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Sociologists of religion scratch their heads for an explanation for the rapid spread of religious movements.  Jesus of Nazareth was condemned to death by the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate, but within three centuries the Christian church, which proclaimed him Lord and Christ, would be the religion of the Roman Empire. 
            Even more astonishing, the prophet Muhammad, who in 622 had fled Mecca, his native city, with a small band of followers, would live to see just ten years later almost the whole of Arabia dominated by Islam, and one hundred years after that, in 732, the Arab armies would reach the city of Poitiers in France, there finally to be halted by the Frankish ruler Charles Martel. 
            But although Islam continues to grow, Christianity appears to be on the decline.  Rapid Muslim growth in the heart of Western Europe provides the backdrop for the Pope’s speech last month in Regensburg, which caused such outrage in the Muslim world. 
            The Anglican Church of Canada has lost half its membership over the past six decades, and Tom Harpur, himself an ordained Anglican priest, has predicted the year when our church will cease to exist.  The ongoing dispute over the same sex issue certainly hasn’t helped. 
            There is no doubt about it: decline is hard on morale.  It pains me to read in the latest issue of The Anglican Journal that the Anglican Book Centre may have to close next July.  There are plenty of models for growth in the postmodern world, but sometimes the proposals seem worse than the plight from which they are designed to rescue us.  Bishop Spong has decreed, “Christianity must change or die,” but the changes which he suggests would be in fact the death of Christianity. 
            I wish we Anglicans could accept and affirm our historical identity, rather than trying to make ourselves over in the likeness of some other religious tradition.  A 16th century pope gave this stern admonition to the Jesuit order: “Let them be what they are, or let them cease to be!” 
            Whether or not Anglicanism survives is in God’s hands.  Growth does not come about through human striving, as in the corporate world.  Growth comes from God;  all that we can do is plant and water (cf. 1 Corinthians 3:6), while remaining true to ourselves.       Our secular culture has given rise to the view that “bigger is better,” and that smallness means inadequacy, insufficiency, inaction, and being a “loser.”  But a small church is not simply a miniature version of a large church.  It is radically different and can do things and offer values that the large church cannot.  No one would suggest that a family with seven children is healthy and a family with only two children unhealthy. 
            Growth is not equivalent to health.  Both small and large churches can experience varying levels of health.  One of the greatest gifts of the small church is the opportunity for intimacy.  All the parishioners are known by name, and individuals are missed when absent from services.  Compassion and care go beyond a passing courteous exchange. 

October 29, 2006

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