On the other hand...

The June 11th edition of the Washington Post carried an article titled “Foreign Missionaries Find Fertile Ground in Europe.”

The article reports, “Churches in countries such as Nigeria, Ghana, South Korea and the Philippines have sent thousands of missionaries to Europe to set up churches in homes, office buildings and storefronts. Officials from the Redeemed Christian Church of God, a Pentecostal church based in Nigeria, said they have 250 churches in Britain now and plan to create 100 more this year. Britain's largest church, run by a Nigerian pastor in London, attracts up to 12,000 people over three services every Sunday."

The article also mentions 150 new churches in Denmark, all started by immigrants from the Global South.

A month later, the July 14th edition of the Wall Street Journal carried a front page article: “In Europe, God Is (Not) Dead,” subtitled, “Christian groups are growing, faith is more public.”

The article makes it clear that where Christianity is growing in Europe, it is growing among the more vigorous, evangelical groups. It also makes clear that this resurgence brings church attendance in Sweden up to barely 3% of the population. 97% of the population remains untouched by faith, Christian or otherwise.

These articles highlight in a public way some significant realities that have long been energetically discussed among church observers in less public settings:

First, Christianity as a living faith essentially had disappeared in much of Europe, leaving behind only the artifacts: architectural, cultural, and archaeological remains of people long dead.

Second, this resurgence is neither the result of strategic efforts by existing European churches, nor a “return of the faithful.” Rather, they are partly the result of immigration (faithful immigrants bringing their faith with them into Europe), and largely the result of energetic missionary work by non-Europeans. Meanwhile, the typically staid, “business as usual” European churches have continued their relentless decline toward extinction.

Third, the resurgence is not a return to the styles and forms of older, former European Christianity. Worship is energetic, charismatic, non-denominational, and loud. It is the opposite of formal, and it attracts the young.

Fourth – this resurgence is not unrelated to the struggle for the soul of the Anglican Communion. This resurgence is strongly influenced by the belief of Christians in the Global South that Christianity had suffered virtual extinction in Western Europe, calling for a new chapter in the story of global missions. At one time, Christian missionaries spread from Judea into Europe and Asia. At another time, Christian missionaries spread from Europe and America into the Global South. More recently, Christian missionaries began to spread from the Global South into Europe.

Fifth -- one of the realities of the current struggle for the soul of the Anglican Communion is this same missionary motive. On the one hand, many in the American Episcopal Church view African and South American bishops as intrusive, interfering, and obnoxious. “They’re invading our turf!” On the other hand, from the point of view of the Global South, Christian faith is visibly diminishing in America, just as it did in Europe. They hope to reinvigorate American Christianity long before it collapses, hoping to avoid catastrophe.

I think it’s a mistake to think in terms of a power struggle for control of the Anglican Communion. To be sure, that power struggle does exist and is intensifying, but I think to become embroiled is a waste of time, resources, energy, and opportunity. I think the wiser course is to take a careful, sober look at history, and to recognize that things change. America was once a mission field long before it was the source of global missions. It is now becoming a mission field again. I believe that indigenous American congregations, like ours, should work hard and strategically, not only to grow and to complete our own missional responsibilities, but to reinvigorate and launch other congregations, as much as possible. But we, and other indigenous American congregations cannot do this on our own. To accomplish the task before us, we need help, whether we want it or not. And help is coming. Whether we want it or not.

Other Christian missionaries from the Global South will undoubtedly come to our shores and to our communities. They will undoubtedly launch many new congregations here, just as they have been doing in Europe. This will undoubtedly increase in the years to come. These new congregations will most likely reflect the culture and values of those missionaries rather than the culture and values of traditional American congregations. But most importantly, they successfully attract and reach many who find American congregations uninspiring and irrelevant.

If we think about these things from an institutional point of view, we will likely think and act adversarially: our institution vs theirs, our power vs theirs, our values vs theirs. Many are already thinking and acting in those terms -- and when we think adversarially we end up, ultimately, in civil litigation. But if we do not think about it from an institutional point of view, if instead, we think in terms of welcoming any and every means for the spread of the Gospel of Christ, then we need not end up in adversarial power struggles. When one looks closely at the struggle of Jesus to deepen the faith of people, to bring healing and freedom, one does see him in conflict with the Pharisees, with the Sadduccees, with the Herodians, with the Sanhedrin, and with Rome. But never for institutional control. He struggled for faith, healing and freedom, but never sought to control the synagogues, the Temple, or the government. He ended up in court, to be sure, but never for property issues. Never for power. Never for money.

Rather than worrying about power, property, and institutional control, or worse, becoming embroiled in the power struggle, we should keep our focus. We should continue to pray and work at fulfilling our own responsibilities to deepen our spiritual growth and to reach out to our families, friends, and neighbors with the love of Christ. And we should welcome the growth of Christianity because of the faithful efforts of these new missionaries. We should pray for their success, even as we continue to pray and work for our own.

Grace and peace,

Nicely Said - an earlier piece by Michael Gerson

Unchained by Idealism

By Michael Gerson
Wednesday, June 20, 2007; Page A19

In many quarters, the role of religion in public life and foreign policy is under question as a source of hatred and extremism. But this year marks the 200th anniversary of history's strongest counterexample -- the strange, irrational end of the British slave trade.

By 1820, some 2.6 million Europeans had left their homes for the Americas. And perhaps 9 million Africans had also made the journey -- in chains, branded like cattle and packed like cordwood. Every slave voyage involved murder, since expected losses were more than 10 percent. Some captives died from disease; some starved themselves to death, thus willing the only form of freedom available to them.

The trade had been developed and expanded by the most enlightened and culturally progressive nations of Europe. Investors over the years included Isaac Newton, John Locke, the British royal family and the Church of England. Little stigma was attached to this mainstream form of commerce in the late 18th century. Opposition was confined to a handful of religious extremists (Quakers) and a few abolitionist societies in London, Paris and Philadelphia. Yet within a hundred years of these efforts, slavery was illegal everywhere in the Americas.

For decades, historians have attempted to give an impersonal, "structural" explanation for this change -- that the end of the slave trade and slavery somehow served the interests of rising industrial capitalism for free labor. In a recent London lecture, David Brion Davis of Yale University, one of the leading historians of slavery, offered a different view. The slave trade, he says, was a "modern and economically successful system" that "fueled the first great wave of globalization." From Caribbean sugar plantations to Peruvian mines to American tobacco plantations, slavery was essential to the economic development of the New World and to the consolidation of European strategic gains against the Islamic world.

Slavery, Davis argues, "was not doomed by some implacable force of historical progress. And here I give most credit to the abolitionists, since without them I think that from the 1780s to the 1880s very little would have been done."

"The abolitionists" were actually an exceptional alliance. Some, such as the large, intense Thomas Clarkson -- whom the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge described as a "moral steam engine" -- were political radicals influenced by the French Revolution; forerunners of the modern human rights movement. Others, such as William Wilberforce -- a charming, diminutive Tory member of parliament -- were passionate evangelicals; forerunners of modern religious conservatism. Using research, lobbying, posters, petitions and boycotts, these allies invented the political pressure campaign. They also created a new way of political thinking. In their view, says Davis, "Providence could reveal itself only through a new human ability -- the ability of an enlightened and righteous public to control the course of events."

Given today's rise of radical Islam, and the tendency of a few American religious leaders to attack the prophet Muhammad and advocate the assassination of foreign leaders, the role of religion in foreign policy is much debated.

The abolitionists demonstrated that religion and conscience can be a force for good in the world, that the darkest instincts and destructive interests of humanity can sometimes be overcome, and that idealism is possible and powerful. "While there is little evidence that human nature has changed for the better over the past two millennia," concludes Davis, "a few historical events, like Britain's abolition of its extremely profitable slave trade, suggest that human history has also been something more than an endless contest of greed and power."

Modern Clarksons and Wilberforces have much to occupy them. It was recently reported in Britain that brothel owners meet at a coffee shop outside Gatwick Airport to openly bid on the victims of the international sex trade -- the new slaves. And I imagine the old abolitionists would react with puffing outrage to the fact that millions in Africa and elsewhere die of diseases that we could treat with our pocket change. Their example should haunt us.

But their example should also inspire us. After centuries of slavery, in which every day brought seemingly permanent brutality, another day eventually arrived -- the British abolition of slavery itself, 27 years after the transatlantic trade ended. "On the last night of slavery," records historian G.M. Trevelyan, "the negroes in our West Indian islands went up on to the hill-tops to watch the sun rise, bringing them freedom as its first rays struck the waters."

It is a hopeful thing that such days are possible.

michaelgerson@cfr.org