Where did Western Christianity go wrong? It has declined and is declining in strength and authority. Here is an idea (that you can disagree with if you like).
Karl Marx, at the beginning of Modernism, criticised Christianity by saying religion is the opiate of the masses. He said it is like a medicine that prevents people from seeing injustice and taking action. People need to move past drugged complacency, to be the foundation of their own reality . Even if his conclusion wasn't valid, the criticism was! But it wasn't biblical Christianity he was talking about. Kierkegaard also criticised the Church in order to make a better one.
In the modernism period (about 1850-1970), leading thinkers criticised all authority, including Christian. They were dissecting and reforming traditional models of thinking to get effective results: Cubism, Psychotherapy, Politics, the descent of man. The new models were successfully used as templates for new design and living. Authority was given to the rational elites: scientists, technologists, leaders of industry, and those who supported their ideas.
Previously the Church used to be the moral authority, but it was set up by Modernists to serve the common good, and was misinterpreted as as a social structure. When that happened it didn't look or function like the Church of the Apostles, with passion and purpose at its core. (There were minor exceptions).
The pride and success of the modernist vision fell. We don't live in Modernist times, but the influence is still around us. If we can identify that trend in thinking we can counter it as a roadblock to the Gospel.
- How is the modern (Western) expression of church more complacent than we read from Jesus and the disciples? Is that from following the form of church, instead of the life within it?
- The Bible talks about church politics, but it was different then. How?
- Do you meet people who think they have a clear idea of what Christianity is, but are missing the Gospel? How do they describe church?
- If you have experienced church in a non-Western/European way (maybe on a missions trip), what words would you use to describe how it is different?
- When you think of the word "Gospel", how is that different from common ideas of the Church?