Will Christianity rediscover its relevance in the West?

A cross close to the church in Grense Jakobselv, Norway. Suomi: Risti kirkon lähellä Vuoremijoella, Norjassa. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Will Christianity rediscover its relevance in the West? While Christianity is growing in many parts of the non-Western world, it continues to age and shrink in the West while becoming seen as less credible and relevant. Yet in the United States, people are not simply rejecting anything and everything to do with either religion or spirituality. Some are turning to other traditions, such as Buddhism,while many are identifying as "spiritual but not religious". While some do refer to themselves as atheist or agnostic, not everyone who adopts such labels are hostile to religious and spiritual things.

This suggests that many folks who are abandoning or rejecting Christianity (the latter never having embraced it to begin with) are not simply "turning away from God", especially in the broad sense of God as some greater meaning to existence, a transcendent or higher power, or some deep inner light that cannot be explained or contained. They are specifically turning away from the contemporary Christian presentation of God. They are turning away from the social and political agenda associated in the popular consciousness with Christianity, especially when it involves shunning or shaming the poor, ethnic and religious minorities, homosexuals, and others who are marginalized and disenfranchised by society.

The confluence of cultural, social, economic, political, and historical factors that are involved in this transition are too complex to be mapped out and dealt with in detail here. I am going to focus on something that stands out to me, but I don't claim it is the only issue or the most important one when it comes to the decline of Christianity in the West. Yet I do think if it is taken seriously it could not only resonate in this age but actually help Christianity to remember itself. To move toward a reawakening. 

The woes of America and attachment to form

Image via Wikipedia

Red, white and Buddha was an early decor theme for this blog for those who remember it from its early days. I think that it has a new meaning for me now, as there is an Eastern teaching that America needs now more than ever: non-attachment to form. This won't require anyone to convert to anything or from anything in terms of their formal religious affiliation, but it does mean a change in how we in the United States (del Norte) see ourselves and our country. This change is essential if we hope to live up to our ideals of freedom and prosperity and to move out of the spiral of declining standards of living for all but the wealthiest of our citizens. I don't expect that anyone must listen to or agree with me, but I don't see the point in letting the ambiguity keep from at least trying to say something. It can't hurt to give it a try. If it helps even one other person think about some important issues for a few moments, it is well worth my time and effort.

The concept of attachment to form has many nuances, so to clarify what I am talking about there is akin to the old saying "If you love something let it go." We can get hung up on possessing something and wanting to preserve it just like we remember it, encased in amber, perfect forever in terms of conforming to our (personal or collective) memory of it. We don't want it to grow, change, fade, or disappear. Yet this is the fate of all things. Living things cannot be encased in amber, or preserved in a chemical pickling, or pick your process. That is for dead things, and if we do this to living things they die. We often want to preserve things as they exist in our memory because we cling to them to keep ourselves from being swept away. Our own bodies, thoughts, feelings and conceptions are constantly in flux as well, and this too is natural. It's like floating down a stream. But sometimes we get panicked, and want to stop the ride, so we reach out and grab whatever is close at hand and try to hold on, but we are only fooling ourselves because everything is floating down the stream, even that to which we clinging.

Now, if I were going to talk explicitly about religion and spirituality, this would be an opportune time to mention that our truest, deepest self is the water itself, the eternal stream, and hence there is no need for flailing or grasping. But instead I want to briefly hint at how attachment and non-attachment to form (form can be any physical, emotional or mental object) relates to current problems in American society. This includes our xenophobic jingoism and our cannibalistic form of corporate capitalism. Both of these things are corroding our current societal well-being as well as undercutting our future. They reflect outdated ways of thinking that are sadly straining to retain and build their influence over our people. They can only serve to increase our burden and our misery, both for us and for future generations.

Standing for and standing with -- solidarity with those on the margins

What is the best way to help those who are on the margins -- in terms of social or economic status, power, or in some other fashion?  How you do envision a solution, partial or whole, to the neglect or abuse of those who fall into such a category?

This is a perennial question for those working to improve living conditions for those on the outside -- those excluded based on some quality deemed inferior, insufficient, impure, inconvenient or otherwise undesirable.  A major model employed with particular vigor in the US has been the human/civil model, which has its critics such as Andrew Sullivan (writing below about discrimination involving homosexuals):

Liberalism properly restricts itself to law - not culture - in addressing social problems; and by describing all homosexuals as a monolithic minority, it is able to avoid the complexities of the gay world as a whole, just as blanket civil rights legislation draws a veil over the varieties of black America by casting the question entirely in terms of non-black attitudes.