The Condomization of the Church

Fulcrum is a curious confection. It arose, as I recall, when Anglicans were at their most bitterly divisive over the proposed episcopal ordination of Jeffrey John. It's not the home of the most strident conservative evangelical Anglicans; but its evangelical-ness is quite strong. There is some thoughtful and rigorous thinking there - typified by writings of Andrew Goddard: his review of Andrew Marin's, Love is an Orientation: Elevating the Conversation with the Gay Community is by turns careful, sensitive, and wise. I probably agree with Andrew (Goddard) less than when we were both students, but his contributions are excellent.

I reproduced the title of a recent article as my title here. It's not a term you expect to find in an Evangelical journal, especially not with the article complaining at some length about a phenomeon the author calls "floaters". The thesis of the article, I think, is that people are not committed any more, like they once were. Just as condoms promote apparently consequence-free sex, so consumerism has infected our perception of the norms of doing church, leading to a self-centred attitude to church as a mere supplier of religious services.

The thing is, despite the arresting title, that doesn't seem a very startling or striking conclusion. Isn't this the whole "Generation X" story? It's a problem if you are running an institution. He says it's a problem because it denies the gospel:

Our condomized culture has learned to think of its relationships and commitments to core values as disposable. Of course, it’s impossible to reconcile such a value system with the demands of the gospel. So, while I appreciate my friend’s worry about the Church’s ability to satisfy the demands of the floating generation, I am confident that the solution does not consist of the Church adapting to the culture in areas where it is the culture itself that is sick.

Rather, the vocation of the Church is to be that alternative community that embodies Christ in its common life, even when that life may seem archaic, exclusive, and unloving to the world.

I can't help thinking that he just has a mind-set-mismatch. Despite having an exceptionally conventional career path (two plus years on the other side of the world notwithstanding), and being typically a stable and static individual, the GenX thing speaks to me: life just isn't so fixed any more. Things are different. People are different. This is both good and bad: but hand-wringing and saying we wish people would behave a little more like they used to, really isn't going to get us anywhere.

The jury still seems to be out (and probably will be for the rest of my life) on how big a sea-change we are seeing in the western church right now: if we overlook the argument that no decent English word should have more than four syllables, who's to say whether or not condomization is a good thing - or maybe we have just to look at a bigger picture.