Wanting to Think Seriously About Your life? “Don’t Expect Christianity to be of Much Help…True or False?”

More and more in Post-Christendom Western Culture, “don’t expect Christianity to be of much help” might be just the response you get to commenting that you want to think seriously about your life and needed some help.

…The Church (particularly in Western Europe) has not fared well in the face of this cultural drift [expressed as “a slow, but inexorable, shift away from seeing the meaning of life as being revealed by external authorities such as the Bible or the Church, towards a belief that truth is revealed to us through our own personal experience. An emphasis on obedience to 'higher' sources of truth mediated to us by religious institutions has been gradually replaced by an emphasis on the importance of living lives that are authentic and expressive of our true selves]. 

In Britain it is now common-place for the 'Mind-Body-Spirit' sections of bookstores (which contain a mix of self-help literature, books on complementary health and texts on various alternative/ 'New Age' spiritualities) to be significantly larger than the sections on 'Religion'. There is a sense in which, if people are going to think seriously about their lives, they are more likely to turn to popular psychology, or the latest popular book on Buddhism, than they are to think about going to listen to the sermon at their local church on the following Sunday. Partly this is because the cultural drift…also involves a shift of interest away from a supernatural realm that exists above our earthly lives, and from a heavenly realm that exists after it, towards a belief that if we are to experience meaning, goodness and truth, this will only happen in the period of time that we have between the day we are born and the day we die. As two leading British sociologists of religion have commented, we are now living in a culture in which it is the 'spiritualities of life’, which are flourishing. Because credal Christianity remains associated with a metaphysical realm above our earthly lives, or with a life after this one, it is therefore perceived as less relevant by the majority of people in Western society who want concrete answers as to how we can achieve well-being within our lifetimes in this world…

Gordon Lynch

Dr Gordon Lynch lectures in practical theology at the University of Birmingham in the UK. He is the author of "After Religion: "Generation X" and the Search for Meaning' (DLT, 2002), ‘Losing My Religion? Exploring the Process of Moving on from Evangelical Faith' (DLT, 2003), and ‘Understanding Theology and Popular Culture’ (Blackwell, 2005)

Read the rest of Gordon’s very useful little essay here

Comments

[ron cole]

Hi Paul, What a great article, and thanks for directing us to it. I love Gordon Lynch's alternative to a credal christianity. In our defence of against science, we have reduced this faith journey probably into someting it wasn't meant to be. While creating a religion of absolutes, in literal truths, theology...we have forgotten that mystery can also be an unbounded truth.
I don't think we need throw out credal christianity, but we certainly must learn to weave the mystery back into the journey. I think maybe on the fringes of the " Church " this is already happening. Which is interesting, because the reality of what and who the church is at the center...is more mystery than we can imagine.

[Kristin]

Hi Paul. Interesting stuff. I wonder whether Christianity, at it's best, doesn't have this dichotomy between meaning/truth/goodness as discovered and created in the now, and a metaphysical reality beyond us. It seems like the Bible is a witness of these things existing in partnership, over time. I actually wonder whether the "leading British sociologists" Lynch references unfairly charicature BOTH sides of this dichotomy. (Can you tell I have my feet in both worlds?...)

[Fyfe]

I can accept the personal account of religion and faith as a sociological fact for today. I equally think that we need to take seriously the fact that institutionally the church has propounded 'truth' in forms that fit less today. By this I mean I don't think it is as simple as throwing out the creeds of old, otherwise we may begin to lose touch with some vitally, long wrestled out, understandings about God. Rather, I would suggest that what needs defining is our own wrestling today with how we understanding God in our context, in our times. One thing the creeds attempt among other things is to gather the people and recognise the communal identity given in faith; to individualise it too much loses this facet to being God's people.

If the issue then is truth for the life we live now, it is certainly more than credal.I like Gordon Lynch's paper, but it seems to me that the issue is truth and where institutional religion has vested and expounded truth.
I have been considering qoheleth in Ecclesistes the past few weeks and I have been struck by the way he seeks to gather the people and challenges the fraudulent faith that is so inadequate to the people who live in quiet resignation. He upholds the otherness, the mystery of God and points to truth there.(more in my blog)I think that in other words qoheleth seeks to offer a spirituality for life that speaks of the harsh sober reality of the likes of suffering, pain, problesm- in toto life in the face of a religion/faith so-called that closes it's eyes and hides behind a credal stance.

[Andrew]

Why does Christianity always have to be interrogated at the bar by culture? Is what is "real" culture or that which is made new in Christ? It seems to me that immanence becomes the guiding factor in this essay. Colin Gunton, in his book Yesterday and Today, argues that similar immanent philosophical assumptions can be found in a lot of the quest for the historical Jesus and have evolved from enlightenment rationality. On a similar note, Ellen Charry reckons that a straight line can connect Decartes and Derrida, the connection is emancipation: Decartes from external constraints and Derrida from meaning itself. It seems to me that at times Lynch's essay is driven by emancipation, especially from tradition. I think we need to hold transendence and immanence in an appropriate tension - a bit like Nicea and Chalcedon tried to!

[Christop]

With regards to the alternative spirituality in bookshops, normally in Australia there isn't a Christian/religious section, but the Christian books are put in the alternative spirituality section. I think this is good (providing the books are good) because that way people who are interested in alternative spirituality are more likely to be exposed to Christian ideas.

I expect the secular, or rather, holistic bookshops don't stock much Christian material because the 'Chritian' shops cover most fo that market already. Perhaps if Christians ordered 'Christian' books through holistic bookshops, then they would stock more 'Christian' material.