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Ben

The Autumn of Christianity

The Season of Autumn (Fall) is my favorite.  The heat of the summer has dissipated and the leaves on trees often turn with vibrant and beautiful colors.  Some plants die while others go into dormancy.  The harvests of the year are over and so much of the ground is barren awaiting the spring planting.  Many see the decline of Christianity in the West as a form of decay.  Such people claim that are losing our essential values and so we need to restore them.  The problem is that one cannot simply restore something that was lost without understanding how the values came to be in the first place.  Trying to “save Christianity” often results in the opposite consequence.


I do not think Christianity is over, but I do think we are in the season of Autumn.  Autumn provides an opportunity for pruning back so that a plant can grow more vigorously in the following year.  So much of what poses today as Christian is truly unhealthy – Christian nationalism, fundamentalism, ignorance of the Christian tradition, and so on.  Nietzsche uses the image of taking a hammer to all values.  The question is: what kind of hammer is he describing?  Is it a sledgehammer used to destroy?  Or is it a small hammer taken not to smash, but rather to see if an object is hollow.  One of my philosophy professors used the image of a tuning fork as an analogy for Nietzsche’s hammer. 


Many mainline churches neglect the early Christian proclamation that threatens structures of power.  Mainline churches mostly support the status quo to keep people in the pews and the money flowing.  Prophets who speak the truth are silenced as threats.  While these statements might sound bleak, I am optimistic about what Christianity can become.  I read countless books and articles on liturgical reform.  Some authors argue for the need to return to the ancient sources which should inspire our liturgies.  Other authors argue that so much of the liturgy grew and developed organically and a return to the ancient sources neglects how the liturgy came to be.  Maybe the truth is in the middle – there is an ancient ideal that should guide us, but we cannot neglect why developments occurred.  We need to prune unhealthy growth that impacts the health of the plant.  We need to prune Christian beliefs and practices that obscure or minimize what is essential.


We in the Independent Sacramental Movement have a role to play in this pruning.  May God gives us the strength we need to witness to the Good News regardless of the season (2 Timothy 4:2).

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