George Lindbeck’s willing to say it:

What the good God is doing to the church, it seems to me, is destroying us bit by bit. And I think that God insists God wants us to be united. And destroying each denomination’s identity is precisely the way in which eventually we’ll have to be united.

from Postliberal Theology and the Church Catholic (Baker Academic, 2012), 118.

At least three arguable claims here, it seems to me.

1. the church is being destroyed
2. by God
3. on account of church division

The first claim would be the easiest to develop given the growing literature on the current decline of the contemporary Western church. For instance, HERE.

The third claim is the least interesting to me. Or maybe I should say, the sort of sociological analyses advancing the first claim seem to point the finger elsewhere, or at least offer a more multifactor explanation. I certainly have my share of ecumenical sympathies, but I’m doubtful church division can bear this weight alone.

The second claim, though, that God is behind the church’s decline, nonetheless remains a genuinely theological proposal in what’s too often merely a sociological conversation. Is our current trajectory (what would you call the opposite of a Great Awakening?) just a historical trend that ebbs and flows like any other tide, and therefore a big nothing burger, even if temporarily disappointing, or is it an act of God? Is God telling us something? Judging us? 

As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” Ro 8.36

But if that’s the case, to what new life may we hope to be raised? Lord, into your hands I commit my spirit.