Of course, there is another side to the story of Christendom\u2019s decline in America. Diana Butler Bass, who conducted a study of thriving Mainline congregations for the Lilly Endowment, responded strongly both to Douthat\u2019s question and to his assumptions about liberal Christianity in a piece titled, \u201cCan Christianity Be Saved?\u201d<\/a> If you pay attention to the numbers, Bass noted, it\u2019s not just liberal Christianity that\u2019s in decline. Save the influx of Latino and Asian immigrants over the past decade, conservative Christian churches would be posting greater losses than some of their Mainline neighbors. Even with the influx from elsewhere, many conservative Christian organizations are cutting staff and trimming budgets. Despite the old dividing lines of the Culture Wars, we have more in common than we think, Bass insists. \u201cDecline is not exclusive to the Episcopal Church, nor to liberal denominations\u2013it is a reality facing the whole of American Christianity.\u201d<\/p>\n When resources are scarce, people tend to fight. But we also get creative, stepping outside our conventional assumptions and daring to imagine new possibilities. By the numbers, the institutions of American Christianity are in bad shape. Truth is, they have been for some time. But this doesn\u2019t mean that Christianity is lost. Across the spectrum of denominational divisions\u2014and quite often in outright defiance of left\/right divisions\u2014Christianity is getting born again in America.<\/p>\n I do not think we can understand the great transition that faith is experiencing in America apart from understanding how Constantine changed the Christian movement 1700 years ago. 2012 is an important year, for it was this coming October, in the year 312, when the Roman Emperor understood his victory at the Milvian Bridge as the blessing of Christ. In short order, Christianity moved from being a persecuted minority movement to become the official religion of the Empire. Though we\u2019ve been through significant political changes in the West since then, Christianity has held its place of privilege. Until recently, that is.<\/p>\n Of course, some people note that Christianity began to crumble when it turned out that Galileo was right and the earth was not, in fact, the center of the universe. Others point to Darwin or to the alliance of Germany\u2019s Reichkirche<\/em> with Hitler\u2019s evil regime or to dozens of other turning points. Christian dominance has, no doubt, suffered many blows for several hundred years. But the big change that Douthat and Bass are arguing about\u2014the transition we are all caught up in\u2014is the empirical evidence that says Christianity as we\u2019ve known it is done.<\/p>\n America has a tradition of Great Awakenings\u2014times when we remember the Spirit blowing across our land and demonstrating God\u2019s power in people\u2019s lives. These revivals have traditionally renewed the church as we know it in our culture, giving rise to new denominations and swelling the ranks of the faithful. Within a Christendom framework, we learned to pray for these renewals because they kept the ship afloat.<\/p>\n But the Great Awakenings also pricked the conscience of our nation\u2019s soul, sparking reform movements from the abolitionists of the nineteenth century to the \u201cWhat Would Jesus Do?\u201d campaign of the early twentieth century. Douthat is right to note that this is an extremely positive force. If it\u2019s old forms have died, we still need to know where this power is being born again. Lord knows the winds of change need all the help they can get these days.<\/p>\n But the awakening that happens when the Spirit blows across our lives does not have to be \u201cgreat\u201d\u2014at least, not if great means crowds of people filing into stadiums to hear golden tongues articulate the good news for our day. When Peter, \u201cfilled with the Holy Spirit,\u201d testified to God\u2019s power in the early days of the Christian movement, he wasn\u2019t noticed because of his communication savvy. People listened to Peter because they saw signs of hope in the new community he and John were part of. What they noted was that he and his friends had \u201cbeen with Jesus.\u201d They had been given power from on high to live a different kind of life (see Acts 4:13).<\/p>\n So maybe we\u2019re not waiting for another Great Awakening. Maybe we don\u2019t need another George Whitfield or Charles Finney, a Dwight Moody or Billy Graham. Maybe the Spirit is already breathing new life into the church and into God\u2019s good world through the everyday awakenings that are happenings all around.<\/p>\n In thousands of little communities that are mostly overlooked, people are being stirred by the Spirit to lead a different kind of life. It\u2019s a life that doesn\u2019t make sense if the gospel isn\u2019t true. But because these people have been with Jesus\u2014because they\u2019ve somehow gotten the truth of God\u2019s story deep down in their bones\u2014their life does make sense.<\/p>\n Indeed, for these people the way of Jesus is now the only way of living that makes any sense at all.<\/p>\n To see your life from this vantage point is to see a whole new world of possibility. It\u2019s like waking up from a bad dream to realize the thing that most scared you\u2014the thing that just a moment before was as real as the rising price of gas\u2014was only an illusion.<\/p>\n The way things are is not the way things have to be.<\/p>\n There is a new creation all around us.<\/p>\n It\u2019s an everyday awakening that can happen anywhere. When it does, you know you\u2019ve found what you were looking for. You don\u2019t have to go somewhere else to find the answer. Your desperate search is over because God has met you where you are.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I read with great interest Ross Douthat\u2019s column in the New York Times, \u201cCan Liberal Christianity Be Saved?\u201d While Douthat doesn\u2019t share many sympathies with those who consider themselves liberal, he did honestly acknowledge that \u201cthe defining idea of liberal Christianity \u2014 that faith should spur social reform as well as personal conversion \u2014 has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":365,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[79,208,6,209,207,206],"class_list":["post-385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","tag-christianity","tag-diana-butler-bass","tag-great-awakening","tag-revival","tag-ross-douthat","tag-the-awakening-of-hope"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/122\/2012\/08\/AwakeningofHope_Cover.jpg\" "\\"AwakeningofHope_Cover\\"")
<\/a>As scary as it might seem, this is good news. For if Christendom is dead, then followers of Jesus can dance because a new way of being Christian has been getting born for quite some time. The \u201cimmensely positive force in our national life\u201d that Douthat longs for and the \u201cawakening of a more open, more inclusive, more spiritually vital faith\u201d that Bass points toward is real in thousands of communities that have committed themselves to practicing the way of Jesus day by day, come what may. These are the communities that inspired me to write, The Awakening of Hope: Why We Practice a Common Faith<\/em><\/a>. Because seeing is believing for so many of us, my friend Shane Claiborne and I went to these places of hope, interviewed some of their saints, and created a DVD to go along with the book\u2014a sort of \u201cAlpha Course\u201d for a new kind of Christianity. Throughout the month of August, you can join a conversation about The Awakening of Hope<\/em> at the Patheos Book Club<\/a>.<\/p>\n