INTRODUCTION

“The global image of the US has significantly deteriorated over the past 12 months, as the chaos in Iraq has deepened. And in 18 of the countries that were involved in previous polls, the slide in America’s standing has steepened.” This was the verdict of a BBC article reporting on a BBC World Service Poll which found widespread discontent among most of the world population toward the United States of America. While the US government may think it is offering the world Pax Americana through particular foreign policy efforts, those policies are viewed with contempt by the rest of the world and have resulted in a crisis of confidence in the American government, diluting its ongoing ability to influence the world. Already its mass exportation of American culture has pricked the ire of many Arab nations, resulting in such events as the USS Cole Bombing, 9/11, and the Iraq insurgency. With so much discontent with America in general, it is no wonder that the American Church’s influence is also waning, especially when it comes to missions. Rightly or wrongly, Christianity is linked with the West and specifically the United States of America. And as America continues its pseudo-colonialist endeavors in the interest of ‘national security’, the American Church’s influence will continue to dwindle unless it embraces a post-colonial posture toward the emerging South and East. As the Western Church grapples with Her role in global missions, She must be post-colonial in theology and missions if She is to make a continued difference in the world for Jesus Christ.

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This morning the New York Times reported on the Pew Forum On Religion And Public Life’s latest survey entitled, “US Religious Landscape Survey.” It is a 143 page document outlining the seismic religious shift the American culture is undergoing. And what does it find? It uncovers what we’ve sort of known all along but were afraid to admit: it’s a very competitive marketplace, with constant movement characterizing the American religious marketplace.

Here are some interesting numbers from their massive 35,000 person survey:

• More than 1 in 4 (28%) have left the faith in which they were raised for another religion or no religion at all.
• 44% of adults have switched affiliation, moved from be affiliated from unaffiliated, or dropped any connection to a specific affiliation all together.
• Fully 16% of adults are now unaffiliated with any particular faith, making it the 4th largest “religious” group. But that doesnt mean they are all athiests or agnostics: 4% of adults are athiests or agnostics and 12% describe their religion as “nothing in particular. This last group, in turn, is fairly evenly divided between the “secular unaffiliated,” that is, those who say that religion is not important in their lives (6.3% of the adult population), and the “religious unaffiliated,” that is, those who say that religion is either somewhat important or very important in their lives (5.8% of the overall adult population).
• 1 in 5 men say they have no particular religious affiliation, compared to 1 in 13 for women.
• Surprisingly (or maybe not so surprisingly…) 1 in 4 young adults (18-29) have no religious affiliation at all.
• Those Americans who are unaffiliated with any particular religion have seen the greatest growth in numbers as a result of changes in affiliation. People moving into the unaffiliated category outnumber those moving out of the unaffiliated group by more than a three-to-one margin.
• 6 in 10 Americans age 70 and older (62%) are Protestant but that this number is only about four-in-ten (43%) among Americans ages 18-29. Conversely, young adults ages 18-29 are much more likely than those age 70 and older to say that they are not affiliated with any particular religion (25% vs. 8%). If these generational patterns persist, recent declines in the number of Protestants and growth in the size of the unaffiliated population may continue.
• People not affiliated with any particular religion stand out for their relative youth compared with other religious traditions. Among the unaffiliated, 31% are under age 30 and 71% are under age 50. Comparable numbers for the overall adult population are 20% and 59%, respectively.

Some interesting findings indeed. Without sounding like Chicken Little or repeating the omen mantras of some fundamentalists who say the Church will die in a generation, I’d like to offer some thoughts on the implications an emerging generation will have on the Church, in light of these findings.

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“There is now no recognized moral knowledge upon which projects of fostering moral development [can] be based.” -Dallas Willard, Divine Conspiracy, pg. 3

This very idea was reflected by Peter Steinfels in a column in this mornings New York Times. Commenting on the fading Religious Right but unfading ‘culture wars,’ Steinfels comments that the pluralistic nature complicates the contemporary trajectory of 21st century skirmishes within the broader culture war. In the face of enduring “significant cultural flash points like those over abortion and gay marriage [that] have not gone away” in the emerged plurality of 21st century America, there are deep disagreements over the nature of what is moral and even how the conversation should be framed.

As is inevitable within any pluralist society, those deep disagreements within the American religio-cultural fabric are “about the sources of moral authority, about the nature of knowing and the limits of scientific rationality, about how best to live out one’s sexuality, about purpose or accident in the universe.” And while “these are not directly or properly political questions, they are nonetheless public. They are struggled over in the marketplace, the arts and popular entertainment, like sitcoms and video games.”

As someone who has devoted my life to Jesus and God’s Redemptive Story, yea even going so far as to study to join the institutionalized version of that Story, I wonder how we are to reconcile this plurality with God’s single Story on Reality. If there is no longer any common ground, no tether to a single reference point (mainly Yahweh himself and His Story), how is our society to function, let alone the Church within that pluralist public square? In a war-torn country like USAmerica at the hands of an oft ugly culture war, how are we to foster morality with no agreement about the Source of moral authority? How are we to even know what is moral with no recognized, common moral knowledge? How do we help people be fully human when there is such stark disagreement about what it even means to be human? How do we explain the purpose of life in the face of an accidental, chaotic cosmic existence?

In short, how can the Church be the Church within a pluralist public square, especially one in which Her voice is no longer the dominant voice and is viewed as “totally unfit, not merely for the public life, but the personal life, as well”?

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