Does the future have a Church?

There Shall Always Be the Church

There shall always be the Church and the World
And the heart of Man
Shivering and fluttering between them, choosing and chosen,
Valiant, ignoble, dark and full of light
Swinging between Hell Gate and Heaven Gate.
And the Gates of Hell shall not prevail.
(T S Eliot)

So did Eliot anticipate the demise of the Church in Western society? The prescience of the poet a sharper discernment than the statistical trends of the sociologist, or the adjustments and accommodations of uncertain theologians? The ambiguity that lies at the heart of an institution that is at the same time a community that dares to claim allegiance to Jesus, is captured in the ‘fluttering’ between world and church, and the ‘swinging’ between Hell and Heaven. But the final prevailing word belongs to Heaven – the Body of Christ crucified, risen and ascended is the spiritual reality that lies behind a Church besieged by uncertainty, under pressure to justify itself by relevance and marketability to a post-modern consumerist culture.
‘And the Gates of Hell shall not prevail’ – is that because the Church will adapt to cultural demands to survive, or resist them as witness to a Kingdom not of this world? What is it that will ensure ‘there shall always be a church’ over and against the world?