The author of more than twenty books including "The Call" and "the American Hour" said, "We meet at an extraordinary moment for church, country, Western Civilization and for our world. Will Islam modernize peacefully; which faith will replace Marxism in China, (the Communist Party is in power but the ideology is hollow), and will the West recover or sever its Christian roots?"

Guinness told his largely Anglican audience that included five Episcopal bishops that we have gone from a "solid community" to a "liquid community", with a shelf life that is not clear to anyone.

"We are living in a global era, the buzzword is globalization. As followers of Jesus we are the world's first global religion. The church is the most diverse society on planet earth and the Bible the most translated book in the world."

"While we should understand globalization, nobody fully claims to comprehend it all. Nobody pretends to control it all. It's running away with us, and it not just market capitalism; the heart of Globalization is communications. Globalization is proceeding at warp speed...we are becoming in a small way, one world."

Guinness said that what controlled Globalization is communication with the microchip and fiber cable being the third force which works regardless of place, time and Government.

"There are winners and losers. The world is universalizing and the winner is globalizing." Guinness said there were countervailing forces. "The losers in globalization are the oppressed, the poor and the victimized." He noted that the three features of our civilization are economic (free markets), political (free elections) and cultural (free consumer choices). "There is no equality. The forces of global capitalism are stretching politicians. It is a global market force."

Guinness said governments now have limited control and that market forces are outstripping government forces and provide huge challenges.

The Christian apologist said the Anglican crisis presents both challenges and opportunities for followers of Christ. "The Church has effectively lost three quarters of the West with only two countries in Europe - Ireland and Poland - practicing the Christian Faith.

"In the U.S. we have lost most of the leadership in our major institutions including education, business, politics, the entertainment world, with not an elite institution in which Christianity now has any influence."

Much faith as it is being practiced is privately engaging but publicly irrelevant, he said. "The Christian faith can only be found in one quadrant - the church."

Guinness noted three features of a globalized world. "There is an unprecedented sense of being on the move with the currency of our world being mobility and connectivity. We have reached the end of geography. We have not conquered time but compressed time and space. Boundaries don't work and old categories are rendered irrelevant."

Guinness said we no longer live in a traditional, 'solid' solid world, but a 'liquid' world. "Ties and bonds have eroded and the glue that once held us together has gone. Traditional Christian marriage 'till death do us part' has been replaced by serial monogamy, 'one man one woman till further notice.' We now have shacking up, semi-detached couples. We have broken the couple bubble with no ties, no tears. Covenants and bonds can be undone."

Guinness said the second feature of Globalization was "atomized individualism", where traditional families were disappearing with people becoming lonely atomized individuals.

The third feature of Globalization was the rise of modern fundamentalism. Guinness described them as "bottom level communities".

Guinness decried Fundamentalism saying he was not one, arguing that Fundamentalism was a modern reaction to the modern world. He pointed to Hindu nationalism, the heroes of terrorism in Muslim and Christian fundamentalism that feared change.

The social critic said there were three temptations among global elites. "The first is the loss of reflectiveness: Who can think? Secondly there was the loss of responsibility. More people are more anonymous and do not see the consequences of their decisions. Thirdly was the arise of new absentee landlordism.

"We as followers of Jesus are our brothers keepers. The loss of realism has resulted in giantism. The Book of Daniel reminds us that we are still finite, sinful people, with feet of clay.

Guinness said he saw three blind spots in secular Globalization. "For many, Globalization is the Good News buoyed by technology and science. But we as followers of Jesus Christ know that is not true. There are disclocations of modernity -industrial dislocation with exploding new cities and slums, but there are contradictions of Globalization where we see market capitalism with freedom and prosperity not sweeping the world. He said the third blind spot was human waste or wasted humans. "Millions have next to nothing, and we still have the evil of the death camps reminding us of our sinfulness."

"Globalization has created enormous consumer demand. We have sex tourism, pornography and pedo-criminality and violent unimaginably horrific sex and violence. The demand is largely Western and most of the demand is American," he said. "We are more addictive, more violent and we are exploring the outer edges of evil."

"It has taken us 400 years, but today 30 millions Africans are being trafficked, two to four million prostitutes and five million in bonded slavery. We are in the middle of gigantic human rights congress."

We must ask three cosmic questions. In what can we trust? Human beings don't have the trust to be trusted. Secondly is it all too late with AIDS and tsunamis, all happening at once, and what if God tires of the human race?

Guinness said American contemporary talk of freedom is disastrous. "We are losing it in America. We need a Christian view of freedom. Globalization has reinforced human evil. America is a broken covenant. From our modern education system to the consecration of Gene Robinson, it is all a mess." Guinness condemned what he called the Evangelical passion for relevance. Evangelicals need to be engaged in Globalization. There are Christian answers on all sorts of levels."

Looking at China, Guinness said that the party in power had no real answers. "Communism is hollow, and reformed Confucianism and reformed Buddhism do not hold the answers, only the Christian Faith, the majority faith, can take China forward."

Guinness said that when he was in China recently he found leaders who were fascinated by the Christian roots of the West for their future.

Guinness said the Church brings three things to the table. The first is that is a global diverse society. "The churches are the broadest distribution network on the earth today. Faith based organizations in consort with the church of Christ con provide for compassion in throughout the world. No civilization has been so successful. Christianity is the first global religion. Its faith speaks to elites and ordinary people together. The questions is; Is the faith true to its classical formulations or being streamlined and made unrecognizable? We need to remind people that science and technology grew out of a Christian matrix."

"Where the Church of Jesus Christ is faithful to the Great Commission, the church is global. Globalization has given us more opportunity and the greatest challenge since the apostles. The Good news is Jesus not Globalization. Secularists believe in Globalization but the Good News is still Jesus. Always do the Lord's work in the Lord's way, it will always have the Lord's blessing."

"Above all," said Guinness, "We need to think globally but act locally. And we can pray. When we deal with the challenges of the cosmos there is nothing bigger than God himself. Have no fear, have faith in God, have faith in God in all situations. Despite staggering challenges of globalization God can be trusted in all situations, we need have no fear. God wants us to trust Him not in Modernity or Globalization," he concluded.

END