Losing the Mind of the World

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Musings on Education
Losing the Mind of the World
By Ralph Lynn, Professor of History ret.
Baylor University

Editor`s Note: Ralph Lynn is a regular columnist for the Waco-Tribune Herald, in which these articles first appeared. At age 91, his pen and mind remain keenly sharp.

Fifty or so years ago, the Lebanese statesman and Eastern Orthodox Christian leader, Charles Malik, gave the entire Christian world a solemn assessment and a warning foresight of its possible future.

"If you win the whole world and lose the mind of the world, you will soon discover that you have not won the world."

How was it possible that a man in his situation could (as I think) understand so perceptively the situation of the entire Christian world? And what do his words really mean?

Probably an answer would have to begin with the fact that the Middle East and Lebanon itself, in our time so beset by the apparently endless disorder of war, were then enjoying a time of relative peace and prosperity. Lebanon`s capital city, Beirut, was known as the Paris of the Middle East.

Living in this remarkable Westernized little nation far from the world power centers but operating on the world stage as a statesman in both politics and religion, Malik may have been granted a perspective and an insight denied to prominent religious leaders in Europe, Britain, and the United States.

"Winning the world" is obviously a phrase which will resonate appealingly to Westerners-especially to those in the United States associated with mission-minded evangelistic denominations.

This phrase is still used, but not with the confident enthusiasm of an earlier time. Now, adults are seldom "converted." Now, to increase church membership, the church members in most groups-aside from Mormons, Jehovah`s Witnesses, and Pentecostals-would have to have larger families.

On the world scene, a seldom mentioned fact is that Christian missions have never been markedly successful save in Latin America and Africa. We have never won significant percentages of the populations of nations which have literate leaders and long and proud histories such as Japan and China.

An admirable Washington Post Weekly article (May 14-20, 2001), "Europe`s Faithful Few," supports this general but fairly accurate picture. Its authors, Washington Post Foreign Service reporter, T.R. Reid, assisted by Post Special Correspondent Adi Bloom, furnish some similarly discouraging specifics.

A recent Sunday Morning Prayer in Canterbury cathedral drew 13 people. The midday communion drew about 300-including "the choir boys and a phalanx of tourists armed with video cameras."
In Britain and France, less than 10 percent attend church as often as once a month.
In Scandinavia the churches attract less than 3 percent of the population.
In Amsterdam the Dutch Reformed hierarchy is converting churches into luxury apartments to pay its bills.
Burial services are the only church rites called for by the masses of people.
Dutch sociologist Nan Kirk de Graaf observes of the general European population: "one of the least religious in the world." She thinks that the rise of science has "caused people to lose faith. They become unbelievers and leave the church.

Another quotation from de Graaf-to me the most frightening comment I know about: "The more parents read, the more likely it is that the child will leave the Church." If the picture presented here is reasonably accurate, it may be logical to offer the following conclusions.

First, we have not only failed to win the world but we are in imminent danger of losing the mind of the world.

Second, we need to come to terms with the realities. Too many religious leaders share the incredible, complacent, mindless optimism of the British Canon Chandler quoted in the Post article. "The British census of 1851 showed that half the population didn`t go to church. We`re below that now, but we can definitely come back, as we have before."

Third, leaders in religion need to realize that our world is not at all the world our fathers knew. It is increasingly mobile, increasingly affluent, increasingly educated, increasingly homogeneous, increasingly urban, increasingly multi-cultural, increasingly science-dominated, and increasingly secular.

I must offer a constructive suggestion: we need to create a religious atmosphere in which parents who read-and their children-will feel comfortable.