Canada Today: Understanding the Times
By Michael Schutz
In our circles, we’re pretty good at dealing with God’s Word. We rightly focus on doing sound biblical exegesis, which is the task of interpreting the Bible based on what the Bible actually says. To do good biblical exegesis, we need to start with what God says in His Word and allow that Word to lead us into proper interpretation. As a pastor, it’s critical that I do good biblical exegesis so that I can rightly handle the word of truth and communicate it to people.
Over the past few years I’ve become convinced that we need to get better at doing a different kind of interpretation: cultural exegesis. This I what I would call “the task of understanding the world around us, based on the reality of our world.” In the same way that we need to allow God’s Word to speak to us and not impose our own desires or thoughts on the text, we need to do the same thing with our culture. We cannot approach the culture around us based on what we wish it was or what we think it should be; we need to understand our culture for what it truly is.
The Apostle Paul was doing cultural exegesis in Acts 17 while waiting for Timothy and Silas to join him in Athens. He saw that the city was full of idols, and he used what he saw there—including their poetry and art—to proclaim the true God to the people. But while he used this method with Greeks, he took a different tack with Jews: visiting the synagogue and proclaiming the crucified and risen Christ from the Old Testament.
In a similar way, we are told in Scripture of the men of Issachar, men who “had understanding of the times, to know what Israel should do” (1 Chronicles 12:32). This task of cultural exegesis is important because it allows us to proclaim God’s Word in a way that addresses the reality of the world in which we live. Proclaiming God’s Word isn’t a theoretical exercise; it’s proclaimed to real people in real places in real history. So we need to understand the real world—the culture—around us.
The meaning of “culture” is a topic that deserves its own discussion, but for our purposes let‘s use Seth Godin’s simple definition: “People like us do things like this.”
So who do Canadians believe are “people like us”? And what do they think those people ought to believe and do?
The Reality of our Culture
One of the tools that can help with cultural exegesis is statistics. Sure, there are varying opinions about statistics—it’s been joked that 68.7 percent of all statistics are made up—but observing what people say and do, and compiling those observations, can help us better understand the culture in which we live, and thus how to engage people in our culture according to God’s Word.
Canadians are continuing to move away from biblical Christianity in both belief and action.
What do recent statistics say about the culture of 21st-century Canada, then, especially regarding religion and spirituality? There are a lot of numbers and opinions to wade through, but there’s one overwhelming theme: Canadians are continuing to move away from biblical Christianity in both belief and action. A 2018 Pew Research survey found that 55 percent of Canadians self-identify as Christians, down from 67 percent in 2011. As of 2018, just 29 percent believe religion is very important in their lives. Two-thirds say it’s not necessary to believe in God to have good values.
Much has also been made of the rise of the “nones.” According to Statistics Canada, those claiming no religious affiliation at all rose from four percent in 1971 to 24 percent in 2011. It’s this rise that gets the most media attention, and causes the most hand-wringing among Christians. But there’s another demographic that warrants greater attention: those whom the Agnus Reid Institute describes as “Spiritually Uncertain” and “Privately Faithful,” which according to their 2017 poll make up 60 percent of Canadians. These are groups of people who exhibit few to no behaviours typically associated with traditional Christianity such as attending weekly religious services, praying, or reading sacred texts.
The news gets worse. The 2017 Angus Reid poll found that only 21 percent of Canadians are “Religiously Committed.” And within that small group, an even smaller percentage weekly attend religious services (just 69 percent of the 21 percent) or read the Bible or another sacred text (just 58 percent of the 21 percent). Curiously, 97 percent of these Religiously Committed people said they “pray to God or some higher power,” and 89 percent said they feel they “experience God’s presence.”
It’s important to note that in this poll, there was no distinction made between Christians and members of other religions; the “Religiously Committed” category was Canadians of all religions, not just Christians. So as Christians look around at our culture, we quickly see that the number of “people like us” is rapidly diminishing, as is the notion of “doing things like this.” The behaviours that we’ve long marked as the regular behaviours of Christians—prayer, gathering for worship, reading the Bible, and concern for others, as examples—are all diminishing in 21st-century Canada.
Along with diminished numbers, we also see a marked diminishing of the influence of Christianity within the public sphere. It’s this loss of influence that is perhaps most concerning to many Christians. Anecdotally, there is growing worry and even fear over the future of Christianity in Canada, especially among older generations.
It’s not difficult to find examples of this loss of influence. The so-called “blue laws” that prevented stores from opening on Sundays were enshrined in the Lord’s Day Act until 1982 in Canada. Many lament that such laws no longer exist. Many think that if we could do things like “get prayer back in public schools,” our nation would be better off.
Or how about a more controversial example? In defending the federal government’s restrictions on what organizations qualify for the Canada Summer Jobs grants, our Prime Minister said that those who focus on “restricting women’s rights by removing rights to abortion” are “not in line with where we are as a government and quite frankly where we are as a society.” Ignore for a moment that Canada has no declaration of such rights; focus on the idea that those who treasure God’s gift of life from the moment of conception are “not in line” with Canadian society. In that, our Prime Minister isn’t wrong; he’s simply describing the culture. “People like us (don’t) do things like this.”
What about our own context in Lutheran Church–Canada (LCC)? There is one overwhelming theme when we look at our numbers: decline. The numbers across LCC are down: baptized membership (down 21 percent over the last ten years), communicant membership (down 19 percent), and average weekly attendance (down 29 percent). When we measure these trends against Canada’s population, the rate of decline grows: between the 2011 and 2016 census, Canada’s population increased by five percent. Over the same period, LCC’s baptized membership dropped by 12 percent and average attendance at Divine Service dropped by 20 percent.
So how should we exegete—properly interpret—this data? Firstly, it’s critical to be honest about where we find ourselves. We can’t engage our culture by treating it the way we wish it was, or view it with a lens that distorts our picture of it. As ugly as the world can be, it’s important to allow ourselves to see it clearly. This is an important part of life under the cross of Jesus Christ: we need to call a thing what it is.
As ugly as the world can be, it’s important to allow ourselves to see it clearly. This is an important part of life under the cross of Jesus Christ: we need to call a thing what it is.
Secondly, it’s important to recognize that numbers aren’t the primary metric to use. Christians have always been set apart from the surrounding culture in many ways. Some might wish to call Canada a “Christian country,” but the reality is that only ancient Israel could be rightly called that. This world, so broken by sin, is not our home; this culture of 21st-century Canada is not the Church. Jesus knew that His disciples were in the world but not of it, because His kingdom is not of this world. While the Christian Church may have had a cozier relationship with wider society in the mid-20th century, it is simply reality that Canada today is increasingly hostile to Christian faith and practice.
What Do We Do?
The men of Issachar in 1 Chronicles 12 didn’t understand the times just for the sake of gaining information for themselves. No, there was a purpose: to know what Israel ought to do. So too with Paul in Acts 17; he didn’t observe the idols in Athens out of sinful fascination, but instead to understand the culture and to proclaim the Word of God to the people. Can we as people of LCC learn something from God’s Word about responding to the culture of our time and place? Absolutely.
We can learn that the starting place for engaging Canadians today isn’t dictated by us; we need to discern it. With the Jews, Paul started with the Old Testament. With the Greeks, he started with their art. He proclaimed Law and Gospel, yes, but that wasn’t the starting place.
We can learn that even when wider society doesn’t look favourably upon us, God still does His work through the Word. When Paul spoke to the Athenians, some sneered. But some said they’d like to hear more. Paul wasn’t concerned whether he fit into the surrounding culture or not. He was concerned with knowing the culture because it allowed him to point people to Jesus.
God doesn’t call us to transform the culture around us.
We can also learn that God doesn’t call us to transform the culture around us. This is actually a point of great struggle for many Christians; they want to influence culture so that the Church and the world are closer to being in harmony. They want Christianity to have influence on the culture, which in itself isn’t a bad thing. But they also expect the wider culture to support at least the morality we confess, if not the Gospel. But this strays into a desire for a life of earthly glory, not a life under the cross of Christ.
Christians are called to be salt and light to the people around us, but it isn’t our end goal to make this nation a “Christian” nation. God calls us through His Word to make disciples, not transform the culture. We have to accept that at this point in our nation’s history, Christians are not cultural insiders; we’re on the outside. In fact, Christianity in 21st-century Canada is in some ways closer to New Testament times than to 1950s North America. The government isn’t supportive of Christian doctrine and practice, nor are most people in Canada. That’s not going to change any time soon. In fact, the enmity will likely intensify.
Some readers will bristle at this message. I have spoken with many people who grieve the loss of Christianity’s influence on society. Many in our congregations grew up in a culture that was supportive of Christianity. For many, this cultural change brings forth feelings of great sadness, confusion, or even despair.
But there is (at least) one more thing we can learn from God’s Word in the midst of these struggles: Jesus has overcome the world. He tells His disciples in John 16 that they will have trouble in this world, but that they can take heart because He has overcome the world. In this culture of shifting sands, we stand on the rock of the Word of God. We are ever more deeply to be engaged in God’s Word. We seek to, as the old prayer says, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest God’s Word. We do this because it is only through the truth of God’s Word that we can look beyond the statistics and the despair they threaten to bring. It is Christ, revealed in God’s Word, in whom our hope lies.
Statistics are useful in helping us understand the world. But they must not draw our attention from the One who has overcome the world. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith. Let us set our hearts and minds on things above. And let us be bold in believing and confessing the hope we profess to the culture around us, because He who promised is faithful.
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Rev. Michael Schutz is Pastor of Concordia Lutheran Church in Penticton, B.C.
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