McChurched - The Decay of Moral Values
“People of the Snowmobile” Decry Moral Decay in
The polling information on the moral values of our nation continues to reflect a growing belief that America is in moral decline…According to the Gallop “Values and Beliefs” poll released June 5, 2007, 82% of us say it is getting worse…The perception that our overall moral values are “poor” has risen 5% since 2005 to 44%...
Suggesting that affluence plays a key role in one’s view of national morality, the poll revealed that those with higher incomes and education were less critical than were those with modest incomes and education…Perhaps the decline of the middle class in America has triggered a search for answers, giving rise to fear that God is punishing us economically for our moral decay…Whatever the psychology behind this condemnation of moral values, reality is 90% perception…
For too long we may have equated morality with righteousness – behavior with condition…Too often we may have judged people’s integrity by what they say or how they appear or what they do for a living…Too often we may have said “God bless America,” when rationale would question how that could be…
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We are discovering the hard way that the Emperor has no clothes…Might does not make right; prosperity, while a potential source for good, has a history as a tool for evil; America is no longer the “shining city on a hill.” Instead, it has earned a reputation as a bully nation…
The question remains, “If our moral compass is broken, will we recognize the root cause of our moral decline?”
For two generations, now, Americans have raised the specter of God to perhaps the highest levels in our history, while its worship of that God has declined precipitously…
There is a snowmobile trail that runs through the parking lot of the little church that I pastor…It is not unusual, on a winter Sunday morning while we worship, to be drowned out by the roar of snowmobiles…I will stop and quip, “Let’s pause for a moment for the People of the Snowmobile.” How can a little country church compete with a fun-filled Sunday morning? As it turns out, many Christian churches have morphed into theme parks for Jesus.
The rise of the Mega-church demonstrates a desperate lurching for relevancy by merging with the Gospel the values of the American Dream ethic of prosperity and success…Irrelevancy has given birth to McChurch, the drive-through, fast food temple of the Christian Right…
Worshippers at McChurch – primarily suburban, upwardly mobile whites – are entertained, coddled and spoon-fed self-esteem rather than self-examination…The Gospel has been dumbed down to “I’m OK; you’re OK.” The fact is that I am not OK, and you are not OK, but that’s OK…There is a way out of the swamp, but it will take pro bono work and discipline, two ethics in short supply in this world in which we live.
The cause of our moral decline is cheap grace that can be bought with a brief confession, a quick dip in the tank and requires little substantive discipline or maintenance…Meanwhile, the “People of the Snowmobile” rationalize meeting God in nature, while little conclaves of the faithful tremble at how irrelevant they seem to have become in a world of big government, big people, big ideas, big lies and big churches…
The answer to correcting the moral decay of our nation lies not in its laws or in the enforcement of those laws…It lies in the responsibility of each of us to care at least as much about our neighbor as about ourselves…That responsibility is worked out through the discipline of living in community with others…In religious circles, we call such a community the “local church,” with all its warts and imperfections…
We have become isolated individuals on a fast track to nowhere…While we have free choice for almost anything we want to do, our choices are made with minimal consideration for their impact on others around us and their collective impact on our nation…
According to the polling information, the people of America perceive themselves to be awakening to a foundation crumbling from moral decay…Whether this will lead to another “Great Awakening” of real faith remains to be seen…
It is, however, long overdue…
Stan Moody is the author of "Crisis in Evangelical Scholarship" and "McChurched: 300 Million Served and Still Hungry
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