Post-Christian Society?

I've just been listening to a podcast from Christianity Today magazine about Christianity in a Post-Christian society. Which you can also view - here. The mics are up at the start so you can hear the panel chatting while the intro is going on, which is quite funny.

I'm about half an hour into listening and they're now talking about what I might have started with had my overblown, poorly-conceived opinion been sought. The question is this: Is this really a post-Christian society? In one sense, it is since comparatively few are interested in Jesus Christ specifically. But here's what I find interesting. We live in a society that is passionate about social justice, helping the poor and feeding the hungry. Our society takes as a given that the sick must be looked after and the elderly cared for.

The way it goes about those things is, naturally, questionable at times. I would argue that the 20th Century nationalisation of those intentions - rather than leaving them to churches, volunteers and philanthropy - is a grave mistake. The churches were undoubtedly complicit in this as they stopped preached Christ, but Christianity, moralism and retreated into Evangelical ghettos, only venturing out to win intellectual arguments. We are, arguably, still in that position today.

But the intentions of our society, and the demands that it makes of its government, and the demands it wants the government to make of those people, are undoubtedly very similar to those of Jesus Christ. They are Christ-informed. I'm not sure I've used Rowan Williams' phrase 'Christ-haunted'. But the bedrock of values in Britain remain undoubtedly, in some way, Christian.

So we're still a Christian society. Well yes and no. But it's more that we've become estranged from Christ - rather than the aims of Christianity. Clearly Christianity isn't much use to anyone. We need Christ, not Christianity. We need Church - Christ's body - not Christianity.

It's almost as if we've forgotten that in Jesus is the ultimate God-Man who wants what we wants - and has begun the work of social regeneration to bring about the society that we want. And this work is going to be completed and all that is evil and unjust will be destroyed - who wouldn't want that? Surely it's the job of the Church to not only live in Christ-centred communities, but to speak of the God-man himself.