Strange as it may seem, some have argued that churches decline because they do not bend to the culture. However, every mainline denomination in the USA, Great Britain, and Europe has been declining for decades—60 decades in the USA—while enthusiastically embracing the culture. Every one of them has shifted from support for orthodox Christianity to blend in with, even advocate for, the increasingly post-Christian culture of the West. This was true when the culture was Modernity, and it is true now that the culture is Postmodernity.
During Modernity,
Evangelical seminaries for the most part stood strong and in opposition to the
culture and culture-affirming trends in the mainline denominations, such as
scientifically based attacks on Biblical authority, sexual liberty, and
abortion. Evangelicals believed that
Scripture was the infallible Word of God, upheld orthodox teaching about the
deity of Christ, the meaning of the atonement, and justification by faith, and
resisted the culture’s moral turpitude.
Evangelical seminaries
(and colleges or universities) have, however, struggled to resist the social
pressures of Postmodernity. During
Modernity, Evangelicals could claim a moral high ground even if viewed as
prudish. Postmodernity, however, claims
the moral high ground even while advocating moral relativism. It claims to represent justice in the form of
diversity, equity, and inclusion—with all the twists and turns of meaning
behind those new values. This new social
justice understands traditional Christianity to be immoral. Some seminary professors and presidents,
pastors, Christian organisations, and so forth have quickly trotted out
statements and policies to prove to the culture that they are not immoral,
support the new social justice, and are, indeed, ‘woke.’ To do so, they have had to accept the dodgy
news and interpretations about social injustice on the one hand and fist bump
their newly hired heads of Human Resources on the way in the door to fix their imagined
problems with their Marxist toolkits. Some version of Critical Race
Theory is accepted either because those in charge really believe that they are
a group of racists or unwelcoming homophobes after all or because they want to
appear to be on the right side of social justice no matter what.
While this nonsense is
bad enough on its own, a possibly more serious problem is that it has a variety
of consequences. It shifts the
theological focus of the seminary and training of students for ministry to
social agendas. (Why not rather go into
social work?) It also removes the
seminary from serving its constituents to concerns about social conformity,
including fitting into the broader demographics of the larger society. Further, to meet quota according to social
demographics, it prioritises social categories over academic and ecclesiastical
merit in hiring processes. (This is a
fancy way of saying that, in order to oppose alleged racism, it becomes racist
by looking at individuals in terms of their race—or gender, we might add.) The culture’s social justice is particularly
fixated on homosexuality and transgenderism and, consequently, some Evangelical
seminaries tip-toe around these issues with care lest they be caught believing
something controversial. They are
setting themselves up to cave to the culture at some point.
All the points offered as
examples here could be and have been discussed at length. Suffice it to say here that, those seminaries
that have caved to the present culture, all in the name of virtue signalling
their affirmation of the new social justice, are certainly going to decline in
the same way as the mainline denominations have been doing for similar reasons
for sixty years. This seems to be a
tried and tested way toward religious decline.
So, if you want to destroy a seminary, bend to the social justice
warriors of present-day Western culture.
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