In last week’s Times there was a fascinating story:
“The Lord’s Prayer has narrowly topped a poll for the most recognisable words in Britain, above the national anthem. It was a closely fought contest but the Lord’s Prayer, sometimes known as the ‘Our Father’, came narrowly ahead of Star Wars as the source of the most widely recognised quotations.”
So we now know that “Give us our daily bread,” is better known in British society that the immortal lines from Star Wars “May the Force be with you!”
This is what the homiletician Fred Craddock called “the nod of recognition.”
In the middle of the 20th Century preachers could assume that there would be a repository of biblical understanding. When preachers spoke about basic biblical ideas the congregation responded with a “nod of recognition.”
It was this repository that was exposited to great effect by the evangelist Billy Graham in his crusades during the late 1940’s and 1950’s. A generation had been given the raw material of Christian knowledge and Graham helped people to see that hearers needed to do something about it by trusting Christ.
When I was growing up in the 1960’s I encountered the raw material of Christianity through school assemblies and RE taught by an evangelical Christian. It meant that when I heard the gospel for the first time I had a database of knowledge that joined the dots of what I was hearing.
My experience as a preacher from the 1980’s onwards was that this repository of biblical understanding and knowledge of its language was becoming rapidly depleted. At times it seemed as if when preachers spoke in scriptural terms they were speaking in a foreign language.
Preachers, myself included, had to learn the skills that are used by TEFL teachers. Starting to teach English to those for whom it is a second language means starting from scratch.
At times this seemed like, in the words of the group REM, “pushing an elephant up the stairs!”
Yet care taken to speak in terms and categories that our contempories understand did begin to bear fruit.
As we move through the third decade of the 21st Century perhaps there is something of a turning of the tide. In the words of the Bible Society, there appears to be a “quiet revival” among Generation Z. The indications are that there is a greater openness toward Christianity among this group, in contrast to Generation X and Millennials.
So why has the nod of recognition returned?
There is a growing interest in what is ancient, vintage, mature, and tried and tested.
Perhaps it is one of those sovereign moments in history where the God who has put eternity in our hearts has created a fresh openess to explore eternity and what it has to do with time.
An interesting example of this can be found in the intriguing book by Lamorna Ash Don’t Forget we are Here Forever: A New Generation’s Search for Religion. Whatever has caused this new curiosity it is a time for preachers to respond wisely and sensitively to those who might turn up at church to have a look.
Photo by Daniel K Cheung on Unsplash