Book Review: Churches and the Crisis of Decline, by Andrew Root (2022)

Many are trying to make sense of church attendance decline. What exactly is the problem, and how does that inform our response? Andrew Root follows up his trilogy of books that outwork the implications of Charles Taylor's seminal A Secular Age, with this fourth, more accessible single volume. As the subtitle suggests, this book seeks to offer churches in crisis and decline: a hopeful, practical ecclesiology for a secular age.

What makes this book more readable is the narrative of a small church - St John the Baptist, which grounds the complex ideas into an all too familiar local church setting. St John's is a mainstream denominational church in decline. They used to be healthy and viable. They have tried the young conservative firebrand who brought the rebrand and repotting, followed by a highly relevant and contextualised community driven pastor. Neither worked, and now the church is in crisis.

Bouncing in and around this narrative are two great names. The first is Taylor, whose description of this secular age with its ‘immanent frame’ describes the setting within which the church loses its way. The second is Karl Barth, who provides the theological and pastoral keys as to how we might rediscover our way to be the church inside this immanent frame.

The problem

This book has several great strengths. It unpacks how this secular age, with its immanent frame, creates a world where certain assumptions prevail. God, who is transcendent, is absent from this world as an explanation and a free agent. Instead, humanity becomes the hero of its own story. We imagine that by having more, we can become more. And it's not only the world that has bought into this myth; it's the church – both pietists (evangelicals) and liberals.

Both tribes are committed to 'religious individualism'. Both believe we are the key activators, whose task is to get busy and grow the church by having and using resources to deliver truth, social justice, godliness, zeal, or whatever our particular brand considers to be the most relevant need.

Using Barth, Root critiques both approaches as 'the church of Esau'. Both have (mostly) swallowed immanent assumptions. We focus on growing the church, not on loving the world. We assume it is up to us to grow the church by creating religious experiences or phenomena. In the process, we idolise the church and displace God. We identify resources and strategies as the solution that expose our cause-effect closed world beliefs.

The solution

In all of this (according to Barth), we fail to let God be God. We are not praying, and expectantly waiting for the God who is God to break into our immanent world and reveal himself. We love the church and judge the world – the opposite to God. Because we do not exist to love and serve this lost world as God does, we fail to 'resonate' with him, and we lose our capacity to 'be' the people of God. When we are loving and being in the world, this message 'resonates' with a world that also desires more than the immanent.

I risk making Root sound like his solution is the social activism he has just critiqued. Not so, or perhaps better – yes and! The solution to the crisis for Root is twofold. First, let God be God, and wait and pray for his next revelation of himself as he loves his world. Second, know this God within the tension of the dialectic (using Barth again). God says yes by saying no; saves by judging; Christ is both with us and in us (or we are found in him) and he is other. The dialectic allows us to know God and love the world as he does, to live in the immanent world yet be a member (think limb) of a transcendent church.

Great critique, but … and ….

There is much about this book that is timely and discerning. In theory, I believe in a transcendent God, but I also hold many immanent assumptions about God's church and its calling. At times, I also felt convicted that I may have idolised the church and not loved the world as I ought. Root's biographical use of Barth, and the archetypal St John's ground and make practical complex ideas that otherwise risk being esoteric.

For all the insightful complexity that Root uses to critique the modern church, I find his alternate narrative a little naïve and shallow. A drug addict finds God and his calling; an older man rediscovers music, ministry, and community; a parishioner becomes the paid vocational minister; and St John's has re-found its groove. To be fair to Root, St John's is not portrayed as thriving with resources and relevance. If you are hoping for that outcome, you have missed the point of his book. St John's has found life because it has found God inside the dialectic of living and dying in Christ.

Books that help us understand what is unfolding in culture, and how we might respond prevail. So they ought – these are changing times, and the gospel message is eternal yet expressed and lived out in context. And as Root has shown, the church is not beyond the influence and assumptions of this present age.  Root's use of Taylor is quite different from Trueman's in The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. His analysis of the context, the essence of the problem, and the ensuing solutions contrast with Trueman's.

Root's critique is sharp – sharper than others. He is a broad and deep thinker who will challenge and stretch. That makes him well worth the read, even if you don't agree with all his observations, theology, or solutions.

© David Rietveld, 2023.