In a couple of weeks I will look at ways for Theology of mission to address the growing atheist population, especially in the western World. There are various ways to look at this, and here I will throw out few random thoughts on the issue.
I will start with Bosch’s claim that:
The first position, that of atheism (“no religion is true” or “all religions are equally untrue”) can be ignored for our purpose since it is not a view entertained by any branch of the Christian theology of religions (478).
When I read this, I became very disappointed for various reasons. First of all I think that the view of atheists is in many ways similar to the exclusivist view of Barth, which Bosch actually quotes later on the same page.
Religion as a human fabrication (478-479).
I think in many ways that Barth’s view is closer to that of the atheists than the self proclaimed know-it-all exclusivist view of the fundamentalist movement or other pre-modern Christian thoughts.
According to an interview with Greg Bernstein in Speaking of Faith-first person (1/26/09), the atheist/humanist/agnostic movement is slowly moving from its focus from its reaction to the evil of religion, to a more proactive stance based on the value of human beings.
It might be said that we have a separation of deeds and creeds, and while sometimes it seems that the religion is moving towards the creeds, the atheist movement is moving toward the deeds. It is worth noting that the single largest community on kiva.org, an organization giving out microloans, mostly in third world countries is an Atheist/Agnostics group.
It is also important for the church to understand that the atheist movement is usually not reacting to our attempts to make the World a better place, but their reaction is against our attempts to make the world in our likeness. Their language is not always proper, at least in our minds, but can we see through that and hear the real problems.
In many discussions with atheist I hear the mainline church people talk about the need for discussion and collaboration. However, discussions and collaboration are often the tools the majority uses to keep the status quo. There is nothing to discuss about Capital Punishment, it is inhumane and evil. When the church thinks that compromise is needed for its behavior it is most likely on the wrong track, trying to postpone the wrong doings.
Our way of using language are also interesting. In Iceland we tend to attack “trú”-leysinga with the claim that their ultimate concern is their “trú” and therefore no one is “trú”-leysingi. Such use of language play is of course not helpful, not any more than the claim that all are christians, just not everyone goes to church. The usage of unchurched instead of non-christian has its place, I recognize that, but it can lead to many dangers.
When addressing the atheist/agnostic/humanist movement, we would do us a favor acknowledging all the people in the movement that have been de-churched or de-Christianized by the religious institutions we belong to.