More Indians Have Access to Cable TV Than to Basic Sanitation
3 Comments Published November 25th, 2009 in Uncategorized.The brilliant Vinoth Ramachandra makes this point in his latest blog post, How to Make Atheists.
He also writes of American Christianity:
I found myself gently defending the Dawkinses and Dennets of this world. Of course their arguments are often silly, directed at “straw men”. I have criticized them in my published writings. But the more time I spend in the US, the greater my sympathy for their strident attacks on Christians. If I grew up in the US I would probably be a hard-core atheist myself. Switch on “Christian television” and you would have to conclude that evangelical preachers were all con-men and Christians were the most gullible people on earth, easily parted from their money no less than their brains.
If American Christianity is sick, is European Christianity sick as well? And if it isn’t, or isn’t to the same degree, or if we want to give any kind of answer that marks us in better health, how much of that is because we are small? If the church grew here again, would we grow into the same pattern as North America?
Your Correspondent, Backwards compatible
I would argue that continental European Christianity as an institutional body is dead and buried, while “offshore” European Christianity is fast heading the same direction… Whilst evangelicalism in these islands still insists in looking to the US of A for its models of church growth and spirituality…
I don’t think the church will grow here until it gives up its comfort zone. Is it even interested in what ticks the european population? It has a message that transcends culture but yet insists on sticking to its own traditions to the detriment of love. It needs to start hating what it thinks it owns, and that has absolutely nothing to do with controlling anything, its own growth included. Any growth patterns will be something we’ll spot in hindsight, and if we try to claim them in order to advance future growth we’ll be like Moses hitting the staff against the rock a second time. If we’re not in line with the spirit, we have nothing to offer this culture because at the moment it is ahead of the church in its ability to control life.
And I know all about trying to control life. It is one of my big character flaws (just making sure by this statement that you WILL think I am humble because the first paragraph wasn’t very humbly submitted).
I think you both might like James KA Smith’s recent thoughts on martyrdom:
http://forsclavigera.blogspot.com/2009/11/room-for-martyrs.html