Seven Days in God’s Army

CBC had an interesting segment last night. Mark Kelley has been developing a series of reports based on the concept of an embedded journalist. He spends seven days in a particular context.

Last night, his context was seven days in God’s Army.

He went to the U.S. Bible Belt to find out what is happening in evangelical Christianity. No need to look in Canada as the evangelical church here is basically a dead movement. Evangelical Christians in the U.S. have similar fears that in the next twenty years or so less their numbers will fall dramatically to less than 6 percent of Americans.

Mark provided an outsider’s view of this insular and often unusual world of evangelical Christianity. He initially was scared of the movement. However, after a mere seven days, he concluded that he was not scared, it was the evangelical Christians who were scared. Scared to become irrelevant, scared to see their movement die.

He repeatedly asked the folks he met what he himself needed to know about Christianity. As he put it: I am just an ordinary guy. What do I need to know?

And for whatever reason, these folks did not answer his question.