{"id":43455,"date":"2019-08-16T06:00:48","date_gmt":"2019-08-16T10:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=43455"},"modified":"2019-08-16T04:18:42","modified_gmt":"2019-08-16T08:18:42","slug":"not-just-catechesis-but-fortification","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2019\/08\/not-just-catechesis-but-fortification\/","title":{"rendered":"Not Just Catechesis but Fortification"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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Many Christians lose their faith not because of a spiritual crisis or intellectual doubts but because they cannot handle the social pressure often exerted against believers.\u00a0 When they encounter opposition to Christianity from their friends, their colleagues, or the social set they aspire to, instead of holding on to or contending for their faith, they give it up.\u00a0 It follows that Christians today, especially young people, need from the church not only catechesis but fortification<\/em>.<\/p>\n

So says David French in his National Review piece\u00a0Another Pop-Culture Christian Loses His Faith<\/a>.\u00a0 He is discussing Marty Sampson, the former worship leader of Hillsong and writer of a host of popular \u201cpraise songs,\u201d who, like Josh Harris, recently announced that he is leaving Christianity.\u00a0 (Actually, Sampson now says<\/a> he hasn\u2019t renounced Christianity completely, just that his faith is on \u201cincredibly shaky ground,\u201d as he struggles between the Christian apologists\u2019 arguments and the New Atheists\u2019 arguments.\u00a0 So pray for him.\u00a0 But what\u2019s the problem with approaching faith in terms of which side makes the best rational case?)<\/p>\n

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French puzzles over the particular difficulties that Sampson cites.\u00a0 The Australian singer and recording artist says that \u201cno one talks about\u201d the fall of preachers, the absence of miracles, the contradictions in the Bible, the problem of evil, etc..\u00a0 And yet, as French says, his evangelical church talks about those things all the time!\u00a0 (I would add that the historical church all through the ages has much to say about them.\u00a0 Perhaps Sampson\u2019s particular Pentecostal<\/a> church, Hillsong, does not, favoring instead the unbridled happy-talk that characterizes not only the prosperity gospel but other strains of contemporary Christianity, as reflected in so many of the praise songs that have been Sampson\u2019s bread and butter.\u00a0 Preparing Christians to live in the fallen world will require churches to be realistic, as historic Christianity always is.)<\/p>\n

Anyway, in the course of his discussion<\/a>, all of which is worth reading, French says this:<\/p>\n

As our culture changes, secularizes, and grows less tolerant of Christian orthodoxy, I\u2019m noticing a pattern in many of the people who fall away (again, only Sampson knows his heart): They\u2019re retreating from faith not because they\u2019re ignorant of its key tenets and lack the necessary intellectual, theological depth but rather because the\u00a0adversity<\/em>\u00a0of adherence to increasingly countercultural doctrine grows too great.<\/p>\n

Put another way, the failure of the church isn\u2019t so much of catechesis but of fortification \u2014 of building the pure moral courage and resolve to live your faith in the face of cultural headwinds.<\/p>\n

In my travels around the country, one thing has become crystal clear to me. Christians are not prepared for the social consequences of the profound cultural shifts \u2014 especially in more secular parts of the nation. They\u2019re afraid to say what they believe, not because they face the kind of persecution that Christians face overseas but because they\u2019re simply not prepared for any meaningful adverse consequences in their careers or with their peers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n