Investigator and writer, George Barna has often written
about the status of the American Church. He maintains that most people who claim
to be Christian are ignorant of what a Christian worldview is all about:
·
A recent nationwide survey conducted by Family
Research Council’s Center for Biblical Worldview asked respondents to determine
what the term “biblical worldview” meant to them and whether they fit the
definition they embraced. The survey revealed that 51% of American adults
believe they have a biblical worldview…[However] 50 questions used to track the
worldview of American adults reveal that only 6% actually have a biblical
worldview.
·
Roughly 70% of U.S. adults claim to be
Christian. Of those, 84% claim to have a biblical worldview. However, the
American Worldview Inventory reports that only 9% of self-professed Christians
actually hold a biblical worldview. That is a remarkable level of
self-deception…
Over the past years, Barna used six basic questions to
determine whether those he surveyed had a Christian worldview:
·
The Bible fully accurate.
·
The Devil exists.
·
Jesus was sinless.
·
A Christian must evangelize.
·
Salvation is a gift.
·
God is omnipresent and omniscient.
Barna consistently found that only about 4-6% could positively
endorse all six. While there wasn’t any statistical behavioral difference
between the 84% who had called themselves “Christian” and the general
population, Barna found that the 4-6% were behaviorally distinct:
Of these 4-6%:
1.
3x less likely to Get Drunk
2.
17x to gamble
3.
2x
to view pornography
(50% vs. 25% in church)
4.
12x to indulge in extramarital sex
Barna concluded:
1. “The reason that people do not
act like Jesus is that they do not think like Jesus.
2. “Although most people own a
Bible…most Americans have little idea how to integrate [it].”
Over the last century, the Christian voice has fell silent. It
had also been silenced in early 18th century England. Indian scholar Vishal
Mangalwadi writes:
·
In 1738, two centuries after the Reformation,
Bishop Berkeley declared that religion and morality in Britain had collapsed
“to a degree that was never before known in any Christian country.” The
important reasons for the degeneration of Protestant England were the
restoration of the monarchy and the supremacy of the Anglican Church at the end
of the seventeenth century. Once the
Anglican Church came back to power, it began to oppress the Puritans and expelled more than four hundred conscientious Anglican clergymen. They had become priests to serve God, and therefore they refused the oath of allegiance to William of Orange.” (The Book that Made your World, 259)
Anglican Church came back to power, it began to oppress the Puritans and expelled more than four hundred conscientious Anglican clergymen. They had become priests to serve God, and therefore they refused the oath of allegiance to William of Orange.” (The Book that Made your World, 259)
Along with this, the Anglican priesthood became utterly
corrupt:
·
A succession of archbishops and bishops lived
luxuriously, neglecting their duties, unashamedly soliciting bishoprics and
deaneries for themselves and their families. Parish clergy followed suit.
(260)…Corruption spread like cancer. (261)
The church is the conscience of society. When it is
silenced, corruption and moral decay are free to spread to all segments of
society. Mangalwadi continues:
·
The moral darkness of the age expressed itself
in a perverted conception of sport, which, like alcohol, brought attendant
evils in its train, such as further coarsening of the personality, cruelty, and
gambling. (262)
·
As for lawlessness, thieves, robbers, and
highwaymen, Horace Walpole observed in 1751, “One is forced to travel, even at
noon, as if one were going to battle.” Savagery showed itself in the plundering
of shipwrecked vessels, lured by false signals onto rocks, and in the
indifference shown to the drowning sailors. This was a regular activity along
the entire coastline of the British Isles.”
Similarly, it appears that as the Christian influence has
been replaced in the Western nations in the early sixties by a virulent and
monopolistic form of secularism, social ills have multiplied. However, there were
revivals. Into this English malaise stepped the John Wesley and others.
However, their ministry to the poor and downtrodden wasn’t appreciated. No one
likes their sins to be exposed:
·
For three decades, magistrates, squires, and
clergy turned a blind eye to the continual drunken and brutal attacks by mobs
and gangs on Wesley and his supporters. Wesley endured physical assault with
missiles of various kinds. Frequently bulls would be driven into the midst of
the congregations or musical instruments blared to drown out the preacher’s
voice. Time after time, the Wesleys and Whitefield narrowly escaped death,
while several of their fellow itinerant preachers were attacked and their homes
set on fire. Hundreds of anti-revival publications appeared, as did regular,
inaccurate, and scurrilous newspaper reports and articles. And the most
virulent attacks, not surprisingly, came from the priests, who referred to
Wesley as “that Methodist,” “that enthusiast,” “that mystery of iniquity”
[anti-Christ], “a diabolical seducer, and imposter and fanatic.”
However, revival eventually came, but how? Charles White,
professor of Christian Thought and History, wrote about the role that the small
groups played in the Methodist revival:
·
The Methodists made such an impact on their
nation that in 1962 historian Elie Halevy theorized that the Wesleyan revival
created England’s middle class and saved England from the kind of bloody
revolution that crippled France. Other historians, building on his work, go
further to suggest that God used Methodism to show all the oppressed peoples of
the world that feeding their souls on the heavenly bread of the lordship of
Christ is the path to providing the daily bread their bodies also need.
(Mission Frontiers, Sept-Oct 2011, 6)
·
Coming to Christ through the Methodist movement
changed the loves of a million people in Britain and North American in the
eighteenth century….most of these people and their children moved from the
desperation of hand-to mouth poverty to the security of middle-class life as
they made Christ their Lord and experienced the impact of His power on their
economic lives. As these people moved up the social ladder, they began to
influence the political life of their nation. They helped to transform Britain
from an eighteenth-century kleptocracy – where the powerful fueled their lives
of indulgence by exploiting the poor into a nineteenth century democracy –
which abolished slavery and used its empire to enrich the lives of every
subject of the crown. (9)
What happened to the Methodist Church? With their increased
affluence, the requirement for membership in a small group was dropped and they
“progressed” to a professional clergy instead of appointing leadership from
within their groups. Fewer demands were made on the congregation, and everything
became more comfortable.
We must pray that the Lord would revive us – whatever it
might take.
