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REFLECTING ON 2016, ANTICIPATING 2017
It is a New Year and time for reflection. How is it going? "It" in this case referring not to the stock portfolio or personal health or career or family or the favorite basketball team, or even the nation's political climate, but to the cause of Christ. How goes the Church and the gospel? Is God's work going well or not so well? What are the big concerns coming out of 2016? What are the hopes for 2017?
Some of the news is not so good.
1) It is reported that 90,000 Christians died because of their faith in 2016. Whatever our other problems, the persecution of our brothers and sisters in Christ is surely one of our greatest tragedies of the year. At least one-third of the deaths were at the hand of Islamists (but we are told Islam is a peaceful religion).
2) United Methodist worship attendance in America declined 2.9%, or by 82,313 worshippers in the church year 2014-2015 (the latest years for which there are figures). In the last ten years the worship decline has been 17.7%, or 594,392 worshippers. This compares with a 2.4% decline in the years 1995-2005, a 2.2% decline in the years 1985-1995 and a 3.8% decline in the year's 1975-1985. This is an unacceptable situation. While the losses have been greatest in the most liberal jurisdictions (The Western and the Northeastern) the decline was seen in every jurisdiction. Evangelical churches are also experiencing decline. This weighs heavily on our hearts.
3) Some studies indicate America is experiencing a decline in religious affiliation. In one study 23% of Americans now claim "none" as their religious preference. This compares to a study done in 1990 in which only 10% of Americans claimed "none." Secularists and atheists are rejoicing that Americans are now coming of age. As James A. Haught, emeritus editor of the Charleston, West Virginia Gazette-Mail, writes in AlterNet (1-3-17): "it took humanity several millennia to reach the Secular Age, now it's blossoming spectacularly." Haught has more to say:
...It's now less plausible to believe in invisible gods, devils, heavens, hells, angels, demons, plus virgin births, resurrections, miracles, messiahs, prophecies, faith-healings, visions, incarnations, divine visitations and other supernatural claims. Magical thinking is suspect and ludicrous. It's not for intelligent, educated people.
4)
Evangelical Christianity in America is increasingly under attack.
This is not just from secularists but even from some progressive Christians. Here is what Catherine Wallace, cultural historian on the faculty of the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University, says:
Moderate Americans are fed up with hate-mongering, intolerant, hard-Right Christian fundamentalists. Scholars in several different fields now agree that "Christian" has come to mean "hard-Right bigot."
Wallace lays out the issues of contention:
Gay marriage, political violence, science-denial, literal-minded absolutism, bullying judgmentalism and misconception of Jesus of Nazareth and God as Jesus understood him.
5)
This attack is taking place even within our own United Methodist Church.
Here are the words of Dorothea Benz of the Love Prevails group (with primary reference to the church's stance on homosexual practice):
An anti-queer majority at General Conference, ...a combination of United States and international conservatives, led and whipped into a hateful frenzy by southern white Americans, has refused to consider our humanity. ...We are in thrall to an unjust body of rules and told the only way to change it is at General Conference, but a General Conference tyranny of the majority is hellbent on betraying our humanity.
Even church leaders pile on. Bishop Melvin Talbot, who once had sworn allegiance to the doctrine and discipline of The United Methodist Church, launches a frontal attack on the very church he had sworn to uphold:
I believe the derogatory language and punitive laws (of the Discipline) are immoral, evil, and unjust. There are times when one's commitment to God takes priority over what the church says.
What then? With this bad news is there reason for hope? There is indeed.
1) Christian faith is still alive and well in America. The claim that 23% of Americans have no religion is misleading. For many people "religion" means "denomination." Loyalty to denominations is in decline but a more careful reading of the religious landscape tells another picture. New churches, including megachurches, "ministries," and "fellowships" are springing up all over, many at the expense of traditional denominations. We believe there are as many persons in worship settings as there have ever been. There are more Christian radio stations, more Christian missionaries, more Christian home-schools than ever before.
2) Whatever the situation in America, there are places in the world where it is difficult to keep up with the Christian growth. Genggang Yarig, professor of sociology at Purdue and author of Religion in China, Survival and Renewal under Communist Rule, reports that the number of Christians in China has increased from one million in 1949 (before Communism sought to eradicate Christian faith) to something like 75 million today. At the 10% growth rate China is due to claim more Protestant Christians by 2025 than the United States (the USA now claims 159 million). Presently Brazil claims 40 million and South Africa 30 million Protestant Christians.
3) Despite the disarray in United Methodism we believe Methodism has a hopeful future. Despite the lack of stellar leadership exhibited by the church's Council of Bishops this past year, and despite the fact that Methodism's most important bureaucratic agency, the Connectional Table, voted 27-4 to recommend that the General Conference scuttle the church's historic stand on homosexual practice, and despite lobbying efforts on the part of other agencies, a number of seminaries, and other causes to change the church's stand, the General Conference was prepared to affirm the doctrine and Discipline of the church at its May 2016 General Conference held in Portland. Final votes were not taken on key legislation while a new commission, the Commission on a Way Forward, seeks to find ways to allow United Methodists to hold as one body without division. In the midst of this churches and individuals and groups are standing firm on the importance of affirming historic Wesleyan Christianity. A new group, the Wesleyan Covenant Association, has been formed to rally evangelical voices in the midst of further discussion and debate. Even in the midst of declining worship attendance in the United States United Methodism as a global church is growing. We affirm many hopeful signs.
What will 2017 hold? For the Church? For the nation? For the world? We do not claim to be prophets who can predict the future. But we strongly affirm the God who holds the future.
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