I did not know that!

Sophie Scholl of the White Rose wanted to become Catholic an hour before her baptism of blood at the hands of the Nazis. Another Newman convert.

Magnificent woman! I think of her as I read stuff like Jon Meacham’s autopsy on what he regards as post-Christian America, in which the MSM exults that their old dream of a US that is (at the moment at least) throwing off the fetters of the gospel.

Of course, part of this is just seasonal. Every Easter, without fail, the MSM finds some new way to declare the gospel a failure, the Church a bust, Jesus a fraud, and our Lady a sort of gestaltic myth of the sacred feminine. Every. Easter.

So it’s not at all surprising that Newsweek is observing the secular pieties and announcing, yet again, the death of Christianity. However, this year, they actually have some data to support the contention that the rising generation is less self-identifiably Christian than in the past. That doesn’t surprise me too much for a number of reasons. A) Our whole culture is arrayed with ever more vehemence against the gospel and with ever more vehemence toward money, sex, and power. B) On the Catholic front, there hasn’t been a bang up witness from Church (though my hope is that Benedict and the bishops are shoring things up). C) On the Evangelical front, (which seems to be what Meacham is focusing on), Evangelicalism is in the process of dissolution (something Michael Spencer noted recent as well). The Emergent Church phenom is basically a reaction to the previous generation of Evangelicals. It groks what’s wrong wtih Evangelicalism (an over-weddedness to the GOP and right wing culture war stuff, a lingering anti-Catholicism) but is not at all sure what’s right and full of mushy relativism, therapeutic moralistic deism, and without an intellectual center (except for a few hardcore TRVE CALVINISTS who like their Christianity in diagram form and have not patience whatsoever with mystery or matters of the heart). I’ve long maintained that such Evangelicalism dissolve in one of five basic ways:

Many will be come Catholic or Orthodox.

Many will slide into some sort of Osteen Feel-Goodism that eventually loses any specifically Christian character at all.

Some will become post-Christian atheist nihlists and deconstructionists (some of the most toxic post-Christians I have ever met are former Evangelicals).

Some will become fortress fundamentalists (and their children will be angry atheist fundamentalists).

Some will remain TRVE CALVINISTS.

Some will form the seed of another pentacostalism that remains Christian, independent, good-hearted and muddled.

Meanwhile, the larger culture will become, not atheistic, but pagan. When you stop believing in God (the God who has revealed himself, I mean) you don’t believe in nothing, but in anything. Our culture has certain things it deeply believes and is busy creating narratives to shore up those beliefs. When we lie to ourselves long enough, they will become sacred narratives. And when Christians challenge those sacred narratives, they will be met with disdain, then with not being invited to parties, then with hostility, then lawsuits, prison, and eventually murder. However, on the way there, post-Christian paganism will make the world a very unpleasant place and some of the young and dumb who are currently jettisoning the George Bushified Christianity of their youth will take another look and realize that not all Christianity is identical with right wing power politics. There will yet be some Sophie Scholl’s out there and the Holy Spirit has tricks up his sleeve we cannot forsee. In the words of Gandalf, “Even the very wise cannot foresee all ends.” So we trust. There’s never been a guarantee that either Evangelicalism nor America are permanent things. The only two things guaranteed to be here on the Last Day are the Church and the Jews. Everything else is fleeting.

On the other hand, a statistical hiccup mentioned in Newsweek is not necessarily a permanent thing either. The world does not change. It wobbles.