The absolutely worst way to respond to the challenge of secularism is to adapt to secular standards in language, thought, and way of life. If members of a secularist society turn to religion at all, they do so because they are looking for something other than what the culture already provides. It is counterproductive to offer them religion in a secular mode that is carefully trimmed in order not to offend their secular sensibilities.
Secularism has so permeated Christian thinking in our time that it has foreshortened the gospel picture. Even many Christians are more absorbed in this world than the other.
Theology for Everyman, Moody, 1965, Chapter 8.
In distinct contrast to the widespread conservative fallacy of the eighties, the sharpest challenge of modernity is not secularism, but secularization. Secularism is a philosophy; secularization is a process. Whereas the philosophy is obviously hostile and touches only a few, the process is largely invisible and touches many. Being openly hostile, secularism rarely deceives Christians. Being much more subtle, secularization often deceives Christians before they are aware of it, including those in the church-growth movement. How else can one explain the comment of a Japanese businessman to a visiting Australian? “Whenever I meet a Buddhist leader, I meet a holy man. Whenever I meet a Christian leader, I meet a manager.”
Dining with the Devil: The Megachurch Movement Flirts with Modernity, Baker, 1993, p. 49.
Secularism is the process whereby God and religion are pushed to the margins of life and so make no significant contribution at all to the policies and values adopted by society. By and large, politics and education carry on as if God were not there.
Wisdom to Live By, Christian Focus Publications, 1998, p. 97. Used by Permission.
