Image by ImágenesIAcristianas from Pixabay

The early Church made a profound impact on the culture, with its opponents going so far as to say it had “turned the world upside down” (Acts 17, ESV).  Its successes in the early centuries include pushing back against a divorce culture, largely eliminating concubinage and polygamy, establishing the principle of “indissoluble marriage,” and promoting the idea that both parties to a marriage should consent to it. 

Recent successes have been modest at best, and indeed the world seems to be having a greater impact on the Church than vice versa, at least in the West.  For example, divorce was once tabu in the Church but now has become much more common.  The extent of moral decay within the Church was driven home to me recently when I learned that a church I once frequented is now offering a course to couples affected by adultery.  It used to be that the Church just offered marital counseling and pre-marital counseling.  

Unchaste behavior in the Church is not limited to the aforementioned adultery but is now also much more common among single, professing Christians.  That and the growing acceptance of divorce prompted a colleague of mine to observe that there is now a great need for “pre-premarital” counseling.  Young people should be clear-eyed about what they will be facing before getting into a relationship.  There is nothing wrong with pre-marital counseling, but it dissuades relatively few from following through on their intended choice of a spouse.  And marital counseling, of course, is there to clean up an already existing mess. 

Unfortunately, the Church has become reluctant to explicitly push back on this moral decay—rarely do you hear a clarion call for chaste behavior, for example.  It’s as if the current state of moral affairs is assumed to be a given and renewal is thought to be unrealistic.  Such was not the attitude of the early Church.