Comment: Making Christianity Credible in a Secular Age
Today’s mainstream churches worry about the declining numbers of “bums on seats” especially amongst the young, the so-called Generation Y. Some commentators write off the support by Gen Y as a sign of their superficiality and self-interest. This may be so. Perhaps the churches should also look at the relevance of their theology and teachings for some sort of credibility gap with people in today’s secular age.
Traditional believers are asking modern, or post-modern, young people to believe that there is a physically undetectable supernatural world - a superior world - where a reasonably well-defined God with infinite knowledge and power is taking a personal interest in our individual welfare in ways we can’t understand. By the way our lack of understanding is commonly stated as a human short-coming. To connect to this God we need to accept the literal truth of the Bible, two compilations of books written, edited, translated and published over the last 2 500 years by many people with diverse interests, histories and motives. The justification for acceptance is that these writings are the true Word of God and that God directly worked through those many writers, editors and publishers.
It is reasonable to assume that many people are seeking a spirituality in their lives beyond their everyday existence. Even though many like me find that special quality in the natural world, others want the greater meaning from something beyond the physical. However most of these same people see traditional Christian claims and beliefs as coming from a series of naive and unbelievable fairy stories from a primitive past still being perpetuated today.
This is nothing new. Many Christian scholars are arguing for an overhaul of Christian beliefs (see references below), in particular, shifting away from a literalistic interpretations to treating the Bible as powerful metaphors relevant to the human condition. This puts the big-ticket items of Christianity under the spotlight:
- Was Jesus really the son of God as well as part of the Trinity?
- Was he born of a virgin birth?
- Did Jesus die and was resurrected to (re)join God and, thereby, save us from our original inherited sin?
- In fact, did Jesus exist at all as one person or was his Bible persona some sort of idealised compilation of preachers?
- Therefore, is the Bible really a mixed collection of historical stories with powerful metaphorical messages written by a diverse range of people rather than the inerrant Word of God?
- If these are wrong or, at least, doubtful, then what does it mean to be a Christian?
- Are there other ways to achieve salvation than through one specific set of religious beliefs?
Asking these questions even in recent times would have been considered heresy. But they are being asked now in progressive religious academic circles. However despite these discussions and questioning amongst theological scholars it is hard to imagine substantial changes at the pews even in a very secular Australia. Many traditional Christians would be unacceptably threatened by these thoughts. Most could not entertain the blasphemous idea that Jesus is not truly the son of God but was only a gifted preacher.
Still these changes seem necessary if Christianity is to be relevant in the 21st Century to younger and future generations.
Alex McCullie
More information
A quick search for ‘Christianity’ returns a vast number of evangelist US based web-sites that promote a fully traditional, literalistic view of the Bible. However here are some alternate search names to check:
- Jesus Seminar - a progressive academic research body seeking the historical Jesus
- Val Webb - author of Like Catching Water in a Net, which covers much of the progressive Christianity mentioned here
- Marcus Borg - prolific author and theological scholar with many popular publications
- John Dominic Crossan - historian of Jesus
- A previous posting with progressive Christian links
