It’s not the end of the world…
There is a typically Hoosier way to refer to some out of the way or distant place. “It’s not the end of the world but you can see it from there.” On at least one occasion the thought has entered my mind, as I scanned the horizon of a frosty Arctic sea. But I have also wondered if and how far the adage might apply to secularism itself. It seems sure to me now that if the trends of the secular age continue they will represent a definitive culmination of the age we have known and in which we were all formed, an age of faith, Western Civilization, Christendom. It’s not already, here and now the end of the world, but you can see it from here. You can see it in declining church attendance in every tradition (the Southern Baptists announced this week that in the last three years they’ve lost 1.1 million members). You can see it in the toxic politics of our time and how this tears at churches with little room left for genuine faith in the public sphere. You can see it in the sense of mean...
