Failed Church: Restoring a Vision of Ecclesial Victory

Covid lockdowns, the George Floyd killing and subsequent riots, Black Lives Matter, cancel culture, Critical Race Theory, the #MeToo Movement, the pervasiveness of gender dysphoria — these and other recent spectacles have exploded on the social scene. They have been such an unremitting part of our social environment over the past 2 to 5 years that they have insinuated themselves into our social currency, and it is difficult to objectively assess the state of recent culture while ignoring them.The church has not eluded their impact. In some cases — the lockdown orders for all “nonessential” services come to mind first — they have drastically shaped the very life of the church. Black Lives Matter, Critical Race Theory, and the #MeToo Movement have almost equally stamped themselves on a wide swath of Western Christianity, including conservative Christianity.Church 2022 looks significantly different from its 2015 iteration, though even then signs of impending infection were not absent.This