history lesson from my perspective. In the 13 years of The Christian Mission it crawled along. In 1878 it changed its name to The Salvation army and grew at an astounding rate, reaching 50+ countries by the beginning of WWI. it was the fastest growing evangelical mission/church in Victorian England in the 1880s.
In 1890 Catherine Booth, our co-Founder with William, died and coincidentally or otherwise the growth continued at a slower pace.
In 1929 we had a leadership crisis and in the UK for the first time our numbers started to decline and they have continued to decline at a disastrous rate ever since. There are no around 35 - 40,000 of us in the UK.
Europe has an even sorrier tale to tell.
BUT. Worldwide The Salvation Army is bigger than it has ever been. Some territories have seen a 45% growth in the number of members in the 15 years to 2010.
The General at the turn of the century came up with a challenge: A Million Soldiers Marching into the Millennium (try saying that on too much coffee!).
We had just over 900,000 members worldwide. We now have nearly 1 and a half million!
I am certain this could be relocated in the other churches.
So I ask, what is going on?
Why is Europe dying while the rest of the world is growing at amazing rates?
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"The point of having an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid."
G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 8237 | From: North Yorkshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2004
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chris stiles
Shipmate
# 12641
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
While the rest of the world is growing at amazing rates?
Mass urbanisation - it only happens once.
Posts: 4035 | From: Berkshire | Registered: May 2007
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pydseybare
Shipmate
# 16184
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Posted
I think it is because there are actually two gospels: one for the poor and one for the rich.
The Salvation Army has done an excellent job of speaking to the poor, forgotten, misused etc - speaking out the gospel of hope, forgiveness, worth, encouragement and so on.
Unfortunately that gospel doesn't really wash when people are rich, self-satisfied, contented, well-fed and so on. Most people turn off immediately as being irrelevant, those that remain become more and more self-centred, more involved in a form of me-first religious spiritual development project.*
The gospel for the rich is that repentance is necessary, that there is no offer of free grace to the wealthy, and that following Jesus Christ involves the rich becoming humbled - including a costly self-sacrificial taking off of the riches and coats of respectability.
*that said, in more difficult times (in Europe etc), I suspect this message will become again more relevant.
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"If you act like an illiterate man, your learning will never stop... Being uneducated, you have no fear of the future."
Posts: 812 | Registered: Jan 2011
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
- Increased prosperity since the end of the war.
Yep, that's the one.
quote:
Why is it the case that in other countries the church is growing and growing?
Because those countries are still (for the most part) poor.
Christianity is a religion that has a lot to offer to poor people - you don't have to read the Bible for long to see that. But all it has to offer to rich people* is condemnation, and the choice between becoming poor or going to Hell. Is it any wonder that rich people turn away from it in droves? And in the West, where we are pretty much all rich, does anyone doubt that it will continue to shrink until only the hardcore of faithful true believers is left?
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*= of course, that's in the context of a world where Christianity is no longer the best and easiest route to political power - back when it was Christianity had much to offer to the rich, albeit maybe not the sort of things its founder would want to be offering. But the days of popes being more powerful than kings are gone. A memory of those days lingers in some Western countries - notably the USA - but will disappear once political power cannot be gained simply by appealing to the Christian Voter.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
Interesting thread.
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
Possible explanations / discussion startes:
- Two world wars in Europe.
- Liberal theology (mostly German)
- Increased prosperity since the end of the war.
- eschatologically expected?
Decline in the UK started well before WW1. Arguably, church attendance has been in decline since the 1850s if not before.
In the 1850 church census 50% of people in the UK attended some kind of church service - an unbelievably high figure in today's terms.
That still begs the question as to what the other 50% were doing ...
The rapid growth of the Salvation Army, in that sense, represents something of an anomaly ... a short kick-back against prevailing trends.
Liberal theology? Yes, I can see the deleterious effects of that but I don't see that many people rushing to embrace more conservative forms of theology. One could argue that conservative forms of theology merely slow the decline rather than halt it ...
Increased prosperity ... yes, I'd agree that this is a factor and I expect to see a plateauing of church-growth in future across developing countries as they become ... developed.
I remember an interesting chat with a Romanian chap who told me that as soon as the Ceaucescu era ended everyone flocked back to the churches - to the Orthodox and Catholic churches and to the various Protestant denominations.
He felt that this initial burst of enthusiasm had now waned and that as Romania became wealthier and more Westernised this trend would discontinue and that the forces of secularism would gain ground.
On the eschatological issue, I'm not sure how that affects things. One could argue that people would be flocking to church if they thought the end of the world was nigh.
I'd add a few other factors:
- The move away from supernaturalist explanations to apparently scientific ones.
- A move away from creedal certainties towards a looser, more laisser-faire approach.
- A reaction against Victorian moralism and pietism.
- More leisure choices. I'm serious. A study in Huddersfield found that church attendance dropped off dramatically in the 1920s with the introduction of buses and cinemas. People had more choices of leisure activity than attending services on Sundays.
There's more we could add.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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deano
princess
# 12063
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
I think it is because there are actually two gospels: one for the poor and one for the rich.
The Salvation Army has done an excellent job of speaking to the poor, forgotten, misused etc - speaking out the gospel of hope, forgiveness, worth, encouragement and so on.
Unfortunately that gospel doesn't really wash when people are rich, self-satisfied, contented, well-fed and so on. Most people turn off immediately as being irrelevant, those that remain become more and more self-centred, more involved in a form of me-first religious spiritual development project.*
The gospel for the rich is that repentance is necessary, that there is no offer of free grace to the wealthy, and that following Jesus Christ involves the rich becoming humbled - including a costly self-sacrificial taking off of the riches and coats of respectability.
*that said, in more difficult times (in Europe etc), I suspect this message will become again more relevant.
But that fails when you consider the USA. Arguably the richest economy and containing massive numbers of wealthy people - relatively speaking - and Christianity is overwhelmingly followed by the majority of the population.
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"The moral high ground is slowly being bombed to oblivion. " - Supermatelot
Posts: 2118 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: Nov 2006
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by chris stiles:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
While the rest of the world is growing at amazing rates?
Mass urbanisation - it only happens once.
This must be one factor. I think that in England the working class began to abandon religion from 1800 onwards, although of course, not uniformly, and the middle class stuck to it more.
I grew up near Manchester, and I knew very few religious people, mainly Irish. I don't think people were hostile, it just didn't enter their minds.
Yet they were pretty poor, so the poverty thing may not be the only factor.
I went to a very posh school, and there were tons of religious kids. So for me, it seemed to operate the other way round - poverty seemed to incline people to atheism, and affluence to religion. There are many confounding factors!
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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chris stiles
Shipmate
# 12641
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
quote:
Originally posted by chris stiles:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
While the rest of the world is growing at amazing rates?
Mass urbanisation - it only happens once.
This must be one factor. I think that in England the working class began to abandon religion from 1800 onwards, although of course, not uniformly, and the middle class stuck to it more.
Yes, I think the working classes abandoned religion earlier - starting at the tail end of the Industrial Revolution. In other countries, mass urbanisation has led to the rise of their own varieties of mass religion (pentecostals in Brazil, Nigeria etc).
In reference to Romania - I have heard similar reports from other former Soviet Bloc countries - in that to start with there was a huge explosion of interest in Christianity (specially non Orthodox and RC variants of Christianity) and in fact anything spiritual. These days, in many of the same places Christianity is seen as increasingly passe, and people get their spiritual kicks from a melange of casual Buddhism/Hinduism etc.
Posts: 4035 | From: Berkshire | Registered: May 2007
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
With reference to the 'casual melange', Jung had the interesting idea that great cycles of images came and went in human cultures, very slowly, and sometimes, not so slowly.
So he argued that the Christian set of images had worked well as a kind of 'objective correlative' for human desires/hopes/fears and for the experience of the transcendent, but would itself come to an end.
Big problem with ideas like this is that they are v. difficult to test - you would have to wait maybe a 1000 years to see.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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que sais-je
Shipmate
# 17185
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by deano:
But that fails when you consider the USA. Arguably the richest economy and containing massive numbers of wealthy people - relatively speaking - and Christianity is overwhelmingly followed by the majority of the population.
I don't know how reliable the wikipedia article is but it would suggest a slow decline (though from a higher level) and quite a big economic/social divide. In keeping with what others have said, the richer states (from my limited knowledge) seem to have much lower church attendance at least than the poorer ones. Even so, it is still more twice as high even in Vermont than Europe.
For reasons not explained, on the demographic map Washington State, Wyoming, Oregon and Montana don't seem to have any Christian denominations. Is this something one of the US shipmates could explain? Perhaps they just don't like surveys!
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"controversies, disputes, and argumentations, both in philosophy and in divinity, if they meet with discreet and peaceable natures, do not infringe the laws of charity" (Thomas Browne)
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Arethosemyfeet
Shipmate
# 17047
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by deano:
But that fails when you consider the USA. Arguably the richest economy and containing massive numbers of wealthy people - relatively speaking - and Christianity is overwhelmingly followed by the majority of the population.
I wonder whether it is instructive to note that the US is probably the western country in which one is most likely to live in abject poverty - the social safety net is much weaker than in other countries so perhaps the same rules about increasing wealth do not apply. It may help to consider that Britain was wealthy in the 19th century but the steep decline in religious activity could perhaps be traced to the introduction of the welfare state in 1945. Is it social democracy rather than wealth that leads to the decline of religious observance?
Posts: 2933 | From: Hebrides | Registered: Apr 2012
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
Although religious attendance began to decline among working class people from 1800, and some argue, even earlier (in England). No welfare state then.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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que sais-je
Shipmate
# 17185
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I went to a very posh school, and there were tons of religious kids. So for me, it seemed to operate the other way round - poverty seemed to incline people to atheism, and affluence to religion. There are many confounding factors!
A N Wilson (in "God's Funeral") and John Gray (in "The Immortality Commission") both, in their very different ways, suggest that in the 19C many of the middle and upper classes believed that religion was necessary as a curb to vice and immorality. Atheism would lead to a break down of society - something which worried the rich more than the poor! Maybe that's one reason the rich kids families were often 'religious'.
On the whole the European experience has been that the collapse of society hasn't been due to a spread of atheism. As far as I know nobody has ever assumed I'm probably dishonest because I'm an atheist or even prey to exciting vices. The American situation does seem different because of a different founding myth maybe. Nobody asks British politicians if they believe in God but it my impression is that saying you are an atheist in America would have a more significant impact on your election chances.
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"controversies, disputes, and argumentations, both in philosophy and in divinity, if they meet with discreet and peaceable natures, do not infringe the laws of charity" (Thomas Browne)
Posts: 794 | From: here or there | Registered: Jun 2012
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
Church attendance probably increased in late 18th and early 19th century in England. Mass urbanisation and the industrial revolution were on the whole good for churches. Crime rates went down as well. And people in general cleaned up their act a little, society becoming rather less violent and more humane.
But the bad things that still went on became more visible because more concentrated in restricted areas of towns and cities.
Churchiness peaked sometime in the late 19th century and declined after that with minor blips for the Great War.
There always was a large group of the working classes who were barely if at all churched. Successive generations of evangelists and slum preachers and statisticians kept on rediscovering them from the 1700s to the 1960s, by which time no-one was surprised any more, because by then the educated middle classes had become overwhelmingly anti-Christian and secular, a process that had been creeping along for centuries as well.
Of course those classes don't remain stable with time. At the beginning of the 19th century maybe less than a quarter of the population were culturally part of the urban industrial working classes, by the end of the century an actual majority were, by the end of the 20th century back down to less than a quarter. So large numbers of the cultural middle classes these days are the children or grandchildren of the cultural working classes.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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otyetsfoma
Shipmate
# 12898
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Posted
In the days when the workers were agricultural they were individually known to their "betters" and felt compelled to go to church. Industrialisation (when they removed to towns) took away that compulsion.
Posts: 842 | From: Edgware UK | Registered: Aug 2007
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stonespring
Shipmate
# 15530
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Posted
China is an interesting case because you have rapid mass urbanization, industrialization, economic development, a growing middle class getting used to certain material comforts and getting exposed to ideas from around the world, etc., but you still have massive rural poverty and an oppressive government that keeps religion (and only the officially permitted religious groups) on a very short and tight leash.
I have heard China described as an area of great potential for missionaries of any religion. But if the government became democratic and respected human rights, and if economic development came to the countryside, would this continue to be true?
Posts: 1537 | Registered: Mar 2010
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
One factor in my own family (anecdote alert), is a kind of link between religion and class. In other words, in blunt terms, clergymen are posh bastards.
I don't know how far you can generalize upon this - of course, you tend to think of the squire and the vicar having port together, while the plebs outside did the manual work, and thought they were rich fat twats.
Well, my grandad came back from WWI, with two firm beliefs: 1. Officers were bastards. 2. Clergymen were absolute bastards.
Of course, clergymen are not all posh, and not all bastards, as I later found out.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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stonespring
Shipmate
# 15530
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Posted
In Africa you have competition between Christian denominations (including various African-founded denominations and movements) and Islam for converts among practicioners of traditional religions. Often, joining Christianity or Islam gives someone a social network that helps their family to progress economically.
In Latin America, various protestant and especially pentecostal churches are attracting converts from Roman Catholicism who also benefit from the social networks, religious charities, and ethic of social mobility.
Immigrants from all parts of the world who come the west often join religious groups in their new countries, some of which are founded and led by immigrants, for similar reasons.
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Although religious attendance began to decline among working class people from 1800, and some argue, even earlier (in England). No welfare state then.
The Established church in England was seen as in cahoots with the squire and other authority figures and quite disliked. People went to church to be respectable but anti-clericalism was strong, and has always been a feature of English religion. I would also wager that the French Revolution had an impact on the English working classes. Nonconformists and RCs were still penalised by the law at this time too.
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
Posts: 5319 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2012
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Mudfrog
Shipmate
# 8116
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Posted
Gaamaliel, can you answer this: Is it the case that the charismatic/restoration stuff of the late 1970s into the '90s was quite a middle-class thing?
I seem to remember reading that stuff like Gerald Coates in Cobham and the Icthus fellowship in London was all very 'stockbroker' oriented.
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"The point of having an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid."
G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 8237 | From: North Yorkshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2004
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
Ichthus might have had a few stockbrokers, but there's no way I'd describe it as stockbroker-oriented. I attended a congregation meeting once on a very down-at-heel South-East London estate.
[ 20. December 2013, 16:26: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian
quote:
Christianity is a religion that has a lot to offer to poor people - you don't have to read the Bible for long to see that. But all it has to offer to rich people* is condemnation, and the choice between becoming poor or going to Hell.
I would add hope. Rich people do not need hope the way poor people do.
quote:
Originally posted by deano:
But that fails when you consider the USA. Arguably the richest economy and containing massive numbers of wealthy people - relatively speaking - and Christianity is overwhelmingly followed by the majority of the population.
To add onto que sais-je's reply: Control. Religion serves the powerful well in influencing the poor to vote against their own interest.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian
quote:
Christianity is a religion that has a lot to offer to poor people - you don't have to read the Bible for long to see that. But all it has to offer to rich people* is condemnation, and the choice between becoming poor or going to Hell.
I would add hope. Rich people do not need hope the way poor people do.
quote:
Originally posted by deano:
But that fails when you consider the USA. Arguably the richest economy and containing massive numbers of wealthy people - relatively speaking - and Christianity is overwhelmingly followed by the majority of the population.
To add onto que sais-je's reply: Control. Religion serves the powerful well in influencing the poor to vote against their own interest.
But surely, Jesus likes a low-tax low-welfare economy, with the leveraged buy-out as the financial tool of choice? I'll be back in a minute, with the correct Biblical quotation.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
I suspect a major reason is that most of us do not live as though we really take seriously what we say we believe. So is it any wonder we don't have much cutting edge?
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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Sober Preacher's Kid
Presbymethegationalist
# 12699
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian
quote:
Christianity is a religion that has a lot to offer to poor people - you don't have to read the Bible for long to see that. But all it has to offer to rich people* is condemnation, and the choice between becoming poor or going to Hell.
I would add hope. Rich people do not need hope the way poor people do.
quote:
Originally posted by deano:
But that fails when you consider the USA. Arguably the richest economy and containing massive numbers of wealthy people - relatively speaking - and Christianity is overwhelmingly followed by the majority of the population.
To add onto que sais-je's reply: Control. Religion serves the powerful well in influencing the poor to vote against their own interest.
And then there's Canada, which serves as a counterpoint to that. None of the Big Four Protestant Churches (United Church, Anglicans, Baptists and Presbyterians) have a strong history of right-wing economic political positions. The Anglicans have traditionally been indifferent politically while the United Church and the Baptists are the churches the Social Gospel built.
The Christian Left has been in power more often in Canada and has a more extensive and lasting record than the Christian Right ever had. The only church that was notably right-wing was the Roman Catholic Church in Quebec (elsewhere it was politically indifferent) and that changed quickly in the 1960's during the Quiet Revolution.
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NDP Federal Convention Ottawa 2018: A random assortment of Prots and Trots.
Posts: 7646 | From: Peterborough, Upper Canada | Registered: Jun 2007
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South Coast Kevin
Shipmate
# 16130
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
I suspect a major reason is that most of us do not live as though we really take seriously what we say we believe. So is it any wonder we don't have much cutting edge?
A hundred times yes. And a big part of why we (those of us who are comfortably off) don't act like we believe Christianity is, I think, that we have other things to hope in (things that we don't always want to give up...).
I agree with those upthread who have said that Christianity is particularly good news for those who don't have much in this life.
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My blog - wondering about Christianity in the 21st century, chess, music, politics and other bits and bobs.
Posts: 3309 | From: The south coast (of England) | Registered: Jan 2011
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Palimpsest
Shipmate
# 16772
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Posted
I remember a comment from an Italian that his grandparents were Catholics and his parents were Communists and his generation were neither. It is possible that the Christianity in Europe was too coupled to the class order to be fondly regarded by the lower classes.
The question about the Northwest United states is best answered by a comment made half in jest by an author of a book on the religious regions of the U.S. "The Northwest is just a bunch of tree worshipping pagans". When I've mentioned this to various people here in the Northwest there's an acknowledgement that it's pretty true. It's hard to ignore the trees here.
The U.S. seems to be going through the secularization that happened in Europe. Atheism is the largest growth group. This makes arguments that sect x is growing and will pick up the survivors of shrinking sect b hard to believe. To a certain extent secularization is slowed down by the still high immigration from non first world countries into the US. If you read the article on the Crystal Cathedral becoming a Catholic church, the immigration from Mexico of Catholics is mentioned.
Posts: 2990 | From: Seattle WA. US | Registered: Nov 2011
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
Ichthus might have had a few stockbrokers, but there's no way I'd describe it as stockbroker-oriented. I attended a congregation meeting once on a very down-at-heel South-East London estate.
I'd have called it - in fact I did call it at the time - mostly what the Victorians would have called the "respectable" working class, verging on lower-middle-class. Skilled industrial workers, low-paid office-workers, a lot more nurses than doctors, people in "caring professions", a few engineers, technicians, builders, computer programmers, printers. Some teachers and academics, and even the odd accountant, but not a lot of stockbrokers or estate agents. As well as a lot of poorer of course.
Same with early NFI. And probably more or less all new autonomous religious movements for all of mediaeval and modern history. And most political ones as well. Lots of people without university degrees - and quite a lot who were the first generation in their family to go to college.
Of course that is more or less my own class position so maybe I'm sensitive to it.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
Mudfrog
I agree with a lot of what's been said. There are no doubt many contributing factors to church decline, each of which stepped into the fray at different times in different places and added new levels of complexity.
I'm personally intrigued by the notion that Christianity contains the seeds of its own decline. On the one hand the Bible teaches that there will be decline in the last days, and warns about believers falling away, becoming too rich or too poor to concern themselves with God, having only the outward form of religion, being lukewarm, etc. And then there's the more recent claim that certain aspects of Christianity inevitably lead to individualism and self-reliance, and so to less faith.
Church/sect theory too posits decline as something generated inside not outside Christianity. The idea is that Christian movements are often fairly democratic and socially mixed to begin with, but as they formalise and institutionalise themselves they focus more and more on developing a class of well-educated specialists and leave less and less for poorer or untrained members to gain spiritually or psychologically from church attendance. Some leave to join new movements, but most just leave.
And some say the founding of new movements (such as the Salvation Army) in the late 19th c. didn't undo the secularising process but rather added to it. The weakening of older religious ties led to a far more provisional and vulnerable replacement that was inadequate to withstand the rapid pace of social change that was to take place in the 20th c.
As for other parts of the world, they're different, but not entirely immune to some of these phenomena.
Posts: 6668 | From: UK | Registered: Feb 2012
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PaulBC
Shipmate
# 13712
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Sober Preacher's Kid:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian
quote:
Christianity is a religion that has a lot to offer to poor people - you don't have to read the Bible for long to see that. But all it has to offer to rich people* is condemnation, and the choice between becoming poor or going to Hell.
I would add hope. Rich people do not need hope the way poor people do.
quote:
Originally posted by deano:
But that fails when you consider the USA. Arguably the richest economy and containing massive numbers of wealthy people - relatively speaking - and Christianity is overwhelmingly followed by the majority of the population.
To add onto que sais-je's reply: Control. Religion serves the powerful well in influencing the poor to vote against their own interest.
And then there's Canada, which serves as a counterpoint to that. None of the Big Four Protestant Churches (United Church, Anglicans, Baptists and Presbyterians) have a strong history of right-wing economic political positions. The Anglicans have traditionally been indifferent politically while the United Church and the Baptists are the churches the Social Gospel built.
The Christian Left has been in power more often in Canada and has a more extensive and lasting record than the Christian Right ever had. The only church that was notably right-wing was the Roman Catholic Church in Quebec (elsewhere it was politically indifferent) and that changed quickly in the 1960's during the Quiet Revolution.
The Anglican church of Canada was the church of the monied class along with the Methodidt/Prysbeterians to a point, the Baptists were there but non aligned with a class, as far as I can tell. The RCC mainly n Quebec was a bastion of the Francophene population , became some what ultramontanist in mid to late 19th century . then mid last century they found the young looking for solutions elsewhere, Quebec nationalism and so forth.
I am an optomist that the church, all of us will rebounnd . I prefer to live in hope than wallow in despare/ blessings all and merry Christmas PaulBC
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"He has told you O mortal,what is good;and what does the Lord require of youbut to do justice and to love kindness ,and to walk humbly with your God."Micah 6:8
Posts: 873 | From: Victoria B.C. Canada | Registered: May 2008
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
In response to Mudfrog's interesting question about class and the UK restorationist movement in the 1970s - 1990s ...
To quote Max Boyce, 'Boyce the Voice', from another context, 'I know, 'cos I was there.'
To quote Andrew Walker the sociologist and still, to my mind, the best and most incisive writer on the restorationist thing, 'A charismatic is a middle-class Pentecostal.'
Gerald Coates was based in Cobham but he was always something of an outlier ... his 'flamboyant' style alienated some of the more conservative, and northern restorationists. There was certainly a north/south divide in the whole thing.
Down south, though, it never struck me as at all stock-broker belt-ish. On the whole, I would say that the demographic was as Ken described ... with some elements of the older, public school 'Bash Camp' brigade in some quarters. Yes, the offspring of an older and well-heeled form of revivalism were involved ... even up north there were public school kids and the sons and daughters of missionaries who'd sent their kids home to be boarding-school educated and who subsequently encountered restorationism at university.
On the whole, though, as Walker notes, the northern end of things (which I was involved in) was rather more working class than the southern equivalent. The southern end also had a fringe of more bohemian artsy types ... although these gradually disappeared as things hardened and became more doctrinaire.
To be quite frank, the church I was involved with in those days was probably the most mixed in terms of demographic than any I've come across since.
There were labourers and lecturers, nurses and consultants, white working class and West Indians, students and unemployed.
The core of the thing was, I would say, rather as Ken suggests, the kind of skilled working-class, lower middle class ... which was very much the kind of demographic you'd find in Pentecostalism and in Brethren assemblies in Yorkshire and South Wales at that time. In essence, the Yorkshire end of things was a peculiar northern/South Walian fusion.
The head-honchos were either former South Walian Pentecostals or 'house-church' types from Brethren or 'Wally North' backgrounds. They'd not been to university and although they valued and respected education and certainly weren't anti-intellectual, they weren't intellectual heavy-weights either. I don't mean any disrespect here, but they found it hard to handle students from some of the less technical or vocational disciplines and also people in the congregation (particularly women) who might be brighter than them ...
But I've seen this in other settings too.
Walker made the insightful observation that the restorationist churches tended to attract the more 'directive' thinkers - engineers, medics, nurses - people who got things done - rather than the more 'discursive' thinkers - the philosophers and poets as it were. It's not surprising I had a hard time to a certain extent as I was certainly in the latter camp.
Provocatively, perhaps, I'd say that this was/is generally the case with evangelicalism as a whole.
How many evangelical poets have there been?
![[Biased]](wink.gif) ![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Mudfrog
Shipmate
# 8116
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
Mudfrog
I agree with a lot of what's been said. There are no doubt many contributing factors to church decline, each of which stepped into the fray at different times in different places and added new levels of complexity.
I'm personally intrigued by the notion that Christianity contains the seeds of its own decline. On the one hand the Bible teaches that there will be decline in the last days, and warns about believers falling away, becoming too rich or too poor to concern themselves with God, having only the outward form of religion, being lukewarm, etc. And then there's the more recent claim that certain aspects of Christianity inevitably lead to individualism and self-reliance, and so to less faith.
Thanks for that - it's what I meant when I suggested an eschatalogical reason which Gamaliel misunderstood as meaning 'people who believed the end was nigh'.
I did mean the predicted apostacy, the lukewarmness of the church, the question as whether the returning Christ will find faith on the earth, the fact that it's the 'overcomers' who will be saved - suggesting that a lot of people will not 'overcome' and that there will be a remnant.
It's my view that in the realms of Biblical prophecy the 'world' is the world of the Roman
Empire, or western civilisation; the Bible doesn't seem to predict anything outside the middle-east, North Africa and Europe. Therefore, the decline in Europe is mirrored in the narrative of the seven churches (This is going to get me into trouble):
Ephesus (Revelation 2:1-7) - the early church that had forsaken its first love (2:4).
Smyrna (Revelation 2:8-11) - the church that would suffer persecution under the Romans (2:10).
Pergamum (Revelation 2:12-17) - the church that was united to the world under Constantine and needed to repent (2:16).
Thyatira (Revelation 2:18-29) - the medieval church that had a false prophetess (2:20).
Sardis (Revelation 3:1-6) - the post reformation church that had fallen asleep - alive in doctrine but dead in spirit. (3:2).
Philadelphia (Revelation 3:7-13) - the missionary church that had endured patiently and faced an open door of revival and expansion (3:10).
Laodicea (Revelation 3:14-22) - the church of the last generations that was lukewarm and insipid (to God) (3:16).
It may be that the western church really is the final church - hot in many places, cold in more and therefore overall lukewarm and nondescript.
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"The point of having an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid."
G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 8237 | From: North Yorkshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2004
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
I remember a newspaper clipping - from The Sunday Times I think - which I kept hold of for a while, with an article headlined, 'Pentecostalism goes middle-class.'
It made the observation that the newer breed of NFI and other 'new church' streams were more middle-class in tone and make-up than the traditional Pentecostal denominations ... the AoG, Elim and the Apostolic Church.
This was certainly the case in South Wales, but there were loads of former Pentecostals involved with the 'new church' scene down there ... and the more 'forward-looking' among them (as they'd have seen it) often used to commute down the Valleys to the more 'happening' churches in Newport, Cardiff or Swansea. This was often seen as detrimental to struggling chapels up in the former mining-valleys.
To an extent, I'd say there was a certain amount of upward mobility involved ... people from working-class Pentecostal backgrounds getting supervisory jobs and so on.
As far as the demographic went - and I'm not looking back with rose-tinted specs, I would say that one the whole, the restorationist churches of the 1980s and '90s had a broader demographic than subsequent movements such as the Vineyard (very studenty), New Wine and so on.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Mudfrog
Shipmate
# 8116
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
How many evangelical poets have there been?
We have quite a few. Two of our Generals were poets and another officer was quite a mystic.
We've had a lot of hymn writers too, from a chap called Herbert Booth right up to the modern day with some stunning poetic lyrics being written for people to sing (as you would expect - we don't listen to poems being read, we sing them. ![[Smile]](smile.gif) )
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"The point of having an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid."
G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 8237 | From: North Yorkshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2004
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
Well, I'm sorry Mudfrog, but you probably already know what I think about your eschatology ...
Back in my restorationist days, of course, I'd have hotly contested the idea of things wasting away and the kind of 'remnant theology' which the restorationist leaders took to be defeatist. But then, I can't say I was ever convinced by all of the rhetoric in the opposite direction.
It wouldn't surprise me that there'll be increasing levels of apostasy and so on. But I'm not sure I'd want to speculate about end-times timetables and so on.
I don't see biblical prophecy working quite as neatly as that.
As for the Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia Minor in Revelation ... these are letters to the Seven Churches of Asia Minor ...
They are what they are and were written to particular people at a particular time and for a particular purpose.
Any attempt to use them as a template or mind-map for subsequent phases of church history in Europe and elsewhere is just bonkers in my view.
I'd go as far as to suggest that it is hermeneutically delinquent.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
I'm talking about poetry not doggerel, Mudfrog ...
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
Hymns can be quite servicable as poetry, but they rarely hit the heights of Parnassus.
And no, Isaac Watts wasn't evangelical and he ended his life with dodgy views about the Trinity. Charles Wesley gets there at times and poor old Cowper tried very hard ...
Aside from hymn-writing (and I'm not knocking that) there have been very few evangelical poets - and very few evangelical philosophers come to that. It's an activist faith and often doesn't have time for such niceties ..
Neither Herbert nor Donne would last five minutes in a contemporary evangelical setting.
There's probably a tangent or another thread here, but when it comes to poetry, philsophy, the use of the grey-matter and various forms of political or social activism, evangelicals often end up co-opting people who weren't even evangelical in the first place ...
C S Lewis, Martin Luther King ...
I could list other examples.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Mudfrog
Shipmate
# 8116
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Well, I'm sorry Mudfrog, but you probably already know what I think about your eschatology ...
Back in my restorationist days, of course, I'd have hotly contested the idea of things wasting away and the kind of 'remnant theology' which the restorationist leaders took to be defeatist. But then, I can't say I was ever convinced by all of the rhetoric in the opposite direction.
It wouldn't surprise me that there'll be increasing levels of apostasy and so on. But I'm not sure I'd want to speculate about end-times timetables and so on.
I don't see biblical prophecy working quite as neatly as that.
As for the Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia Minor in Revelation ... these are letters to the Seven Churches of Asia Minor ...
They are what they are and were written to particular people at a particular time and for a particular purpose.
Any attempt to use them as a template or mind-map for subsequent phases of church history in Europe and elsewhere is just bonkers in my view.
I'd go as far as to suggest that it is hermeneutically delinquent.
Then tio be consistent you'd have to apply that exact same hermeneutic to every word of prophecy from Genesis 3 v 15 right through to the epistles of John.
I don't know any evangelical who, in interpreting the seven letters as covering the church age, would not say that in the first instance they were applicable to those seven actually church fellowships. All prophecy has at least 3 meanings - the immediate context, the future fulfilment and the ever-present truth.
It's like the theories of the atonement - it's one of them and all of them together. Take which one applies to you and leave the rest, but be aware that the other interpretation still stands without detracting from your own.
Ironically, not one of the 7 churches exists today which perhaps serves as a salutary reminder that no church/denomination can stand on a 'right to exist'.
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"The point of having an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid."
G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 8237 | From: North Yorkshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2004
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Mudfrog
Shipmate
# 8116
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
I'm talking about poetry not doggerel, Mudfrog ...
And you've read a lot of Salvationist poetry in your quest to be an expert in all things pertaining to the church.
![[Disappointed]](graemlins/disappointed.gif)
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"The point of having an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid."
G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 8237 | From: North Yorkshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2004
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balaam
Making an ass of myself
# 4543
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Posted
I'm not usually one to stand up for liberalism, but... quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
- Liberal theology (mostly German)
...is not really fair. I'd say that it is more a case of the church failing to be seen as different from society at large. Yes some liberal churches are guilty of this, but they are not the only ones. On the other hand where Christians are seen as being different it is because they are being reactionary, against change and standing for the status quo. Opposing change when they should be leading reform.
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Last ever sig ...
blog
Posts: 9049 | From: Hen Ogledd | Registered: May 2003
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Mudfrog
Shipmate
# 8116
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by balaam:
I'm not usually one to stand up for liberalism, but... quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
- Liberal theology (mostly German)
...is not really fair. I'd say that it is more a case of the church failing to be seen as different from society at large. Yes some liberal churches are guilty of this, but they are not the only ones. On the other hand where Christians are seen as being different it is because they are being reactionary, against change and standing for the status quo. Opposing change when they should be leading reform.
I agree with you on this, as far as the church not being different enough; but i would suggest that Liberal biblical and doctrinal theology has emptied the churches - when people know longer believe, then churches die and become empty.
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"The point of having an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid."
G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 8237 | From: North Yorkshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2004
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
Send me some. I'll soon tell you whether it's doggerel or not.
I thought you'd know me well enough by know to tell when I'm yanking your chain or flicking at the brim of your cap.
In fairness, I've met plenty of Pentecostals and independent evangelicals who have had a way with words. I've come across some who write poetry too. At its best it can be direct and muscular.
At its worst it can dissolve into sentimentality.
And, to be fair, the outpourings of liberal hymn-writers are hardly exemplary. There're some real turkeys about in that stable ... he said, mixing metaphors ...
You are being rather too po-faced, Captain.
On the eschatological thing. Yes, I know that biblical prophecy can have three layers or tiers - a contemporary application, a future one that might refer to the time of Christ and a third that may refer to something yet to take place.
But I'd suggest that things aren't always quite as clear cut as that.
As for the Seven Churches of Revelation ... they are what they are and the fact that they no longer exist is indeed an object lesson.
I'd suggest that this is one of the ways they can be understood and applied. As object lessons.
They've got nothing whatsoever to do with neatly demarcated 'ages' and epochs in church history or predictions in the uber-specific sense.
To read them that way is to engage in eisegesis not exegesis.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Hymns can be quite servicable as poetry, but they rarely hit the heights of Parnassus.
And no, Isaac Watts wasn't evangelical and he ended his life with dodgy views about the Trinity. Charles Wesley gets there at times and poor old Cowper tried very hard ...
John Wesley said something about poetry being the handmaiden of piety. He was thinking of hymns, though.
As you know, literature (especially great literature) and piety often have little to do with each other. Still, without a dose of childhood or adolescent evangelicalism quite a few authors would be lacking in a useful theme for their work.
Posts: 6668 | From: UK | Registered: Feb 2012
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
I agree with you on this, as far as the church not being different enough; but i would suggest that Liberal biblical and doctrinal theology has emptied the churches - when people know longer believe, then churches die and become empty.
The problem with this theory is that the conservative churches are now emptying as well. The churches growing the most are the "prosperity gospel" churches -- the ones that have most firmly taken on secular values.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Mudfrog
Shipmate
# 8116
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Apologies. Major.
Try THESE WORDS
(You'll need to scroll down to the fourth panel and maybe zoom in to make the words bigger.
The artwork is from a CD of Salvation Army songs sung by the King's Singers (so no doggerel here then!)
If you want to hear a salvation Army choir sing them - and yes, this is music by a salvationist composer - try HERE and make sure you have highlighted 'Reflections' on the play list in the box - it turns red)
And yes, I am aware this is a significant tangent but please humour me just this once
Thanks
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"The point of having an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid."
G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 8237 | From: North Yorkshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2004
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
I want to hear or read these 'stunning poetic lyrics'.
I've twice attended large Salvation Army rally/recital type events in northern town halls and enjoyed them. The music was a lot more varied than I'd anticipated and was of a very high standard indeed.
It's a long time ago now, but can't remember any of the lyrics being particularly arresting. In fact, I can't remember any of the words but they didn't strike me as either execrable or outstanding at the time.
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
We've had a lot of hymn writers too, from a chap called Herbert Booth right up to the modern day with some stunning poetic lyrics being written for people to sing (as you would expect - we don't listen to poems being read, we sing them. )
I don't have a problem with congregational singing or poems being read in services and so on ... but that's not the point I was making.
The point I was making was that, by and large, evangelicalism attracts 'directive' rather than 'discursive' thinkers ... the activist rather than the reflective types.
I'm not saying that's right or wrong or making a value judgement - we need the 'directive' types to get things done.
I was simply answering your question about the demographic make-up of the restorationist scene when I was involved with it and noting that it was more varied than many independent evangelical outfits ...
I then went on, though, to qualify that by saying that it appealed to and attracted a particular personality type ... more activist, more extrovert on the whole.
I used the 'poetic' personality as an example of characteristics that might not necessarily fit that mould ... although I was being broad-brush because poetic types can also be activist types too ... there's no clear-cut demarcation.
So the question I asked about evangelical poets was a rhetorical one.
There have certainly been plenty of evangelical hymnwriters and lyricists ... no-one is disputing that. But I can't think of many arts-for-arts sake poets from an evangelical background.
There have been a few. But they'd be outnumbered by poetic types from among some of the other Christian traditions.
[fixed declining code]
[ 20. December 2013, 20:32: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Mudfrog
Shipmate
# 8116
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Posted
I think this is where TSA is quite different from (to?) other evangelical traditions; we are very reflective in much of our writing, especially when it comes to devotional and holiness writings. There is almost a medieval mysticism to some of the stuff that's written. Possibly not in the literary sense but certainly in the spirit behind it all. I would not describe it as doggerel.
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"The point of having an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid."
G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 8237 | From: North Yorkshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2004
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
Sorry, Mudfrog, I didn't find the lyrics 'stunningly poetic' at all. They're not bad, they're not awful. But hardly 'stunning'/
They are competent and conventional in sentiment, expression and tone. I'm sure it's a good CD.
Incidentally - 'doggerel' refers to words not to whoever happens to be singing them, Kings Singers or pub singers or whoever else it might be.
As for the recordings ... yes, some variety there and not just the kind of oompah-oompah or barber-shop-quartet arrangements we might associate with SA hymnody.
It's all very well and good but not my style. Although I'd probably enjoy it live.
Anyway, the point I was trying to make was rather different. I wasn't thinking about hymn lyrics and spiritual songs necessarily but 'poetic' and 'philosophical' sensibilities as opposed to 'directive' ones.
I think you rather missed the point I was making, but that may say more about me than it does about you.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
I'll grant that you've got a point to some extent, Mudfrog, in that I think it's axiomatic that the SA has inherited the 'almost medieval mystical' element from the Wesleyan tradition, which arguably revived that in a post-Reformation form.
Early Methodist hymnody contained passionate references to Christ's heart, blood and wounded-side and so on in ways that hadn't been done since before the Reformation ... and which some commentators such as E P Thompson in 'The Making of The English Working Class' found highly distasteful and almost homo-erotic.
I reiterate my point, I was talking about restorationism initially (and that had a very pronounced Wesleyan streak in it too, largely imbibed through the Pentecostal streams that went into it) and then made a rather cheeky comment about the lack of poetic sensibility within evangelicalism as a whole ... with some smilies, I think,, to show that these were cheeky ...
I get told off for using the emoticons but I generally use to them to show when I'm 'having a laff' or making a point hyperbolically.
As I was in this instance.
Some of the restorationist leaders I knew used to write poetry. It wasn't very good poetry ... but they did write it.
I wasn't at all intending to go off on a tangent about how poetic or otherwise SA hymnody might be - an interesting diversion though this was.
For my part, being dead-pan and serious, I think that SA music takes more 'risks' than the lyrics do but even there you pretty much know what you're going to get ... as indeed you do with contemporary choral music on the whole.
Whether it's up there with Tavener and Part is a moot point ... or Britten's carol settings and so on ...
But we're not comparing like with like. SA music is SA music. It's written for that purpose and it does its job in that context.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
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