Bearings, We Look for Clues About the Future of the Church by Paying Attention to the Church of the Present
for the Life of Faith A UTUMN 2013 A Publication of the Collegeville Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research Editors’ Note Theologian James Gustafson once referred to the church as housing “treasure in earthen vessels.” Treasure may abide, but earthenware is notoriously apt to chip, crack, and shatter. It’s an appropriate image for our time. Far and wide, scholars are diagnosing a permanent state of decline in the institutional church as we know it, at least in the West. According to nearly every marker of institutional health, the church is failing. It is bitterly divided, financially strapped, plagued by abuses of power, shrinking in numbers, and poorly regarded in public perception. Tellingly, a growing number of prominent Christian figures are quite willing to bid farewell to the church—the very institution that reared them and upon which their livelihood depends. With titles such as Jesus for the Non-Religious, Saving Jesus from the Church, and Christianity After Religion, various church leaders are suggesting that the church may be more of a hindrance than a help to Christian identity and mission in today’s context. It’s hard not to hear echoes of theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer who, over 75 years ago, warned in his book The Cost of Discipleship of a church “overlaid with so much human ballast—burdensome rules and regulations, false hopes and consola- tions,” that it stood in danger of abandoning its central call to follow the way of Jesus. Even if the church is coming to some sort of an end, Christianity is still very much with us.
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