"Wishy-washy" Christianity driving old-line Britons to Islam
Al-Jazeerah news reports, "Thousands of British elite embrace Islam."

According to the first authoritative study of the phenomenon, carried by the Sunday Times on February22 , some of the country's top landowners, celebrities and the offspring of senior Establishment figures have embraced Islam after being disillusioned with Western values.

The new study by Yahya (formerly Jonathan) Birt, son of Lord Birt, former director-general of the BBC, provides the first reliable data on the sensitive subject of Christians' reversion to Islam.

He uses a breakdown of the latest census figures to conclude that there are now14,200 white converts in Britain. ...

"I have received letters from people who are put off by the wishy-washy standards of contemporary Christianity and they are looking for a religion which does not compromise too much with the modern world," said [Charles Le Gai] Eaton, author of Islam and the Destiny of Man.

(HT: Orthodoxy Today) I've been writing for months and months that the traditional mainline Euro-American churches are in large measure promulgating political ideology dressed up in Godtalk. The Church of England was founded for political reasons, but even so had a long period of vigorous missionary activity (usually accompanied, 'tis true, by naval cannon and army muskets). Yet it, along with Left-dominated American churches, is in serious and perhaps irreversible decline. As the last religious census of the United States shows, theologically conservative churches are growing, not liberal ones.

Political liberalism is not the only reason for their decline, but it's a big part of it. A lot of people are tired of having left-wing politics gussied up with Bible talk and presented to them literally as the Gospel truth.

Reinforcing this point is religion researcher George Barna's January 2004 survey, "Only Half Of Protestant Pastors Have A Biblical Worldview."

Based on interviews with 601 Senior Pastors nationwide, representing a random cross-section of Protestant churches, Barna reports that only half of the country's Protestant pastors - 51% - have a biblical worldview. Defining such a world view as believing that absolute moral truth exists, that it is based upon the Bible, and having a biblical view on six core beliefs (the accuracy of biblical teaching, the sinless nature of Jesus, the literal existence of Satan, the omnipotence and omniscience of God, salvation by grace alone, and the personal responsibility to evangelize), the researcher produced data showing that there are significant variations by denominational affiliation and other demographics.

"The most important point," Barna argued, "is that you can't give people what you don't have."

Now, I would quibble with how Barna defines "biblical world view," but if we grant it purely for the sake or argument, we can see why its lack was said by Eaton to be wishy-washy and in compromise with the modern world. When people go to church they expect to encounter God, some sense of contact with the transcendent, the holy - not political litanies, pop-culture psychobabble or rock n' roll entertainment. Yet all three of these things are quite prominent in many worship services today.

I addressed some other concerns in my post, "The metrosexual Jesus" - Would you trust your eternity to this guy? Neither would I."

The question, though, is whether there are enough people in the West who are both substantially disillusioned with the churches and looking for religious anchors to the point where they will embrace Islam. And if significant numbers do, will Islam change them or will they change Islam? There is another impediment to such conversions, too. As Mr. Birt observed, "The image of Islam projected by political Islamic movements is not very attractive."

Update: I should also point out that as left-leaning churches have decided that religious faithfulness means adopting reflexive antii-American ideology oritented toward state socialism, here in America some denominations have gone the other way. Many conservative American churches promulgate a theology that seems awfully cozy with lassez-faire, I-got-mine capitalism, fairly blind to America's transgressions either domestically or abroad. Thus, at one of the spectrum are churches that think America is mostly condemnable, and at the other end is "My country, right or wrong - and it's not wrong."

by Donald Sensing, 3/25/2004 11:28:52 PM. Permalink |