I don’t know quite how it happened, but I was born into a Christian culture that has transformed into a post-Christian one. This change is a basic fact of my time, regardless of what I or anyone else thinks about it.
I am too young to remember fully Christian times. However, from what those a few years older than me say, when I was born, Christianity – or Protestantism, to be exact – was considered the default. Shortly before I was old enough to take an interest in such matters, the expectation was that any respectable man or woman would go to church on Sunday. If anyone wanted to succeed in business in a recognizable community, they made sure they attended regularly, and, if they were really ambitious, they became involved in their local church. Naturally, too, everybody was married in a church. Everybody knew the bible, too, or at least the stories in it.
These norms were so pervasive that I attended Sunday School at the United Church until I was about twelve, even though my mother was only moderately religious and my father an agnostic or atheist, who probably only attended holiday church services as a family outing
By the time I quit attending, I had absorbed that Catholics were an odd, barely tolerated sort of Christian, no better than the Christian Scientists that I passed on my way to Sunday School. I had encountered only one family of Jews, but I often wondered what made them so different. As for Sikhs or Hindus or Muslims, they were mostly a distant rumor to my young ears, but I understood that any I encountered were to be trusted only to the extent that they acted like good Protestants.
Even my grandfather, who I rarely saw be impolite to anyone, belonged to the Orange Lodge. Admittedly, in British Columbia, this was a much watered-down version of the organization that had been involved with religious violence in Ontario and was still in the middle of the chaos in Ireland. Yet my kind and gentle grandfather apparently believed that the mostly theoretical Catholics of the neighborhood needed opposing, because their loyalty to the Pope meant that they were denied religious freedom.
Looking back, I realize that things were already changing when I was a child. The minister, a pale man who always did his best to sound earnest, talked about social service and good causes as much as about Jesus – and never about hell. But the remnants of a Christian culture were still strong enough that few questioned them openly.
And now? When polled, a majority still will say they still believe in God. In the United States, people are still reluctant to vote for anyone who is an open atheist. Yet despite such hypocrisy, church attendance has sinking for over two decades. When morality is discussed, it is rarely in terms of the bible or Christianity, or any other religion. Asked on a census, many still call themselves Christians, but by their actions and attitudes, clearly Christianity does not steer their actions, and very few would be considered Christians by the standards of fifty years ago.
But probably the greatest sign that we are in a post-Christian world is that religious festivals such as Christmas and Easter have become secular holidays, and governments are careful not to endorse even a generic Christianity over any other religion. A few of the remaining devout Christians complain about these changes, citing the occasional excessive zeal of non-denominationalists as proof, but what they really seem to object to is the loss of any special status in the culture.
My own beliefs parallel these changes, since I have been agnostic since I was a young teen and drifting towards atheism ever since. If anything, I am more at home in the culture of my middle-age than I was in that of my youth. Generations younger than me seem to have caught up with my thinking as a young man.
At the same time, while decidedly a non-Christian, I am glad that I was lucky enough to be educated in its basic tenets. After all, no matter what I think of Christianity today, at one time it was an undeniable creative force.
How, I wonder, do those brought up entirely non-Christian appreciate the cathedrals of Europe without the understanding that they were physical prayers to God? How can they listen to Handel’s Messiah and understand how it develops? Or read the works of Christina Rossetti or Gerald Manley Hopkins, whose styles and phrasings were where they worked out their relationships with their deity?: Even great agnostics like George Eliot or Thomas Hardy make little sense without a thorough knowledge of Christianity, because their passing references and analogies draw upon the common Christian mythology. I would only be short-sighted and false if I attempted to deny that Christianity was a major influence on much of our cultural history.
Knowing Christianity, I have a sense of the continuity in my culture that most people no longer have. But, as for the decline of Christianity as the foundation of the culture – for that, I feel nothing except relief, tempered by only a mild ambiguity stirred by the cultural accomplishments of the past.
Off the Wall 
Well said Bruce.
I share a lot of things with you on this one. I was raised in an area that had similar norms, and this area has, to a certain extent, never lost them. I also grew up in a household that held the more conservative/literal-factual views of religion.
However, my path diverged from yours somewhat. I have, in a sense, rejected the Christianity I received — or, more accurately, thought I received — as a child, and embraced a Christianity that is about a way of life more than worship of the Bible (note how I didn’t say worship of God in that sentence). I am pro-tolerance, pro-gay marriage, etc. And so are many in my church, which is the same one in which I grew up.
I actually share something of a fondness for the decline in Christianity. I do not think it was necessarily good for the religion to get involved with the state, which happened so many centuries ago already. I think that North American christians in particualr have been foolishly quick to spar over theological nits while missing the big picture. And I think that losing special political status may have some hidden positives. Christians have lived alongside those of other religions (and those of no religion) across millenia and hemispheres, and I do not think it is bad that this is happening now in Western society. If anything, I am saddened by the vocal conservatives that drive more people to atheism by their sad characiture of a way of life than anything else.
Your point about the arts is well-taken. I think it would be hard to understand Beethoven’s Ninth without a keen religious understanding of some sort.
Hi, John:
Reading your description of your path, I can’t help wondering if post-Christian culture hasn’t made it a little easier than it might have been. When there isn’t a single orthodoxy, perhaps it is easier to find your own religious values?
Your version of Christianity sounds like it might be somewhat similar to the Christian activism that in Canada was responsible for our medical system and many other reforms. A few years ago, its most famous leader, Tommy Douglas (father of Shirley Douglas and grandfather of Kiefer Sutherland) was named “the greatest Canadian” in a poll across the country.
Right now, I expect that Christianity as a whole is where Roman culture was in the fifth and sixth century: It may no longer have the control it once had, but its influence is going to be continued to be felt for several generations.
I don’t know if I would pin it on post-Christian culture so much as better communication and more readily available information. There was never a single orthodoxy; religious disputes are even recorded in the Bible. But in certain areas of the world, there sure was a monoculture, and often an insular one at that. (OK, so this may be splitting hairs a bit.)
Part of it was a failure on the part of church leaders to expose the amazing diversity of Christianity to members of the church – perhaps out of fear of controversy or something. Part of it may have been I simply wasn’t old enough or mature enough to pick up on clues.
I think the lack of this monoculture has been tremendously liberating to people like me. We can embrace diversity, revel in it, readily access theological works across a vast time & place, in ways that my grandparents simply couldn’t. I think, though, that it’s been threatening to others. People that want certainty in life, that would have some things that they don’t have to examine, find it scary perhaps. They may also feel threatened economically or culturally. I think these are the people that we keep hearing from on TV.
I can’t say I’m familiar with the situation in Canada in specific, but yes, that sounds like me; and actually, like a great many Mennonites from this area, over centuries. Many refused to fight in World Wars I and II, believing killing others to be wrong 100% of the time, sometimes putting their lives in more danger than if they had gone. During World War II, some received religious deferment from military duty, and were instead required to perform unpaid work domestically. Many were assigned to work in what were then known as insane asylums, and a great deal of activism for better mental health services followed the war. So I can’t take any measure of credit at all for being unusual in this respect.
You might find Branden Robinson and my discussion of “God: The Failed Hypothesis” interesting reading: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/332310262