The challenges facing churches in New Zealand and the United States are similar says a visiting American professor of Christian ethics Reverend Doctor David Gushee.
“That is pretty much what I found during two weeks of lectures and sermons across New Zealand.”
Gushee identified 4 overlapping challenges to religion which he believes are common to both countries.
1) Both countries are becoming more secular
Steadily shrinking percentages of the people in both New Zealand and the United State claim Christian commitment.
2) Churches are suffering from thinning understandings of the meaning of commitment
“When I first became a “born-again” Christian in the 1970s, the expectation and practice was that we would be in church three times a week – Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night — along with the weekly tithe of 10% of income to the church.”
“But both in New Zealand and here, high commitment these days looks more like one to two visits a month, and giving is more irregular among many.”
3) Our denominations and congregations are affected by politicised ideological and moral divisions
The left/right polarisation on today’s sex-related social issues looks pretty similar in New Zealand churches to what it looks like in the United States.
Some of these differences are contributing both to internal conflicts and difficulty in mustering a public voice.
4) Our pastors struggle to meet the challenges of the era.
- They do everything they can and still numbers decline
- They start contemporary services for younger people while retaining traditional services for the Boomer set
- They try to shepherd flocks that are hard to get a grasp on because it’s a different congregation every week
- They have to navigate theological, ethical, and political land-mines, any of which can blow up already vulnerable congregations
Gushee also noted some significant differences between the two countrys:
- Politics in New Zealand overall falls further to the left. New Zealand is much more like a European liberal social democracy
- New Zealand is much more “green”
- New Zealand is much more peacemaking-oriented. This extends to most Christians as well
- He was impressed by New Zealand’s efforts to build a genuinely bicultural society in relation to its indigenous Maori population — and a genuinely multicultural society related to other immigrants
- Christian voices in the public square appear overall to be stronger in the United States than in New Zealand. The general sense is that public discourse hums along in New Zealand without a significant Christian presence
- Earlier denominational efforts to fund public-issues research or public-affairs officers seem largely to have been abandoned
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