“Picture the face of a clock, as if it represented the flow of history. At high noon let’s place a time that was very friendly to Christians, say the 1950s. At the bottom of the dial, at 6:00, let’s put a time when Christians were persecuted and killed for their faith, the days of the early martyrs…But, when you think about it, which was the bad time? Christians suffered a great deal during the early persecutions, but rose to great heights in their faith. Their self-sacrifice was a direct cause of the rise and spreading of the faith… On the other hand, the fifties saw a lot of perfunctory, bland, nominal Christianity. A placid kind of faith was taken for granted, and that was actually an impediment for people who wanted to live a more challenging faith. As the sociologists tell us, an organization that demands little is weak, while a high-demand organization is strong. And the fifties couldn’t have been such a perfect time to raise kids; look what happened when those same kids hit the sixties.”
(Frederica Matthewes-Green, ‘Bringing it Home’)