It's unfortunate
when churches close, but decline in religious practice is inevitable
and won't be reversed by either "fresh expressions" or a return
to some form of the "old time religion."
Historically,
most people have looked to the Church to satisfy a variety of
essentially secular needs: social contact, healing, material help
and opportunities to provide material help to others, education,
a sense of control over their social and physical environment,
a body of wisdom literature, and a venue for communal celebrations
and rites of passage. In affluent societies, where secular institutions
meet these needs, religious participation declines — and
there's nothing churches can or should do to change that. In poor
countries, and amongst the lower classes in affluent countries,
where secular institutions don't meet these needs, people look
to the Church and religion flourishes.
There
are, always have been and likely always will be, a minority who
are interested in religion as such — in theology, mysticism, sacred
art, music and literature, mythology and cultic practice, in churchiness
as such. I'm one of these people — and the Church will always
have that "niche market." But the Church will lose us if, in a
futile attempt to create mass appeal, it jettisons everything
that appeals to us, its core constituency.
This is
a hard saying. It means that the Church should adopt a stance
of real humility and recognize, for this first time in its history,
that in what Bonhoeffer called a "World Come of Age," the Church
does not possess "the whole faith for the whole world" but only
a package of theology, mysticism, art, mythology and cultic practice
that appeals to a minority of the population in traditionally
Christian countries, perhaps five percent, who have the religious
impulse and for whom Christianity is their culture religion. Secular
people can live good, "meaningful" lives — they do not need the
Church. There is no reason why they should engage in religious
practice and no reason to believe that religious commitment is
of any ethical significance. Secular societies that provide for
the needs of their people by secular means are perfectly adequate.
However,
that five percent of the population of Christendom who are interested
in religion numbers in the millions. If the Church fails us, as
it has, we have no viable alternatives and if the Church abandons
us, as it has, in the interest of appealing to the majority of
the population who are not interested in religion as such, it
is doomed to failure.
H. E. Baber
University of San Diego
San Diego, California, USA
baber@sandiego.edu
14 May 2007
Anyone
seeking information at Wikipedia about
Anglicanism in any of the 20 countries in Latin America would have
no idea that there is an Anglican church anywhere in Central or South
America. Although some of the information presented about religion
on the various Latin American sites is accurate, much of it
is not, and there is absolutely no mention of Anglican (or
Presbyterian or Methodist) on any of these sites, although
these churches are all thriving and growing in most Latin
American counties.
If you
have specific information about Anglicanism in any of the Latin
American countries, please go to Wikipedia and add it.
The Reverend
Peter Christiansen
South San Francisco, California, USA
smi2le@sbcglobal.net ss
14 May 2007
