A new era of Bible engagement …
According to Stephen Bullivant, a professor of theology and the sociology of religion at St Mary’s University in London, “Christianity as a default, as a norm, is gone, and probably gone for good – or at least for the next 100 years.” [The Guardian, March 2018].
The end of cultural Protestantism in Europe.
Is Christianity in Europe as a default, as a norm, gone? Research seems to support Bullivant’s conclusion. Data from the European Social Survey 2014-16 indicates that “the new default setting is ‘no religion’, and the few who are religious see themselves as swimming against the tide.”
German theologian Evi Rodemann seems to concur. In response to a Pew Research survey, she says, “German Protestants have to a huge degree lost their Christian identity and Christian history is often just a cultural decoration.” Church planting expert Dietrich Schindler adds, “German Protestantism is anemic at best, irrelevant at least.” [Joel Forster, Evangelical Focus, February 28, 2019]
From the mountain-top to the valley. In the 19th Century, the church in the UK served as the hub for the most significant missionary advance the world had ever seen. Now, according to statistician Peter Brierley, 95% of UK children and young people don’t attend church [UK Church Statistics 2, 2010-2020, Tonbridge: ADBC Publishers, 2014]. It’s a similar story in Germany. Five hundred years after the reformation, the Christian faith has been pushed to the margins (Evangelicals account for 2% of Christians in Germany).
The rise of secularism in North America.
Christian faith in North America is also in free fall. According to the Pew Research Center, the growth of the religiously unaffiliated in Canada and the USA has gone from about 4% in the 1970s to more than 20% in 2010. In Canada, religious disaffiliation for those born in 1987-1995 is 30%. The trends reveal that every successive generation of North Americans is more secular than the previous generation.
What’s collapsed in the UK and Germany and what’s collapsing in North America is cultural-historic Protestantism. Cultural, historic Protestantism is religion focused on hard work, thrift, and efficiency, i.e. it places emphasis on religious duty and using God-given resources at each individual’s disposal. Rodemann describes it as “reason (not Christ) alone, my work (not grace) alone, my self-reliance (not faith) alone, and my philosophy of life (not Scripture) alone.”
That’s the bad news.
But the bad news may be good news.
Reimagining Bible engagement in the church.
The purpose of writing the jumpintotheword blog ties directly to sola scriptura. The collapse of cultural historic Protestantism is, therefore, good news because religion (institutional, traditional systems) is the enemy of Bible engagement (see my previous article, The Scourge of Bible Engagement). And it’s good news because the disintegration of cultural historic Protestantism wipes the Christian slate clean.
We can replace cultural-historic Protestantism with something new with the Christian slate wiped clean. The million-dollar question is, “What will be the nature and purpose of the church that replaces cultural-historic Protestantism?”
Biblical scholar Richard Halverson says, “When the Greeks got the Gospel, they turned it into a philosophy; when the Romans got it, they turned it into a government; when the Europeans got it, they turned it into a culture; and when the Americans got it, they turned it into a business.”
Missional culture guru JR Woodward says, “We are called to incarnate the Good News, not to overcontextualize it.”
Incarnating the Gospel: With the decline of cultural, historic Protestantism, there are unprecedented opportunities to get back to God’s Word – back to reimagining the church – back to the church as a spiritual organism – back to embodying and proclaiming Jesus Christ.
Yes, the bad news may be good news. With the spiritual vacuum that now exists in Europe and is growing in North America, opportunities to re-imagine and reform the church abound. But as we take advantage of the opportunities, we must ensure we don’t overcontextualize the Gospel.
Guarding against overcontextualizing the Gospel.
To guard against overcontextualizing the Gospel, we must safeguard how we connect with the Bible. We must ensure we don’t read God’s Word in ways that adapt it to our culture. We must be careful not to read God’s Word in ways that interpret our existing church practices back into the text. And we must get back to reading its essence – back to understanding the Gospel, not in the milieu of the shifting sands of postmodernity, but in the framework of the life, death, resurrection, and return of Jesus Christ.
All this is to say that we need a new season of Bible engagement for the changing times. A season where we break free from the subtle entrapment of deeply entrenched unbiblical traditions. A season where we biblically re-evaluate what the church meetings should look like to express Jesus Christ in all His fullness. And a season where we practically, not just intellectually, believe that the Word of God shows us how to truly worship and live for Jesus Christ alone.
To learn more about a new era of Bible engagement, please read the related articles.
Related Articles
The Scourge of Bible Engagement
Opposition To Bible Engagement
Summary
A new era of Bible engagement: Christianity in Europe and North America is in decline, with cultural-historic Protestantism losing its influence as more people identify as secular or religiously unaffiliated. This collapse, as experts like Stephen Bullivant and Evi Rodemann suggest, signals a shift from a culture built around Protestant values to a more secular society. While this may seem like bad news, it presents an opportunity to reimagine church life and Bible engagement, free from the constraints of institutional traditions. The challenge moving forward is to safeguard the essence of the Gospel by ensuring we don’t overcontextualize it, but return it to its pure form, focused on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
© Scripture Union Canada
