We stand face to face with a new decade. During the sixties radical changes confronted and challenged not only mankind in general but the Christian churches. A new theology and a new morality have swept across the land, leaving not even the smallest and most isolated congregation completely untouched. And believers, who are called to know the signs of the times, must take heed to themselves and their stance. Unless they are equipped with that spiritual sobriety and vigilance to which the Scriptures call them, they and their children will succumb to the spirit of the age which is like the destruction which lays life waste at high noon.
A Widespread Concern
Everyone apparently knows that there is something radically amiss with the Christian churches in our western world.
Week after week periodicals call attention to this plight. While millions have been amassed to keep the ecclesiastical machinery going in its impressive sanctuaries and offices and printing plants, little of the impact of true Christianity seems to be felt through~ out the land. The past decade has witnessed a veritable spate of volumes attempting a diagnosis and remedy but to little avail. We seem to be very religious indeed, but with a religiosity which is characterized more by form than power. And amid all the panaceas prescribed for our ills, we hear too little of the authentic and authoritative Word of the Lord. Unless as individuals and congregations we pledge ourselves to return to that gospel. we shall not experience a revival of the saving strength and sweetness of our Lord.
This is not the first time that the American churches have suffered the stubborn realities of spiritual debilitation. disease and decay.
Almost three centuries ago (after the Reforming synod of 1679) the New England churches succumbed to a fearful decline. William Dean Howells has described what went wrong in church and community:
Religion there had largely ceased to be a fact of spiritual experience, and the visible church flourished on condition of providing for the social needs of the community. It was practically held that the salvation of one’s soul must not be made too depressing, or the young people would have nothing to do with it. Professors of the sternest creeds temporized with sinners, and did what might be done to win them for heaven by helping them to have a good time here. The church embraced and then included the world.
Standards for church membership were lowered. Any respectable person, even when acknowledging that he was “without grace,” received a welcome at the Lord’s table. Discipline fell into almost complete abeyance. And although from time to time revivals also swept through that part of the country, their fruits were largely ephemeral. Never were the losses solidly recovered.
Two centuries later a similar situation began to prevail throughout much of the rest of the United States. From about the turn of the present century we can trace the almost inexorable decline which has brought us to the present spiritual crisis with its apostasy, indifference, sex-mania, lawlessness, and widespread substitution of outward respectability for the godliness and sanctification without which no man shall see our Lord. A summary is provided by Winthrop S. Hudson. In his volume The Great Tradition of the American Churches he writes:
The failure of the churches can almost be dated. It largely occurred during the fateful decade of the eighteen nineties, when Russell Conway was identifying Christian virtue with alertness to economic opportunities and sin with its opposite; when Newell Dwight Hills was preaching on timely topics and proclaiming contradictory gospels on successive Sundays; when Phillips Brooks was insisting that the church must be as broad as humanity; when other preachers were spending their time demonstrating how one could be both a skeptic and a believer, or beating the drums for an increasingly jingoistic nationalism, or retreating with Charles Sheldon into the realm of romantic sentimentality. In a certain sense, these are caricatures of men who were indeed more than mere prisoners of their time, but they are caricatures which reveal only too clearly the unhappy truth that the churches were losing the distinctive note of the Christian gospel and the distinctive quality of the Christian life.
How much the descriptions given above sound like the situations of today!
The very theories and prescriptions which are palmed off as so novel, relevant and necessary for the recovery of the true life of the churches were preached also then. And wherever these were embraced, the Christian life and witness languished to the point of extinction, unless the fresh wind of the life-living and life-sustaining Word once again blew with power to drive away the miasmas of approaching death. This is the warning sounded by the history of the churches of our land.
Four Characteristics of Decline
In the chapter “The Church embraces the world” Hudson delineates the four major characteristics of the spiritual decline which he has described. The first of these is the decline of ecclesiastical discipline, by which the tension between church and world was lit first cased and thereupon erased. And when instead of taking on the world the church is taken in by that world, it not only loses its true identity; it fails to function as the conscience of society and forfeits all its influence among the sons of men. The second characteristic is the loss of evangelistic fervor. How can the church preach with conviction and urgency, if it no longer believes that there is a radical antithesis between being “in Christ” and living apart from him? Thus also the number of churches in proportion to the burgeoning population has been drastically reduced. Churches, once filled but now sparsely attended by a few faithful, can only try to recoup the loss of their influence by merging with equally weak congregations. Closely allied with this, so Hudson opines, is the substitution of social fellowship and concern for personal conversion and commitment. Many churches have become little other than comfortable middle-class clubs where one gathers to sing a few hymns with people of one’s own kind. It need surprise no one, therefore, that the fourth characteristic of this decline is the church’s failure to provide intellectual stimulus and leadership in matters of the Christian faith. The doctrine delivered by God to his people in his Word simply can’t and won’t be important to a worldly church. Truth as it is in Christ Jesus is to such people no longer a matter of life or death.
What all this has to say to us as evangelical Reformed believers and churches ought to be immediately obvious.
Whither the CRC?
Here we look into the mirror of the church’s past and its consequences, Well may we remember that in large measure the churches about which this record speaks are mainly rooted, like ours, in the Calvinistic reformation. And if the examples cited above seem somewhat too far removed from us in time or association, then attention need only be called to what is happening in these years within the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands. So much has been Written in periodicals written by and for the Christian Reformed constituency on this subject, that it is unnecessary to detail that course of events here. But that our churches by and large are deeply perplexed and disturbed by the radical changes which are taking place within that fellowship ought to be taken much more seriously by our Dutch brethren and sisters. At the same time we do well to guard against complacency, as if the same cannot happen among us. Also our churches are caught up in the swirling crosscurrents of a deluded and decadent western culture.
Can we find also among us evidences of the four major characteristics of spiritual decline which Hudson has cited? Dare we look into this mirror of the past which has produced the present confusion in so many churches around us? And as we look into that mirror, will we look there for living members of the church, not first of all seeing the face of preachers and elders and fellow church-members but of ourselves? How much does the doctrine which is according to godliness mean to us personally? How eager are we for church reformation and revival, beginning with ourselves? How zealous are we to bring the saving gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ in word and deed to those who do not know his grace? How concerned are we with disciplining the lives of ourselves and our families according to the revealed will of our God? In large measure as we answer these questions at the threshold of another decade, we will be co-responsible for which way also the churches to which we belong will go.
It does little good to wring our hands and bemoan the course of events in church or world. Our sovereign God has called us in and for such a time as this.
In Jesus Christ, the all-sufficient Savior who is Lord over all, his people -the church which he has purchased with his own blood—are more than conquerors. But only those who are faithful to the full gospel of his grace will taste the joy of his victory. Thus the question; “Which way will the churches go?” becomes an intensely personal one. Which way are you and I, each of us individually and all of us together, going in these opening days of the 1970s?
Dr. Peter Y. De Jong is professor of practical theology at Calvin Seminary, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
A Widespread Concern
Everyone apparently knows that there is something radically amiss with the Christian churches in our western world.
Week after week periodicals call attention to this plight. While millions have been amassed to keep the ecclesiastical machinery going in its impressive sanctuaries and offices and printing plants, little of the impact of true Christianity seems to be felt through~ out the land. The past decade has witnessed a veritable spate of volumes attempting a diagnosis and remedy but to little avail. We seem to be very religious indeed, but with a religiosity which is characterized more by form than power. And amid all the panaceas prescribed for our ills, we hear too little of the authentic and authoritative Word of the Lord. Unless as individuals and congregations we pledge ourselves to return to that gospel. we shall not experience a revival of the saving strength and sweetness of our Lord.
This is not the first time that the American churches have suffered the stubborn realities of spiritual debilitation. disease and decay.
Almost three centuries ago (after the Reforming synod of 1679) the New England churches succumbed to a fearful decline. William Dean Howells has described what went wrong in church and community:
Religion there had largely ceased to be a fact of spiritual experience, and the visible church flourished on condition of providing for the social needs of the community. It was practically held that the salvation of one’s soul must not be made too depressing, or the young people would have nothing to do with it. Professors of the sternest creeds temporized with sinners, and did what might be done to win them for heaven by helping them to have a good time here. The church embraced and then included the world.
Standards for church membership were lowered. Any respectable person, even when acknowledging that he was “without grace,” received a welcome at the Lord’s table. Discipline fell into almost complete abeyance. And although from time to time revivals also swept through that part of the country, their fruits were largely ephemeral. Never were the losses solidly recovered.
Two centuries later a similar situation began to prevail throughout much of the rest of the United States. From about the turn of the present century we can trace the almost inexorable decline which has brought us to the present spiritual crisis with its apostasy, indifference, sex-mania, lawlessness, and widespread substitution of outward respectability for the godliness and sanctification without which no man shall see our Lord. A summary is provided by Winthrop S. Hudson. In his volume The Great Tradition of the American Churches he writes:
The failure of the churches can almost be dated. It largely occurred during the fateful decade of the eighteen nineties, when Russell Conway was identifying Christian virtue with alertness to economic opportunities and sin with its opposite; when Newell Dwight Hills was preaching on timely topics and proclaiming contradictory gospels on successive Sundays; when Phillips Brooks was insisting that the church must be as broad as humanity; when other preachers were spending their time demonstrating how one could be both a skeptic and a believer, or beating the drums for an increasingly jingoistic nationalism, or retreating with Charles Sheldon into the realm of romantic sentimentality. In a certain sense, these are caricatures of men who were indeed more than mere prisoners of their time, but they are caricatures which reveal only too clearly the unhappy truth that the churches were losing the distinctive note of the Christian gospel and the distinctive quality of the Christian life.
How much the descriptions given above sound like the situations of today!
The very theories and prescriptions which are palmed off as so novel, relevant and necessary for the recovery of the true life of the churches were preached also then. And wherever these were embraced, the Christian life and witness languished to the point of extinction, unless the fresh wind of the life-living and life-sustaining Word once again blew with power to drive away the miasmas of approaching death. This is the warning sounded by the history of the churches of our land.
Four Characteristics of Decline
In the chapter “The Church embraces the world” Hudson delineates the four major characteristics of the spiritual decline which he has described. The first of these is the decline of ecclesiastical discipline, by which the tension between church and world was lit first cased and thereupon erased. And when instead of taking on the world the church is taken in by that world, it not only loses its true identity; it fails to function as the conscience of society and forfeits all its influence among the sons of men. The second characteristic is the loss of evangelistic fervor. How can the church preach with conviction and urgency, if it no longer believes that there is a radical antithesis between being “in Christ” and living apart from him? Thus also the number of churches in proportion to the burgeoning population has been drastically reduced. Churches, once filled but now sparsely attended by a few faithful, can only try to recoup the loss of their influence by merging with equally weak congregations. Closely allied with this, so Hudson opines, is the substitution of social fellowship and concern for personal conversion and commitment. Many churches have become little other than comfortable middle-class clubs where one gathers to sing a few hymns with people of one’s own kind. It need surprise no one, therefore, that the fourth characteristic of this decline is the church’s failure to provide intellectual stimulus and leadership in matters of the Christian faith. The doctrine delivered by God to his people in his Word simply can’t and won’t be important to a worldly church. Truth as it is in Christ Jesus is to such people no longer a matter of life or death.
What all this has to say to us as evangelical Reformed believers and churches ought to be immediately obvious.
Whither the CRC?
Here we look into the mirror of the church’s past and its consequences, Well may we remember that in large measure the churches about which this record speaks are mainly rooted, like ours, in the Calvinistic reformation. And if the examples cited above seem somewhat too far removed from us in time or association, then attention need only be called to what is happening in these years within the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands. So much has been Written in periodicals written by and for the Christian Reformed constituency on this subject, that it is unnecessary to detail that course of events here. But that our churches by and large are deeply perplexed and disturbed by the radical changes which are taking place within that fellowship ought to be taken much more seriously by our Dutch brethren and sisters. At the same time we do well to guard against complacency, as if the same cannot happen among us. Also our churches are caught up in the swirling crosscurrents of a deluded and decadent western culture.
Can we find also among us evidences of the four major characteristics of spiritual decline which Hudson has cited? Dare we look into this mirror of the past which has produced the present confusion in so many churches around us? And as we look into that mirror, will we look there for living members of the church, not first of all seeing the face of preachers and elders and fellow church-members but of ourselves? How much does the doctrine which is according to godliness mean to us personally? How eager are we for church reformation and revival, beginning with ourselves? How zealous are we to bring the saving gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ in word and deed to those who do not know his grace? How concerned are we with disciplining the lives of ourselves and our families according to the revealed will of our God? In large measure as we answer these questions at the threshold of another decade, we will be co-responsible for which way also the churches to which we belong will go.
It does little good to wring our hands and bemoan the course of events in church or world. Our sovereign God has called us in and for such a time as this.
In Jesus Christ, the all-sufficient Savior who is Lord over all, his people -the church which he has purchased with his own blood—are more than conquerors. But only those who are faithful to the full gospel of his grace will taste the joy of his victory. Thus the question; “Which way will the churches go?” becomes an intensely personal one. Which way are you and I, each of us individually and all of us together, going in these opening days of the 1970s?
Dr. Peter Y. De Jong is professor of practical theology at Calvin Seminary, Grand Rapids, Michigan.