The Greatest Tragedy?
On Tuesday I wrote about how young people seem to be migrating from mainline protestant churches to Catholicism. I analyzed the trend in terms of an outlook to personal salvation and evangelicalism. Among hardcore Evangelicals there is a term, “spiritual warfare,” and I think we need to think about it as well. The world, it would seem, would just as soon not have churches at all.
Two stories in the last couple of days have brought this home to me. The first is the story of a pastor in England being charged with manslaughter after someone he was baptizing drowned. This was, of course, a full immersion baptism. The circumstances are not described, so it is impossible to make any judgement about just how negligent the pastor actually was towards the signs from the individual being baptized of trouble. The story is horrifying of itself, but the charges and the reporting (lack thereof actually) strike me as an outright attack on church.
I, for one, would presume a death under such circumstances to be entirely accidental. It’s not that pastors are beyond murder – they are most assuredly not. Rather, a baptism is a public event. If you are going to kill somebody do you really want a room full of witnesses? I would think the burden of proof of anything other than horrific accident would be very high. That is, unless the prosecutors really wanted to prosecute the church in some fashion. The fact that the prosecution does not release any details indicates to me that there is more at play than the fact that the evidence leaves them no choice but to charge. The media’s lack of questioning of such circumstance puts them in the hotseat as well. Methinks the headline is the point – tarnishing the church.
The other story comes from a recent Pew poll – “Roughly a third of young adults have negative views of their mental health.” For decades now the lines between spiritual and mental health have blurred and a headline like that would seem to indicate that perhaps the boundary has disappeared altogether. Many conservative Christians have viewed the psychiatric and psychological professions suspiciously for a long time now. They have been inarticulate in their claims, but boiled down they center on confusing sin and sickness. No longer is the alcoholic a sinner (which is what AA teaches by the way) they suffer an illness – and so forth and so on. I have thought such concerns overwrought, but when I see headlines like that I begin to wonder.
I really do wonder how many of those young people so concerned about their mental health might not be so concerned if they were in church? The piece is all about stress management and relationships. If nothing else, church creates community and community relieves stress. There are mental health benefits to even a non-believer being in church. It seems clear church has been delegitimized sufficiently these days that these young people do not seek it out for those benefits.
But then, what we saw on Tuesday was that at least some churches have lost their way to some extent. Churches talking about social justice are dying and churches focused on personal salvation are not. So is the spiritual warfare here between the world and the church or the church and its own worldly, sinful nature?
Each church, each congregation must answer that question for itself. But it also better ask it of itself before it is too late.
The post The Greatest Tragedy? appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.