Faith in a changing world? A deliberately ambiguous question with answers coming from two directions.
The first way of answering the question is yes, we have faith that the world is changing. The speed and impact of change right now mean that everyone except the most secluded hermit is affected by changes to a greater or lesser degree.
Changes in employment opportunities, communication, relationships, recreational activities, the political environment and more.
The second way and the subject of this post is to answer how our faith stands up in the changing world most of us are experiencing now.
From attending conferences, study courses and in many discussions recently, I have noticed a range of attitudes towards faith. Not just faith as in religion, but in secular expectations, philosophical reflections, faith or concern over children’s futures in a changing world.
Abundance or lack of faith in either religious beliefs or a good future is not evenly distributed across the generations. The whole range of emotions from ecstatic anticipation to miserable negativity can be found in all age groups.
But it does seem that more of those who have faith in Christianity and who regularly attend church services are to be found in the over 50 age group.
Many mainstream churches are facing declining attendances and ageing congregations. Church administrations and parish councils and are spending hundreds of hours debating the problem of empty pews and ways to reverse the trend. Churches are closing, church buildings demolished or used for other purposes.
Faith as a buffer to change
In this post, I wrote about how my faith kept me going through some very difficult periods of personal change after my move to Canada.
My late father would have been 104 in March 2018. Unusually for a father of his generation, born at the end of the Victorian era, he did talk to my brother and me about philosophy, faith and world events when we were still young. He continued sharing his thoughts throughout our lives until he was killed.
He experienced huge changes in his lifetime. When he was a child in London, England, there were still horse-drawn fire engines and delivery wagons. Dentists pulled teeth without using anesthetic. He was old enough to remember the harsh conditions after WWI, the depression at the end of the 1920s. In WWII he served in the army. He lived through, the Cold War, the first Arab Israeli war and the moon landing.
I regularly relayed the fears I heard at school about the end of the world from a nuclear war between the USA and USSR, end of mankind from overpopulation and other perceived calamities. His answer was always that he had the same fears at various stages in his life but he – and everyone else – were still around. The world had not ended and was unlikely to any time soon.
He spoke about how his parent’s generation – born before 1900 – had feared that mechanisation would destroy most jobs. How the motor vehicle would cause chaos on the roads. How modern weapons and the use of aircraft would kill millions of people and threaten the future of the human species.
It didn’t happen.
He and millions of others had faith that there would be a future. There was.
Change has been a factor in life for as long as man has had the ability to think.
Faith in the future of religion
It seems that change is occurring at a chaotic pace now, but if I look back at my life and remember my father’s stories, some of the changes in the previous two centuries were more dramatic.
That’s why I have faith that we will survive.
There seems to be a yearning in many people for more substance to life, more substance than consumerism, social media and all the other distractions can satisfy.
I believe that we will see more people searching for the meaning of life and how to survive in the changing world.Some are turning back to religion and spirituality as a source of faith.
Will they turn back to religion in sufficient numbers to save churches?
Only if churches embrace change too, become more relevant to better educated, sceptical even cynical seekers of meaning. Many will have to make drastic changes, to services, buildings, their place in the community, the work they do, the peace they can provide.
Some churches are changing, success stories can be found in many different denominations and types of services. For two thousand years, churches have been the focal point of communities. Some are now beginning to fill that role again with success.
What do you think?
man praying photo by stocksnap / pixabay
church photo by svsckin / pixabay