Vanishing Grace

What Ever Happened to the Good News?

Philip Yancey

• Publisher: Hodder Faith
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781444789027
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

'Why does the church stir up such negative feelings?' This is a question that Philip Yancey has been asking all his life - for himself, as a pilgrim; for others, as a journalist. The question is more relevant now than ever: in the UK Christianity continues to decline, even as it is increasingly thought to be linked with intolerant, fundamentalist attitudes.Yet while identification with traditional forms of Christian religion is dropping, indicators show that interest in spirituality is rising. Why the disconnect? Why are so many asking, 'What's so good about the "good news?"'Yancey's lifelong writing career has always focused on the search for honest faith that makes a visible difference for a world in pain. In his landmark book What's So Amazing about Grace? he issued a benchmark call for Christians to be as grace-filled in their behaviour as they are in asserting their beliefs.People inside and outside the church are still thirsty for grace, Yancey points out. Perhaps what the church seemed to lack in its heyday is now, in its increasingly marginalised stance, exactly what it needs to recover in order to thrive. Grace can bridge the gap across the movement away from Christianity, inviting outsiders as well as insiders the chance to take a deep second look at why it matters and what could reignite its appeal to future generations.How can Christians offer grace in a way that is compelling to a jaded society? And how can they make a difference in a world of such wrenching need? Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News is a milestone book for all those who are striving to make sense of their faith and live it out amid the changing landscape of our day. Philip explores how Christians may have contributed to hostility toward them by presenting the gospel in ways that come across as strident and judgemental. Then he explores what kind of news is good to a culture that thinks it has rejected the Christian version. And finally, he offers illuminating stories of how faith can be expressed in ways that disarm even the most cynical critics - through pilgrims, activists, and artists rather than through preachers, evangelists, and apologists.

Part One

A World Athirst

In the novel The Second Coming, one of Walker Percy’s characters says about Christians, ‘I cannot be sure they don’t have the truth. But if they have the truth, why is it the case that they are repellent precisely to the degree that they embrace and advertise the truth? . . . A mystery: If the good news is true, why is not one pleased to hear it?’

Chapter 1

A Great Divide

In general the churches . . . bore for me the same relation to God that billboards did to Coca-Cola: they promoted thirst without quenching it. John Updike, A Month of Sundays

As a Christian, I have deep concern about how we represent our faith to others. We are called to proclaim good news of forgiveness and hope, yet I keep coming across evidence that many people do not hear our message as good news.

I decided to write this book after I saw the results of surveys by the George Barna group, conducted in the USA. A few telling statistics jumped off the page. In 1996, 85 per cent of Americans who had no religious commitment still viewed Christianity favourably. Thirteen years later, in 2009, only 16 per cent of young ‘outsiders’ had a favourable impression of Christianity and just 3 per cent had a good impression of evangelicals.1 I wanted to explore what caused that dramatic plunge in such a relatively short time. Why do Christians stir up hostile feelings – and what, if anything, should we do about it?

For more than a decade I’ve had a window into how the modern secular world views Christians, through a book group I belong to. These informed, well-travelled readers include an environmental lawyer, a philosopher who was fired from an American university because of his Marxist views, a child development expert, a pharmacology researcher, a US state auditor, a bankruptcy lawyer, a librarian and a neurologist. Our diverse careers and backgrounds make for lively discussion.

After ranging over ideas sparked by whatever book we’ve just read, the conversation usually drifts back to politics – a sort of substitute religion, apparently. All but one of my book buddies lean strongly to the political left, the sole exception being a libertarian who opposes nearly all government. The group views me as a source of information about a parallel universe that exists beyond their social orbit. ‘You know evangelicals, right?’ I nod yes. Then comes a question like, ‘Can you explain to us why they are so opposed to gay and lesbian marriages?’ I do my best, but the arguments I repeat from leading evangelicals make no sense to this group.

After the 2004 re-election of George W. Bush, the Marxist professor launched into a tirade against right-wing evangelicals. ‘They’re motivated by hate – sheer hate!’ he said. I suggested fear as a possible motive instead, fear of society trending in what conservatives see as a troubling direction. ‘No, it’s hate!’ he insisted, uncharacteristically raising his voice and turning red in the face.

‘Do you know any right-wing evangelicals personally?’ I asked.

‘Not really,’ he admitted a bit sheepishly, though he said he had known many in his youth. Like most of those in my book group, he had grown up in the church, in his case among Seventh-day Adventists.

Many similar conversations have taught me that religion represents a huge threat to those who see themselves as a minority of agnostics in a land of belief. Nonbelievers tend to regard evangelicals as a legion of morals police determined to impose their notion of right behaviour on others. To them, Christians are anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-women – probably anti-sex, for that matter – and most of them home-school their children to avoid defilement. Christians sometimes help with social problems, say by running soup kitchens and homeless shelters, but otherwise they differ little from Muslim fanatics who want to enforce sharia law on their societies.

A research group based in Phoenix was surprised to encounter the degree of abuse directed towards Christians, antagonism that went far beyond a difference of opinion on issues. According to the company president, ‘Evangelicals were called illiterate, greedy, psychos, racist, stupid, narrow-minded, bigots, idiots, fanatics, nut cases, screaming loons, delusional, simpletons, pompous, morons, cruel, nitwits, and freaks, and that’s just a partial list . . . Some people don’t have any idea what evangelicals actually are or what they believe – they just know they can’t stand evangelicals.’

The good news isn’t sounding so good these days, at least to some.

Mixed Aroma

In a clever metaphor, the apostle Paul writes of ‘the aroma of Christ’ that can have a very different effect depending on the nose: ‘To the one, we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life.’ My assignments as a journalist take me to places where Christians give off a perfumed aroma and also to places where Christians offend the nostrils.

The United States is undergoing a marked change in its attitude towards religion, and Christians there face new challenges. When a blogger named Marc Yoder wrote about ‘10 Surprising Reasons Our Kids Leave Church’, based on interviews in Texas (a comparatively religious state), his post went viral. Instead of a hundred or so hits, his website got more than half a million. ‘There’s no easy way to say this,’ wrote Yoder, in words that struck a nerve: ‘The American Evangelical church has lost, is losing and will almost certainly continue to lose our youth.’2 If we don’t adapt we will end up talking to ourselves in ever-dwindling numbers.

What lies behind the downward trend? I got some insight from a friend of mine in Chicago who once worked on the staff of Willow Creek Community Church, one of the nation’s largest churches. Daniel Hill took a side job as a barista at a local Starbucks where, he now realises, his pastoral education truly began.

‘When Christians talk to you, they act as if you are a robot,’ said one customer when the conversation turned to religion. ‘They have an agenda to promote, and if you don’t agree with them, they’re done with you.’ Often Hill heard an anything-goes attitude: ‘I don’t personally follow Christianity, but I figure whatever makes you happy, do it.’ As one person told him, ‘Look, we all know that “God” is out there at some level, but no one has a right to tell another person what “God” looks like for them. Each person is free to express that however they want, but they should keep their opinions to themselves.’

During his time at the coffee shop, Hill heard two distinct approaches to the faith. ‘Pre-Christians’ seemed open and receptive when the topic of religion came up. They had no real hostility and could imagine themselves connecting with a church one day. In contrast, ‘post-Christians’ harboured bad feelings. Some carried memories of past wounds: a church split, a domineering parent, a youth director or priest guilty of sexual abuse, a nasty divorce which the church handled clumsily. Others had simply absorbed the media’s negative stereotypes of rabid fundamentalists and scandal-prone television evangelists.

Listening to Hill’s stories, I thought back to C.S. Lewis’s analogy of communicating faith in secular Britain. It’s the difference between courting a divorcée and a virgin, Lewis told a friend in a letter. A divorcée won’t easily fall for sweet nothings from a suitor – she’s heard them all before – and has a basic distrust of romance. In modern America, Hill estimates, around three-quarters of young ‘outsiders’ qualify as post-Christian, the ‘divorcées’ of faith.

Not everyone falls into a neat category, of course, but I found Daniel Hill’s perspective helpful. I began to think through my own contacts with people who have no faith commitment. Having lived in Hill’s home city of Chicago, I must agree with his assessment of young urban dwellers. No one else in our six-unit apartment block went to church, and most of them viewed Christians with suspicion. Some of my book group friends in Colorado also fit the post-Christian category.

On the other hand, large portions of the American South and Midwest remain open to faith and qualify as ‘pre-Christian’. I grew up in the religion-soaked South, and on return visits I’m always struck by the difference in attitudes towards religion there. The Bible Belt largely accepts the framework of the gospel. There is a God (don’t American coins affirm ‘In God We Trust’?); we have sinned (country music spells out the salacious details); and Jesus provides a way to forgive those sins (you can still see ‘Repent’ or ‘Jesus Saves’ slogans on some Southern barns and billboards). Hit the radio’s ‘scan’ button while driving in the South, and there’s a good chance you’ll hear a testimony from someone recounting their once-wayward life, now transformed by a born-again conversion experience.

On my travels to other places, too – Africa, Latin America, parts of Asia – I see the continuing appeal of the basic Christian message. People there associate Christians with missionaries who came to them as pastors, teachers, doctors and nurses, agricultural experts and relief workers. The gospel answers questions of meaning, holds out the promise of an afterlife and provides a community of support for those in need. To many in the world it still sounds like good news, a Godspell to break the dark spell that shadows so much of life on earth.

When I return to America from those trips it comes as a shock when people in my home country speak of Christians more ­sinisterly. Post-Christians hear the same music as if distorted through cracked speakers. Evangelists who speak of sin come across as shrewish and hectoring: What gives them the right to judge my behaviour, especially when so many of them mess up their own lives? Doctrines such as the Trinity, the atonement, original sin and hell seem baffling, even incomprehensible, and who can legitimately claim truth anyway? People who live in prosperous countries, intent on enjoying this life, pay little heed to the idea of an afterlife. And a string of New Atheists upbraid all religion as bad news, a primary source of fanaticism and wars – one called the atrocities of 9/11 ‘a faith-based initiative’ – and long for the day when the human species will finally outgrow its need for religion.

In Europe, the seat of Christian faith for most of its history, many do not give it a thought. Barely a third of French and British survey respondents even believe that God exists. While visiting France I spoke to a Campus Crusade worker who had practised evangelism in Florida before moving to Europe. Carrying a clipboard, he would walk up to strangers and ask, ‘If you died and God asked why you should be allowed into heaven, what would you say?’ That approach got mixed results in Florida, but in France he was met with blank stares; he might as well have been speaking Urdu. Now he leads with the question, ‘Do you believe in God?’ and the typical French response goes something like this: ‘What a fascinating question! Let me think. I’ve never really considered it before.’

As I travel internationally I feel like a commuter between post-Christian and pre-Christian societies. The cultural divide stands out sharply in the US, where Christians remain a force to be reckoned with. Some Christians respond to the divide by making harsh judgements about the people they disagree with – one of the main reasons why evangelicals have an unsavoury reputation. I cringe when I hear such words, and respond by keeping mostly quiet about my faith. Neither approach is healthy.

Jesus granted his followers the immense privilege of dispensing God’s grace to a thirsty world. As one who has drunk deeply of that grace, I want to offer it to a world adrift. How can we communicate truly good news to a culture running away from it?

Good News, Squandered

The Quakers have a saying: ‘An enemy is one whose story we have not heard.’ To communicate to post-Christians, I must first listen to their stories for clues to how they view the world and how they view people like me. Those conversations are what led to the title of this book. Although God’s grace is as amazing as ever, in my...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Imprint Page
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Preface
• Part One - A World Athirst
• 1 A Great Divide
• 2 Grace Endangered
• 3 Soul Thirst
• 4 Reclaiming the Good News
• Part Two - Grace Dispensers
• 5 Pilgrims
• 6 Activists
• 7 Artists
• Part Three - Is It Really Good News?
• 8 Does Faith Matter?
• 9 Is There Anyone Else? The God Question
• 10 Why Are We Here? The Human Question
• 11 How Should We Live? The Social Question
• Part Four - Faith and Culture
• 12 Uneasy Partners: Christians and Politics
• 13 Holy Subversives
• Sources
• Acknowledgements