Dr. James Emery White

In an interview with LBC in London, famed atheist Richard Dawkins offered two startling admissions: first, that he mourned the loss of much of what reflects the Christian faith in the world, and second, that he would consider himself a “cultural” Christian. He stated:

I do think we are culturally a Christian country. I call myself a cultural Christian. I’m not a believer, but there is a distinction between being a believing Christian and a cultural Christian.... I love hymns and Christmas carols and I sort of feel at home in the Christian ethos, and I feel that we are a Christian country in that sense.... [I] would not be happy if, for example, we lost all our cathedrals and our beautiful parish churches.

Dawkins even added that if he had to choose between Christianity and Islam, he would choose Christianity every single time: “It seems to me to be a fundamentally decent religion, in a way that I think Islam is not.”

After this came another lament, written by the self-described agnostic Derek Thompson for The Atlantic:  

As an agnostic, I have spent most of my life thinking about the decline of faith in America in mostly positive terms. Organized religion seemed, to me, beset by scandal and entangled in noxious politics. So, I thought, what is there really to mourn? Only in the past few years have I come around to a different view. Maybe religion, for all of its faults, works a bit like a retaining wall to hold back the destabilizing pressure of American hyper-individualism, which threatens to swell and spill over in its absence.

He adds that rituals of religion bring that which is “embodied, synchronous, deep, and collective.” His final words are haunting: “It took decades for Americans to lose religion. It might take decades to understand the entirety of what we lost.”

Strange that a famed atheist bemoans the loss of what Christianity has brought to culture, and an agnostic the loss of what Christianity brought to the dynamics of human community. They both reject the faith itself but also mourn the loss of its influence. Neither considers that what they mourn may, in truth, be a powerful argument for reconsidering whether there might be truth in its tenants. After all, as its founder has already suggested, such things should be judged by their fruit. But at the very least, the world is beginning to see the cultural importance of the “Keeper of the Springs,” a story often told by the late Peter Marshall.

The “Keeper of the Springs” was a quiet man who lived high above an Austrian village in the deep forests of the Alps. He had been hired many years before by a town eager to see debris cleared from the pools of water that fed the spring that flowed through their town. The man did his job well, faithfully patrolling the hills, removing branches and leaves. The clear water made the village a popular attraction, with graceful swans gliding across the spring, creating rich farmlands and picturesque views. As time went by, the town council faced budgetary challenges. They saw a line-item for a “Keeper of the Springs.” Who was this? What did he do? Surely such an obscure role wasn’t needed. By unanimous vote they released the man from his duties.

At first, nothing changed. The water flowed as clear and free as ever. The town council felt reassured in their decision. Then autumn came and the leaves began to fall. Wind blew and branches fell into the pools. Soon the flow of water began to lessen. Then a yellowish-brown tint appeared in the spring. Soon the water grew even darker. Before long, a film covered the water along the banks and a stank odor filled the air. Millwheels ground to a halt, the tourists left with the swans, and soon disease and sickness began to permeate the village.

The town council called another meeting. Realizing their mistake in judgment, they brought back the old “Keeper of the Springs.” Within a matter of weeks, the waters began to return to their pristine state. Marshall’s point then, even more pressing today, is that what the spring meant to the village, the Christian faith means to the world. Christians know this from the teaching of Jesus about the importance of being salt and light. Now atheists and agnostics are seeing it too through the loss of cathedrals and community.

James Emery White

Sources
Derek Thompson, “The True Cost of the Churchgoing Bust,” The Atlantic, April 3, 2024, read online.
LBC video post of Richard Dawkins on X, posted March 31, 2024, watch here.
Walter Sánchez Silva, “Famous Atheist Richard Dawkins Says He Considers Himself a ‘Cultural Christian,’” Catholic News Agency, April 3, 2024, read online.
Catherine Marshall, Mr. Jones, Meet the Master.

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Dr. James Emory White's blog focuses on many of the popular cultural issues of the day.  He writes about how Christians should major on the major issues of the day and stop focusing on minor issues.   Dr. James Emory White is great at tying Biblical principles to the present societal issues of the 21st-century church.  He teaches Christians how to make the Bible relevant to people who believe the Scriptures are irrelevant in today's society.  He has written many other great articles for today's Christians on his blog at serioustimes.org.  He is the Senior Pastor at Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, Virginia.  He has written over a dozen books.   Follow blogger Dr. James Emory White, at Christianity.com.

This is a blog with a very specific audience. I know it may exclude some of you, but it may be healthy for you to eavesdrop.

This is for all the church planters and their volunteers on post-Easter Monday, struggling to make it from week-to-week, and for the leaders and members of established churches that are anything but “mega”—well below the 200 threshold in terms of average attendance.

I don’t know how Easter Sunday went for you, but I have a hunch. 

It was bigger than normal, but less than breakthrough. It was good, but not great. Your attendance was large, but not staggering; worth being happy about, but not writing home about. You are grateful to God but, now that Easter is over, there’s a bit of a letdown. You wanted so much more.

It was, in the end, a typical Easter Sunday.

And you are normal.

When you lead a church, you can’t help but dream—and dream big. I think that’s one of the marks of a leader. But for most, it’s not long before the dream comes face to face with reality.

When I planted Mecklenburg Community Church, I just knew the mailer I sent out (We started churches with mailers in those days.) would break every record of response and that we would be a church in the hundreds, if not already approaching a thousand, in a matter of weeks or months.

Willow Creek? Eat our dust. Saddleback? Come to our conference.

The reality was starting in a Hilton hotel in the midst of a tropical storm with 112 dripping wet people, and by the third weekend – through the strength of my preaching – cutting that sucker in half to a mere 56.

Actually, not even 56, because our total attendance was 56. This means there were 15 or 20 kids, so maybe 30 or so people actually sitting in the auditorium. 

(As a good church planter, I think we also counted people who walked slowly past the hotel ballroom doors in the hallway.)

Yes, we’ve grown over the years. 

But that’s the point. 

It’s taken years.

It usually does.

I know the soup of the day is rapid growth, but please don’t benchmark yourself against that. It’s not typical. It’s not even (usually) healthy. So stop playing that dark, awful game called comparison. It’s sick and terribly toxic. 

Really, stop it.

I don’t care who you are, there will always be someone bigger or faster-growing. So why torment yourself? Or worse, fall prey to the sins of envy and competition, as if you are benchmarked against other churches?

(Rumor has it the true “competition” is a deeply fallen secular culture that is held in the grip of the evil one. Just rumor, mind you.)

The truth is that on the front end, every church is a field of dreams. After a few months, or a year or two, it morphs from a field of dreams to a field to be worked, and your field may not turn out as much fruit – much less as fast – as you had hoped.

That’s okay.

You can rest assured that it probably has little to do with your commitment, your faith, your spirituality, your call or God’s love for you. 

I know it’s frustrating. We’ve got a lot of the world in us and thus look to worldly marks of success and affirmation.

But what matters is whether you are being faithful, not whether you are being successful. You’re not in this for human affirmation, but a “well done” from God at the end.

Did you preach the gospel yesterday?

Then “well done.”

Did you and your team do the best you could with what you had?

Then “well done.”

Did you and your church invite your unchurched friends to attend?

Then “well done.”

Did you pray on the front end, have faith and trust?

Then “well done.”

Ignore the megachurches that tweet, blog and boast about their thousands in attendance.

Yep, even mine.

It’s not that we don’t matter. We do, and we’re very proud of the hard work of our volunteers and the lives we have the privilege of changing. There’s a place for us.

It’s just that you matter, too.

And you may need to remember that.

And perhaps most of all on the Monday after Easter.

James Emery White

Editor’s Note

This blog was first published in 2012 and is offered annually on Easter Monday.

About the Author

James Emery White is the founding and senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, NC, and a former professor of theology and culture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, where he also served as their fourth president. His latest book, Hybrid Church: Rethinking the Church for a Post-Christian Digital Age, is now available on Amazon or from your favorite bookseller. To enjoy a free subscription to the Church & Culture blog, visit churchandculture.org where you can view past blogs in our archive, read the latest church and culture news from around the world, and listen to the Church & Culture Podcast. Follow Dr. White on X, Facebook and Instagram at @JamesEmeryWhite.

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The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of CrosswalkHeadlines.

James Emery White is the founding and senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, NC, and a former professor of theology and culture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, where he also served as their fourth president. His latest book, Hybrid Church: Rethinking the Church for a Post-Christian Digital Age, is now available on Amazon or from your favorite bookseller. To enjoy a free subscription to the Church & Culture blog, visit churchandculture.org where you can view past blogs in our archive, read the latest church and culture news from around the world, and listen to the Church & Culture Podcast. Follow Dr. White on X, Facebook and Instagram at @JamesEmeryWhite.

good adj. better, best a) a general term of approval or commendation; b) suitable to a purpose; effective; c) producing favorable results; beneficial

The amazing thing about Good Friday is that it was – and is – part of the “good” declared by God at creation. “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good” (Genesis 1:31, NIV). The Fall was not good; sin, disobedience and suffering are not good. But God’s purpose in creation and the redemptive drama that ensued were – and are – good.

Some would put God in the dock for placing such a burden on human life—that through our creation and giving us free will He knew the suffering we would experience. What is less noticed is how God always knew of Good Friday. In the rapture of creation, the cross loomed large. Yes, there would be suffering, but none more so than for God Himself. 

C.S. Lewis writes:

God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them. He creates the universe, already foreseeing—or should we say “seeing”? there are no tenses in God—the buzzing cloud of flies about the cross, the flayed back pressed against the uneven stake, the nails driven through the mesial nerves, the repeated incipient suffocation as the body droops, the repeated torture of back and arms as it is time after time, for breath’s sake, hitched up. If I may dare the biological image, God is a “host” who deliberately creates His own parasites; causes us to be that we may exploit and “take advantage of” Him. Herein is love. This is the diagram of Love Himself, the inventor of all loves.

What an ultimate “good” this must have been; declared at creation, consummated on Golgotha. But it wasn’t a good designed for God. There is no good to be added, or deficit to be addressed, in His being. 

It was a good for us.

Many books have come out of late portraying the heart of God toward us as a lover pursuing the beloved, a fairy tale where God is the prince and we are the maiden. “Suppose there was a king who loved a humble maiden,” begins Soren Kierkegaard, who first fashioned the popular analogy. 

The king was like no other king. Every statesman trembled before his power. No one dared breathe a word against him, for he had the strength to crush all opponents. And yet this mighty king was melted by love for a humble maiden. How could he declare his love for her? In an odd sort of way, his kingliness tied his hands. If he brought her to the palace and crowned her head with jewels and clothed her body in royal robes, she would surely not resist—no one dared resist him. But would she love him?

She would say she loved him, or course, but would she truly? Or would she live with him in fear, nursing a private grief for the life she had left behind? Would she be happy at his side? How could he know? If he rode to her forest cottage in his royal carriage, with an armed escort waving bright banners, that too would overwhelm her. He did not want a cringing subject. He wanted a lover, an equal. He wanted her to forget that he was a king and she a humble maiden and to let shared love cross the gulf between them. For it’s only in love that the unequal can be made equal.

Yes, this is the heart of God, and He is on just such a mission.

But the deeper truth lies in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. We are not a beautiful maiden. There is nothing becoming in us whatsoever. Instead, we are desperately criminal, and the only rescue grace would bring would demand storming the Bastille in which we are rightfully held. This is precisely what He did. “Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8-9, NIV).

And that’s an even better story. And it’s the one story that the world does not already have, and most needs to hear.

James Emery White

 

Editor’s Note

This blog was first published in 2005 and has been offered annually on or near Good Friday.

Sources

Webster’s New World Dictionary, Second College Edition.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves.

Victor Hugo, Les Miserables.

Soren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments.

About the Author

James Emery White is the founding and senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, NC, and a former professor of theology and culture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, where he also served as their fourth president. His latest book, Hybrid Church: Rethinking the Church for a Post-Christian Digital Age, is now available on Amazon or from your favorite bookseller. To enjoy a free subscription to the Church & Culture blog, visit churchandculture.org where you can view past blogs in our archive, read the latest church and culture news from around the world, and listen to the Church & Culture Podcast. Follow Dr. White on X, Facebook and Instagram at @JamesEmeryWhite.

The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of CrosswalkHeadlines.

James Emery White is the founding and senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, NC, and a former professor of theology and culture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, where he also served as their fourth president. His latest book, Hybrid Church: Rethinking the Church for a Post-Christian Digital Age, is now available on Amazon or from your favorite bookseller. To enjoy a free subscription to the Church & Culture blog, visit churchandculture.org where you can view past blogs in our archive, read the latest church and culture news from around the world, and listen to the Church & Culture Podcast. Follow Dr. White on X, Facebook and Instagram at @JamesEmeryWhite.