In our last class period we looked at Dr.Martin Luther King, Jr, and the role he played in the civil rights movement. This movement had a profound impact on the South, and worked a revolution of sorts in the social and political culture of the region. Even today, 40 years removed from the beginning of the Montgomery Boycott, we are still probably to close to these events to weigh their ultimate consequences.

But certain results already seem clear. For instance, the revolution that did so much to improve the lot of African-Americans occasioned the defection of many from the institution which sponsored it. Beginning in the sixties, many black young people divorced religion from social change, and the good life, choosing an altogether secular style of life.

Another force that threatens the vitality of the Black Church is Islam. The growing presence of Islam in the African-American community is nurtured by a variety of forces, but one of its principle sources of strength is the sense within many blacks of a tremendous gap that exists between what takes place in the Church on Sunday, and how church people live the rest of the week. Many of the new converts to Islam were Christian, but they testify to seeing little coherence between what takes place on Sunday, and the rough and tumble world of the streets the rest of the week.

What is so attractive about Islam to African-Americans is Muslims live what they preach. Whereas church members might spend much of their week hanging out and drinking, Muslims demonstrate discipline, respect, and personal integrity that many in the black community feel is lacking among many members of the church. In a similar fashion, the Muslim claim that Christianity was imposed on blacks by the slaveholders has struck a sensitive nerve in the black community, and has aided them in the effort to win new converts. Growing numbers of blacks have accepted the proposition that Islam was the original faith of African-Americans. As a result, the same forces driving Afro-centrism are also prompting many blacks to explore their roots in Islam.

The result of this increased competition from secular life and from Islam has been a weakening of the Black Church as a social institution. While insufficient time has elapsed for us to be certain as to its future, clearly the Black Church became a powerful change agent in the fifties and sixties. If it can find visionary leadership and a clearly defined cause--two elements in place at the height of the Civil Rights movement--it may be able to recover its prophetic voice in the larger American community.

The Aging Dowager

One area where the Civil Rights movement failed to have much impact was the white churches of the South. While there has been some integration in a small minority of parishes, on the whole there has been little eagerness on the part of either whites or blacks to build genuinely interracial congregations. If the Civil Rights movement has brought about a greater sense of shared cooperation and respect between the races (a highly optimistic assessment), clearly there has been little interaction between whites and blacks in worship. The 11:00 worship service on Sunday still remains the most segregated hour in America.

The defection of young blacks from the church, that I mentioned just a moment ago, has its parallel in the white churches. As Will Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas have made clear in their book, Resident Aliens, many denominational churches--both white and black--have acted like the old dowager who lives in the decaying mansion at the end of the lane. She lives off her inheritance and still thinks she's the center of what's going on in the town, but it's all self-deception. Many southern churches are presently living off the inheritance of the past. They are still living as if the evangelical consensus still holds. They assume that people who are good and moral are still going to join church, and all they have to do is to put up a sign and wait for people to walk in the door. But they fail to realize that they are no longer at the center of people's lives.

The final straw that broke the strangle hold of evangelical religion on the South waswhen its blue laws were challenged by the movement of national retail chains to the region. In the 1960's, for instance, K-Mart, Zayre, and other stores in this community challenged the laws that prohibited them from opening for business on Sundays. This event was viewed by many as a profaning of the Sabbath, and condemned from local pulpits. But the people in the pews still made their way into these stories to avail themselves of the blue-light specials. The result, was a profoundly different South.

For the first time, the churches of the South now had competition for people's time, energy, and money. Prior to this, there had been few--if any--options on Sunday for entertainment. The only game in town was the fellowship and activities at one's local church. But now, the church was faced with competition from restaurants, theaters, malls, arcades, as well as a variety of recreational options such as the lake or the coast. No longer would the Church get a free pass or a free ride when it came to attracting people.

The Erosion of Shared Values

Another change has been the erosion of a shared values within the culture. Whereas there once was a time when state, home, and church formed a consortium that worked to instill a common set of Christian values, that is becoming increasingly rare in the South. At one time,people grew up Christian simply because they were lucky enough to be born in places like Winston-Salem, Oakboro, East Tennessee, High Point, or Northern Stokes County. People looked out and saw a world that was good and right, and the values that children were taught at home were reinforced in Sunday School, as well as in the public school classroom.

If one conceives of the home, church and school as the three legs supporting this social structure--this "Christian" world-view--one can begin to see why the U.S. Supreme Court decisions outlawing school prayer were so threatening to large numbers of Southerners. It removed one of the legs of the stool. With the role of the church in society increasingly weakened by the increased competition for people's time and energy, the idea of a Christian society no longer had the necessary support to sustain itself. The result has been an increasing secularism in the South, and a decline in the ability of the church to shape its social environment.

There are many, however, who still deceive themselves into believing that if they elect a few "Christian" senators, if they pass a few new laws, or tinker with the state and federal budget to end the funding of abortion, that we will be able to form a new "Christian" culture. They long to restore the old social order--the golden age of the church culture--when church, state, and home cooperated to craft good citizens and good Christians. Such efforts are naive, and ultimately doomed to fail.

A New Evangelicalism

There are, however, growing numbers within the region who are waking up to the fact that the world has changed profoundly, and that the Church must learn to live with the fact that it has extremely effective competition for people's time, energy, and money. These religious leaders celebrate that the old cultural captivity is over, and that the Church no longer has to support the existing social order. They feel liberated to discover new paradigms, to discover the Church the Lord is calling them to be.

Within the South, as within the nation at large, there is a growing effort to develop a new and better church. One sees it taking shape in para-church organizations on college campuses like Campus Crusade, Intervarsity, or Young Life. One sees it taking shape in large mass ecumenical movements like Promise Keepers or the Million Man March. These groups are not affiliated with any of the existing denominations, and are seen by the denominations as rival organizations. And they are. The older bureaucratic paradigm of the church--that assumed a churched culture where people gave and supported the Church out of obligation and a sense of responsibility--is breaking down. Resources are drying up. They are giving way to decentralized small groups of people engaged in ministry like Habitat For Humanity. Instead of financial resources flowing to the denominational hierarchy, they are staying closer to home where they can be used in such "hands on" endeavors.

One could best describe these new efforts as the New Evangelicalism. It is Evangelicalism with a capital E, not evangelicalism that aggressively seeks to win the lost. One's spiritual status--whether one is lost or saved, hell-bound or on the way to heaven--is not the orientation of these new groups. Instead the focus is on the authority of Scripture, the serious study of Scripture, and application of Scripture to real life problems. Slowly, but surely, the emphasis is shifting from what religion can do for me to what I can do to help others.

This is in stark contrast to traditional churches. There the focus is on serving the needs of those who are already present. In these churches one continues to hear sermons about the needs of the institution, or the obligations and responsibility of parishioners to pay the denominational askings. In churches shaped by the New Evangelicalism, the focus is on God's grace. One gives not out of obligation or responsibility, but out of a desire to be caring and compassionate. Sermons help people to see one of the great paradoxes of the gospel: we help ourselves best, when we help others. The message of the New Evangelicalism is couched in the language of the mission field, not the churched culture. It is a message that is focused on reaching the growing numbers of people in the South who are not part of any church.

For the Moment

We live in interesting times. Today, denominations still dominate the religious life of the South. But the older, established churches, are showing signs of their age. The rivalries within Southern Baptist life are simply the symptoms of a denomination that has lost its sense of mission, and its connectedness to the pulse of the region. Southern Baptists are debating and fighting among themselves as to who will steer the canoe, all the while the current of the larger society is sweeping them toward the waterfall. It won't matter whose hand is on the rudder if they go over.

While Methodists and Presbyterians enjoy peace, it is the peace of the aging dowager I spoke of earlier. In 30 years, large numbers of mainline churches will close because the aging congregations who worship there now will have disappeared. In many of these congregations, the youngest participants are 55-60 years of age. Over time, they will simply be unable to sustain themselves.

Many of the mainline denominations had hoped for an infusion of new life from the Baby Boom Generation as it aged, had children, and became interested in the church once again. That influx has not happened to the degree many had expected, and where it has, the institutional church has had great difficulty accommodating these individuals. The new generation does not speak the language of commitment and responsibility of the earlier Great Depression and World War II generation, and are not motivated by the language of guilt, duty, or obligation. In fact, they are repealed by it. The result has been that many of those Baby Boomers who dropped into the church, have dropped back out, and are now exploring their spirituality privately. Only a few isolated congregations have been able to learn the new language of mission that is required to reach these individuals.

While my assessment of the state of the Church in the South may seem bleak--and I admit there are times when even I depress myself--I take comfort in the realization that ultimately the future does not lie in any of our hands. Along with the past and the present, it belongs to God. We're all along for the ride. Enjoy.