The Colosseum - scene of early Christian persecutions
I’ll explain at the end why I am not sure about this, but here are some choice quotations from the Skinner article:
Personally, I like our ever-dwindling status. I even like our ever-dwindling numbers. There was a time when social pressure made people go to church. If anything the reverse is now true. Most adults you see in church nowadays are there because they want to be there. That’s not decline, it’s progress. The wheat has been separated from the chaff. We get quality, not quantity, in the churches and the chaff can enjoy a nice lie-in…
Christians have always worked best as an unpopular minority. We were surely at our most dynamic when we knelt, eyes to Heaven, hands clasped in prayer, with a Colosseum lion bounding towards us.
That’s why I think Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, is wrong to get his cassock in a twist about changing attitudes to Christianity in this country. He speaks of a “strident and bullying campaign” to marginalise Christianity. But that’s great news. “Blessed are ye when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake”…
I’m a little wary of muscular Christianity. It’s been used to justify everything from the Crusades to the shooting of abortion doctors. It seems to be in direct contradiction to “Resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also”…
Surely the central image of Christianity is someone who can shoot fireballs out of his fingertips allowing himself to be nailed to a wooden cross — submission as the ultimate show of strength — love as impenetrable armour. Most British Christians are badly dressed, unattractive people. We’re not pushy and aggressive members of society. We’re a bit like Goths — no one can remember us being fashionable and we talk about death a lot. I love the glorious un-coolness of that…
Christians tend to save their best work for the “voice in the wilderness” genre. We are most impressive when operating as a secret sect, kneeling in small, candle-lit rooms and scrawling fishes on walls. I’m enjoying this current dose of persecution. It’s definitely good for the soul.
This idea works if you believe that people are either wheat or chaff; that we are either ‘true Christians’ or ‘Christians in name only’ who might as well give up the pretence of Christianity now. But, to change the metaphor, I think we are more like seeds: thrown into the soil of the society and culture in which we live.
So if that culture is conducive to Christian faith; if it nourishes it, encourages it, gives it meaning, and helps it to grow — then many of us will indeed grow in our faith. But if it is antagonistic, negative, barren — then many of us who might otherwise have flourished, might give up altogether.
I’m not saying that we bear no responsibility for living our faith, and that we can simply blame the culture. I’m just stating what I think is a historical fact: that in times of severe persecution, despite the heroism and sacrifice of many Christians, many others are pressured into abandoning their faith, and this doesn’t mean that they didn’t have any faith in the first place.
That’s why I believe, much more than I used to, in the importance of building a culture (and institutions) that support Christian faith; and why I am much more sympathetic, and heartbroken, when good people abandon their faith because of the struggles they have had to face.
Yesterday (having read the Skinner article over my cornflakes), I was invited by some young leaders of the Sion Community to celebrate Mass for them during a weekend retreat for teenagers. There were about twenty five teenagers present from all parts of the South of England. It was a grace-filled experience and their enthusiasm for their faith was infectious. This might be what a “creative minority” look likes…but I’m not sure if, in sociological terms, it would even be counted as a “minority” – there were fewer teenagers present than in one classroom of a school. But at the moment, such concerns didn’t matter and the “creative minority” paradigm looked convincing.
But I am also very much in sympathy with Fr Wang’s position and concerns. An aggressively secular culture can strengthen the faith of some, but it can also the weaken the faith of many.
Yet, I sense there is another dimension to this debate which Catholics find more difficult to think and talk about in constructive ways without the debate being reduced to “liberal” vs. “conservative” sectarianism. There have been and are cultures that are largely sympathetic to faith and yet, they are haemorrhaging Catholics,e.g., Ireland, Spain, Italy, Mexico, Brasil, etc. Why is this? I’m sure there are all sorts of complex factors, personal and institutional, that contribute to this, but I think one of them might be that believers are still struggling to find a convincing language that communicates to a post-modern age the life-giving truth of living a Trinitarian faith. If my hunch has an element of truth in it, then the question is how do we communicate better with the men and women of our age?
What do you mean by “building a culture”? Do you mean we should celebrate more what the Church can offer, instead of standing sheepishly in the corner? Or do you mean our faith should effect in quite an obvious way everything we do? I think allot of my friends would be more interested if they could see what they could gain by having faith, but they see no sign of God anywhere they look. I think this might have something to do with the faith being presented as a series of rules. Our Lord as an “encounter” isn’t easy to communicate. Is this the point of your blog? You are hoping to point to signs of the divine that are ignored?
I’m optimistic I hope I’m not complacent. (I would probably still be optimistic if we were down to three Christians left in my city!). I don’t see any signs that a “post-modern” society can sustain itself away from its deep roots. I’m amazed that people are so happy with what seems to me to be a greyer, thinner world.
Yes, I think we should celebrate more, and let our faith effect everything we do. But by building a culture I meant, first of all, creativing a cultural environment in which faith can make sense and be lived freely, keeping the Christian presence in society alive and vibrant, retaining the memory of the bible stories and the Christan tradition, having Christians speak more confidently and naturally about what their faith means to them in public, etc, etc. I like the idea of ‘encounter’; and that encounter with Christ is usually mediated through words or images or stories or people or whatever. So all of us need to work at making Christ present not just through our inner personal holiness (although this is important!), but through the external expressions of our faith too. This is part of what I mean by culture – that faith is expressed and embodied.