Author challenges Christians to rethink their mission
Magazine editor Rod Dreher, noting that "these are not normal times", has challenged US Christians to rethink their whole strategy for evangelisation.
"Pope Benedict XVI himself once said that the spiritual crisis the West faces is worse than anything since the 5th-century fall of the Roman Empire," wrote Dreher.
To prepare for the future, Christians need to begin with "a brutally honest assessment of both the modern Church and the contemporary world," he said. Much of what he wrote is very relevant to Ireland.
"The most pressing problem Christianity faces is not in politics," he wrote in an article for the New York Times. "It’s in parishes. It’s with pastors. Most of all, it’s among an increasingly faithless people."
The first concern is that Americans, especially young adults, are falling away from the Church in unprecedented numbers, and are not likely to return.
As a result, "America is on the same path of religious decline pioneered by Europe and Canada."
The decline of Christianity will be a catastrophe for the Church but also "a calamity for civil society in ways secular Americans do not appreciate."
Secondly, "the faith that American Christians profess is, from a moral and theological perspective, shockingly thin," it is really a pseudo-religion that has been named “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism”.
This religion has abandoned authentic Christian doctrine and morality and replaced it with feel-good, vaguely spiritual quackery.
It sees the highest goal of religious life as being "happy and feeling good about oneself. It’s the perfect religion for a self-centred, consumerist culture. But it is not Christianity," said Dreher.
For sociologist Christian Smith, “America has lived a long time off its thin Christian veneer. But it is all finally being stripped away by the combination of mass consumer capitalism and liberal individualism."
Dreher argued that conservative American Christians unwittingly participated in their own marginalisation by placing too much hope in Republican politics.
Not that he opposed Christians being active in the public square. "If you disagree," he told New York Times readers, "take it up with the slavery abolitionists and the civil rights movement."
But the belief that the American people are a morally sound majority led by decadent liberal elites, was inaccurate.
Misled by this belief, Christians "failed to effectively counter popular culture’s catechetical force."
Now, instead of devising new approaches, too many are "doubling down on the strategies that not only failed to convert Americans but have also done little to halt the assimilation of Christians to secular norms and beliefs."
But Dreher's response to the crisis has triggered an immense debate in America since he proposed it in his book, The Benedict Option, in March.
Christians, he believes, "will have to step back to some meaningful degree from the world for the sake of building up orthodox belief, learning the practices of discipleship and strengthening our communities."
Others, however, believe that Christians cannot abandon the world in this way, but must engage with it from an authentically Christian perspective.
"Pope Benedict XVI himself once said that the spiritual crisis the West faces is worse than anything since the 5th-century fall of the Roman Empire," wrote Dreher.
To prepare for the future, Christians need to begin with "a brutally honest assessment of both the modern Church and the contemporary world," he said. Much of what he wrote is very relevant to Ireland.
"The most pressing problem Christianity faces is not in politics," he wrote in an article for the New York Times. "It’s in parishes. It’s with pastors. Most of all, it’s among an increasingly faithless people."
The first concern is that Americans, especially young adults, are falling away from the Church in unprecedented numbers, and are not likely to return.
As a result, "America is on the same path of religious decline pioneered by Europe and Canada."
The decline of Christianity will be a catastrophe for the Church but also "a calamity for civil society in ways secular Americans do not appreciate."
Secondly, "the faith that American Christians profess is, from a moral and theological perspective, shockingly thin," it is really a pseudo-religion that has been named “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism”.
This religion has abandoned authentic Christian doctrine and morality and replaced it with feel-good, vaguely spiritual quackery.
It sees the highest goal of religious life as being "happy and feeling good about oneself. It’s the perfect religion for a self-centred, consumerist culture. But it is not Christianity," said Dreher.
For sociologist Christian Smith, “America has lived a long time off its thin Christian veneer. But it is all finally being stripped away by the combination of mass consumer capitalism and liberal individualism."
Dreher argued that conservative American Christians unwittingly participated in their own marginalisation by placing too much hope in Republican politics.
Not that he opposed Christians being active in the public square. "If you disagree," he told New York Times readers, "take it up with the slavery abolitionists and the civil rights movement."
But the belief that the American people are a morally sound majority led by decadent liberal elites, was inaccurate.
Misled by this belief, Christians "failed to effectively counter popular culture’s catechetical force."
Now, instead of devising new approaches, too many are "doubling down on the strategies that not only failed to convert Americans but have also done little to halt the assimilation of Christians to secular norms and beliefs."
But Dreher's response to the crisis has triggered an immense debate in America since he proposed it in his book, The Benedict Option, in March.
Christians, he believes, "will have to step back to some meaningful degree from the world for the sake of building up orthodox belief, learning the practices of discipleship and strengthening our communities."
Others, however, believe that Christians cannot abandon the world in this way, but must engage with it from an authentically Christian perspective.
