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I begin with an important institution in decline in the United States. Once plentiful in small towns and big cities between 1970 and 2018, the number of outlets of this institution dropped by more than 25% Between 1987

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and 2020. The number of pain participants dropped more than 50% from 63 million down to 24 million Between 2008 and 2020. The number of paid employees also dropped dramatically from 79,000 in 2008 down to 49,000 in

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2020. In our money and growth oriented society. People often think that if an institution is in decline , it deserves to be that protest is backward and resistance futile. That is confused. Decline may be

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a fact, but is it good. That is a different question. And in this case, I think decline is awful and we should resist it. Now, I could be talking about decline in family

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farms, mom and pop stores, independent pharmacies or doctors offices or manufacturing jobs, But I'm talking about the decline of an institution vital to a healthy democracy . The 4th estate, the newspaper, industry,

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paper and digital. The decline may be even worse than the statistics suggest because it is not clear. The fourth estate can function independently when it is consolidated and glamorous and owned by investment funds and billionaires.

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That is not a knock against investment funds are billionaires . But recognition of the way the real world works in relation to the integrity of the 4th state. I think an independent and pluralistic fourth estate is vital

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to a healthy democracy. That the deregulation of the 1990s did great harm and that the decline of the fourth estate is something we should struggle against. But I confess my feelings about the press are mixed because

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I'm frustrated by their neglect, caricature and even the scapegoating of Christianity and other faith traditions. Some of you may have thought I was talking about the decline of the second Estate of Churches because the mainstream press

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repeatedly trumpets headlines about the decline of the church. A few weeks ago, the international english newspaper, The Guardian, ran a typical example, the headline losing their religion. Why us churches are on the

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decline. The subtitle, thousands of churches are closing each year. The first paragraph proclaims churches are closing at rapid numbers. The second says again, thousands of churches are closing each year. This may sound

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like old news. A few years ago, I read the familiar storyline and a Christian publication saying 7000 churches a year closing in the US between 1998 and 2018. Church membership declined from 70% to 50% of

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the population. It may surprise many then, to read in the fourth paragraph of that Guardian article, That the church about that article about the church in decline, that in 2019, more protestant churches closed

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than opened in the United States for the very first time. Or you may be surprised to learn that that journal for the scientific study of religion article that documented the offsite and 7000 churches closing a year statistic

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also found that even more churches were opening a year . It found that in 1998 there were 220,000 congregations in the us. But in 2018 there were 358,000 congregations in the US an increase of 138,000 congregations.

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Meanwhile, if 50% of the population of the US and 2018 were church members. As it said, that's 163 million church members, 10 million more than the total population of the US in 1950. So

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on the whole, in real numbers between 1950 and 2018, there was an increase of 10 million church members in the us. Now let me stop with these number games because increase no more means something good

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than decline means something bad. The 4th estate is in precipitous decline. That's bad our faith communities, churches, synagogues, mosques, temples in decline maybe . But jesus's ministry declined rapidly from multitudes to a

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handful and then ended. That does not settle how we evaluate his ministry or its impact. My concern is the way widespread the church is dying narratives combined with caricature and scapegoating of Christianity, demoralized pastors and

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people of faith and create an environment hostile to Christianity . The way the mainstream press caricatures. Faith first hit me when I was 2018 american Academy of Religion , Society of Biblical Literature conference. That's the A

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. R. S. P. L. Uh in Denver For five days around 7000 scholars of religion from around the world, including most seminary and religion professors in the us present thousands of cutting edge papers

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on topics of local and global concern. The Guardian reported on a faith conference in Denver that weekend, but they're reported didn't mention the A. A. R. Spl. Instead, he reported on a

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tiny set of christians holding a flat earth conference. These folks think the earth is literally shaped like a pancake. Such editorial decisions create a caricature picture of Christianity. It's like sending a reporter to devour Switzerland

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during the world economic forum where global elites debate priorities for international trade policies and treaties which supplant the sovereignty of democratic nation states around the world and deciding to report not on the world economic forum, but on

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a tiny friends group trying to revive interest in tulip futures. Unfortunately, the American Academy of Religion and even the society for Biblical literature can also be hostile to faith. My son's girlfriend took a hebrew bible

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course at her State University last fall, the major interpretive rule for the course was not to read the text asking how it might be meaningful for our lives today. Reading scripture for inspiration or wisdom is called

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reading the bible theologically and it is rejected as non academic a violation of the canons of modern rationality. The same applies if you're reading the Bhagavad Gita or the Koran, you may remember our midwinter lecturer,

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a professor of old testament at case Western Reserve University commenting that his department likes to talk about being church adjacent. He says, we don't worship God. He said, we write about, we study people

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who worship God. We don't write theology. We write about people who write theology to get some idea of what all this means for the understanding of faith in modern universities, imagine a professor of music saying

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we don't listen to music, we study people who listen to music or we don't compose music. We study people who compose music. Well, imagine professors telling students to read plato Aristotle, Nietzsche Sartre,

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fan and Spivak or Butler, but acquiring them not to consider how those philosophies, what those philosophies might mean for their lives. It is important to read scriptures and study people of faith from a disengaged analytical

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stance, qua historian, literary theorists, psychologists, anthropologists or the like, but to insist that that is the only academic way to engage faith in divine reality is to insist one study the world's scriptures and

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faiths in a fashion, which systemically eliminates the ability to discern or reflect upon the realities those faiths are about now. In reality, my son's girlfriend's hebrew bible professor is a devout latter day Saint and the

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wife and daughter of our midwinter lecturer are ministers and he I take it as a devout christian. So both these professors are actually people of faith. But in order to meet modern university standards for rationality,

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each has to alienate themselves from the essence of their own faith. In order to teach that faith, I'm naming a systemic distortion which marginalizes every faith tradition in modern departments of Religious studies. This is ironic

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because religious studies scholars are well versed in critical theory , trained to spot systemic distortions and most of them would call themselves postmodernist and pluralist. But a truly postmodern and pluralistic department of religion would leave historical,

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psychological and anthropological research to historians, psychologists and anthropologists and be dedicating themselves to scholarly reflection among as pluralist as pluralistic. A mix of faithful buddhist, christian , hindu, humanist, jewish muslim Navajo and so

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forth. Scholars as as possible instead to think as an engaged person of faith is considered irrational. In addition to dubious narratives of decline, caricatures and marginalization of faith as irrational. There was scapegoating of faith

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traditions. For instance, it is common to hear rhetoric, suggesting that Christianity and christian intolerance was behind Western colonial expansion that missionaries forced other peoples to accept jesus while taking their gold, their labor and sometimes

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even their people. The cultural portrayal of Christianity as an oppressive force, a movement filled with greedy. Hypocritical, hateful people is today. So dominant that my own Children have absorbed it and this may well

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lead to a significant decline of faith communities in the future. Now, I want to say right up front, there is certainly truth to the accusation that awful things have been done in the name of Christianity

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and christians have remained silent while awful things have been done. We christians should be the first to confess our past and our ongoing complicity and commit ourselves to change confession is a good thing and it is good

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when it is a part of weekly christian liturgy. Sometimes I wonder if it would be good if professions were practiced more widely. For instance, if there be any impact before sessions of Congress or before shareholders

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meetings, if people paused and seriously confessed how they , their corporations or their countries had failed to be loving good and just had caused harm where they could have caused good, pursued their own interests while harming

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the interests of others. Christians have been complicit and we must confess an act. But still, when I think of all the christians and pastors, I've known across the United States and in the Philippines and

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Zambia and South Africa and working on the border, our own students and trustees here at Austin Seminary, many of whom have given up far more lucrative and powerful opportunities in order to engage in minute mercy and

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grace. When I think of Wesley or slime Oscar gutierrez James Cohen was very mad for truther delores Williams and Francis among a host of others. It is clear this common picture of Christianity as an oppressive movement

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filled with hypocritical, hateful people is distorted. I'm reminded of an atheist Princeton University religion professor Jeffrey stott , who recently wrote a book on grassroots social justice movements in the United States, secular grassroots social justice

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movements in the United States, blessed are they organized and found himself forced to conclude on the basis of extensive interviews that if it were not for christian congregations , there would be no secular grassroots social justice movement

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in the United States. He also points out the critical role played by christian congregations in the abolitionist suffrage and civil rights movements. This should set critical theorists at 10 I quiver for it explains how cultural elites

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would benefit from the marginalization and demonization of faith traditions . In fact, when it comes to modern Western imperialism and ongoing exploitation of the masses by global elites , critical theorists criticize Christianity, but they focus primarily

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upon modern Western rationality and neoliberalism, which are enduring and predominant forces in our world, a world which is returning to levels of inequity and exploitation that rival even those of the imperial roman empire. In other

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words, according to critical theory, from 19th century London to 20th century Frankfurt, even if all faith traditions in the world had vanished in 1600 the imperialism and exploitation would still have happened, and if we

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get rid of all faiths tomorrow. Global exploitation of people, creatures and resources will continue. Apace. This means that the scapegoating of religion creates what critical theorists call false consciousness a mis identification of oppressive forces

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which misdirected energies of resistance, protest and reform. A misdirection which is devastating because it protects the actual forces of exploitation or oppression by by by winding them invisible. If scott is right that Christianity is not

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only not a prime source of oppression but a distinctive social stratum whose ideals are not profit or pleasure, but what is loving good And just then if we lose churches and synagogues, mosques and temples, then

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we lose essential incubators and sustain urz of social justice movements. If this is true then the narratives have declined the presumption of irrationality and the caricaturing of faith , all of which served to demoralize and marginalized people

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of faith and churches Foster's fell false consciousness misdirecting energies of resistance and reform and undercutting a structural dimension of society essential for inspiring and sustaining resistance. Last december 23rd Guardian commonness just before this last christmas. Guardian

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columnist Polly Toynbee published an essay on christmas, christmas comes with good cheer. Her title title declares the tragedy is the religious baggage Toynbee starts by celebrating the fact that this is the first christmas in modern history

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when most people in the U. K. Are not christian, she celebrates this because she celebrates any decline in superstition any rise in those who look life and death in the eye with no expectation of anything

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beyond this earth. She acknowledges that in all christmas messages, the poor inherit the earth. The stable stands for the homeless and refugees. But she continues the mystery is why so little of this goodwill gets

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beyond the tensile into the politics. She says she is a cultural christian, she likes christmas concerts, but that she dislikes most christian belief. She likes the iconography, iconography of christmas, the rest of

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Christianity. However, she finds loathsome. She moves from christmas to jesus's death on the cross. Why were the symbol of a barbaric torture? She asks , martyrdom is a repugnant virtue, she declares,

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and so too, is the imposition of perpetual guilt . Why worship a god? She continues who inflicts random horrors on his people while demanding praise, thanksgiving and glorification. She declares she would rather have the

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badly behaved quarrelsome gods of the Greeks and romans. She prefers the classical forces of reason, learning mathematics and philosophy which valiantly tried to resist insurgent christian unreason . The rest of the column builds on the caricature

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and scapegoating by reciting some awful things done in the name of Christianity which most all christians would object to . And she throws in one horrible thing done in the name of islam, that I expect most all

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Muslims would object to. It is terribly unfair. Unfortunately Toynbee celebration with the decline of Christianity. Her presumption that faith is irrational. Her mocking of the cross dismissal of life after death, rejection of guilt

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and her hostile caricatures, all of which the Guardian editors decided to print on the eve, christmas is all too familiar. It would be easy to respond in kind to argue that given the vast multitudes of

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humans and other creatures whose lives have been brutal, agonizing and short, simply mean spirited. Not at least to hope that there is some kind of life after death. To point out that christians with their

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emphasis upon the human power of human greed and selfishness and their regular communal confessions of sin, are not at all surprised that the goodwill often does not extend beyond the tensile. They understand why on sunday it's

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the golden rule, but come monday, it's the one with the gold who rules and they struggle against it. Or I might point out that the reasoning gods of the romans that Toynbee celebrates support the brutal

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, radically unequal and oppressive colonial piece of the pax romana. I might point out that it was the roman vision of that so called peace and of caesar augustus as the prince of peace. The gift of

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the gods that the christmas story told from the underside of that brutally oppressive pox radically critiques. I might point out that the so called peace of the pax romana was secured through sustained violence in particular, the

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violence of the cross, a form of execution reserved for insurrectionists who dared challenge roman rule, a form of execution designed to be so horrible that it would terrify, subjugated populations into submission. And I might

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explain that it was precisely because jesus in this imperial roman imperial context, faithfully and unyielding lee spoke love to power and fidelity to all the suffering masses. It was because of that prophetic witness that he ended

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up a martyr on the cross. I might even suggest that it is not too surprising that members of the british elite no less utilizing one of the most powerful platforms on the planet would celebrate the roman empire

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, mocked the cross, reject the idea of perpetual guilt and look to scapegoat Christianity and as long but to do that would be to forget the spirit and letter of today's scripture and the fact that jesus did

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not speak truth to power. He spoke love to power, there's a difference and he called us to love our enemies. I don't even think Toynbee or the other people have been criticizing our enemies. I

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think they are good people caught in the grip of a systemic distortion, which impedes their quest for a more just and loving world by leading them to wholesale caricature and scapegoating of christians, Muslims and people of

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other faiths. So our communities of faith going to survive. They should, we should struggle to see that they do because at their best they sustain a vital space of community and love in a dog eat

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dog world. It would be good if they survive , but they may not, jesus and paul and so many other prophets and saints from all the world's faiths should have survived. They did not. The

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question of survival, however, is the wrong question . We are not called to survival. We are called to love. Today. We stand between christmas and good friday on the cusp of lent christmas is

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about turning the world's view of power and significance upside down. The Son of God and Prince of Peace is not caesar augustus, but an impoverished baby. And a marginal manger lint is about not about suffering

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for the sake of suffering, but imitating jesus and speaking and acting. Love to power, even when they make, that may cost you as it costs jesus and so many others, it is significant that

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we christians hope after easter hope for easter, but we regularly celebrate the crucifixion, for this is profoundly countercultural. For modern rationality. Survival is the thing . For modern reason. Enlightened or no self interest

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is paramount in modern game theory. Self interested action defines rational action. That is what makes the Eucharist crosses and crucifixes so profoundly countercultural. They signify our commitment to imitating the fidelity of jesus christ and living

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and acting not out of self interest but out of love for all, including ourselves. We are not called to survival. We are called to be part of a community of love sustaining one another, correcting

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one another and struggling together after what is good and just and loving for all people and all creatures may the love which inspired and sustained, jesus and saints and prophets of all the world's faith traditions inspire and