Posted on 05/13/2015 7:04:58 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, responded to the new Pew Study survey documenting the decline of Christians and rise of religiously unaffiliated, by calling the "increasing strangeness" of Christianity "good news" for the church.
"Christianity isn't normal anymore. It never should have been. The increasing strangeness of Christianity might be bad news for America, but it's good news for the church. The major newspapers are telling us today that Christianity is dying, according to this new study, but what is clear from this study is exactly the opposite: while mainline traditions plummet, evangelical churches are remaining remarkably steady," Moore said in a statement.
He added that the report shows that there are more honest atheists in America today, and that they are rejecting what Moore called "almost-Christianity," or traditions that "jettison the historic teachings of the church as soon as they become unfashionable."
"The churches that are thriving are the vibrant, countercultural congregations that aren't afraid to not be seen as normal to the surrounding culture. This report actually leaves me hopeful. The Bible Belt may fall. So be it," he continued.
"Christianity emerged from a Roman Empire hostile to the core to the idea of a crucified and resurrected Messiah. We've been on the wrong side of history since Rome, and it was enough to turn the world upside down."
The Pew study, released on Tuesday, noted that the religiously unaffiliated group rose to 22.8 percent share of the population in 2014, eclipsing the number of Catholics in America, who fell to 20.8 percent.
Christians as a whole fell from 78.4 to 70 percent of the population between 2007 to 2014, with every major group experiencing a decline. Evangelical Protestants fell from 26.3 to 25.4 percent, and Mainline Protestants declined from 18.1 to 14.7 percent.
The number of self-described atheists among the unaffiliated nearly doubled, however, rising from 1.6 to 3.1 percent of the total population in the same time period.
In a posting titled "Is Christianity Dying?" on his blog "Moore to the Point," the ERLC president wrote that the Pew study shows that it is not so much that atheist are rising in numbers, but that more people are refusing to identify as Christians simply because of societal pressure.
"In the Bible Belt of, say, the 1940s, there were people who didn't, for example, divorce, even though they wanted out of their marriages. In many of these cases, the motive wasn't obedience to Jesus' command on marriage but instead because they knew that a divorce would marginalize them from their communities. In that sense, their 'traditional family values' were motivated by the same thing that motivated the religious leaders who rejected Jesus—fear of being 'put out of the synagogue,'" Moore offered.
"Secularization in America means that we have fewer incognito atheists. Those who don't believe can say so—and still find spouses, get jobs, volunteer with the PTA, and even run for office. This is good news because the kind of 'Christianity' that is a means to an end—even if that end is 'traditional family values'—is what J. Gresham Machen rightly called 'liberalism,' and it is an entirely different religion from the apostolic faith handed down by Jesus Christ."
He added that the type of Christianity that simply reflects culture "only lasts as long as it is useful to its host."
"That's because it's, at root, idolatry, and people turn from their idols when they stop sending rain," Moore reflected.
A post-Christian world suggests a world without hope. It will be interesting to see how the human condition responds to that.
Interesting read. But if Christians as a whole (Cw) = 70.0%, Evangelical Protestants (Pe) = 25.4%, Catholics (C) = 20.8% and Mainline Protestants (Pm) = 14.7%, then Cw - (C + Pe + Pm) = 9.1% unaccounted for. That’s a pretty big group, roughly 5/8th the size of Mainline Protestants.
If they are only counting church attendance then I call BS. I know people who have stopped going to their liberal church that embraced (or accepted by passivity) homosexuality, pedophilia, adultery and the likes. They did not leave Christ, they left apostate churches. Bible following Southern Baptist churches in our area have seen attendance hold steady and rise in some areas.
2 Thessalonians 2:3-4 happening right before our eyes.
The polls set out to prove a theory, and skew their samples to get a predetermined result. How else would they get the British, Israeli, and US congressional elections so wrong?
I don’t believe polls, surveys or studies anymore. I don’t believe this one, and I never was a Christian, so I don’t have a dog in this hunt.
Something about “those who do not acknowledge Me, neither will I acknowledge before the Father?”
If they are only counting church attendance then I call BS.
Christianity is not dying. It is being purified.
It will be interesting to see how the human condition responds to that.
That is how I see it as well.
This is assuming that Christianity is defined only by the three groups, the Evangelicals, the Roman Catholics, and the Protestants. There are others that do not fit easily into these categories, such as the Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter-Day Saints (which many do not, oddly enough, consider to be a “Christian” church), or the various Anabaptist memberships (Amish, Mennonites, Hudderites and others), and still others that are considered to be spin-offs of the Christian church, but without Christ (Deists, Theists), and just plain agnostics, who may acknowledge there COULD be a Divine Creator, but they just ain’t feeling it, man. And of course, little oddities like Jews for Jesus.
Then, of course, there are a number of believers and/or practitioners who just would not reveal to a stranger, or even some of their neighbors, that they actually DO believe and/or practice Christianity, considering the bad press and the general air of uncertainty that surrounds matters of religious preferences, and they get marked as “none”.
I'm not sure how one could count the spin-offs of the Christian church, but without Christ as Christians when they wouldn't even consider themselves as such. They might be counted with the Baha'i, Jews or Muslims who consider him to be a great prophet or teacher, something like I as a Christian would view Buddha or Confucius.
I think that you are on to something. The church we have been going to for the past couple of years ran off our minister who was a conservative Navy Chaplain for 30 years. People there have made fun of my wife and I for coming to church clean and dressed nicely. Before coming many don't bother to shower or shave and are wearing filthy clothes that stink.
We now have a very loud “band” instead of a choir. I have to put toilet paper in my ears because they play so loudly that it aggravates my tinnitus. The “worship service leader” wears a T-shirt and worn looking jeans... he wears his hair in an obnoxious Mohawk. I think that he is trying to look tough, but he just looks like an idiot to me.
Lately we have gotten some weird sermons that seem to have no actual message where the minister says that Jesus was ugly, sickly, dirty and dressed badly.
One of the biggest events of the year was their Superbowl Party which I guess is fairly common these days. To us it was just weird to come to church and find it decorated up with all of this football stuff.
When asked why these changes have been made we are told it is because they are trying to make the church more appealing to young people because they are the “future”. They think that young people don't like to be bothered with things like personal hygiene so we should all come to church looking like transients so we won't make them feel awkward... We are looking for a different church. The church left us not the other way around.
Yep... and its largely being purified by weeding out the social club people. The people who go to church instead of a country club because its cheaper....
I have seen that as well. Every youth minister feels the need to be tatted up and dress like a hipster. Luckily our church has the conservative service and the contemporary, but even that is not as bad as I have heard some churches have gotten.
We went to the later service one day and I will say that our pastor stood up in contemporary service and flat told the hipsters that they need to thank the older membership since they support the church (about 70% to 30%) and basically allow their worship service to exist. I gave an amen.
If you want to see what a Christian-less world would look like, just look at an officially atheist country, such as North Korea. All human compassion is gone, life is cheap, and the ruler acts like a demigod.
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