Losing our identity in the name of respectability

Liberal Churches lose both members and integrity, writes David Quinn

The Lutheran Church of Sweden is urging its clergy to use gender-neutral language when referring to God and avoid words like ‘Lord’ and ‘he’ and ‘father’. What Martin Luther, after whom the Lutheran Churches are obviously named, would think should be obvious. He would hate it and denounce it, but that’s because Luther took the Bible seriously and many of his modern successors do not.

Lutheranism is based chiefly in Germany and the Nordic countries. Germany is split roughly 50-50 between Catholicism and Lutheranism. It is interesting to compare their respective fortunes because the Lutheran mainstream has adopted every single reform the modern world insists upon and Catholicism has not.

To put it another way, Lutheranism has done everything possible to make itself more ‘relevant’ to the modern world, while Catholicism has more or less stuck to its guns, and yet the fortunes of Lutheranism have not revived at all. On the contrary. While it may be true that Catholicism in Germany is in decline, Lutheranism in Germany is declining at least as fast, despite all its reforms.

Recommendation

Lutheranism began with a reformation, that is to the say, the Reformation. It was a reformation based on Luther’s interpretation of the Bible. For the last few decades another reformation has been underway, this time a reformation based on leaving behind the Bible. How else do we explain the call to refer to God using gender-neutral language?

While it may be true that God has no gender as such because he has no body, at the same time he is referred to continuously in the Bible as male. Again and again he is called ‘Lord’ and Jesus referred to him as ‘Abba’, meaning ‘father’. Are we to second guess Jesus? Apparently so. Do some Christians believe they know better than Jesus? Apparently so.

Lutheran pastors do not have to follow the recommendation, of course. But many will and probably already have. In fact, some have doubtless been already doing so for years.

As it is, the head of the Lutheran Church in Sweden is a woman. Women’s ordination has been permitted for years. It is possible to find Lutheran bishops who approve of abortion under certain circumstances, never mind contraception. Some Lutheran churches also conduct same-sex marriage ceremonies. It is very hard to think of a single liberal reform they have not adopted.

The point of all this isn’t to argue against the substance of these reforms (not here anyway) so much as to demonstrate that the reforms in no way, shape or form make the Churches that go down this road an iota more ‘relevant’ to the general population or draw in new members in substantial numbers. Quite the reverse in fact, because they increase the rate of decline.

This should be noted carefully by those Catholics – Fr Tony Flannery is one such – who urge us to embark on a similar reform programme. It should also be noted by all those journalists and commentators who urge the same.

The Catholic Church is continually being told that it must introduce a plethora of liberal reforms if it is to have any hope of stemming the haemorrhaging of members. It must permit women priests. It must permit married priests. It must permit Catholics to use contraception. It must soften its position on abortion, which the Catholic magazine The Tablet urged in Britain recently to worryingly little backlash. It must soften its position on divorce and remarriage. And so on.

Again, I am not attempting here to argue for or against these various reforms. I am simply arguing what is unarguable; namely that these reforms have never revived the fortunes of any Church and have instead accelerated their decline.

The reason is because they alienate their orthodox members and drive them to more conservative churches and they do not draw in alienated liberals because for the most part these alienated liberals aren’t staying away from church for this or that teaching, they simply don’t believe, period. They might be happy to call themselves ‘spiritual not religious’ and they might have a vague belief in a god of some kind, but they do not believe strongly enough to have any intention of becoming a member of any church.

So, while it may be the case that they give a pat on the head to liberal Churches that agree with them on issues like contraception, divorce, gay marriage and abortion, it doesn’t move them to join those Churches. All that happens is that the more faithful members – faithful to the Bible, faithful to the historic tenets of Christianity – go elsewhere.

What is more, the liberal Churches lose their integrity along with their members, and also lose all ability to be truly counter-cultural and prophetic.

Social 
reforms

Many of the social reforms of the last 50 years are destroying our societies over the long term. Birth rates in the West are well below replacement rate. Millions of unborn children are being aborted annually and the commitments that buttress the family are being undermined in the name of personal freedom. A growing number of societies are killing their old and infirm.

In the midst of this, the Christian Churches have to be true to themselves even if it comes at the cost of endless attacks from our cultural elites, and a loss of ‘respectability’ and marginalisation.

For centuries the Church lived alongside the warrior cultures of Europe and found itself making many compromises that undermined its moral witness over the long term.

Today it finds itself alongside a culture that exults sexual ‘liberation’, and personal freedom more generally, and it is tempted to compromise again. Some Churches have already compromised completely at the price of their integrity, their membership and their ability to offer a proper counter-witness to a society that very badly needs it. That is far too high a price to pay for a pat on the hand from our rulers and a tiny bit more ‘respectability’.

David Quinn’s new book is ‘How we killed God (and other tales of modern Ireland)’ from Currach Press.