Over the next several weeks, I will be sharing portions of the article, The Descent Into Unbelief: When Christendom Produces Cultists, Mockers and Atheists, by Jonathan Rice. It originally appeared in the SCP Journal (29:2-29:3) and is reprinted here WITH PERMISSION. Please respect their copyright.
This article struck a chord with me because it addresses many issues facing the church today. He also takes a slightly different stand on the issues regarding church passivity. He looks at the promise of the Victorian Era, in someways likened to the hayday of Christianity, in that the church was so effective at changing and improving society. Many of the beneficial institutions we take for granted today owe their beginnings to devout Christians of this time period. But their children? Many of them walked away from the faith. Some of the most well-known atheists and agnostics are the children and grandchildren of devout Christians of the Victorian Era. The reasons he explores are relavent to the Church today and I think worthy of critical analysis.
Recently I came across an old book by Ian Bradley entitled, The Call to Seriousness: The Evangelical Impact on the Victorians, which gave a detailed account of how the nineteenth-century British Evangelicals ended the English slave trade, abolished sati (widow burning) and infant sacrifice in India, banned child labor and other related abuses in England, started the world’s first animal welfare organization (The RSPCA, which banned the torture of animals for sport), rehabilitated prostitutes, reformed the Parliament, brought education and relief to the destitutes of England, and brought about prison and lunatic asylum reforms, just to mention a few.[1] The period referred to in Bradley’s study is the Victorian era, which came on the heels of the Wesleyan Revival, a movement that brought about the wholesale transformation of English life and culture, and, by extension, brought sorely needed reforms to the nations then under British rule.
Bradley tries to take the stance of an impartial historian. It becomes clear after a few chapters, however, that the subjects of his study are steadily gaining his admiration and empathy. In each chapter he critiques the excesses of the movement: their petty legalisms, repressive behavior codes (“The Cult of Conduct”), intellectual philistinism, and so forth. And yet his approach is fair and he always balances the negatives with their many positive contributions. For the most part, the positives win out. A famous historian
quoted in the book sums up the positive/negative mixture: “Between 1780 and 1850 the English ceased to be one of the most aggressive, brutal, rowdy, outspoken, riotous, cruel and bloodthirsty nations in the world and became one of the most inhibited, polite, tender-minded, prudish and hypocritical.”[2]
But Christ said,
…upon this rock I will build my Church, and the Gates of Hell will not prevail against it. (Matthew 16:18)
We are to be on the frontlines of this battle for our culture, not retreating from it. It is the Gates of Hell which have reason to fear, not the faithful Christian.
(Note: I do NOT believe this is a battle for our children to face. My stance is that parents need to instruct their children diligently in the Word so that they learn to discern truth. If they leave home with the light of God’s Word, the darkness around them will be illuminated. Satan cannot snuff it out. But in fear, we do sometimes hide it under a bushel. And if we are not faithful in presenting our children with a means of examining the ideas they will be confronted with, they will not be well-equipped to meet the challenges they inevitably will face.)
Principled Discovery is a place to stop and discuss news and information related to faith, family and particularly education. Pour yourself a cup of tea and join the conversation! 
Wow. We must have had some sort of connection going on there, because as you were commenting on my blog, I was reading yours.
Very interesting topic and you are very correct in saying that too many Christians anymore simply cannot have a rational debate.
I do my best to be one that can.
I look forward to reading more of your series.
We live in a time where more people have college educations than at any other time. Maybe the problem is that we are too smart for our own good? Or that we have knwoledge, but not in the things that REALLY matter?
What I think is lacking in society is common sense and common courtesy toward our fellowman. These aren’t things one learns out of a textbook.
Thanks! And if I remember correctly, I actually got to your blog off the link in statcounter, so I suppose that would explain that : )
And it is of concern to me that many Christians refuse rational debate, falling into the old thought that faith is antithetical to reason. That was tool of the “opposition” at one time, to show that matters of faith really weren’t applicable to life. Why has the Christian church adopted the same attitude?
Bill, I’m afraid you ilustrate my point exactly, and I mean that with the deepest respect. I think I know who you are, and I enjoy most of your posts to the group. But, the bible instructs us: Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves. (Matthew 10:16).
In order to combat the ideology of our times, we cannot retreat into an unexamined faith, ignorant of the arguments being waged against us. If Christianity is the answer, than it must have an answer.
I am not against education and rational debate. But what is needed is Biblical knowledge. We have a bunch of Christians who toe the denominational line, but can’t find a defense for their beliefs in God’s Word because they don’t read it.
I agree with you there, Bill : )
>….rather than activiely engaging our culture and its shaky foundation, some of us have put our fingers in our ears and begun to sing “la, la, la…” so as to protect ourselves and our children from this teaching.
I love that phrase. Because of the “diversity” in our families, we’ve had to talk about many uncomfortable topics with our children while they were very young. I would have preferred to wait until they were older, but we didn’t have a choice. It was face it head on or avoid family gatherings.
As the years go by, I can see the benefit to our children from talking openly about controversial topics or unpopular doctrines. I’m not worried that my children will grow up, read something critical about their faith, freak out and leave.