The Post Christian Mind

Tracing the origins and foundation of the departure from the Christian worldview within the Church is essential in understanding the current condition of professing Christendom and sadly, most of evangelicalism and fundamentalism. Harry Blamires provides some very interesting background in the following quote. We best not dismiss his observations too quickly as the position of "the liberals." In his words I see much more than just "liberals." The mind of the culture around us is in actuality part of us....(Editor.)


"Gradually the fashion and taste for reasoning faded. I can locate the point int time, around 1960, when I became personally aware of how the change was affecting the popular mind. As a teacher, I had always found students responsive when the matter in hand led to some open discussion of philosophical or religious positions. Some topic had arisen with a group of mature students, many of them former officers who had been retired from the armed forces by a national cutback. Interestingly views were being aired when one student suddenly said, "But this is the Age of Aquarius." That was all. And the implication of the words soon became apparent. Reasoning about basic issues of life and death, of truth and falsehood, of goodness and evil, was no longer valid. There were no longer any intellectual landmarks or signposts by which such reasoning could be conducted. Absolutes were nonexistent. The fluidity of experience was irreducible to formulation in concept or premise...

The scientifically based challenge to Christianity infiltrated the Church in the first decades of the [20th] century, and so-called theologians tried to whittle away its supernatural affiliation and to bowdlerize its dogma. The Aquarian drift of popular thinking has now infiltrated the Church. It has led the clergy to an emphasis on the immediate which is neglectful of history and tradition. It has led to an emphasis on emotional togetherness in delight as opposed to controlled obesience in worship. It has produced a generation of clergy who try to please rather than to instruct, to appeal to natural inclination rather than to the sense of duty." (Harry Blamires, The Post Christian Mind, Servant Publications, 1999, pp. 16-18.)