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Chapter One

If We Believe

W

hy is the Church today in such an unholy mess? And before we start to say, “It’s not really that bad, is it?” the answer has to be a resounding, YES IT IS! At least, the Christian Church is, in the United Kingdom it is, in the early years of the Twenty-First Century it most certainly is!

We need to realise that the moral and spiritual decline of the Twentieth Century Church, which has now spilled over into the Twenty-First Century, is so distressing to true believers, that it requires an urgent investigation into the beliefs and practices of the First Century Church to enable us to get back to basics before it is too late.

Such an investigation, of course, is bound to be controversial, and to some extent provocative, although the former is inevitable but the latter is probably very desirable. The Church of today desperately needs to be provoked into some form of action. One thing is certain, however, the present frightening decline must be halted—and very soon, before it is too late.

To be fair about it—and that is something we want to try to be throughout this book—we want to acknowledge that the statements at the beginning of this chapter are a generalisation, because there are individual church fellowships which are doing quite well, even though some of them have their problems if we dig deep enough below the surface; and we admit that generalising can be dangerous. But if we take this general overall picture of the Christian Church today there is really no other description we can give—it is an unholy mess!

So let us stop playing the ostrich, take our heads out of the sand and face up to the facts, painful though this exercise might be.

Now, having started off on this somewhat negative note, let us turn it around to something more positive. For example, it is all very well criticising the present situation—although it is not so much a criticism as a genuine expression of deep concern for an obvious fact, if we are honest—but what are we going to do about it? What can we do about it? An answer to these questions would be a positive contribution.

 

IF WE BELIEVE…

Perhaps the answer, or at least part of it, lies in the statement upon which this book is based. If we believe what the first Christians believed we will achieve what they achieved. As we have already said, this moral and spiritual decline of the Twentieth Century Church, which, in the early years of the Twenty-First Century is showing no signs of improvement, must be halted, and a possible solution is this proposed investigation into the beliefs and practices of the First Century Church to enable us to get back to basics before it is too late—or is it too late already? We shall see.

The question now facing us is, how can we best approach such an investigation? We can begin with our foundation statement, for example, which sounds plausible enough in theory, and could go a long way towards addressing the problem, yet it is one that must be made to work out in practice if we are going to achieve our objective.

Believe to achieve; it is because the Church today is in such an unholy mess that it is achieving nothing like what the first Christians achieved. So what has gone wrong? To begin with, what does the Church believe today? If the pronouncements one hears from various pulpits these days, and some of the statements made during so-called religious programmes on radio and television, are anything to go by, there are many ministers and clergy who have little or no knowledge of what the Bible says, and one is left wondering just what they really do believe. It is a very frightening situation indeed.

Let us look at some of the evidence of decline in the Church today to establish the need for the investigation proposed in this book. This decline is not a new phenomenon. It has been going on for years! We cannot afford to let it continue. Of course, we could fill the whole book with such material, such is the abundance of reported information available, but this would leave very little or even no room for seeking the solution. So we must be selective and arbitrarily begin with the year 1984.

BELIEF UNDERMINED TODAY

A report appeared in the Daily Telegraph on the 27th November, 1984, under the heading: CHRISTIAN “FAIRY TALES” MESSAGE BY BISHOP OF DURHAM. It stated: “The Bishop of Durham...says in his Christmas message that belief in the literal truth of the Virgin Birth could convince non-believers that Christians deal in ‘fairy tales’.” It then goes on to quote the Bishop as saying: “We have no right to insist on the literal truth of the story about the Virgin Birth of Jesus.”

Of course, this is the man who attempted to shake the foundations of Christian belief by casting doubt on the Resurrection of Jesus, and describing His Second Coming as nothing more than symbolic. We should not be surprised, therefore, when he goes on to state: “Believers in God should be able to use symbols, for no statement about God is literally true.” (The italics are mine!)

Now this seems a very far cry from the beliefs of the first Christians. No wonder the achievements of the Church today leave much to be desired. Plenty of theory, we might say, but precious little practice. This lack of achievement inevitably results in steady decline.

LACK OF NEW TESTAMENT BELIEF?

Another report appeared in a local Christian newspaper, now defunct, in February 1987, under the headline: EVANGELICAL COUNCIL WINDS UP. It stated: “After a brief existence of only three years the District Evangelical Council has taken a bold decision to discontinue.” The purpose of the Council had been to provide a forum for debate and co-operation amongst local evangelical churches, with the aim of bridging traditional barriers and forging closer fellowship.

The report continued: “It takes a great deal of hard work to get many a local church to appreciate a wider dimension to the work of God. Churches tend to be defensive, preferring the security of their own traditions; they also tend to be pushed for manpower and have little spare capacity for inter-church activity.” (Again, the italics are mine!)

Dare we suggest here that perhaps very little was achieved because of lack of New Testament belief? Once again, in theory it works out fine; in practice it is a very different matter.

BELIEF DUBBED POMPOUS AND ILLIBERAL

Yet another report appeared, this time in the Daily Express on the 9th June 1988, under the headline: CAN WE AFFORD TO SWITCH OFF TV RELIGION? It stated: “Controllers of the ITV companies have conspired to try to get rid of religious programmes on television. They say the Sunday afternoon and evening ‘God slots’ are ‘pompous and illiberal’ in these enlightened times.” In another newspaper report the day before they were quoted as saying: “It is illiberal and pompous in an age when only ten percent of the nation still goes to church.”

“Religious programmes are pompous and illiberal because some people in this country (trendy clergy most of them) do not believe in God. Or else they believe in some foreign God,” the Rev. Peter Mullen writes defensively in the same report. (On this occasion the italics are not mine, but they might well have been if they had not appeared in the original report!)

A FRESH LOOK AT SOCIAL TRENDS

Reporting in the May 1992 edition of the Christian newspaper, Evangelicals Now, under the headline: BRITAIN TODAY, Sir Fred Catherwood takes a fresh look at social trends in the country today. “For all our nostalgia,” he writes, “Britain is changing. Or maybe our yearning for Britain in a golden age is so strong just because it is changing so fast. The latest issue of the Government’s publication, ‘Social Trends’, charts the change.

“We are becoming a much less gregarious society. The institutions which hold society together are in decline and the number of people living all alone is on the increase.” He then deals with subject under various headings: Voluntary Societies, Family, Abortions, Crime, Purchasing Power, Government, Materialism—but it is the section dealing with Church and Sects which is of interest to us here.

“Church membership continues to fall. Between 1975 and 1990 Christian churches lost 1.3 million members, dropping by 16% to 6.8 million. The Catholics lost 580,000 (23%) and the Anglicans 570,000 (19%); Baptist churches lost only 30,000 (11%), though Presbyterians and Methodists lost heavily. Other Protestant churches actually gained 170,000 (32%). This must reflect the sharp increase in the house churches, the networked charismatics and the independent evangelical churches.

“The sects increased by 130,000 to 460,000 and the non-Christian religions by over a million, the biggest increase being the Muslims, who were up 59,000 to nearly a million and the Sikhs, up 270,000 to 390,000.”

Sir Fred Catherwood believes a turn-around is needed. Now this is exactly what this book is seeking to establish. The true Christian Church, that is, all true believers everywhere right across denominational boundaries, cannot afford to be complacent, cannot afford to sit back and do nothing. This is why we have to investigate the beliefs and practices of the early Christian Church, the issue we seek to address through this book.

Sir Fred Catherwood concludes the report: “When the great Dr. Samuel Johnson was told that English society was in ruins, he replied that there was always a great deal of ruin in society. But in his days the family was still holding together and the Methodist revival was beginning to reform the church. Unless we see a turning soon, we are heading for a rougher society than we have known for a very long time.”

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