Jenkins on the Modus Moriendi of the Church
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:date: 2021-07-09T16:59:43
:category: faith
:tags: theology, sociology, Christianity, blogComment

(my comments on the blog post “`What if the Nones Really Do
Herald the Decline of Religion?`_” by Philip Jenkins)

It is unbelievable! I have been thinking for the last couple of
weeks exactly about this (preparing on preaching a sermon as
a guest in my old church). Here in the most atheistic Czechia
(which is quite incorrect, there are not even atheists here much;
atheists fight against God, most people here just don’t care, and
most of them are quite friendly), so here in Czechia we were
thinking about the end of religion (or at least of our religion)
for some time already.

In 1650, Jan Ámos Komenský (in English usually known as
Comenius_) wrote his “The Last Will and Testament of the Dying
Mother The Unity of Brethern” (I have never found its English
translation, so `I have just translated it`_), which is his
saying farewell to the dying denomination (dying because of the
persecution during the Thirty-years War). The Unity of Brethern
then truly died, but seventy years later emigrants from the
current Czechia re-established into new `Moravian Church`_, which
then erupted into the biggest non-state Protestant mission ever
to the whole world. So, that’s one text about the dying church.

The middle of the 1970s was a very dark time in the history of
our nation. All hopes of the 1968 attempts to humanize Communism
were lost, and the country was firmly under the control of the
Soviet-controlled Communist Party. There were not even many
dissident movements and everything looked bleak. A Vatican
diplomat Agostino Casaroli was supposed to say at that time that
the discussion about the relations between the Church and state
in Poland will be about *modus vivendi*, in Hungary about *modus
vivendi vel moriendi*, and in Czechoslovakia, it will be only
about *modus moriendi*. A Czech dissident Catholic priest,
formerly professor of the Catholic ethics, Otto Mádr got angry by
this statement and wrote then very influential article “Modus
Moriendi of the Church” (originally in German, later published in
Czech, `translated by me to English`_), where he follows this
Czech line of thinking started by Comenius.

The Communist oppression of the Church is gone now, and we, Czech
Christians, are freer than we ever were, but this line of
thinking is unfortunately still relevant. All measurements of
religiosity and participating in the religious life (of any
religion) are going down, and the age structure of some
denominations is ridiculous (this is the age structure of the
Czechoslovak Hussite Church based on the 2011 census; 68 % of
members were over 60 years of age).

.. image:: {static}/images/CSCH_age_structure.svg
   :width: 50%
   :align: center
   :alt: Age structure of the Czechoslovak Hussite Church

Modus moriendi is quite an acute problem right now, but there
doesn’t seem to be anybody talking about it much. Reactions seem
to me two: either a believer tries to cling to hope that the
revival is coming and everything will be all right (combined with
the flagellant thoughts how the decline of the Church is all
their fault, and how bad Christians they are) and other, mostly
unbelievers, are with Schadenfreude observing how the Church will
(finally?) go away. I believe that neither of these approaches is
helpful (well, the second one doesn’t even try to be).

I think a more helpful question on how to start deal with the
current situation is exactly stepping out of assumptions that are
behind those two approaches. The first one seems to me the idea
that success is the measure of the quality of a Christian, which
seems to me completely wrong. We are not called to be successful,
we are called to be faithful, and success if hoped for but not
required consequences of our faithfulness. And the second is that
the major (or even only) influence on the growth of the Church is
the quality of our action. However, that is going straight
against the word of the Scripture: “I planted, Apollos watered,
but God caused it to grow.” (1Cor 3:6 NET) Yes, we should
faithfully plant and water, but the growth is the gift of the
Sovereign Lord who gives “grace upon grace” (i.e., God gave for
free, and we return freely, not as a payment, but as an
expression of our thankfulness).

To get down to the practical level. I don’t expect any surprising
change in current trends of decline of religiosity. On the other
hand, we are currently living in the middle of the biggest
societal upheaval since the time of Gutenberg and Luther (or
perhaps even earlier), so the world may change so much, that it
will turn towards religion again, but I don’t see any current
sign of happening so. So, the question for us is not how to make
such revival happen, but how to be faithful to God even in
a situation where it won’t.

On the more positive side, it is never a good idea in social
sciences to extrapolate current trends to infinity. All these
trends plateau somewhere. Or to say it biblically: “I still have
left in Israel seven thousand followers who have not bowed their
knees to Baal or kissed the images of him." (1Ki 19:18) There
will always be a group of believers who will be waiting for God
to return. And not waiting while being paralysed, but waiting
while happily enjoying their life.


.. _`What if the Nones Really Do Herald the Decline of Religion?`:
   https://www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiousbench/2021/07/the-nones-and-the-decline-of-religion/

.. _Comenius:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Amos_Comenius

.. _`I have just translated it`:
   https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Translation:The_Last_Will_and_Testament_of_the_Dying_Mother_The_Unity_of_Brethern

.. _`Moravian Church`:
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravian_Church

.. _Apparently:
   https://www.teologicketexty.cz/casopis/2004-1/Ceske-teologie-umirajici-cirkve-sedmdesatych-let-20-stoleti.html

.. _`translated by me to English`:
   https://matej.ceplovi.cz/cizi/modus-moriendi_EN.html