How to Reach the West Again: Reflections from the U.K.
The following is a response from Pete Nicholas to How to Reach the West Again, Timothy Keller and City to City’s book on starting a new missionary encounter with Western culture. They invited ministers from around the world to respond to, extend, and engage that vision. This article was first posted on Redeemer City to City blog, and is republished here with their kind permission.
SEISMIC CULTURAL SHIFTS
Over the past generation, the United Kingdom’s society has—in line with much of the West—undergone seismic cultural shifts.
As Tim Keller states, some of these shifts are as follows:
Modernity was an adaptation of the Christian narratives of progress, ethics, meaning, and truth, but with the Enlightenment, the focus shifted away from God and placed these principles firmly on humanity’s shoulders. Postmodernity is a complete deconstruction and relativisation of that narrative, and has been an even bigger shift in ideology in an even shorter space of time. We are still reeling from it here in the U.K.
Globalisation has caused people to be more mobile than ever and resulted in a mix of cultures across all segments of society—including the recent phenomenon of displaced people groups. Whilst concentrated in urban areas, this is not confined to big cities.
The birth of the Digital Age brought radical new connectivity, a huge increase in access to information, and a reimagining of communication and relationships.
The breakdown of Christendom has shown decreasing church attendance and the growth of two groups in particular: those who are “secular” and those who are “spiritual but not religious” (SBNR). David Voas, Professor in Religion at Kings University London, calls them the “fuzzy nones”—”fuzzy” in their fidelity to spirituality but “none” being their self-designated religious affiliation.
Looking at these four dynamics together, it is not surprising that the church in the U.K. would feel overwhelmed. What has perhaps been more surprising is that, with a few notable exceptions, the approach of the U.K. church has been to embrace that most British of maxims: “Keep Calm and Carry On!” The Christian community’s ministry models, the subjects at major church conferences and gatherings, the books and articles written, and the response in front-line prayer show a remarkable degree of consistency since the mid- to late-twentieth century. Very little seems to have changed within the church whilst much is changing outside.
VERY LITTLE SEEMS TO HAVE CHANGED WITHIN THE CHURCH WHILST MUCH IS CHANGING OUTSIDE.
It is therefore not surprising that, with the exception of London, the church in every U.K. city is in numerical decline. In London, the percentage of churchgoers has increased from only 8.25% of the population to 8.75%, and most of that modest growth can be accounted to black-majority churches and their significant growth amongst migrants, particularly those from Africa.¹
THE CHURCH’S RESPONSE
What accounts for the apparent lack of response to the challenges we face here in the U.K.? Here are three potential explanations:
The church is sleepwalking and unaware of these cultural shifts.
In Isaiah 62:6-7, the Lord says “I have posted watchmen on your walls, Jerusalem; they will never be silent day or night. You who call on the Lord, give yourselves no rest, and give him no rest till he establishes Jerusalem.” In every generation the church needs people “watching,” looking to the horizon and assessing the lay of the land. It may well be that generations of cultural significance for the church have meant that these prophetic voices were deemed unnecessary, and now we no longer have them posted on the walls, or if we do, we are oblivious to their warnings.
It is striking in Isaiah 62 how those who watch are bound up with front-line prayer. In London, for example, whilst the diaspora churches and black-majority churches can gather thousands for all-night prayer vigils, the white evangelical church often struggles to get more than a hundred together for similar calls to prayer. This may be because large evangelical churches, which are usually the opinion-formers, can feel culturally secure on a Sunday despite the fact that they—and their church plants—only account for a few thousand in a city of millions.
The church is being urged to adopt the “middle ground.”
Churches face significant pressure to respond to culture’s changes by accommodating to them. Professor Grace Davie’s analysis in Believing Without Belonging (2nd ed.) is that, just as political parties have succeeded by becoming more central on the political spectrum, so the church needs to embrace a move to the centre. The persistent rhetoric from culture is for the church to “Get with the programme” as former Prime Minister David Cameron said after the initial Church of England vote on women bishops. The promise is, “Accommodate, and we will accept you,” and large sections of the evangelical church believe this. They believe this despite the weak and ineffectual state of theological liberalism (which has culturally accommodated) and despite church growth occurring mostly in theologically-faithful churches.
The church thinks existing models that have served it well will remain fruitful.
One of the challenges for the church in the U.K. is to discern the difference between “contextualisation” defined as a need to adapt the gospel message to the culture, and contextualisation defined as a way to faithfully communicate and embody the unchanging message of the gospel to a changing culture. Many still struggle to grasp this distinction. In addition, there is considerable attachment to certain ministry models that have served the church well in the past. Arguably, a lack of awareness of church history and a lack of engagement with the global church means that the church lacks context (somewhat ironically) and different voices to help it critique its existing ministry models to see what is cultural and what is the timeless gospel and its implications.
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR EVANGELISM
I would now like to elaborate on the recommendations from How To Reach the West Again for the U.K. context, with a particular focus on the sections “Christian High Theory” and “A Truly Post-Christian Evangelistic Dynamic.”
1. An increasing sense of spiritual hunger and a longing for engagement with the big issues
One factor that differentiates one culture from the next is the answers it gives to life’s big questions, such as “Where have we come from?”, “What is the good life?”, “Is there any hope for the future?”, etc. These answers form the foundations of the social imagination of a culture. In the West at present, there is no common or coherent set of answers.
Standard apologetics that engaged culture shifted from Mere Christianity (the Baby Boomers) to The Reason for God (Generation X). But the issues for millennials are different. They are focused more around the big questions in life. This may well be why TED talks that engage in these areas are so popular. The gospel gives us unique resources to engage with these questions. However, we need to resist:
Simplistic answers. People intuitively know that you can’t solve issues like the problem of suffering in 25 minutes, and even if you could, living out the answer is a lifelong endeavour. Language of resolution vs. solution and wanting to have a conversation rather than having the final word are helpful when underpinned by a conviction that Jesus really is all we need.
Using the issues as a mere bait-and-switch. We need to really engage with the questions and show how Jesus engaged with them! Our existing evangelistic frameworks may need stretching to accommodate the questions, but our witness will be better for it.
2. A challenge to get over the initial “speed bump” of our post-Christendom age
Because the Christian narrative is diminishing in Western society, and because globalisation is bringing other faiths into our cities, we can no longer assume a Christian understanding. On the contrary, liberalism is prone to label Christianity “dangerous” on certain cultural hot-potatoes such as sexuality, gender, and abortion, while secularism is prone to label Christianity “intellectually unviable” on grounds of the Bible’s reliability, the plausibility of miracles, and science vs. religion. These dynamics create a sort of instinctive, superficial resistance to the gospel and the church, which shakes the confidence of the church as people seek to be witnesses. We need to be unafraid of these initial challenges and have cultural apologetics ready to answer them, rejecting the hype that people are “more hostile” than ever before. The truth is, there may be an initial speed bump of the objections highlighted above, but once they are overcome, they open up to an increasing spiritual appetite.
3. A shift in how people engage with religion
Robert Wuthnow observes in After Heaven: Spirituality in America Since 1950 that the secularisation hypothesis is too binary. Instead, he argues there has been a shift in religious engagement from dwelling to seeking. Dwelling emphasises habitation. It is about place, boundaries, and territory. It is the state of religion in a society where a religion is culturally accepted and “normal”—a state Christianity has enjoyed in the West for a long time. However, seeking emphasises negotiation. It is about navigating life to find the sacred in moments and experiences rather than in fixed dwellings and about negotiating with a culture that does not see Christianity as a core part of it and its social institutions and beliefs.
Importantly, Wuthnow points out how Christianity has the ability to work in both these modes. Habitation is the language and approach of temple Christianity—in the land, settled, accepted. Negotiation is the language of the tabernacle and the wilderness—in exile, wandering, away from home. In fact, a survey of the Scriptures would suggest that negotiation is the more “normal” mode for Christians this side of heaven. Moreover, it is the majority experience of Christians in the world today. However, it is more foreign to Western Christians who have enjoyed unbroken cultural acceptability in many countries for over a millennium.
We need to engage scripture differently. The negotiating mode in scripture is plainly seen in letters like 1 Peter, Luke, Acts, Romans, and Old Testament books that are set in the exilic community like Exodus, Jeremiah, the second half of Isaiah, Daniel, and Esther. Of course, I am not suggesting these books have not been preached or engaged with, but perhaps we should re-engage with them now in a different way. We should look to see what we can learn about how to live within a hostile culture, noting the aspects of God’s character and work that are emphasised to strengthen his church and understanding the virtues and dispositions that will need to be cultivated in the U.K. church to grow and flourish.
We can learn much from the global church if we are prepared to. Since the majority of the global church occupies a negotiating stance to culture, we should expect that we can learn much from them about how to transition into and make the most of this mode. The shift in our missionary model of no longer being “from the West to the rest” but “everyone everywhere” will benefit us in the U.K. greatly, if (and this is a significant “if”) we can learn to receive rather than give. We have the global church on our doorstep (particularly in our cities) but remain far too slow to join in fellowship and to ask for help. If the U.K. church’s struggles humble us and drive us to a deeper dependance on God and a greater desire for partnership and collaboration with the global body of Christ, we will be stronger for it.
IF THE U.K. CHURCH’S STRUGGLES HUMBLE US AND DRIVE US TO A DEEPER DEPENDANCE ON GOD AND A GREATER DESIRE FOR PARTNERSHIP AND COLLABORATION WITH THE GLOBAL BODY OF CHRIST, WE WILL BE STRONGER FOR IT.
4. A need to engage with the heart and the affections
In After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre notes the increasing shift to “emotivism” in our culture’s thinking and public debates. He defines it as “the doctrine that all evaluative judgments—and more specifically all moral judgments—are nothing but expressions of preference, expressions of attitude, or feeling.” This matches the shift to a “post-truth” age where “objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”²
As the cultural debate has shifted in its focus from the head to the heart or the feelings, so our evangelism and apologetics needs to shift too. This is not to say that the shift needs to match the culture and deify emotions. Instead, a robust biblical anthropology that moves away from excessive rationalism and a merely “normative” engagement towards the embracing of our affections will be able to both affirm and correct the cultural shift.
We can affirm and engage with what people are feeling and experiencing, understanding that our true affections are our more settled inclinations and desires that result in emotions. This will provide Christians with the resources to understand emotions and the limitations of emotive appeals whilst also avoiding dry evangelistic strategies that are lacking emotional force.
We can push back on and deconstruct “emotivism,” exposing the often thin foundations that the arguments it employs stand on. And we can offer an alternative that isn’t overly rationalistic.
We can rightly give the gospel a broader cultural appeal. Different cultures occupy different places on a spectrum from more emotive to rational. An engagement with the affections can be both an affirmation and a critique of the cultures and their different approaches. Similarly in the UK, university-educated people tend to be more normative/rational and working class people more emotive. Should it surprise us, then, that Christian traditions with more emotional engagement such as Charismatics and Pentecostalism have had more traction amongst the working class in recent decades? Embracing a theology of the heart and biblical affections will broaden the appeal of the gospel socio-demographically as well as ethnically.
Clearly there is much more that could be said on each of these areas, and I have chosen to engage in only two of them. I hope these reflections are fruitful and feed into a wider project to benefit the whole.
1 See Brierly, Peter. Capital Growth. 2012 and UK Church Statistics 2010-2020 by Brierly Consulting.
2 Oxford Online Dictionary. Post-truth was the Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year 2016.
