Brian Zahnd - Future of the Church

Interesting comments about the future of the church by Brian Zahnd in an interview with Brad Jersak.

The church will eventually have little choice but to be counter-cultural. It will have to be. Christianity is at the heart of the culture wars going on in North America at the moment. It is not a war that the church is going to win. It is not a war that we should fight. I am not fighting for the idea of maintaining Christianity as a cultural hegemony and dominant force. I don't know how long the battle will rage, but I am pretty sure who will win, and it will be secularism.

Christianity should always look a bit odd to people who are not baptised. We make some outlandish claims. We say that the logos of God became assumed human flesh in the person of Jesus of Nazareth through a virgin. That he was crucified and rose again on the third day. These are outlandish claims.

The church will lose the wrong-headed culture war that many are waging right now. It will not win. The ramifications will be long-lasting.

I do not think there is as much difference between Western Europe and North America as we imagine. The culture wars and the existence of civil religion make Christianity look stronger than it actually is. The political situation is such that people who have never gone to church are calling themselves evangelicals. It is a political brand/identity that is papering over the lack.

Western Europe is secular, but I see deep historic Christian roots. They might be buried or forgotten, but they are there. You don't find that in North America.

The United States is an experiment in secular governance. That is what will be remembered about the United States in 500 years' time. The French Revolution took it further, but the first real attempt at secular governance is the United States. I am not against that. Let the world do what it does, the church is something different. It does not persuade by coercion. We persuade by love, witness, Spirit, reason, rhetoric, and, if need be, by martyrdom; but never by force.

Secularism is a philosophy that is relatively new in the whole human journey. That is the deep roots of the United States, and that is what will win out ultimately. We will get what Thomas Jefferson and his fellow deists actually wanted, and that was a rationalistic, very materialistic philosophy, where Christianity was tolerated, but no longer really prominent. Jefferson hoped for that, and I think he is going to win, in one sense.

The church will have to be content with being underground, a counter-cultural movement that serves the gospel. We are best when we are counter-cultural, not angry. As in the first 300 years of the church, let the world do what the world does, but we are going to be something other.

Let go of the idea that it is our job to change the world. That kind of language has been ubiquitous in evangelical circles, but it is not our task to change the world. Our task is to be the world already changed by Christ. Christ is the saviour of the world. If the world is going to be saved, it has to be Jesus that does it. When we try to do it, we always reach for the ring of power, and it always corrupts us.