Lausanne World Pulse – Themed Articles – The Dilemma of State Church Structures in Europe
Gospel Reductionism
Darrell L. Guder wrote in 2000 about the conversion of the Church. This conversion is related to re-thinking theology, evangelization, worship, leadership and structures. Most importantly, it demands undertaking measures against the gospel reductionism within the Church. The early Church went from “movement” to becoming an “institution.” Constantine’s Church replaced the understanding of the gospel with a focus on an event with the formulation of a defined faith system consisting of truths. The Kingdom of God was conceived as the eternity that awaits a Christian after death; salvation was given to the individual by the church, in particular through the sacraments. On the basis of these gospel reductions, the organizational structure of the Church was transformed into state religion and the administrator of religious meaning in society.1 Likewise, according to Guder, the reformation and pietism have reduced the gospel to a matter of salvation for the individual:
“The benefits of salvation are separated from the reason for which we receive God’s grace in Christ: to empower us as God’s people to become Christ’s witnesses. This fundamental dichotomy between the benefits of the gospel and the mission of the gospel constitutes the most profound reductionism of the gospel.”2
Structures and Secularisation
These structures have, in the course of the centuries and in close collaboration with the Enlightenment, also paved the way for the so-called secularisation (“so-called” because most scholars were wrong when they predicted that religion would lose its influence and eventually disappear). What actually occurred was that Christianity and the Church lost its support and position within Western society and have become increasingly marginalized, while at the same time religion in general has flourished throughout the rest of the world. In England, church membership has fallen to fifteen percent, and in several East-German cities memberships have dropped as low as ten percent. In my time, church membership in Denmark has dropped by fifteen percent, and church attendance has decreased by seventy-five percent.
At the same time, our Scandinavian societies have developed into multi-societies (multiethnic, multicultural and multi-religious). In the midst of this development, faith is cut loose: one-third of the Danish population believes in reincarnation, and large groups make use of religious or quasi-religious therapists.3
A 2003 overview sketches some main challenges to churches from the Constantinian era:
The Need for New Paradigms
In his pioneer book on missiology4, South African missiologist David Bosch claims that we are experiencing a shift from the modern Enlightenment paradigm in the history of Christendom toward a postmodern, ecumenical paradigm. In this shift, old answers will not suffice. A paradigm shift requires a shift in worldview. Above we have looked at the dramatic changes in the established churches of the West which led to the closure of the era of Christendom. During the last decades of the twentieth century we experienced a religious shift from the North to the South, and a shift of gravity with regard to church and Christians: a massive growth in the South and East, whereas Western churches experienced a disastrous decline.
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