‘Our shared morality, once the glue that held the social fabric together, is being torn apart’.
Paul Kelly – 2nd March 2024․
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Around a year ago I wrote this regarding our times; tragically it is even more relevant twelve months later –
‘In the West, we have arrived at Easter 2023 as a society disintegrating as a result of its wilful rejection of the Easter message itself. A society increasingly being torn apart by tribalistic division, an identity-political fragmentation of the society birthed by, shaped by, guided by and, yes as imperfect as it was, largely held together by, the society-shaping ‘Glue’ that is the Grand Story of the Biblical world view. That ‘Glue’ is now little more evident than the fading Cheshire Cat in Alice’s Wonderland, as the western Church continues its decades long missional failure and consequent decline.
Further, as the ‘biblical Glue’ is leached out of society, we are watching the horror show of a moral trainwreck taking place before our eyes. This moral disintegration, this social tearing, is marked by a deepening fragmentation into Tribes defined by ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, political partisanship, religious belief etc.
As ‘God dies’ in society, so too is lost the ‘identity-politics-denied’ belief that all people are equal, as expressed in the American Declaration of Independence which states-
‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights’.
Such a statement could only be the fruit of a Biblical world view, but now, untethered from the Biblical narrative, such truths are anything but ‘self-evident’. Indeed, the lack of them has been the mark of pagan cultures throughout history, as well as in the West today.
Also lost with the ‘death of God’, are such ‘quaint’ notions as putting the interest of others first (Philippians 2:3); or the ‘Golden rule’ of treating others as you would like to be treated (Matthew 7:12); and every one of whatever status being ‘our neighbour’ and ‘loving them as we love ourselves’ (Luke 10:25-37)’.
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However, while many Christians today are seemingly ignorant of it, all this has happened before.
In 1738, Bishop George Berkely a bishop in the Anglican church, declared that morality had collapsed ‘to a degree that was never before known in any Christian country’. For Britain had descended into a moral cesspit characterised by rampant ‘Gin-drinking’ alcoholism, a gambling epidemic, public promiscuity, an explosion of prostitution and freely available pornography.
The reason that this allegedly ‘Christian’ nation, Britain, had fallen into such moral degradation is simple – the Bible, or rather the lack of it.
In the 18th century the institutional British church had become corrupt. Conscientious clergy had been expelled, taking their prophetic voices with them, and consequently the nation lost the biblical influence that only two hundred years before had been resurrected by the Reformation.
Enter John Wesley
‘Knock out the civilizational traditions that are the foundations of our moral order and you knock out the bonds keeping our societies together at the exact time powerful centrifugal forces are working to pull them apart’.
Paul Kelly
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Into this ‘moral cesspit’ entered John Wesley, an ordained Anglican clergyman born in England in 1703. Wesley was shunned by the institutional Church because of his opposition to the church establishment, persecuted by clergy and banned from parish churches, including the one his father had been minister of. So, he was forced to continue his ministry largely in the open air.
The Wesley story is a lesson for our times, in that it is just one example of the fact that when the church is impotent and has lost its way, revival, when it occurs, rarely comes from the established church itself but usually from outside of it.
Wesley believed that the living core of Christianity was contained in the Bible, a belief that had largely been lost in the mainline churches of his time. Preaching from the word of God to thousands of people in the open air was the central characteristic of his ministry. The results of his bible-centred, and bible-proclaiming ministry were spectacular, resulting in the English ‘Great Awakening’ of the 18th century and the restoration of Biblical morality to Britain.
Tragically, we now have come full circle, with the now half-century-long decline of Christianity, and the corresponding loss of the biblical glue that previously cemented western society. Now we are once more descending into an 18th century-like moral cesspool for-
‘The United States, and the West, are caught in the slowly asphyxiating grip of a decadence they do not understand, and have been there for 50 years . . .
We are not standing on the cusp of decadence. The US, and Australia, have been decadent for half a century or more. The culture wars of the 1960s have never been resolved but have left us with a paralysed dystopia slowly getting worse’.
Greg Sheridan, ‘How the West Was Wasted’’
This plunge into the ‘moral cesspool’ has come about because ‘our shared morality, once the glue that held the social fabric together’ is no more, as the Bible is banished from the public square.
Although such a suggestion is mocked today by many in the media, in governments, in universities and schools, that ‘shared morality’ is biblical morality.
‘Men have forgotten God, that is why all this happened’. Alexander Solzhenitsyn
One result of the ejection of God from western society, is the dismal output of our education system, in particular a deep ignorance of history by younger generations that beggars belief. Those who want to banish Christianity are mind-blowingly ignorant of the fact that the very benefits of the society in the West that they enjoy are the results of the Bible they reject!
It is the Bible, and the Christian civilization it created, that was the reason modern science, with all its benefits, developed in the West. It was the Wesleyan Biblical revival that, in the words of the Indian writer Vishal Mangalwadi, ‘was the midwife’ of the free institutions of the English-speaking world. It is the Gospel emphasis that flowed from the ‘Great Awakening’, the ‘looking after the interest of others before yourself’, that was the impetus for-
‘The factory schools, the Ragged schools, prison reform, the Salvation Army, the London City Mission, George Muller’s orphanages, evening education institutes for working class people, the National Children’s home, the YMCA, Barnardo’s Homes, the NSPCC, Boy Scouts, Girl Guides, the RSPCA. St John’s Ambulance, the Red Cross and a legion of other organizations formed by Biblically-driven Christians for the benefit of society’.
As an aside, the above list (which could be much longer) is worth mentioning to those who wish to denigrate western civilization!
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‘Religion and morality are the essential pillars of a civil society’.
George Washington
So where should we look for rescue? How can we restore the ‘essential pillars of a civil society’? What can provide a new ‘Act of Hope’ in this dismal Tragedy? What could save us from this
uncontrolled descent into the moral quagmire? What can bring about a new ‘Great Awakening’?
The only vehicle for such is the one God intended for the purpose, i.e. the Church. But no! Most definitely not the impotent, inward looking, resource consuming, comfortable, missionally barren institutional western Church of today, with leadership which appears to be unable to respond to the Crisis but contents itself with just managing decline. No, so sadly, not that Church which, as Doctor Ruth Powell has described it, just ‘(Doubles) down on what hasn’t worked for decades’.
It was the widespread proclamation, the shining of the light, of the Gospel that restored the moral fabric of 18th century Britain, but it wasn’t the institutional ‘Church’ that did it. No, it was a new movement outside the established Church, the one driven by Wesley and others in Britain.
To face the presenting challenge to Christianity in the West, the challenge of neo-Pagan mission, nothing less than a new extra-‘Church’ movement is required.
However, before any such thing can even begin to happen four things must be grasped.
- The challenge is one of Pagan Mission, something the western Church has not carried out ‘in its own culture’ for 1500 years. Unless and until this fact is grasped, and there is little sign that it is, there will be no possibility of developing effective missional strategies.
2. We are at a hinge point in history, with ongoing tectonic shifts in culture taking place, of such speed that the rigid, change-averse, ‘Church’ is incapable of responding to them.
3. As I first wrote nearly ten years ago –
‘Unpalatable though it may be, and much as many seem to wish to
ignore or deny it, the current local church paradigm in the West has
not been for over 20 years, is not, nor can it be made to be,
capable of achieving trend-reversing missional goals.’
The ensuing years have proved that point. For since then things have only become worse in terms of church attendance, the making of new disciples and the collapse of the influence of Christianity (the SALT) in society. Yet, apart from some wonderful exceptions for which we thank God, there has been virtually no response in terms of the Church in general. All we have seen is a doubling down, a recycling of the failed (what I call Square Wheel) strategies of yesteryear.
4.The new Pagan Mission requires new ‘Missionary Leadership’. Regrettably this, again with a very few honourable exceptions, is unlikely to come from the current cohort of church leaders. (Nor is it likely to come from those in the pipeline currently being trained in the ‘old model’) who, while for the most part being godly, faithful men and women, consistently seem unwilling and/or incapable of grasping points 1 to 3 above, no matter how dire the statistics on church health become, including the fact that five times as many churches are being closed as are being started. See Missional Mathematics.
A Quantum Leap
Jesus said to his disciples, ‘No one lights a lamp and hides it in a jar or puts it under a bed. Instead, he puts it on a stand, so that those who come in can see the light’. Yet that is exactly what the standard church does, hiding the light of the gospel inside the four walls where services are held (or in a bible study in somebody’s lounge room), and worse where very few have ‘come in’ for a very long time. These are places where the bible may well be faithfully taught and learned but hidden away so they have no impact on the millions of the Lost outside.
What is urgently needed is a totally new strategy that fully requires a ‘quantum leap’ in missional thinking, but to what exactly? To answer that, we can learn from John Wesley with his networks of lay led small groups (Classes), or the strategies of the Celtic missionaries in the fifth and sixth centuries, who evangelised pagan Britain with small Christian communities planted in pagan villages, who according to one author-.
‘pushed through Europe’s wilderness of forest and swamp and savage tribes. They were the David Livingstones of their day, but even more successful . . . . (It was) through them, Europe became more civilized.’
The only way a new ‘Great Awakening’ can take place is if a new missional movement is formed that takes the Bible to the ‘Live, work and play’ spaces where those without Christ regularly meet. This means establishing networks of small, cheap, easily multiplied, easily reinventable, largely lay-led communities of all shapes, sizes, and styles in those spaces. needed
It is important to acknowledge here, that there are already several such networks of Christian fellowships being developed (although not all of them tick the easily multiplied, easily reinventable boxes). However, they are far too few and far between to have any great effect in the massive missional task ahead.
For a mission that will have any possibility of achieving the massive increase in fruitfulness needed, the quantum leap required must be to ‘Something Completely Different’ from current missional practices. As I explained in greater detail in my book, Quantum Mission (SEE here).
Take the Initiative
However, this is not just an issue for leadership, but for individual members of congregations who are not let off the hook. For if our expression of faith is largely limited to participating in the standard Sunday church model, it is important to realise that what we are doing is just continuing to consume God’s resources with (apart from rare exceptions) little fruit. Every congregational member has a responsibility to use our God-given resources to bear Kingdom fruit.
Each church member could start to exercise that God-given responsibility to bring about the far more missionally fruitful strategies so urgently required by-
Asking their church leadership some questions such as-
- How many unchurched and de-churched people have joined our congregation in the last year/5 years? (say the answer is A). How many people have left and not joined another congregation in the same period? (Say the answer is B).
Calculate A minus B. The answer is some measure of Kingdom growth (not the same as church growth) or decline resulting from congregational activities in that period.
2. Given the well documented decades-long decline in disciple-making and gospel influence in society, that has led to the loss of the Biblical moral ‘Glue’, what new initiatives is our congregation engaged in, or planning, that will TAKE And EMBED the gospel (the Bible) into the ‘Live, work and play’ spaces of the Lost in our local community?
3. If the answer to question 2 is effectively ‘none’, as it will be in 90% plus of cases, then we might ask, ‘How can the church initiate such strategies?’
Asking themselves-
- Bearing in mind Jesus’ statement that Christians are chosen to ‘bear fruit and fruit that lasts’, what percentage of my God-given resources am I using to bear fruit for the Kingdom of God?
2. How do I need to change my own priorities?
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At a time of Crisis such as ours, when the institutional ‘Church’ has lost its way, and the (biblical) ‘glue that held the social fabric together’ is lost also, resulting in the current descent into a moral quagmire, Christians can learn much from the example of John Wesley.
It is vain hope that flies in the face of decades of evidence, to believe that the urgently required revival can come from the institutional church. The current neo-pagan missional challenge in western society can only come from a movement outside the Church which has lost its way regarding its God given missional task to its ‘own culture’.
The choice is ours. To do nothing and retreat into an ever-diminishing number of Christian
ghettos in a neo-pagan wasteland, or to ‘awake’ to a costly reality and switch our resources to creating new, culturally appropriate missional entities and strategies for our times.
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