Church on a mission to put an end to 'recession' in western faith

Published on Sunday 3 May 2009 22:11

EUROPE needs to be converted back to Christianity because of a "recession" in the faith, a Kirk report has claimed.

The Church of Scotland's World Mission Council is to tell the General Assembly that many African countries have become heartlands of the faith while Europe has seen a slump in Christianity which is "unprecedented in its extent and severity".

It claims that Christians from Asia and Africa are now approaching Europe as a mission field.

Officials say a great reversal has taken place since the 1910 international missionary conference in Edinburgh, where delegates were hoping to evangelise the "non-Christian world".

While many European churches saw a decline in membership numbers during the 20th century, developments on the continent of Africa increased from around 10 million in 1900 to 360 million at the end of the century.

Reverend Colin Renwick, convener of the council, said that the western churches had to learn lessons from the African and Asian churches. "Part of the reason for its success is that they have taken faithfully what the Biblical message is and applied it keenly to their lives," he said.

"I think the issues the gospel brings about of forgiveness, reconciliation and unconditional love are needed by any society, no matter how affluent."

Falling congregation numbers have been a recurring problem for the Kirk, which has a current membership of just under 500,000.

Professor Werner Jeanrond, an expert on religion and society at Glasgow University, said that Christian groups would have to reassess their message, especially to young people, if they wished disenchanted Christians to re-engage with them.

"I would not want to approach it from the angle of re-conversion. I would want to have a discussion about what went wrong with the practice of faith in Europe.

"We should not be repeating the mistakes of the past, going around the world, asking people to believe what we believe without paying attention to the cultures in which faith needs to engage. I think it would be very unhelpful for any African or Asian people to come here and ask us to believe like they do. Of course, we could listen to how they respond to the gospel in their part of the world and how they organise living and prayerful communities, and learn for our self-assessment.

"I think there are a number of important things: firstly, it's vital that the churches become more attractive to themselves and to our contemporary society and leave the missionary bit to the Holy Spirit, so to speak; secondly, we have lost the youth because we have attended to problems that are not of their concern. For instance, our liturgical language is not understood by them. The church obsession with sexuality, out of context, sounds revolting to them. They want to know what love means and how it could be practised today."

Prof Jeanrond added that churches had to abstain from "constant moralising", and put their efforts to creating new ways of expressing their faith in God and of engaging with society's real needs rather than "lament" the decline of their old ways.

He said the Church also had to ask what a Christian vision was for a just and loving society and how Christians can care for God's creation which is endangered by ecological, economic and health problems.

Rev Dr Robert Anderson, minister of Blackburn and Seafield Church in Edinburgh, welcomed the call for evangelism but said the church needed to start by reasserting its intellectual integrity in society.

Rev Anderson, who has criticised the Kirk's leadership for its liberal bias and failure to create a proper role for the church in modern Scottish society, said: "I would rather go on the intellectual recovery of Christianity first."

The report will go before the General Assembly when it meets in Edinburgh this month.