Jesus is the divine redeemer whose suffering and death was the point of his life and the Gospels.
Catholic Ping - let me know if you want on/off this list
Posted on 04/21/2004 6:02:37 AM PDT by Liz
This will come to be seen as the century in which religion replaced ideology, writes Angela Shanahan.
At no other time of the year does the great divide in Australia between the secular majority and diminishing Christian minority seem so apparent as at Easter.
Those who say Christianity is dead or dying might, on the face of it, have a point. There is widespread disillusionment with the established church, and secularism encourages a view of religion that would exculpate its influence from the public domain.
To make matters worse there is a shrinking demographic in Christianity's traditional European strongholds. And a new liberalism has taken hold in Europe and North America that wants to diminish the authority of the hierarchy and erode traditional doctrine on issues such as life, family, and sexuality.
But while this is the case in the old Christian world, think about this. In the Philippines the annual rate of baptisms is higher than the totals for Italy, France, Spain and Poland combined. Of the 18 million Catholic baptisms recorded in 1998, 8 million took place in Central and South America, 3 million in Africa and almost 3 million in Asia.
The coming dominance of new Christianity is the theme of a ground-breaking book by American historian of religion Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity.
Jenkins argues that "the 21st century will almost certainly be regarded by future historians as the century in which religion replaced ideology as the prime animating and destructive force in human affairs".
His argument is not theological. He analyses sociological trends. Within 25 years the population of Christians will be 2.6 billion, making it the world's largest religion, and most of these will be in the developing world. The growing numbers of Christians in Africa, projected at 228 million by 2025, has probably the deepest political significance because it is there that the dividing lines are drawn between Islam and Christianity - both of which seem to be polarising towards fundamentalism.
The perception that Christianity is dead is a peculiarly Western-dominated line of thought.
The liberal Catholic writer James Carroll has complained that world Christianity is falling increasingly under the sway of what he deems "fundamentalism". True, where Christianity is flourishing it is not of the new touchy-feely character that wants to marginalise religion to the outskirts of discussion about society and tolerates a watering down of doctrine to vague do-goodism. No, conservativism flourishes in the Christianity of the developing world - and reformers obviously do not like this fact.
But Jenkins compares the new Christianity with that of the early church - mystical, puritanical and prophetic and with its own martyrs, most recently in Africa. So from a more positive point of view, in the developing world the anti-authoritarian excess in the West that followed Vatican II has been corrected, and ancient elements of Catholic tradition and practice such as the Marian emphasis are revived. There is also a rejection of Western notions of "private" sexual morality, which in the developing world, riddled by AIDS, are seen for what they are.
Already we have seen the fallout from this divide in the Anglican Church over the vexed question of the ordination of practising homosexuals. The Anglican church in Nigeria - the single largest Anglican church - has all but come to schism with Canterbury.
Whether one would use the dreaded F-word - fundamentalism - or the term "new orthodoxy", analogous to a counter-reformation, to describe new-world Christianity depends on which side of the global fence you sit.
The perception that religion in general and Christianity in particular is dead is a peculiarly Western-dominated line of thought. It not only ignores the major demographic trends in Africa and Latin America, it forgets the historical view of the church itself, which has always operated as a world entity, not a European one. Closer to home, this perception also ignores a growing Christian movement in the West among young people who, having been brought up with no faith, are finding it.
When the film The Passion of the Christ was released at the start of Lent this year there was a general perception that a religious film produced by an eccentric and seemingly reactionary Catholic like Mel Gibson was in some ways an exotic curiosity. Many critics, particularly reform-minded Catholics, regarded it as a throwback to a different, pre-Vatican II version of religion.
But contrary to expectations, the film has been hugely popular among the young. This is partly because it vividly dramatises the Passion. But the Jesus of this film is not the fashionable Jesus of my youth, the counter-culturalist, as portrayed in Pasolini's famous film The Gospel According to Matthew. No, it is the suffering Jesus to whose suffering we join our own.
Whatever one's opinion of the artistic merit of the film, it's greatest achievement at Easter 2004 is to bring within the orbit of popular culture an annunciation of the central doctrine of orthodox Christianity: Jesus is the divine redeemer whose suffering and death was the point of his life and the Gospels.
It does that in no uncertain terms - and the young of today want certainty.
Angela Shanahan is a Canberra writer.
Pity if true. Since Christ came to make religion, all religion, obsolete, and did.
Amen.
Anyone who survived junior high can understand Christ's Passion.
Reading the book and doing what it says is the whole point of the faith.Although I have seen the film four times and consider it a remarkable contribution to religious art, I can certainly appreciate others' reluctance to see it. I do, however, question the formulation that the point of Christian faith is to 'read the Bible and do what it says.'
Scripture doesn't exist for itself or by itself. It is intrinsically linked to the Incarnation, to the eternal Son of God's becoming man, to His taking on flesh to redeem man. Jesus is the Logos, the Word, and Scripture only finds its force because it is linked to the Word. Jesus is the Truth He reveals. Were it not for the intrinsic link between the divine person and the written word, Christians would have no use whatsoever for Scripture.
This is not to say that revelation is unimportant or nonessential to our life in Christ -- revelation does indeed affirm and promulgate the importance of God's having become man in history -- just that there must be that link between the divine Person who became man and revelation. The focus of Christian faith is, first and foremost, the person of the Christ.
Jesus is the divine redeemer whose suffering and death was the point of his life and the Gospels.
Catholic Ping - let me know if you want on/off this list
I don't remember reading that in the Bible. Can you give me a citation?
While you're doing that, maybe you could also explain why James 1:27 says, "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world."
1) "I am the way , the truth, and the life, no man comes to the father but through me"- Jesus
Religion is obsolete, all religion. Your religion OR Jesus you can't have both.
Jesus eliminated the middle man. PURE Genius I would say. And the reason they HAD to martyr him, could'nt have that getting around..
2) That quote exposes and ravishes religion, in case you did'nt notice. Not a good start you seeing a dis on religion as being passage for it. One wonder what else you have missed.
Another question.. What would a real genuine God almighty even need with a religion, any religion, even yours ? If he needed a religion, he would'nt BE GOD..p> Clergy needs religions, God don't. Thats why theres so many..
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