Good News for a "Post-Secular" Culture

I saw this headline that intrigued me in the online collection of news I get from a news and opinion aggregator called Real Clear Politics. The headline was “Holland's Post-Secular Future”. “Post-secular”, I thought—that must mean the article is about a growth of religious influence in Holland; and from other articles I’ve read about what’s going on in Europe, I guessed that the growing religious influence would be Islam.

There are millions of Muslim immigrants in Europe. And, since “demography is destiny” as some have said, I figured that the higher birth rate of Muslims would figure into the religious surge in Holland. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the article was about a resurgence of Christianity.

When I clicked on the headline’s link and actually saw the article, I was even more intrigued. The title is “Holland’s Post-Secular Future”, and the sub-title is “Christianity is dead. Long live Christianity.”

I encourage you to read the entire article. This clip is a clue to the sub-title:

"The idea that secularization is the irreversible wave of the future is still the conventional wisdom in intellectual circles here. They would be bemused, to say the least, at a Dutch relapse into religiosity. But as the authors of a recently published study called De Toekomst van God (The Future of God) point out, organized prayer in the workplace is just one among several pieces of evidence suggesting that Holland is on the threshold of a new era--one we might call the age of "post-secularization." In their book, Adjiedj Bakas, a professional trend-watcher, and Minne Buwalda, a journalist, argue that Holland is experiencing a fundamental shift in religious orientation: 'Throughout Western Europe, and also in Holland, liberal Protestantism is in its death throes. It will be replaced by a new orthodoxy.'"

The clue is in the last two sentences, and like a treasure hunt, it leads us to search for the next piece of the puzzle. What is the “new orthodoxy”? It is a return to the orthodoxy of traditional Christianity which has been rejected by the mainstream Protestant churches in Europe, but which has been embraced by “a growing group, most of them young people, who are genuinely interested, for whom this is all completely new." It’s strange to think that traditional, orthodox, Christianity is new to the youth of Europe. After all, it’s 2000 years old. But it’s new because the established churches seem to have replaced traditional views for something they thought would be more relevant. The result, though, is relegating the established churches to irrelevancy.

“There's statistical evidence to back up the "new orthodoxy" hypothesis. First of all, there's the undeniable fact of the continued decline and fall of the old liberal religious order. Worst hit are the mainstream Protestant churches, whose membership declined from 23 percent of the population in the late 1950s to 6 percent today. According to government estimates, by 2020 this figure will have dwindled to a mere 2 percent. The decline of liberal Protestantism has been matched by that of liberal Catholicism. The once-powerful Catholic Eighth of May group--a liberation theology movement born out of a mass meeting on May 8, 1985, to protest against Pope John Paul II's visit to the Netherlands--was disbanded in November 2003 because of lack of interest among its rapidly declining membership. More broadly, aging Catholic congregations mean that Roman Catholicism, too, will likely face another decade or so of declining membership. From 42 percent of the population in 1958 and 17 percent today, membership could fall to as low as 10 percent before leveling off around 2020.”

The real clue to the “post-secular” phrase is best seen in this quote: "It's evidence of a growing spiritual hunger in society. People are really searching for truth."

I saw some of this spiritual hunger myself this week. In talking with a couple of younger men about an upcoming study on prayer that my Sunday School class will start soon, the subject of guilt, repentance, and subsequent return to the same sin (behaviors, thoughts, and attitudes) came up. How can I expect God to forgive me and accept me when I keep doing the things I’ve just repented of?

I’m not sure how much it helped, but I was able to point out that all of us have the same problem, as even Saint Paul exclaimed in Romans 7:18-19: “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing.”

The answer to Paul’s dilemma, and to ours, is grace. God did something for us that we could not do for ourselves. God gave us something we do not deserve. “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:6-8 NIV)

This is the message that people want to hear. No one has to tell us that there is something wrong inside us. We know it all too well. What we want to hear is that there is a remedy, that there is hope that we can change (or rather that we can be changed).

With all the self-help tricks we can find we try to change ourselves. But in this inner core of our being we know it’s not a matter of just changing a habit, or going on a diet, or all the other resolutions we make, especially at this time of year. We want to change, but we cannot erase what we have done in the past, and we struggle to become the kind of person we want to be for the future.

As sincere as it is, the attempt by liberal Protestant Christianity (whether in Europe or here in the United States) to replace the fully God and fully human Jesus of traditional, orthodox, Christianity who “died for our sins” with the spiritual but only human Jesus who serves as a model for us to follow does just not have any appeal.

When a person is wrestling with the sinful nature that they know is at the core of their being, they don’t want a model. They want a Savior. Jesus is that Savior. That’s the “new orthodoxy” that is appealing to the young Christians in Holland. That’s the same message that has appealed to believers for 2000 years.

My church has the word “Calvary” in its name. We are now celebrating our 125^th anniversary. What was it in the mind of the founders of that church 125 years ago that led them to use that word? Calvary is the place where Jesus was crucified. “Calvary” reminds us of the cross that towers above our church building. “Calvary” brings to mind the message bound up in the death-burial-resurrection event we anticipate at Christmas and celebrate at Easter—God, in the person of Jesus Christ, dying for us and becoming our Savior.

My prayer for my church and for others is that this time-tested message will never be replaced with the message that has proven to be ineffective in changing lives—the message that Jesus is only our teacher or model. We need a teacher. We need a model. But we need more: we need a Savior. Thank God, we have one in Jesus.