16. Firm Center, Soft Edges
16
Firm Center, Soft Edges
Good faith Christians are grounded in Scripture and practice the art of seeing people.
The setting for the interview was unreal: a beautiful resort near San Diego, California. Seagulls circled in a cloudless sky over the Del Mar tidal region. I showed up to prerecord a segment for a CNN special report on the rise of atheism in the United States; they had asked me to contribute some of Barna’s findings on the subject. The segment was slated to be filmed in the office of Deepak Chopra, a well-known New Age spiritualist who rose to fame via frequent stops on The Oprah Winfrey Show.
Among the topics on the agenda: whether America is becoming more atheistic and the alleged large number of pastors who are closet atheists.
“The number of people claiming no religion has grown,” I told the interviewer. “That means there are more secular Americans today than there were a decade ago. But actually the number of atheists is about the same. Instead, people tend to call themselves agnostics or religiously unaffiliated.”
“So what would you say to those who say that secularism is one of the fastest-growing groups in America?”
“America is definitely less Christian than it was twenty-five years ago. And the increasing visibility of atheism is part of that. Yet a lot of the change we are seeing is because researchers are asking the questions differently than they did in the past. When you give people a chance to mark ‘not affiliated’ or ‘none’ but you’ve never offered that option in the past, you don’t have any way of tracking a hypothetical increase.”
“Do you have evidence that there are some pastors who secretly admit they don’t believe in God?”
“No, we don’t have any research on that. I am sure you can find someone to interview, but I doubt it’s a very large group. Being a pastor is a tough job, but in our research, we don’t have a lot of evidence that there is any sort of notable crisis of faith among clergy.”
The interview went on for an hour.
About halfway through the taping, the interviewer, Kyra, stopped the cameras to welcome the office owner to the room. Deepak Chopra was here.
“I’m sorry, Deeps. We are running late for your interview.” Clearly, Mr. Chopra and Kyra were acquainted.
“No problem. I have an eternity.”
That day in Chopra’s office could be seen as a microcosm of faith in our society: a strange mix of Christianity, secularism, and other faith systems trying to find enough common ground to talk about what’s happening. But it was also more. That room in San Diego played host to three people created in God’s image who had brought their unique needs, desires, and baggage to a conversation about the world.
We are big fans of data, but every day we try to keep in mind that the numbers we toss around represent real people. When we dig into a new data set, the challenge is not only to identify trends in the population but also to see the people in the population.
We want to challenge you to do the same.
If we are going to successfully demonstrate good faith, we must not only understand societal dynamics but also know how to relate them to real people. As we explore the big-picture dimensions of secularism and pluralism in our society, think about people you know (or should get to know) who are atheists, agnostics, and religiously unaffiliated or who profess another faith.
Do you know their story? Are you familiar with the unique needs, desires, and baggage they bring to a conversation? Or are they lumped together in your mind as one big “them”?
Let’s take a hard look at the data, but let’s also keep in mind who the data represents. Charts, graphs, and tables are helpful, but only as much as they help us see people.
As David reminded the CNN interviewer that day in San Diego, the vast majority of Americans are informed by faith in some way, and Christianity is far and away the dominant player on the US religious scene (as it has been for 350 years or so, once the European population overtook Native Americans). With simple population projections, we can reasonably say that Christianity will continue to be the dominant—but less dominant—demographic force in the United States even a hundred years from now.
Christianity holds such massive sway that even now about half the population believes America is best defined as “a Christian nation” (see the table on the following page).
But the signs of a more active secularism are hard to miss. Most people perceive that culture is adrift from its Christian moorings. Four out of five Americans agree with the statement “US society is becoming more secular, meaning more likely to exclude faith and religion from public life.” Also, 43 percent of all adults and 57 percent of practicing Christians say the description “a secular nation” fits today’s America. Other adults are apt to call the nation “godless” (23 percent) or “post-Christian” (31 percent).
In reality, atheists, agnostics, and the religiously unaffiliated account for only about one-quarter of the population. Their proportion is growing, especially among Millennials, but they are still a minority in the United States.
Common ground is also easy to find.
Even amid a diversity of faith views, there is unity around a couple of big ideas. About one-third of both practicing Christians and non-Christians describe America as “a religiously plural nation” and more than half call it a “nation in transition spiritually.” Now, that’s something we can agree on.
The perception that we live in a religiously diverse society has some truth, but only about one-tenth of the nation adheres to a faith other than Christianity or secularism. These visions of reality compete and drive much of the religious and ideological conflict we see in public life.
The Best Descriptions of the US Today
The following is a list of words or phrases. Please indicate whether each is an accurate or not accurate description of the US today.
% “accurate”
All Adults
Practicing Christians
A religiously plural nation
66
71
A nation in transition spiritually
53
57
A Christian nation
49
49
A secular nation
43
57
A post-Christian nation
31
39
A godless nation
23
36
N
Behind the Numbers
There is no question that secularism has momentum in Western society. And as our nation becomes more pluralistic—where all ideas have an equal place at the societal table—we need to understand what opportunities and threats exist for good faith to advance.
When we get behind the big-picture data of opinions and affiliation, there are three underlying realities. And if we can zoom in to see the people, we can respond with care and sophistication as good faith Christians in the days ahead.
The Decline of Legacy Christians
As the following table shows, the number of people who identify themselves as Christians is declining. Nearly 9 out of 10 Elders and Boomers self-describe as Christian, but that number drops to 78 percent among Gen-Xers and just 67 percent among Millennials.
However, our data show the drop-off is happening mostly among legacy Christians, those who self-identify as Christian but don’t prioritize faith. The proportion of practicing Christians—those who attend worship services monthly and say faith is very important to their lives—is relatively stable. For example, 45 percent of Boomers who self-identify as Christian are practicing, compared to 42 percent of Gen-Xers and 36 percent of Millennials. There’s a generational dip, but overall it is much less pronounced. Millennials do face challenges retaining their faith, but among those who do, commitments to the Bible, the church, and Christ are strong.
This is encouraging. While there may be an overall decline in the number of Americans who identify as Christian, the core number of them who prioritize their faithful way of life remains steady and strong. And these believers represent the future of Christianity in America.
The Faith Profile of US Adults
% Elders
% Boomers
% Gen-Xers
% Millennials
Self-identified Christians
88
85
78
67
Self-identified atheists, agnostics, or “none”
6
8
13
21
Adherents to faiths other than Christianity
6
6
8
11
Cities and States
N
Totals may not equal 100% due to rounding.
We can acknowledge that it’s not a bad thing to see superficial forms of faith fade away. When inert faith evaporates, there is greater opportunity for the faithful to stay on mission. But a few questions we should wrestle with are:
God doesn’t need a popular majority to do his work, but if each successive generation has fewer active disciples, there is more work for fewer to do.
The gospel changes everything, starting with our hearts and then bursting into our homes, neighborhoods, and businesses and through the fabric of complicated everyday life. Dallas Willard, in his book Knowing Christ Today, makes the argument that Christians need to reclaim faith that speaks to “the very nature of things.”1 Too often, we let scientists and academics decide what counts as reality while religion is consigned to the soft stuff of commitment, perception, and emotion. But the Holy Spirit transforms us into restorers concerned about much more than the “kid’s table” of life’s issues.
This is the kind of transformative faith we must live and pass on.
Questions about the Bible’s Authority
A second overall trend in secular and pluralistic America that’s making an impact on real people’s lives is widespread skepticism. This is especially true among younger generations, particularly when it comes to the Bible. For a sizable number who start out as Christians, waning trust in God’s Word is where they begin to lose their religion. Yes, the vast majority of American households own a Bible, and millions of people, even non-Christians, revere what they know (or have heard) about its wisdom. Yet through research for the American Bible Society, we have tracked an increasing percentage of Americans who say the Bible is just another book written by men, not the inspired Word of God.
When the Bible goes, so goes good faith. This is a huge threat among the next generation.
Among Elders in the United States (age seventy and older), three out of four believe the Bible to be authoritative, and the ratio of those who are engaged with the Bible to those who are skeptical is 4:1. Among the youngest generation of Americans (Millennials, age eighteen to thirty-one), fewer than half believe the Bible is authoritative, and the ratio of Bible engagement to skepticism is 1:2. And as we explored in chapter 4, Millennial non-Christians are much more likely than older Americans to view the Bible as “just a story” (50 percent), “mythology” (38 percent), or “a fairy tale” (30 percent).
These data reflect a sea change in the way young Americans are approaching the Scriptures. If older generations of non-Christians don’t exactly believe the Bible, they generally don’t find fault with it. Telling someone “the Bible says so” might communicate persuasively among older Americans, but young adults are much less likely to buy it. The prevailing ethos goes, “Keep your dogma to yourself.”
We must take a sober look at these trends because Bible attitudes aren’t generally influenced by life stage—that is, they don’t shift like other religious behaviors when people advance in age. Taking these trends to their logical conclusion, secularism is likely to accelerate. Why? Because reduced trust in the Bible has the same impact as removing the foundation from under a building. Everything starts to crumble.
Many Christians worry about secularism taking over, but secularism shouldn’t be our greatest concern. In other words, secularism’s advance is downstream from anemic Bible engagement and thin theological thinking. We understand that some Christians today might disagree, but, as evangelicals, we believe the Bible is the inspired Word of the Creator, true in all it affirms, and utterly necessary for understanding who God is, who we are, and how we are meant to live as his people.
Our submission to Scripture’s authority is the basis of good faith.
We must relearn to trust in God’s ways, even when they run against the grain of current culture. Doing so will include healthy doses of both intellectual honesty and humility. But it’s urgent work that must be done because it underpins the “believe” part of the love-believe-live trifecta of good faith living.
The Journey of the iSoul
A third macro-trend is the emergence of the individual as the center of everything. Original sin created the self-absorption problem, but we seem to be living at the height of it. Comparatively, we live in a very narcissistic era. Whether because of consumerism’s tentacles or the instant gratification of digital tools, or some combination of other factors, more people are “all about me”—and this includes Christians. As we showed in chapter 4, there is a tremendous amount of individualism in today’s society, and that’s reflected in the church too. This individualism impacts the practice of good faith in an increasingly secular context because it robs the Christian community of its ability to be countercultural.
These are simply mind-blowing statistics. Millions of Christians have grafted New Age dogma onto their spiritual persona. When we peel back the layers, we find that many Christians are using the way of Jesus to pursue the way of self. Lucretius seems to be winning the day.
While we wring our hands about secularism spreading through the culture, a majority of churchgoing Christians have embraced corrupt, me-centered theology. Our discipleship efforts must prophetically respond to the “iSpirit” of the age. We should lead people not only to convert to Jesus but also to de-convert from the religion of self.
Christianity is not iFaith. It’s not just for Sunday morning when we feel like it or weeknight Bible study when we don’t have anything better to do—and it’s certainly not just for making us feel good about ourselves. It is an inward work of the Spirit that turns us outward as Christ’s body to God’s purposes for the world.
The sooner good faith Christians renounce me-me-me belief, the sooner we can offer others a way out of their own self-centeredness.
This is the church at its best: healing sinners of our self-inflicted wounds so we can become healers too.
This won’t be easy. Decoupling from the culture’s narrative can happen only when communities of faith adopt a new way of life, one rooted in Scripture. This will, indeed, be countercultural. But the Christian faith has a pretty good track record when Christians stick to the basics.
Seeing People
My friend Bill and I drove up the California hillside as the sun was slipping toward the horizon. We were invited to a sneak preview of Oprah Winfrey’s television miniseries Belief—a sort of Planet Earth–style documentary about the spiritual lives of human beings.
About 150 or so people representing different faiths gathered in the semidarkened theater, and then Oprah—Oprah!—came out and welcomed everyone to Santa Barbara. After a brief introduction, the screen lit up with stories of Christians, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, and more. The cinematography was incredible; the stories of the men and women, boys and girls, were compelling. Oprah’s voice narrated the entire documentary.
The lights flickered on, and we were all given a card with directions to Oprah’s home for dinner. As we drove the few miles, Bill and I talked about what we did and didn’t like about Belief. As it turned out, we had both enjoyed much about the episodes we had just viewed. We also wondered what other Christians, especially evangelicals, would think of the series.
“David, do you think it promotes universalism to show multiple faiths on equal footing?” Bill wondered. “And do we Christians really expect someone to make a program about faith—especially a person like Oprah—without showing multiple faiths?”
After all, we are living in a pluralistic world.
We drove through beautiful gates onto a tree-lined, cobble-stoned street, where we were greeted by the valet. Walking onto the main lawn, which was the size of a city park, Bill and I took in the towering redwoods and sparkling pond, whipped into small waves by a soaring fountain at its center.
“I feel weird that I had such a hard time with the positive angle they took on all the different religions,” I admitted. “I understand why, theologically, it bothered me. But why was I personally bugged to watch it? I felt good when Christianity was shown in a positive light but not when other faiths were.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.”
“Still, the whole thing was a noncynical approach to talking about faith, and I feel like I should be able to support that, even if I don’t agree with everything. So why am I struggling so much?”
These thoughts kept racing through my head, and I realized what was nagging at me. I’d just experienced a beautiful depiction of pluralism at work. Done with the excellence we’ve come to expect from Oprah, all faiths were given equal weight. But the basic notion being conveyed was that all faith is good, no matter which one you choose.
This was a fair thing but not a true one. And while all faiths contribute to a lot of good in the world, not all beliefs can be true. They each have ultimate claims that contradict the others. Not all paths lead to heaven.
Good faith Christians must be wary of these distortions. The message that all faiths are true is pluralism at its worst. Instead of respecting diverse points of view (confident pluralism), this relativizes competing beliefs and suggests none of them are actually true; they are just good ways to become more “spiritual.”
At the same time, we need to know how to coexist and be present in environments where these distortions are the order of the day.
As twilight came, we and the other guests were seated at tables under an enormous outdoor veranda, and dinner was served. After a bit, Oprah made the rounds and eventually came to our table. As she answered another guest’s question, an image of Oprah as a ten-year-old popped into my head—a little girl longing to do good in the world.
Suddenly, I could see her. Not just Oprah! No, I could see a woman created in God’s image, dearly loved by her Creator, and hungry to know him. Even as I drew my own conclusions on what I thought about her television series, I could see her a little more clearly: a woman doing everything she knows to do to help people tap into something deeper, something more spiritual. Although her efforts didn’t advance the Christian faith exclusively, I wouldn’t be judgmental about it, but instead embrace the opportunity to discuss faith wherever and however it comes up. I would see the best in her work and appreciate how her storytelling and cinematic work of art could be a conversation starter.
When Oprah looked my way, I said, “I spend a lot of time thinking about the spiritual journeys of Millennials . . . why they stay connected to their faith tradition and why they don’t. I think one of the strong parts of Belief is the sincere way it shows young people, Christians included, finding faith. That’s not the norm today; most Millennials lose confidence in their faith. But Belief shows that faith traditions matter and can be passed on from one generation to the next.”
“Thank you for that,” she replied and then described some of the production decisions that led to that emphasis. After a few more minutes of discussion, she thanked us and made her way to another table.
That’s when I looked around that luxurious outdoor dining room and saw my fellow guests of various faiths: people who are seeking, to whom Jesus has promised if they will pray, “Keep on seeking, and you will find” (Matt. 7:7). My heart leapt at the potential.
When we relate to people who are not Christians, whether secular or of another faith, we have to get the love + believe + live = good faith equation right. As our friend Barry Corey says, Christians should have “soft edges and firm centers.”2 Jesus related to people this way. Think about his interaction with the woman at the well. Or his responses to his interrogators. Or his life-giving answers to those with hungry hearts. He spoke truth from a “firm center,” but his hospitable, humble “soft edges” allowed people to get close enough to hear him.
Jesus practiced the sacred art of seeing people.
When we have soft edges and firm centers, we can see people Jesus dearly loves. And when, aided by the Holy Spirit, we see them, we can look beyond the trends and into real people’s hurts, hopes, and needs.
It’s too easy for us to look the other way, isn’t it? Gabe once hosted a Muslim imam at a Q Conference, the imam who was responsible for the so-called Ground Zero Mosque that created a stir in New York City and across America. A few months later, Imam Feisal would become his neighbor in Manhattan. For Gabe, extending that invitation was an expression of a soft edge, even as he kept hold of his firm center. And while Gabe made it clear from the stage that he didn’t agree with or support the imam’s theology, he also expressed how important it is for good faith Christians to hear from a devout Muslim.
Most of the Q attenders were open and receptive; they could see that listening, learning, and seeking to understand are worthwhile. But others felt Gabe was implicitly endorsing this man’s perspectives merely by inviting him to be seen and heard. A few of them took to Twitter to voice their disapproval, tweeting their way through the imam’s remarks to let the world know how their time was being wasted.
They may have felt that way, but they missed an opportunity to see.
Living in a pluralistic culture means learning how to get along, understand the “other,” build friendships, and communicate across divides. These are essential skills.
Good faith Christians lead the way when we have confidence in what we believe and practice seeing those who believe differently.