The age of indifference

by Editor · April 14, 2004

When the Pontifical Council for Culture said last month that the Church’s biggest challenge in Western societies was religious indifference rather than atheism or the denial of God, it made a profound observation indeed.

While atheism is in itself a theology, in as far as its true adherents have contemplated the existence (or lack thereof) of a deity, religious indifference is a manifestation of the “yeah, whatever” era an age in which the shapers of culture promote unreality over fact, and in which political manifestos are little more than extended advertising jingles.

Whereas in Asia the Church faces opposition sometimes of a violent nature mostly from followers of other religions (and in some countries from atheist regimes), the adversary in the West is a secular agnosticism that regards God as immaterial.

The pontifical council describes that form of unbelief in colloquial terms: “Perhaps there is no God. It’s not really important. Anyway, we don’t miss him.”

To a significant extent, this indifference is fed by an actively pursued hostility towards Christianity. The secular media in particular plays a crucial role in undermining the reputation of the Christian church if not always as a matter of policy, then certainly in effect.

Most recently the battlelines were drawn around Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ, one of the most significant cultural events in recent years.

Typically, the secular media portrayed supporters of the film as “conservative” (which, in their terms, is synonymous with “fanatical fundamentalist”) Christians. Of course, many Christians are conservative, and many “progressive” Christians expressed reservations about the film. It did not follow, however, that Christians who found merit in Gibson’s film were necessarily conservative.

In typecasting patrons in this way, the secular media acted in one of two ways: either it was ignorant about how Christians in general felt about The Passion, or they sought to send a coded message to non-conservative Christians that this is not a film they should wish to be associated with.

The daily This Day took the animosity to deceptive lengths when it exclaimed on its street placards that Leon Schuster’s lowbrow comedy Oh Schucks, I’m Gatvol beat The Passion at South Africa’s box offices after both films opened on the same weekend.

The claim, although empirically true, was mischievous: with three times as many prints in circulation, the Schuster film only made about 30% in box office takings than The Passion.

The secular media’s agenda is diverse. Its collective relationship with Christianity is informed by hostility, indifference and incompetence each perpetuating each other. It is telling that few South African newspapers have a reporter on the religious beat, notwithstanding the reality that South Africa remains overwhelmingly a religious nation, at least nominally.

Likewise, public servants, corporations and even NGOs are becoming increasingly indifferent, even hostile, towards the Christian church they regard as becoming irrelevant.

It would be tempting for Christians to retreat into the laager. This, however, is not the way Christ showed. His command was to make believers of those who do not believe. The crucial step in evangelisation today is to address the phenomenon of secularised indifference, and to challenge the media that advocate and sustain this indifference.