Post by StellaMaris on Sept 30, 2022 0:20:01 GMT
... on the call to evangelize.
The Pillar interview with Bishop Egan on evangelization in the UK. This was an interesting reflection.
Why is the Church better at evangelizing in some eras than others?
Faith can’t survive in a vacuum. It needs a culture to express itself in and to help sustain it. In the Middle Ages, that classical culture was theocentric. So those three Bs were easily correlated. Theology was the center of the sciences, architecture was Gothic, God was in heaven, and everyone knew their place in society.
But the modern culture that emerged in the late 17th century rejected the classical culture and its suppositions in favor of empirical science, or the new thinking of the Enlightenment and modern nation-states, and so on. Modernity was anthropocentric. And now postmodernity, which in some ways is still part of modernity, has kind of overlaid that. Whilst postmodernity is more open to myth and imagination, it still subscribes to the agnostic philosophies of modernity, and it’s now coupled to secularism and consumerism.
In the last 50 years, Britain has quietly undergone a religious revolution which is in many ways as significant as the Reformation was in its time. Most British people have now thrown off their Christian faith in favor of a pluralism of live and let live. They’ve thrown off Christian morality in favor of humanism, and their Christian church-going and convictions in favor of a certain indifference. And that’s why, I think, many people today say they are nones, people of no religion. We’re no longer living within Christendom, in other words. We are in a new apostolic age.
It was very interesting during the Queen’s funeral last week. It would have been for many, many people a throwback to an earlier era. It was very profoundly Christian in its celebration. It’ll be interesting to see whether that’s had any longer-term impact. But I do think the postmodern, secular, consumer forces are very, very strong, and the waters may well wash in again over that.
Read the full interview here.
The Pillar interview with Bishop Egan on evangelization in the UK. This was an interesting reflection.
Why is the Church better at evangelizing in some eras than others?
Faith can’t survive in a vacuum. It needs a culture to express itself in and to help sustain it. In the Middle Ages, that classical culture was theocentric. So those three Bs were easily correlated. Theology was the center of the sciences, architecture was Gothic, God was in heaven, and everyone knew their place in society.
But the modern culture that emerged in the late 17th century rejected the classical culture and its suppositions in favor of empirical science, or the new thinking of the Enlightenment and modern nation-states, and so on. Modernity was anthropocentric. And now postmodernity, which in some ways is still part of modernity, has kind of overlaid that. Whilst postmodernity is more open to myth and imagination, it still subscribes to the agnostic philosophies of modernity, and it’s now coupled to secularism and consumerism.
In the last 50 years, Britain has quietly undergone a religious revolution which is in many ways as significant as the Reformation was in its time. Most British people have now thrown off their Christian faith in favor of a pluralism of live and let live. They’ve thrown off Christian morality in favor of humanism, and their Christian church-going and convictions in favor of a certain indifference. And that’s why, I think, many people today say they are nones, people of no religion. We’re no longer living within Christendom, in other words. We are in a new apostolic age.
It was very interesting during the Queen’s funeral last week. It would have been for many, many people a throwback to an earlier era. It was very profoundly Christian in its celebration. It’ll be interesting to see whether that’s had any longer-term impact. But I do think the postmodern, secular, consumer forces are very, very strong, and the waters may well wash in again over that.
Read the full interview here.
