We are rapidly experiencing our third disestablishment or loss of power as a church that is more cultural in nature. If the churches can no longer count on legal support and also have competition in spreading their message, now they cannot count on a friendly cultural environment to reinforce their message either. From children’s soccer leagues to working hours at stores and restaurants, the church has competition for its time. If a person makes a choice to become an active Christian, they do so in a culture which not only does not support that choice but at times is hostile to the practices that reinforce that faith. (See Sydney Mead’s The Lively Experiment; Harper and Row, 1983 and Robert Handy’s A Christian America; NY: Oxford Universeity Press, 1984)
One might hazard the suggestion that we are also experiencing a fourth disestablishment which might be called ecclesiastical. It is no longer assumed that the church is necessary for the practice of one’s faith. In some ways this is the most dangerous disestablishment of all. In its beginning the church lacked legal, religious and cultural support and yet it flourished. In fact the church has often been at its best under circumstances of persecution. But the faith has never flourished independent of the community.
At least two factors have contributed to this fourth disestablishment. The first factor is the distortion of the belief that you are saved by accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. The cultural assumption, based on the principle emphasized by Protestants that you are saved by faith and not by works, is that salvation is the result of a mental decision. If you say in your mind that you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, then your ticket to salvation is purchased and will always be honored. This mental act does not require a community in which you “work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” (Philippians 2:12)
The second factor is that we have come to assume that Christianity is an idea and ideas do not require embodiment in the lives of a community. If truth is an idea, theoretically you could come to such a truth even though there was no practice of that truth in existence. You could discover that truth in your own mind and hold on to it as your personal possession. In contrast, Scripture declares that God was revealed not as an idea but as an act that was experienced. In the Hebrew Scriptures God is not discussed theoretically but is experienced because God chooses to act in relation to a people. Christianity emerged in this world in the body of an actual historical person who related to other people in a manner that revealed truth. The church, as the Body of Christ, becomes God’s chosen instrument by which that Good News continues to be experienced and therefore revealed in the world.
