What do we do when we're no longer the big dogs?
When we're losing the culture wars?
When church attendance is falling?
When people no longer believe in God?
What do we do when we're no longer the triumphant, dominant paradigm in the world - Christian values, a churched public, a Christian humanist society?
It's a question facing Christians in the west as 'human rights' become less anchored in the imago dei and more anchored in 'this is just the way that it should be'. Which is a problem all its own, but it's not going away. The Christians of the last 500 years built a fairer world, acknowledging not only spiritual grace and faith in the resurrection, but also the grace of God from which derives both 'this world' justice and mercy (instead of confining it to the next) and fought to end slavery, fought to give suffrage, fought to make things fairer for everyone, even if they couldn't make all men (and women) equal.
And yes, they failed along the way. Some of them pretty spectacularly. For those failures, we repent and ask forgiveness, we try to make amends, and where we can't, we press on, resolving to do better.
There's a big focus on 'winning' these days - well, in the last thirty years, actually. It's not enough to be quietly the people of God, beavering away. No, we must be CONQUERERS. We must subdue the earth and everything in it! It is our DESTINY to be the rulers of the Earth!
It kind of ties into that post I made a while back about 'good Christian governance' and what we think of as a 'good Christian leader in a secular world'.
