This is an important article for pastors and especially for those involved in evangelization in America. The article is a distillation of Ryan Burge’s just published book, The Nones: Who They Are and Where They Are Going (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2021). Both the article and book are the distillation of the Pastor Burge’s research and decades-long experience as a minister. In many ways, it was a disconcerting experience for him. He saw his congregation, as well as other Evangelical congregations, steadily decline in numbers. At the same time, the numbers of American who are religiously unaffiliated steadily increases.

Those who have no religious affiliations are now labeled as “Nones.” That is, when questioned as to which denomination they belong to thy respond by “None.” This category has existed for a long time, called Deists in colonial America. They may have been a majority of the American public in the years after independence and before the Second Great Awakening (1798-1730). I encountered many Nones while doing evangelization in a Hippy/New Age neighborhood of Atlanta 30 years ago, but they were not yet given that nomenclature.

Ryan P. Burge, The Nones: Who They Are and Where They Are Going (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2021).

The problem now, as Burge aptly points out, is that the percentage of Nones in the American population had increased dramatically in recent decades. In 1968, 5% of the population were Nones, but now they are over 25% and growing. At the same time, the percentage of Christians who are faithful church attenders is slowly declining. (As I pointed out in an earlier article, this is not as bad as it seems, as those who remain faithful as increasingly devote and more intensely and effectively prayerful.[1]) Burge also shows that the percentage of nominal Christians will practically disappear in coming decades.

Burge has learned the discipline of sociological investigation and with these skills and has identified three varieties of Nones: Those who do not believe in God at all, those who do not participate in any church (but may believe in God), and those who do not behave at all in any Christian manner (but again may believe in God). Interestingly, the hard-core atheists, who are non-attender and non-Christian behavior persons, are only 6% of the population. But as the author points out these are immensely influential in the media and industry and dedicate much of their energies in evangelizing their atheistic persuasion and life-styles. All of this makes for depressing reading. But Burge sees a silver lining in these dreadful statics. About 40% of the Nones still believe in God to some degree, and here is an evangelical opening. To quote him:

In my book I write that nearly 20 percent of people who identified as “nothing in particular” had changed their affiliation to Christian just four years later. And this “nothing in particular” category represents nearly 1 in 5 Americans. The harvest is plentiful!

Thus, at least some come back. I suspect much of that return is fueled by couples wishing their children to be raised in church and a decent Sunday School after they have tasted the sin-driven agnostic’s lifestyle. Sadly, as a non-Pentecostal/charismatic Christian Burge has only the standard Evangelical solutions to offer in order to bring back to church more of the Nones. These include things like listening to others well, outreach for the poor, etc. The last chapter of his book, The Nones, entitled “What we can change and what we cannot,” expresses his mix of hope and befuddlement at reversing the continues growth of the Nones.

But as Pentecostals and charismatics we can hold to a much greater hope. John Wimber, founder of the Vineyard denomination, showed the way forty years ago with his seminal books, Power Evangelism and Power Healing.[2] Specifically, Wimber encouraged evangelization the New Testament way, by demonstrating the power of God in healing prayer and effective prayer in the marketplace, office, or wherever a suitable situation presents itself.

On a practical level this is especially effective by manning a public prayer station right in the middle of a neighborhood where Nones are numerous, as in the places around a university. The public prayer station can simply be a sidewalk sign saying something like “Prayer Station” or “Free Prayer” and a place staffed by persons who know how to minister healing and deliverance prayer and prayers for other intentions. Many Pentecostal and charismatic churches already have trained prayer intercessors who normally minister in church – they can be put outdoors as “None catchers.” The Nones with health issues or other problems will give prayer a shot, and after, the ministers can invite the person to church, or suggest the person give their lives to Christ. On the details of this ministry see my article and book on this ministry.[3]

Reviewed by the Rev William De Arteaga

Notes

[1] “Real Christianity is Growing in the USA,” Pneuma Review (April 16, 2018).

[2] See especially John Wimber and Kevin Springer, Power Healing (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987).

[3] William De Arteaga, “How the Public Prayer Station Started,” Pentecostal Theology (October 24, 2019).

Gary M. Burge, Jesus and the Land: The New Testament Challenge to “Holy Land” Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic: 2010), 176 pages, ISBN 9780801038983.

Affirming the normal human practice of attaching oneself to land—of having a place to call home—Burge recognizes the practical and political challenges this desire poses for both Palestinians and Israelis. In agreement with D. Boyarin’s A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity (1994), Burge says that “If the Jewish people are the indigenous people of this land, then the Palestinians are indigenous nowhere. And if the Palestinians are indigenous there, then the Jewish people are indigenous nowhere” (x, xi).

He addresses how he believes Christians can view the “competing land claims” of the Palestinians and Israelis by isolating and offering key questions for an ongoing discussion. What is the relationship between land and theology in the New Testament? What did Jesus and the New Testament writers think about the territorial claims of ancient Israel? Did they retain the view of the sanctity of Jerusalem and its Temple? Were they rethinking the relationship between faith and locale? Or were they confident that a sacred place was still to be held for believers?

Burge, of course, answers these questions. For example, he believes “the early Christians possessed no territorial theology; and “Early Christian preaching [was] utterly uninterested in Jewish eschatology [that] devoted [itself] to the restoration of the land” (59). In his view, for instance, the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews would “never have been inclined to see the politics of Judaea as an appropriate venue for Christian interest” (107). This is because God’s focus is not the Land, but the world. The Land is but a small, though vital, part of that world.

While some readers may not feel comfortable with some of his amillennial leanings; nevertheless, his discussion pushes the conversation forward. Now we know the questions we should be asking.

Reviewed by Carolyn D. Baker

Publisher’s page: bakerpublishinggroup.com/books/jesus-and-the-land/322870

As the title indicates, this book is concerned with who owns the Holy Land. At the outset, Gary Burge explains how he struggles with rival biblical versus historical claims to the land by both Jews and Arabs, asking if it can really be justifiable to evict Arabs who have lived on the land for centuries on the basis of an ancient promise made in the book of Joshua. He also questions the eschatological zeal driving Christian Zionism which he believes ignores major ethical problems in Israel today. Hence, Burge is keen to provide an alternative view of the situation in the Middle East to Christians he believes are not being told the entire story. Yet despite championing Palestinian self-determination without Israeli interference, nonetheless he also believes Israel’s security and right to exist must be secured if there is to be lasting peace in the region. Moreover, while the Old Testament covenant has been abrogated, this “should not diminish the church’s respect for Judaism nor the rights of the Jewish people to live in the land of Israel” (xviii).

The book begins with a description and historical survey of the land, before moving on to theme of land ownership in the Old Testament. Burge demonstrates how the land is intimately connected to God’s covenant with Abraham and Israel. Yet control of the land was conditional upon Israel’s faithfulness: “Possession of the land is linked to covenant fidelity” (74). Israel does not actually own the land, rather she is a tenant entrusted with it only as long as she is in a covenant relationship with God. Thus, the promise of the land is indeed eternal, but only provided Israel remains faithful to God.

Burge then moves on to explore the theme of the land in the New Testament, noting how, by and large, it is absent there. Focusing on the abrogation of the Old Testament law, he argues that the promises made to Abraham are now spiritualised in and through Jesus, who is a new Moses:

Jesus himself becomes the locus of the holy space … Just as Moses was leading the people of Israel to their promised land, so too, Jesus leads God’s people. But now we learn that Jesus himself is in reality that which the land had offered only in form. To grasp after land is like grasping after bread—when all along we should discover that Jesus is ‘the bread of life’ (175).

Gary M. Burge is professor of New Testament at Wheaton College and Graduate School.

Thus, the book argues, the true descendants of Abraham (that is, Christians rather than simply Jews) will inherit the whole world, rather than simply the tiny strip of land which is modern day Israel. Yet Burge cannot quite bring himself to reject fully the notion that the Jews and Judaism retain some special significance in the divine plan, stating that unbelieving Judaism is still beloved of God and retains an ‘enduring role’. “For the sake of their history, for the sake of the promises made to their ancestors, God will retain a place for Jews in history” (187). But whether Burge is simply suggesting Jewish believers are grafted onto the Church (cf Rom 11:17ff), or else something more substantial, is unclear. The book concludes with a brief survey of Palestinian Christianity, a critique of Christian Zionism (“Many of us within the evangelical church are offended by Christian Zionism”, 246), and highlights Evangelical organisations that reject Christian Zionism.