How did Christianity lose its influence in the West, and what are Christians to do about it?

That was the question Gregory Thornbury, president of The King’s College in New York City, discussed March 4 during Charleston Southern University’s annual Staley Lecture series.

He delivered three lectures: “Eclipses of Christianity in the Past,” “The Recent Eclipse of Christianity in the United States,” and “Response of the Church and Christians in the Academy.”

According to Thornbury, the West (Europe and the United States) has seen the decline of the influence of Christianity as a result of secularism having become plausible in the West. In short, he said, it comes down to a dispute over who has the right to define what culture is.

Thornbury said culture is formed from the top down. “Everything flows downstream from philosophy and ideology,” he said. “To understand the mood of the world in which we live, we must understand the ideas that shaped who we are.”

The response of the church should be one of “re-enchantment,” he said. “We have to help people see a world in which there is real meaning and transcendence in this age of nothingness,” said Thornbury. “[We must] reexplain the contributions of the Christian community to the commonplace, the things that actually give life, enjoyment and meaning to contemporary society as we find it.”

“We must re-enchant the next generation and respond to people freaked out by God references,” he said.

Re-enchantment, he said, involves a topic-by-topic examination of the positives that Christianity has brought to society.

Visit http://www.charlestonsouthern.edu/christianleadership for archived podcasts of all three lectures.