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133 pages

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In one of the world's great ironies, the Christian faith contributed decisively to the rise of the modern world, but has been undermined decisively by the modern world it helped to create. The Christian faith has become its own gravedigger. In the 25 years since philosopher and social critic Os Guinness first published The Gravedigger Files, much has happened: the fall of the Soviet Union, the rise of the computer age, the reemergence of China and India, the rise of Islamic terrorism, and the worldwide revitalization and politicization of religion. The central mystery of Dr. Guinness's spy novel inspired by his affection for John le Carré thrillers remains unsolved: Can Christians regain the full integrity of faith in Christ while fully and properly engaged in the advanced modern world? This new edition of The Last Christian on Earth, which includes previously unpublished top-secret memos, is Dr. Guinness's parable about the future of the Christian church in the West. Written in the grand tradition of le Carré, Fleming, and Clancy, this thriller pays homage to the genre while transcending it--because the real-life ending has yet to be written!

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Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	18 février 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781441223890
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0490€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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the last christian on earth

© 2010 Os Guinness Illustration on page 22 by Nick Butterworth
Published by Baker Books a division of Baker Publishing Group P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287 www.bakerbooks.com
Baker Books edition published 2014
ISBN 978-1-4412-2389-0
Previously published by Regal Books
Formerly published as The Gravedigger File: Papers on the Subversion of the Modern Church (InterVarsity Press, 1983).
Ebook edition originally created 2011
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
All Scripture quotations are taken from the following:
NASB —Scripture taken from the New American Standard Bible , © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.
NEB— From The New English Bible. © The Delegates of Oxford University Press and The Syndics of the Cambridge University Press 1961, 1970, 1989. Reprinted by permission.
NIV —Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version ®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.
DOM and to CJ and his generation, who are the ones to make the critical difference on these issues
Contents
A UTHOR’S I NTRODUCTION TO THE N EW E DITION
P REFACE : How These Papers Came Into My Hands
M EMORANDUM 1: Operation Gravedigger
M EMORANDUM 2: The Sandman Effect
M EMORANDUM 3: The Cheshire-Cat Factor
M EMORANDUM 4: The Private-Zoo Factor
M EMORANDUM 5: The Smorgasbord Factor
M EMORANDUM 6: Creating Counterfeit Religion
M EMORANDUM 7: Damage to Enemy Institutions
M EMORANDUM 8: Damage to Enemy Ideas
M EMORANDUM 9: Fossils and Fanatics
M EMORANDUM 10: Trendies and Traitors
M EMORANDUM 11: The Last Christian in the Modern World
A FTERWORD : On Remembering the Third Fool and the Devil’s Mousetrap
A PPENDIX : An Evangelical Manifesto
R EFERENCES
Author’s Introduction to the New Edition
Some years ago, I had the privilege of addressing a forum of Chinese CEOs in the business school of one of China’s leading universities. As we were walking back to the conference after a magnificent dinner, the dean asked me the most searching question of the day.
“What am I missing?” he said. “We in China are fascinated by the Christian roots of the Western past, in order to see what we can learn for China’s future. But you in the West are cutting yourself off from your roots. What am I missing?”
The dean’s question highlights one of the most urgent questions facing Western Christians in the advanced modern global era. We are living in the global era. The global era is a product of the West, just as the West is largely a product of the Christian faith. And the Christian faith is the world’s first truly global faith. But what is wrong with the Church in the West if the Church is exploding in the global South and around the world but is increasingly faithless and failing in the West?
I was born in China, and the area where I grew up has witnessed the most explosive growth of the Christian Church in 2,000 years. I am an Anglican Evangelical, and a member of a church that is decadent or withering in many parts of the West but exploding in Africa and Asia. And not only that, but the courageous and faithful sisters and brothers in Africa and Asia who were led to faith by missionaries from the West are in their turn riding to the rescue of the Western Church that has fallen captive to the most heretical and apostate forms of faith in 2,000 years of Christian history.
The Episcopal Church in the U.S. is an extreme case, but what has gone wrong elsewhere in the West? How are we to make sense of the spiritually barren situation in Western Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand? Or of the fact that in the United States, where Evangelicals, the people of the good news, are still strong numerically, they have become one of the shallowest, noisiest and most corrupt parts of the Christian Church, bringing down an unprecedented avalanche of disdain on their heads—almost none of which has anything to do with Jesus?
For five decades now I have been a follower of Jesus and an Evangelical, one who has always sought to define myself, my faith and my life according to the good news Jesus announced and demonstrated. Not once has God ever let me down, and the central and overwhelming response of my life is joy, gratitude and trust for the greatness and goodness of God. But, a constant lesser theme on my journey has been sorrow over the weakness and follies of the Church in the West, both in Europe, where I have spent many years, and in America, where I live now.
The core challenge to the Western Church can be expressed in three words: “integrity,” “credibility” and “civility,” though the greatest of these is integrity. In relation to Jesus Christ our Lord, we must regain the integrity of our faith; in relation to educated outsiders, we must regain the credibility of our faith; and in relation to people of other faiths, we must regain the civility of our faith. This is the sum of our challenge to be utterly faithful to our Lord while at the same time utterly and properly engaged in life in this astonishing modern world.
The Search for the Deepest Answer
There are Christian books by the hundreds that tell us we have problems in the Church and that appeal to the disillusioned and stir the angry. But there are few that say why. What has caused the problems, or what Martin Luther would have called the new “Babylonian captivity,” of the Western Church? There are many answers to this question and many of them are obviously inadequate or wrong. We simply cannot trace all of the problems back to theological liberalism or secular humanism or godless education or sexual permissiveness or coarse television or corrupt politicians or outmoded pastors, or whoever and whatever is purported to be the villain of the day. There has to be a deeper, more comprehensive and more damaging reason than any of these answers.
I believe there is such an answer. What Luther called “Babylonian Captivity” is a falling for the spirit, style and system of the age, which is also a worldliness and an unfaithfulness that both saps the strength of the Church and brings it under the judgment of God. How have we done that? Ironically, we in the Western Christian Church have been undermined by the very modern world that the Christian faith was so instrumental in helping to create.
This notion has mostly been studied in the social sciences, which is why Evangelicals have mostly missed it until recently. The notion might be called the “gravedigger thesis,” and it can be put simply: The Christian faith contributed decisively to the rise of the modern world, but it has been undermined decisively by the modern world it helped to create. The Christian faith has become its own gravedigger.
When I began to understand the significance of this analysis many decades ago, it threw such light on the weaknesses and follies of the Church today that I wanted to share it with fellow Christians. But much of the analysis was buried in academic books and papers that were impenetrable to ordinary readers. Hence The Gravedigger File , the first edition of this book that I wrote in 1983. It was a grand summary and simplification of much that has been written in the social sciences on the state of modern religion, but with a crucial difference: I translated it all into a form that looks at the issues from the perspective of faith and discipleship, rather than sociology.
I am not a subscriber to apocalyptic alarmism or to conspiracy theories. On the contrary, I adhere strongly to the most repeated assertion of the entire Bible: “Have faith in God. Have no fear.” But I used the literary device of writing memoranda from one spy to another spy on how to undermine the Church for a simple reason. I did so deliberately, in order to challenge us as Christians to wrench ourselves out of our shortsightedness, so that we can see things from an outside point of view. Worldliness is always a spiritual myopia. It falls for the spirit and system of the age and fails to correct itself through the correcting lenses of the perspective of the global (the Church in other continents), the historical (the Church in other centuries), and above all, the eternal (the Word of God across all places and times).
Over the years, many readers have asked whether my model was C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters , and wondered who is “the old Fool” mentioned in the story . I owe a great deal to the famous Oxford don, including his decisive nudge toward my coming to faith in the first place. But my inspiration here was not Lewis but John le Carré and his brilliant depictions of the grey world of intelligence. As for the “old Fool,” he is Malcolm Muggeridge, who was alive and well when I first wrote the book, and a dear friend. His utterly hilarious, but deadly serious, brand of fool making has long been an inspiration to my lifelong passion for Christian persuasion. He is now in heaven, but he read the book when it first came out and his kind commendation has always meant the world to me.
Timelier than Ever
Twenty-five years later, some may like to evoke associations with other and newer types of secret agents, but they are always only devices. The central challenge, however, remains. Since The Gravedigger File was first published in 1983, the world has changed considerably—including such dramatic events as the fall of the Soviet Union, the rise of the computer age, the re-emergence of China and India, the rise of Islamic terrorism, and th