Culture & Faith: Part 1 Who is influencing who?

In 2006, James Canton, in his book The Extreme Future, suggested that speed, complexity, risk, change and surprise would define the times up until now. In the past 15 years these trends intensified. We don’t need a 5G network to tell us that. Christian singles, seniors and families, attempting to hold onto traditional values, practices, rights and freedoms, are getting blown over in the tumble of cultural challenges and opportunities through a tsunami of technology, globalization and diversity.

The question of who is influencing who continues as churches fill the digital waves with Christ-promoting messaging and governments propose legislation undermining the faith and convictions of the faithful. A third of church facilities (9,000) are designated for closure or demolition as crumbling buildings and shrinking congregations proliferate the landscape. Surviving congregations are partnering up, renovating and repurposing for social justice, housing, and community programs, welcoming ethnic diversity and rebranding themselves on the air waves. Loss of structures can mean loss of beauty, memory, community, programs, landmarks and history along with worship spaces. Does loss of visible presence mean loss of influence, or has it always been about the believers living as salt and light through faith?

Thirty years ago, conversations on a post-Christian society bubbled up and conversations began to have every church missional. Today, our youngest generations boast the highest percentage of generations who claim to be atheistic, and 65% of our churches are in decline. While we are not as post-Christian as Europe, our society has thrown off much of the culture our forebears laid down. As philosopher Charles Taylor admits, we have become a society where identities are hyper-fragile, where our sources of fulfillment have become disappointing, where are freedoms fall short of hopes and where our understanding of reality doesn’t fit in with human nature.

The culture wars seem lost, with issues like intersectionality, conversion therapy, MAiD, secularism, cancel culture, political extremism, consumerism and technology anchored in place. Perhaps our prosperity, individual security and comfort have influenced us more than incoming cultures, changing social mores or even government legislation. Where are the voices of influence coming from seasoned Christian leaders – or have they all been compromised into silence so we are left defenseless? 

With 25 percent of those under 21 spending eight hours a day on social media and another 57% spending at least 4 hours there is a catechism influencing the next generations and it is not in line with our traditional teaching. As Tim Keller notes, the new catechism is that our youth need to be true to themselves (the identity narrative); everyone should be free to do what they want as long as they don’t hurt anyone (the freedom narrative); that everyone needs to do what makes them happy (the happiness narrative); and that no one has a right to tell us what is right or wrong apart from ourselves (the morality narrative).

Christians engage contemporary culture by segmenting into a blur: those who participate without reservation; those who critique and redeem; those who select segments to engage in, and/or separate from, anything originating through an ungodly source (see Bill Strom, More Than Talk). A new generation of believers are producing resources available on all social media platforms to help with the dysfunctions and struggles, but the flood of the messaging coming against us is having its impact. Being confined under COVID, with little option apart from media, is only accelerating the outside catechism. 

Sociologist Reginal Bibby noted in a UBC 2017 report titled Resilient Gods, that although the early 1960s witnessed a “flourishing religious forest” in Canada, “it’s as if a fire of secularization has devastated much of [the forest].” In one generation, over the last 50 years, we’ve seen church attendance drop from 66 percent to 25 percent or less. The younger generation is evaporating in many spaces and COVID will test the commitments of other faithful. More than 25 percent of Canadians claim no religious affiliation.

Still, the church was birthed and is sustained by Jesus. He has promised to build it and to not allow the gates of hell to prevail against it. The mission of disciple-making continues. New selfless leaders will emerge to vision new strategies in the spiritual war and they will call a new generation into the conflict. The internet will become a front door for spiritual entrepreneurs, the gospel message will transform hearts, and the Spirit will gift transformed followers to build and rebuild the body. We may become intimate and informal in small gatherings and/or we may enlarge and establish ourselves in modernized facilities, but we will face the holy restlessness within and look for brothers and sisters to influence us toward godliness in the middle of the chaos around us. The influential DNA of the early church is still in our souls.