IN RECENT years, Rupert Shortt has published a series of books on topics pertinent to the present profile of Christianity globally and locally. In this substantial volume, he distils the essence of his output, the fruits of his voluminous reading, and the insights harvested from engagement with an extremely eclectic roster of interlocutors.
He opens with a compact but compelling overview of how the profile and influence of religion in general, but essentially Christianity in particular, has fared in the cultural melting pot of modernity. He acknowledges “a flight from enchantment”, which has contributed to a marked decline in, for example, church attendance against a backdrop of intellectual, social, and political trends predicated on misguided or even maliciously motivated secularist assumptions.
But he believes that there are good reasons to challenge simplistic accounts of Christianity’s rise and fall. For a start, it is enjoying significant numerical growth globally and, closer to home, the crises engulfing organised religion do not necessarily translate into an equivalent embrace of atheism or wholesale rejection of Christian beliefs and values. The contribution made by Christian agencies to aid and development work around the world is immense even if seldom acknowledged. He robustly challenges secularisation theories prevalent among sociologists since the 1960s. He maintains that we are “metaphysical animals . . . unlikely to abandon age-old quests for a fundamental and inclusive context of meaning”.
Nevertheless, “mainstream European culture is hurtling forward largely without the fuel that Christianity has historically supplied”. This has disturbing consequences acknowledged even by avowed atheists. But the question remains whether Christianity’s credal credentials can enable it to fuel a sustainable culture into a future threatened by complex existential crises facing humanity and the environment.
Shortt responds to such a challenge, first, with an exposition of just how shallow and insipid so much atheist polemic has been of late. He eloquently defends both the meaning and the mystery of Christian beliefs founded upon scripture and tradition as objectively credible even if, as the biblical critics and liberal theologians for whom he has little affection attest, it is ultimately unfathomable. Shortt entitled one of his books The Hardest Problem and tackled head-on the problem of evil with appropriate humility. while confident that it does not hole Christianity below the water line — a case that he succinctly summarises here.
Part One, focusing on faith faltering in modern times, and specifically Christian faith, concludes with an account of how Christianity continues to have a vital part to play in the public square which would be significantly more oppressively governed, self-centred, and ethically shallow without its influence. Whether it can rise to such a challenge in the near future is a key question addressed in Part Two.
First of all, Shortt recounts the alarming prevalence of persecutions perpetrated against Christians, especially in Africa, Asia, China, and the Middle East, which threaten its future from without. But there are issues internal to the Churches which also have to be addressed. Indeed, the longest chapter confronts the recent and present state and status of the Roman Catholic Church, with profiles of the three most recent popes, and some disarmingly honest appraisal of the church tradition to which Shortt himself belongs. He is critical of much that the hierarchy decides and dictates, but ultimately finds grounds for hope that renewal, significantly inspired by the distinctive personality and pastoral priorities of Pope Francis, is discernible in what is local and lay rather than centralised and hierarchical.
Next, he turns his attention to Anglicanism, and the Church of England in particular. Once again, he casts a critical eye over recent episcopal and archiepiscopal leadership against the backdrop of numerical decline, internal dissension, and sexual-abuse scandals. He offers a judicious assessment of successive initiatives to reverse such negative trends, and leans towards the parochial system as capable of accommodating fresh expressions of church alongside the unique contribution of ordained and lay local ministry re-presenting God to a community, and that community to God. By no means least, potential for the Anglican Church to be at the heart of global initiatives to effect positive change in relation to, for example, the environment is affirmed and celebrated.
Meanwhile, he is sceptical about successive centripetal strategic initiatives, and laments a perceived erosion of theological rigour at the centre compared with the standard set by Rowan Williams, one of his principal inspirations.
A brief profile of Pentecostalism, and its spectacular expansion around the world, concludes Part Two. Shortt identifies a defining feature of the movement as “repudiation of the intellectual constraints of the European Enlightenment” — a repudiation with which he has a great deal of sympathy.
Part Three focuses on three features of contemporary culture which pose serious challenges to human flourishing in general, and to religion in particular. First up is the threat posed by AI, and the need to affirm the distinctiveness and importance of spiritual intelligence. Maintaining a place for Christian education is promoted as crucial to delivering on this imperative.
Next, he challenges the silencing of the Christian voice in the public square, especially in matters pertaining to medical ethics — abortion, assisted dying, trans-sexuality. Here, he sticks closely to Catholic teaching, although elsewhere he adopts a less conformist stance in relation to divorce and same-sex relationships.
Third, he turns to the arts and media to highlight evidence for the sidelining of Christianity in mainstream culture. Here, he displays righteous indignation about, and barely disguised contempt for, influencers who should know better.
Finally, he revisits the ills of modern culture and confirms that the remedy lies in upholding the legacy of the Judeo-Christian tradition because “atheism has failed to answer a simple question: what is the meaning and purpose of life?” Christianity is about “Faith and hope in a journey from exile through a wilderness to springs of living water. . . Its eclipse matters because the church is the sturdiest vessel for the preservation of values without which civilisation will wither.”
It remains to be seen just how close to total any eclipse of Christianity might be, but eclipses are by their very nature transitory, and Shortt, notwithstanding his painfully honest analysis, provides a halo of hope sufficient to confound the doubters and re-energise the faithful.
The Rt Revd Dr John Saxbee is a former Bishop of Lincoln.
The Eclipse of Christianity: And why it matters
Rupert Shortt
Hodder & Stoughton £25
(978-1-3998-0274-1)
Church Times Bookshop £20
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