Where are the apologists?

Why are there no longer popular Christian apologists, such as CS Lewis or GK Chesterton in our modern public spaces? Is it because Christians have retreated from talking about their religion in public? If so, why? Or is it because the public space is hostile to the Christian religion?

GK Chesterton. (Photo: Biography.com)

The fact is, the public space has always been hostile to religion, except perhaps for the period between the Constantine age and the end of the Middle Ages when medieval thinking in general was mostly religious. So hostility cannot be the reason.

Have the believers become timid? St Paul and St Augustine wrote in times when the public forum was mostly anti-Christian, yet they prevailed against the cacophony of voices of their era.

Are Christians losing the ability to communicate with the world outside their religion, especially with the secular world?

If we continue on this path our religion will soon be like a sandbar, cut off from the shore by the incoming tides. In time it will become submerged, inaccessible to most except only as a beacon of nostalgia.

CS Lewis. (Photo: Biography.com)

I have seen the beginning of this in European countries where church buildings are fast turning into nightclubs, bookshops, pre-schools and so on; where they are seen as being interesting only for their architectural value and as historical reminders of humanity’s most spiritual times.

There is no denying that in our era religion is in a spiritual crisis, or rather in the spiritual doldrums, if not tilting towards metastasis. The spiritual quest defines all great religions. And that is most lacking today, at a time when faith is regarded more as a ritual than the pull of conscience that draws us higher through the spiritual quest.

Sneering at religion has always been the symptom of ages beset with spiritual metastasis, and it is usually the result of a stunted imagination. Our era falls into this category of cynical posturing, when big ideas have made way for spiritual bankruptcy.

But the Church has always been in the world but not of it, even if at times she came precariously close.

She has always been a beacon of hope during trying times of intellectual and spiritual bankruptcy and opened her fountains of inherited spiritual wealth to counteract the metastasis.

But now the Church in us seems to have lost its confidence to speak to the outside world. When the Church’s fountains do not flow to irrigate the drying creative runnels of the world, making everything new, then the world has restricted access to the spiritual wealth of all ages.

Can we, in all honesty, say the public space is hostile to religion in our times? Our era does have a penchant for celebrating charlatans, indeed the non-believers have more appeal to our media than those who have faith. But why is this?

Is it enough to say that the modern media is hostile to religion? Or can it be that believers, unlike non-believers, have not managed to harness the language of our times. This is the trick non-believers, people such as the late Christopher Hitchens, Stephen Dawkins and their like, have learned very well: to speak with the language of the media and thereby make their message more accessible.

Before he became famous and celebrated for his atheism and attack on religion, Mr Hitchens, for instance, was known for his journalism in the field of foreign correspondence where he learned the art of making the Western world listen to other people’s problems.

Although Christian thinkers and scholars have, now and then, exposed the shortcomings in Mr Hitchens’ arguments against religion— and they were extensive—he made a late career out of criticising and ridiculing religion. And sometimes he even got things right, especially when he pointed to the false pretensions of religion.

But there never emerged a consistent Christian apologist voice in the vein of the debates between GK Chesterton against George Bernard Shaw to counteract and correct some of the false impressions and pretensions perpetrated by Mr Hitchens and his ilk (and, of course, Hitchens was no Shaw, by any means).

This leads me back to my original question: where are the reasonable public Christian apologists for our era?

It’s certainly not from a lack of competent Christian thinkers. There are plenty of them, but they tend to preach to the converted, staying within their fold rather than facing up to the supposedly hostile public platform. Why have Christians become timid in the face of public discourse?

Why is there this apparent inability to communicate and transmit the wealth of faith we have inherited in a manner that makes the spirits of our contemporaries, and the next generation, soar?

Religion, to paraphrase Ronald Reagan, is never more than one generation away from extinction.

We don’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be taught in fresh ways that are pertinent to the times, protected and handed on to the next generation for them to do the same. This is what makes the Church eternal even on this side of heaven.

Luckily, in Benedict XVI, we have a vicar of Christ who has woken up to the weaknesses of our times and the flickering flame of our spiritual quest. We need to follow him in venturing to the deep.

Do not be afraid, little flock, your master and the source of your existence has prayed and formed this rock never to fall from the foundations of time.