It is unbelievable! I have been thinking for the last couple of
weeks exactly about this (preparing on preaching a sermon as
a guest in my old church). Here in the most atheistic Czechia
(which is quite incorrect, there are not even atheists here much;
atheists fight against God, most people here just don’t care, and
most of them are quite friendly), so here in Czechia we were
thinking about the end of religion (or at least of our religion)
for some time already.
In 1650, Jan Ámos Komenský (in English usually known as
Comenius) wrote his “The Last Will and Testament of the Dying
Mother The Unity of Brethern” (I have never found its English
translation, so I have just translated it), which is his
saying farewell to the dying denomination (dying because of the
persecution during the Thirty-years War). The Unity of Brethern
then truly died, but seventy years later emigrants from the
current Czechia re-established into new Moravian Church, which
then erupted into the biggest non-state Protestant mission ever
to the whole world. So, that’s one text about the dying church.
The middle of the 1970s was a very dark time in the history of
our nation. All hopes of the 1968 attempts to humanize Communism
were lost, and the country was firmly under the control of the
Soviet-controlled Communist Party. There were not even many
dissident movements and everything looked bleak. A Vatican
diplomat Agostino Casaroli was supposed to say at that time that
the discussion about the relations between the Church and state
in Poland will be about modus vivendi, in Hungary about modus
vivendi vel moriendi, and in Czechoslovakia, it will be only
about modus moriendi. A Czech dissident Catholic priest,
formerly professor of the Catholic ethics, Otto Mádr got angry by
this statement and wrote then very influential article “Modus
Moriendi of the Church” (originally in German, later published in
Czech, translated by me to English), where he follows this
Czech line of thinking started by Comenius.
The Communist oppression of the Church is gone now, and we, Czech
Christians, are freer than we ever were, but this line of
thinking is unfortunately still relevant. All measurements of
religiosity and participating in the religious life (of any
religion) are going down, and the age structure of some
denominations is ridiculous (this is the age structure of the
Czechoslovak Hussite Church based on the 2011 census; 68 % of
members were over 60 years of age).
Modus moriendi is quite an acute problem right now, but there
doesn’t seem to be anybody talking about it much. Reactions seem
to me two: either a believer tries to cling to hope that the
revival is coming and everything will be all right (combined with
the flagellant thoughts how the decline of the Church is all
their fault, and how bad Christians they are) and other, mostly
unbelievers, are with Schadenfreude observing how the Church will
(finally?) go away. I believe that neither of these approaches is
helpful (well, the second one doesn’t even try to be).
I think a more helpful question on how to start deal with the
current situation is exactly stepping out of assumptions that are
behind those two approaches. The first one seems to me the idea
that success is the measure of the quality of a Christian, which
seems to me completely wrong. We are not called to be successful,
we are called to be faithful, and success if hoped for but not
required consequences of our faithfulness. And the second is that
the major (or even only) influence on the growth of the Church is
the quality of our action. However, that is going straight
against the word of the Scripture: “I planted, Apollos watered,
but God caused it to grow.” (1Cor 3:6 NET) Yes, we should
faithfully plant and water, but the growth is the gift of the
Sovereign Lord who gives “grace upon grace” (i.e., God gave for
free, and we return freely, not as a payment, but as an
expression of our thankfulness).
To get down to the practical level. I don’t expect any surprising
change in current trends of decline of religiosity. On the other
hand, we are currently living in the middle of the biggest
societal upheaval since the time of Gutenberg and Luther (or
perhaps even earlier), so the world may change so much, that it
will turn towards religion again, but I don’t see any current
sign of happening so. So, the question for us is not how to make
such revival happen, but how to be faithful to God even in
a situation where it won’t.
On the more positive side, it is never a good idea in social
sciences to extrapolate current trends to infinity. All these
trends plateau somewhere. Or to say it biblically: “I still have
left in Israel seven thousand followers who have not bowed their
knees to Baal or kissed the images of him." (1Ki 19:18) There
will always be a group of believers who will be waiting for God
to return. And not waiting while being paralysed, but waiting
while happily enjoying their life.
It is strange how little fanfiction authors investigated the
whole area of the historical stories, a life of the magical
community outside (and before) the canonical storyline. Aside
from replants of the normal fanon stories to the past (“Prince …
I was rereading again “Breakfast in New York” by Radaslab and
I don’t know for certain why it aggravates me so much. Certainly
there is the conflict between generally …
Eros Syndrome was not named or defined back then, but it was
there. Eros Syndrome was needed to explain certain things.
Namely, how could Hermione have let that happen …
Discussing the character of Severus Snape in other thread, I was
made to think about the class structure behind the story. We know
that Severus Snape was a son of a jobless worker in …
If you are interested in the theory of writing, then I have to
suggest to you two very obscure and old books (yes, old books are
quite often better than the new ones): “The Mind of …
One of the many issues with the universe of the Harry Potter
books, which has never been fully resolved in the books by Ms
Rowling is the true nature of the Dark Magic. It is really not
explained. Dark Magic …
Technical question of the day. Would the Homonum Revelius
spell reveal a hiding vampire? I figure it will reveal
a hiding werewolf but they’re still sort of human. Aren’t
vampires supposed to be “dead” and so would such a spell
reveal them …
Of course, all Europeans almost without an exceptions were
Christians well into the 19th century. It was traditionally
unacceptable (or perhaps only unfashionable) not to be Christian
in Europe well into the …
After the discussion on other
thread,
I was given reference to three Harmony+werewolves stories (Lupin bites
somebody in the end of the third year). I found them surprisingly good:
Except the quality of this review is on par with those on the DVD
box. This is not a review, it is a promotion by a fan. There is
not one weakness found, and although I like …
(my comments on the review of “Their Finest” by Susan Wloszczyna)
I really wanted to like this film, it started nicely, and
generally I like it, but then there are points which just don’t
make sense at all. It is even worse when whole film is about
scriptwriting.
First of all, you should avoid the dark trap of all
adventure/fantasy stories: my story must be more dramatic than
the previous one, my heroes and my antagonist must be more
significant than the previous one. It is not enough to save …
Finished reading the story and there are two overwhelming
thoughts in my head. The first is obvious and rather normal for
most of the fanfiction stories (and especially so-called romantic
ones): it should be cut to like one quarter or so …
I prefer the explanation in chapter 16 of Thou Shalt Not Suffer
by TheWizardsHarry: there are horrible problems with our
translations of the verse, because all Bible translators were
Muggles, and they just couldn’t grasp the …
Bashing and similar are not the cause of poor quality of their
stories, but they are just a symptom of the author being lead by
the poor design of his story into areas, which would be
impossible to resolve or it would be too difficult, so bashing is
then just …
OK, I will suggest a very weird book for reading. The Mind of
the Maker by Dorothy L. Sayers (yes, the author of detective
stories with Lord Peter Wimsey) is one of the best books on the
art of writing …