Why modernist christianity will die

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Surveys Browse dozens of topics covered by major national surveys. Across the European continent, nations stood ready to deliver their young to the slaughter, and behind every trench stood intellectuals and politicians alike, preaching the righteous and sacred nature of their cause.

Herein lay a double hypocrisy: the false glorification of war by romantically-minded artists and the willful blinkering of politics to merely pragmatic goals, without regard for the moral center of the society they professed to defend. By undermining the propagandism of the latter, Owen strove to compel a true examination of conscience in the former. No longer would the ideologues of the war be able to appeal exclusively to the awesome power of the Father over evil for their sanctification; they would be forced to contend with the interminable love and forgiveness of the Son, in the spirit of which, Owen asserts, they were fatally lacking.

At the outbreak of the Great War, all the nations of Europe still affirmed themselves as strongholds of the Christian faith, if not legally—France had been officially secular since —then certainly in spirit. Owen could not fail to see the utter hypocrisy behind such assertions; if the gospel was one, a single revelation, how could the competing aims of these warring nations appeal to the same source of inspiration?

There men often hear his voice. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life—for a friend. Is it spoken in English only and in French? If each side of the war thought that same God blessed their cause to the exclusion of the other, then either one side—or both—must be in grave error. They may be to the next. All a poet can do today is warn. A true martyr, Owen was willing to swim against the current of populist fervor to serve a cause integral to the very future of civilization.

The church has no place on the fields and in the trenches; it can say nothing of comfort to those whom it sends to be massacred. The creeds of the church are utterly complicit with the hellish brutality of the evil it abets. Owen therefore seeks to estrange himself completely from these traditional creeds, demonstrating their complete bankruptcy; his is not merely a remedy, nor even a reformation, but a revolution in the Christian message.

If a true one exists, I shall find it. This is especially significant in the light of his own religious upbringing. This theological tradition emphasizes the ultimate power of God the Father; no part of the universe escapes the purview of his will, which predestines with equanimity some of his creatures to salvation and others to eternal suffering.

So people stop going, and that eventually means the death of modernist Christianity. The first generation of modernist Christians will attend church regularly. The second will attend church sometimes. The third almost never. The fourth and fifth will not see any need for worship.

They will conclude that if religion is no more than good works, then the religious ritual is redundant. Modernism is essentially individualist and not communal. Each person makes up his own mind about matters.

Therefore when it comes to religion the fissiparous nature of modernist religion will become more and more acute. Individuals with firm opinions will form ever smaller and more passionate groups with like minded people and the smaller the groups, the more they will eventually wither and die. Modernism is also subjective and sentimentalist.

It eschews doctrine and favors individual spirituality and sentimental responses to doctrines and moral issues. It is not long, therefore, before the individualist and sentimentalist inclinations drive a person from a church that is dogmatic and demanding. Modernists will prefer their own spirituality and emotional experiences to any sort of formal, corporate religious commitment.

Modernism is historically revisionist. They re-write history according to their prejudices. In religious terms this means they are cut off from tradition. They are therefore cut off from the life-stream of real religion. As they cut themselves off from the tradition they will only have the latest religious gimmick, fad or adaptation to contemporary culture.

Such an ephemeral attitude cannot provide for long term sustained religious longevity. Modernists contracept and abort. So they will lose the next generation to either real religion or paganism. Modernism makes no great demands for its devotees to be religious. You should come because you love God, not because you fear him.

The modernist himself does not really understand why anyone should be religious. He started out as a religious man believing in sin, redemption and the supernaturalist story. He became modernist gradually and all the time continued his religious practice, but he has never stopped to ask why such a thing should be necessary. If he is honest and asks himself the question he will soon stop the practice of his religion too.