lord, is it i?

​We hear much about the decline of Christianity and the growth of agnosticism and atheism in America.  Both trends can be found among the people formerly known as Mormons. I read the following today about these trends.
 
“Recent data shows us that while we’ve long known that institutional Christianity is in decline in the United States — especially among younger generations — the bottom is starting to fall out of evangelicalism, with people identifying with “no religion” surpassing evangelicals and Catholics for the first time earlier this year as the most common answer on a religious self-identification survey of Americans. Just this week, an article on FiveThirtyEight explained that more and more research is explicitly concluding that increasing numbers of Americans are “falling away from religion because they see it as so wrapped up with Republican politics” (Jim Wallis, “Jesus has Survived all of us Christians,”sojo.net).
 
I don’t know what role the obscene alliance “Christians” have formed with the Republican political party plays in American Christianity’s decline. No doubt, the reasons behind the decline are more complex than this. But I do find refreshing the willingness to look for possible reasons for the decline inside rather than outside the Church. 
 
Too often the explanation for the decline is simplistic and self-righteous, intent, one suspects, on absolving the Church of any responsibility for the decline or obligation to change, to reform/restore itself. But true disciples of Christ and institutions that claim to represent him should follow the example of Christ’s very first disciples.
 
On the final night of Jesus’ mortal ministry, he lamented,
 
“Verily I say unto you, One of you which eateth with me shall betray me” (Mark 14.18).
 
This lament was followed by multiple additional laments: this time those of Jesus’ most trusted disciples.
 
“And they began to be sorrowful, and to say unto him one by one, ‘Is it I?’ and another said, ‘Is it I?’” 
 
It is just such honest self-interrogation, I suggest, rather than dishonest self-righteous censorship, that the American Church must conduct if it is to remain relevant and worthy of trust when it claims to speak of and for God.
 
“Lord, is it I.”