Okay, I’ve been thinking about the talk by Dr. Reynolds and I think I’ve got it. Here’s the sum-up:

1. The cultural war is going much much worse than you thought.
2. The usual ideas to fix it won’t work.
3. Now is the time for each individual Christian to get to work as if it mattered, because it does.

There, that wasn’t so hard, was it?

The cultural war
Basically, in the Christians vs. the World contest, we’re losing. We have been losing, and there’s no reason to think that the trend will end anytime soon. One of Dr. Reynolds quotes that I really could read from my notes (woo hoo!) was “We are always losing, but to different people, and that’s the good news.” Hopefully that won’t come as a shock to any Christian. Just about every seminar or sermon/homily — Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant — you’ll ever hear makes this point to some degree or other. Some may think Dr. Reynolds is being more pessimistic than most. From where I stand, unfortunately he’s also being more accurate. When you consider that active, meaningful Christianity has lost so much ground throughout the world in the last 40-50 years that it’s not even regarded as worthy of consideration, you realize that that’s about as bad as it gets. The American Left either vilifies Christians as dangerous control freaks or caricatures us as repressed, prissy nobodies. It’s the only politically incorrect stereotype that’s not only tolerated but encouraged. But it’s a compliment when you consider that in Europe, Christians are no longer worth paying any attention to at all. (For those at the event who didn’t get a chance to buy the lectures, consider buying “The Death of Christianity in Britain” here. It’s the one that I started in on, and it’s excellent.) And hopefully, it goes without saying that the picture isn’t better elsewhere in the world, though there are definitely some spots that are brighter than others. So what’s a body to do?

The usual stuff won’t work
This is definitely going to come across as even more pessimistic to some. Surely the point of realizing the shrinking ice floe that we’re on is to send a clear call to action for a Revival. Surely a Bible seminar is the thing, or a massive influx of street-corner missionaries, or a reprint of all the Chick tracts in 3-D.
Nope. Those things, and others of a much more profound nature, have been done over and over again. They’ve been done in other countries by those more qualified than we are. In this country, people are almost completely inured to any freshness that the message of the Gospel might have once had. Those that aren’t in church now aren’t going to go there based on even the most attractive publication or the most winning speaker or the most Bible-centered teaching.

This is dismal news, and yet — speaking just for myself — it was so incredibly refreshing for someone just to say it out loud for once that it didn’t make me feel bad. No one’s saying that churches shouldn’t continue their outreach efforts, but I think we need to understand what those things are and what they’re not. They are the life of the church — they may not turn out to be the life of the world.

When you think of it, it’s ridiculous to think that they really would’ve been. Believing Christians know the end of the story. It’s the particular cross that has been placed on all of us. Did we really think that here in America we would never experience the great tribulation about which Christ said, “unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved?” Well, I know the partial answer to that. Yes. Many Protestants held onto (and still hold onto) the Rapture as their get-out-of-jail-free card. I’ll leave it to more qualified scholars to debate the point. For me, though, I’ll just point out that the Rapture is a hypothesis — it’s not dogma, and it certainly isn’t directly Scriptural. Considering what’s at stake, I would think that if I was inclined to believe in it, I would still act as if I didn’t because the cost of being wrong is so great.

Another part of the yes answer comes, I think, from seeing how robust, how vigorous, how apparently bursting-with-life Christianity is in America. What other country would respond to a tragedy like 9/11 by writing “God bless America” on every surface?

Rats. I hate that I no longer regard that as worth much. I hate to think I’m getting cynical. But I can’t help it. There’s something that just doesn’t strike me right about this outpouring of slogans and bumper stickers.

These things are too easy. And they’ve given us false hope.

If I have a problem with American Protestantism, it’s that it is so American that it has our ebullient, painfully cheerful and hopelessly naive approach to life. SMILE — God loves you!!! As if God doesn’t love a newly-widowed woman, a handicapped infant, a hospitalized victim of crime. The problem with Americans is that we have no real context for pain, suffering or the tribulation that, as Paul says, produces perseverance which produces character which produces hope. We’re capable of going about feeling hopeful all the time (or trying to, which will kill a person), but unless you’ve gone through the steps to get there, that’s not the same as having hope. (In case it’s not obvious, I by no means mean to exempt myself from this criticism. I don’t like pain. It hurts.) I think that we go about with Jesus’ name on our lips all the time, but haven’t realized that it hasn’t penetrated much further than that. And the power of the Name is such that even based on our shallow invocations, the country has taken on the hue of a deep and lasting Christianity. We can’t imagine the cultural war becoming a war in actuality — threatening livelihood, property and life — in a country like this.

I think we fool ourselves. I won’t go into it any more than that. That we’re on a continuum from light to dark is incontrovertible — where we are exactly is a matter for some interpretation. So again, what do we do?

Be a Christian as if it matters
Whenever I’ve heard inspiring talks for Christians that start out this way, they hit a snag when they come to the proposed solution. They could always just skip proposing a solution, but that really is just pessimistic. We’re alive. And just to be clear, giving the bad news in the first two points isn’t saying that there aren’t still, in the sense of Elijah’s 7,000 from I Kings 19, many, many believing Christians — only that the Christian Church is no longer a cultural force.

It may sound like a dodge to say that though the problems are general, the answer is absolutely personal. But really, what else could it be? Who else do I have more control over and who else am I completely accountable for at the Judgment Day? If that sounds like I think it lets me off the hook somehow, I must not be saying it right. It puts me on the hook more than ever. If Christianity has been marginalized to the point that the cultural war is no longer fought on gigantic global battlefields but in little skirmishes everywhere than ordinary church-goers may be called on to be soldiers. If vital Christians become as rare as gems, they have to shine like gems.

Lent is coming for Orthodox Christians. What would it be like if instead of doing it as a religious duty or an act of obedience, I approached it the way that soldiers approach combat games when they’re about to go into combat — not as something distant and abstract, but as something that would make the difference between life and death? What if I stopped thinking of the fasting, the extra prayers and services not as good ideas from the past or tokens of future piety, but as something that is of the utmost importance to get right and can’t wait?

It may turn out that Dr. Reynolds isn’t right about some of this, in which case I’m also wrong for passing it along. But I don’t see any ill that can result of taking the opportunity to work much harder in my spiritual life — and I see a lot to be lost in ignoring the opportunity.