Every New Year's Eve people use the calendar change as an opportunity to reflect on their life and to consider their prospects. The upcoming change of decade and century, and even millennium, is giving society a common milestone to evaluate the past and to take stock of the future.
More Than Just "Christian Megatrends"
Tom Sine, author of the 1981 Mustard Seed Conspiracy, continues his observation of social, scientific, and spiritual trends in his recently released Wild Hope (Word Publishing, 1991, $12.99, paper). Sine issues a wake-up call to the Christian community, notifying us of the alarming technological changes society is in store for.
Sine surveys a number of topics—the environment, robotics and artificial intelligence, biological adaptation, changing economic power centers—charting both nearly realizable technologies and seemingly unimaginable innovations.
Idolatry in the form of technological, scientific, or economic progress is central to the future dangers. And while Sine notes the "captivity of the Christian mind," he often gives the activities of Christian institutions much credence as signs of hope. He calls for a renewed sense of Christian responsibility, so that the church becomes "captured by the Wild Hope of God's vision for the future."
Sine's primary contribution is his focus on the need to develop an understanding and a value structure in order to interpret developments, rather than a knee-jerk policy reaction to change. Too often Christians have been dismissed by experts due to their Luddite tendencies in response to technological advancement. This criticism cannot be leveled against Sine, as he constantly models an evaluative approach to "advances" with fearless willingness to make moral proclamation when necessary.
Wild Hope is written and arranged to be used for intensive reflection and discussion. Sine provides many subheads, giving readers a good sense of outline and plenty of breaks to consider his insights. And the questions at the end of each chapter further help the reader to develop her or his thinking about what the future portends.
The Christian message, Sine articulates, speaks to current and future realities. He is able to see a "new creation"one that is evangelical and tolerant—even as he identifies the dangers set out before us.
Likewise, Russell Chandler's Racing Toward 2001: The Forces Shaping America's Religious Future (Zondervan, 1992, $17.99, cloth) stares directly into the face of the future. Not dealing as directly with technotrends (and more so with demographic and social trends), Racing Toward 2001 is a bit more upbeat than Wild Hope. Instead Chandler, a religion writer for The Los Angeles Times, demonstrates how environmental devastation, job availability, and increasing racism must take up more of the church's agenda.
Such trends as the "greening of religion"—increased involvement of church people in environmental concerns—and "ecofaith"—increased use of sacred language by secular people—have the potential for profound impact on how the church views itself and its contributions.
Although not a book about church growth, Racing Toward 2001 focuses more narrowly on how changes will relate to church structure and polity. Chandler foresees decreased attachment to a particular church (the "cafeteria doctrine") and development of satellite churches organized around a central hub ("perimeter" churching). The competition of traditional churches, whether evangelical or mainline, with New Age and Next Age spiritualities—arising out of increased contact with other faiths and with technological advances—will be central to the church's future, according to Chandler.
Technotrouble
Whereas Sine and Chandler have offered more thorough surveys of the technological, social, and moral issues that will confront us in the future, Jacques Attali has filled in the picture with the most haunting and descriptive image: the "nomad."
The central thesis of Attali's Millennium: Winners and Losers in the Coming World Order (Times Books, 1991, $17, cloth) is that technology is making us all increasingly nomadic—the rich because of their participation in these technologies and the poor because of their alienation from them.
All become homeless, wandering the world without ties to place or institution, because technology allows it to be so. No longer connected to workplace or home, since with a telephone implanted in our ear and electronic mail that finds us wherever we are, we need not develop affinities with anyone. Neither nation nor neighborhood will have any real meaning.
Those who participate in this new world order will be "freed" of such boundaries. Those who are not part of this order become dispensable, especially since technology will take the place of menial work.
Attali argues that a major shift in the economic power center and form looms, which will result in "a long period of uncertainty and apparent regression." He searches history (or at least Western history) for other such periods of crisis, and finds that, in this era of money as a driving force (earlier forces were religion and militarism), violence has always accompanied these shifts. There is a cost to the freedom that technology provides.
As we are in the midst of the shift, Attali does not try to offer a guess whether Japan and its periphery or the new European community will arise as the new locus of power. There are arguments for each. He does wonder whether the United States will be hired as the military power for whoever ends up being the new economic power.
Attali's is probably the most shocking of these futuristic books. The technologies he points to make Orwell's vision of the future seem tame. And the accompanying economic analysis makes for a very frightening world order scenario.
My one complaint has to do with his seeming interest in bringing all the world's people into the consumptive society. (He thinks that the new centers of power may allow for all continents except Africa to become nations of consumers.) Only two-thirds of the way into the book does he address the environmental hazards associated with such consumption, and he never returns to the topic of consumption and its costs.
Millennium is a quicker read than John's Revelation, though no less bleak in some ways. Without much methodological or scientific data, it reads like a long editorial. Though this 130-page book is very important, plan to read it in several sittings.
Angst
I must admit that reading these books was difficult. I am left with a real sense of angst about the inevitability of a frightening future. And I feel angry at my sense of powerlessness in the face of evil systems and structures.
I am certain that people of faith must immerse themselves in the substance of these issues to help plot our future. More than ever it will require a unified community of people to say, "Enough."
Let's make a "resolution" on this eve of the New Millennium—that we'll stand together to face a future that will challenge us deeply. Stay tuned!
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