Why is it that almost every year as if on cue a legion of pollsters comes out during the Easter season to inform us that church attendance is way down and that our society is becoming less religious?
Gallup published such a poll yesterday 4 days prior to Good Friday. Only 21 percent of Christians attend church every week. 41 percent attend church at least once a month. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints are the most observant with 67% attending weekly services. Evangelical and Baptist congregations report 44 % attendance and Catholics report 33% attendance.
These numbers do not reflect how many people believe in God, how many families say grace daily and how many people routinely pray and read scripture. The fact that they have been trending lower is not necessarily a reflection of the traditional dogma and doctrine being taught by church leaders, but rather I believe the result of the secularization of all institutions, most importantly The Church. People are turning away from the church not because they are turning away from God, but because they are rejecting a secular humanistic doctrine that many churches and church leaders have embraced. Many of the churches and our church leaders are turning away from God—not WE, the Body of Christ.
I pray that this rejection of progressive humanism will lead to another Great Awakening in our country. All around us we see the failure of societies being engineered by elite leaders and elite large corporations who no longer feel accountable or connected to their constituents or customers. It is not just the clergy who needs to stand up to materialism, but every believing person in every walk of life needs to witness and teach that we are first of all accountable to God, and secondly accountable to our families and each other.
The march to utopianism has taken on many strategies over the past 140 years, but it has accelerated and taken on the mantle of a Trojan Horse using names like “social justice”, Black Lives Matter(BLM) Critical Race Theory (CRT), and intersectionality. Social justice was originally a theological term coined by Fr. Luigi Tipparelli and his student Pope Leo the XIII. In the famous Rerum Novarum and In Plurimus, Pope Leo rales against communism, socialism, fascism, and all “forms of totalitarianisms and human exploitation”.
Over the past 30 years one of my heroes in the American Catholic Church Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles, an immigrant he, has continually stood up to the modern day “social justice movement”.
He stated on July 22nd, 2022, in Madrid Spain, “that an elite leadership class has arisen, one with little interest in religion, in local traditions or cultures. This elite class runs corporations, government at all levels, universities, the media and various cultural and social organization…to this group and its elite world view there is no need for an old fashion belief system or even religions. In fact, as they see it religion especially Christianity only gets in the way of building a brave new world”—a new world order.
Many Protestant and Catholic Theologians are reluctant to step into the world of politics, but maybe framing the issue a little differently may help. I believe those still operating within “the church” need to understand that the modern-day secularism sees itself a “pseudo-religion” that attempts and rivals Christianity itself. They all claim to provide people with an explanation of the conditions they are living under. To some they even provide a meaning and a cause.
I would like to compare the Christian story with the “woke Story”:
As Christians we believe that we are all created in the image of God are blessed as called upon to be in union with Him and our neighbors. By His Mercy and His love for each of us we can be saved through His dying on the cross and resurrection. Jesus reconciles us to God and our neighbors. As Fr. Gomez points out by “working to build His kingdom on earth, working in confident hope that we will share in His kingdom to come.”. On the Cross Jesus died for all of us. In the kingdom to come there will be no black, white, red, yellow, or anything else. As our souls shall be judged in heaven, we should judge each other by “our hearts and the content of our character” Nothing else. That is true equality—not equity.
The rival salvation narrative—new social justice story, being told by the elitist classes in media, government academia, and many but not all corporatists goes something like this:
We can never know where we came from, but certainly we must share interests with people of common skin color, ethnicity, gender or position in society. Many of us are suffering through no fault of our own and we are oppressed by other groups in our society. We can only be liberated and find redemption through our constant struggle against those who oppress and suppress us.
The battle for political and cultural power must be fought in the name of “Equity”. Karl Marx or Saul Alinsky preached the same sermon—the world is divided into innocents and victims, the oppressed and the oppressor, allies and adversaries. These “pseudo-religions” are not theology but materialistic philosophy. They deny the connection between the human soul and body and the transcendent nature of that relationship. They reduce what it means to be human to physical materialistic qualities. By not recognizing that we are all made in God’s image, including those with physical limitations, the poor, the elderly and the unborn and all those who need Christian Charity—are we all not in need of each other’s love(?) it is easy to separate us into tribes.
Fr. Gomez in the final analysis of our “great divide” opines “that all utopian movements create the illusion that through our own political efforts we can create a “heaven on earth”. All the “isims” have failed for fifteen thousand years—the more modern ones have been the biggest failures. In denying God, these atheistic movements have lost the truth about the human person. This may also be the reason for their harsh treatment of Christians and Jews and their uncompromising politics. This is what has given rise to the “cancel culture”
Remember, Jesus didn’t cancel anyone. The only commonality that really matters is that we were all made in the image of God.
WE need another GREAT AWAKENING.
