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On December 11 the Pew Research Center published a report on the number and distribution of members of Christians throughout the world (http://pewresearch.org/pubs/2151/christian). The percentage of Christians in the world has held basically steady in relationship to the world's populations in the past century (35% in 1910; 32% in 2010). As the summary of the report states, however, "his apparent stability, however, masks a momentous shift. Although Europe and the Americas still are home to a majority of the world's Christians (63%), that share is much lower than it was in 1910 (93%). And the proportion of Europeans and Americans who are Christian has dropped from 95% in 1910 to 76% in 2010 in Europe as a whole, and from 96% to 86% in the Americas as a whole. At the same time, Christianity has grown enormously in subSaharan Africa and the Asia-Pacific region, where there were relatively few Christians at the beginning of the 20th century."

Such a shift is noticeable when we gathered at Mid-City this Christmas. We gathered as an English-speaking congregation on Christmas eve and Christmas Day joyfully in worship. The Samoans had previously met and our sanctuary was a beautiful fusion of South Pacific and Northern European cultures. What moved me, though, was the openly visible joy at Christmas from the Kiswahili congregation and the Haitian congregation. Whereas many of the English-speaking congregation had traveled, the numbers of the Haitian and Kiswahili were up in celebration of the festival of the nativity. Kiswahili has no indigenous term for "Christmas"-- they take the French term, Noel, and add the Kiswahili "blessed" or "happy" 'nzuri' to say, "Noel nzuri'.

For many of our French speaking congregation, this was their first Christmas since they had been released from the detention center in the United States. On Christmas eve, the congregation met in worship and celebration past midnight. When I arrived, a family had arrived and were preparing food in the fellowship hall. On Christmas morning, the congregation again gathered for worship -- their joy was palpable. The congregation met again, this time for gifts for the congregation at the end of the celebration--gifts as mentioned in my previous blog, from the Cambodian congregation. The vitality of their faith and the centrality of the church for their celebration of Christmas stands in such a contrast to the complementary nature of the church for much of the celebration of Christmas by members of the United States of Northern European traditions. Again, remember for many congregations of Northern European extraction, it was a real issue whether to gather for worship on Christmas morning -- and many didn't. What a contrast that highlights the reason behind the data that the Pew Forum discovered.

This Christmas vitality of the French-speaking congregation (not just from Haiti, but some Africans still as well) witnesses to us all. It is interesting that Benedict XVI spoke of the same dynamics to the Roman Curia in his Christmas address exhorting to the new evangelism: "The essence of the crisis of the Church in Europe is the crisis of faith. If we find no answer to this, if faith does not take on new life, deep conviction and real strength from the encounter with Jesus Christ, then all other reforms will remain ineffective.

On this point, the encounter with Africa's joyful passion for faith brought great encouragement. None of the faith fatigue that is so prevalent here, none of the oft-encountered sense of having had enough of Christianity was detectable there. Amid all the problems, sufferings and trials that Africa clearly experiences, one could still sense the people's joy in being Christian, buoyed up by inner happiness at knowing Christ and belonging to his Church. From this joy comes also the strength to serve Christ in hard-pressed situations of human suffering, the strength to put oneself at his disposal, without looking round for one's own advantage. Encountering this faith that is so ready to sacrifice and so full of happiness is a powerful remedy against fatigue with Christianity such as we are experiencing in Europe today."

Perhaps God can use such steady witnesses outside the European Renaissance and early Modern centers of the life of the church to renew the church in the United States and Europe. Yet Benedict is correct: "Amid all the problems, sufferings and trials that Africa [and Haiti] clearly experiences, one could still sense the people's joy in being Christian, buoyed up by inner happiness at knowing Christ and belonging to his Church. From this joy comes also the strength to serve Christ in hard-pressed situations of human suffering, the strength to put oneself at his disposal, without looking round for one's own advantage. Encountering this faith that is so ready to sacrifice and so full of happiness is a powerful remedy against fatigue with Christianity such as we are experiencing in Europe today."

Posted by johnwright at 9:06 PM

The end of the semester has come and gone. I only have a few (four exactly) grades to enter-- which I plan to finish before these evening. Tomorrow nights Christmas I (eve) service is planned, and I am excited to be able to gather with the congregation on Christmas morning as well. I have a stack of books by my chair that I hope to share with you in the coming days. Next semester hopes to be much more sane than this one -- for which I am thankful.

I mentioned Bill Cavanaugh's boon on "Migrations of the Holy" -- how secularization is not a genuine emptying of God and the significance of the church. We can see how life is organized comes from networks that run through nation-states. Thus the transference and transformation of "Advent" to the nation-state and to the market in my last post in November (could it really have been that long ago?!) via "Thanksgiving"'s establishment as a pre-Advent economic stimulus.

I was interviewed by a local Christian newspaper about the "controversy" on the practice that some large Protestant churches have adopted to cancel worship services on Christmas morning when Christmas falls on Sunday -- of course, Catholic congregations could not fathom this as intelligible, a practice made easier by the mid-night services that cover both the evening and the morning! But in that mass is held every day, of course, what a wonderful time to gather in worship to hear the completion of the Christmas passages. What is interesting to me is that the same people who run the "keep Christ in Christmas" campaigns overlap with the congregations that cancel worship on Christmas morning. I would find it interesting to see how many Churches of the Nazarene will cancel churches on Christmas, and the comparative nature of their demographics.

Of course this is part of the "migration of the holy" -- the transformation of Christmas from a church festival to a "public festival" of consumption. This then has generated its only "counter-consumption" transformations. For instance, the Spanish/Mexican tradition of "La Posada" in which Mary and Joseph's wanderings before the birth of Christ has been taken up by organizations like "La Posada Sin Frontier" to protest United States immigration policy. In its inversion of the commercialization of Christmas, it participates in the same "migration of the holy" through de-ecclesializing the event. Whereas the traditional rite ended at the local church on Christmas eve, the "La Posada Sin Frontier" has ended in at a public park around the border fence between Imperial Beach and Tijuana. As the mainstream culture transfers Christmas into a family festival of consumption for the sake of the national economy, the Christian ecclesial re-enactment of the journey of Joseph and Mary becomes an act of protest to bring about a different economic order. The "La Posada Sin Frontier" seeks to allow a freer movement of human beings to join the free transference of goods across national borders to bring about the completion of the neo-liberal program. In such acts one sees how the libertarian right and the post-Marxist left come together as the same thing-- and how the "migration of Christmas" continues to move outside of the church.

Perhaps, however, the most explicit sign of where we are came in a routine phrase in USA Today this past week. On December 14th, Christina Rexrode of the Associated Press wrote an article entitled, "Christmas Can Wait? Economy Intrudes On Holiday for Some". Picking up from evangelical Protestant practices like "Christmas in July," Rexrode notes howthe celebration of Christmas is becoming unhinged from the church's calendar, and celebrated at a time that is "more convenient" and "economically viable." But what struck me was Rexrode's description of Christmas: "Postponing Christmas Day, originally a Christian holiday to celebrate the birth of Christ, is almost unheard of in some circles."

"Christmas Day, originally a Christian holiday to celebrate the birth of Christ". What it "originally" was, but is no more?!

If one does not recognize here that we have entered a post-Christian setting, we have eyes that will not see -- a post-Christianization often driven by Christians themselves as they "de-church" the faith given to the saints as their practices are absorbed into the state and the market" via its collapse into the dialectic of consumerist capitalism and its inverse -- the antithesis of protest of the excesses of nationally controlled globalization to enhance the promised "freedom" of individuals to bring about the end of history.

As Christmas eve approaches, I hope that God will gather you with a congregation. Of course, the saints will gather at Mid-City -- the English-speaking congregation Saturday at 5:00 (the French-speaking congregation gathers later and will spend much more time in worship, thank God!). Sunday morning things will go a pace as usual -- except that the Cambodian congregation has purchased gifts for the children from all congregations -- whereas but the church can you find persons from Cambodia buying gifts for poor children from the Congo, Burundi, and Haiti. Here is a re-enactment of the Magi from the east, coming and offering gifts to the young Jewish messiah. No headlines in the paper; no grand directives from above. Just the faithful response of a congregation whose live has been pulled into the wonderful mystery of the body of Christ.

You see, even as "the holy" migrates according to the policies of the nation-state and its economic advisers, God still brings forth signs, in out of the way places, that it is God, not the powers, that unto us is born a Savior who shall be for all people, named Christ, the Lord.

Posted by johnwright at 8:55 AM