Posted on 06/05/2006 12:39:01 PM PDT by MplsSteve
If God has little respect for wealth how do churches justify passing around a collection plate? Also, Christianity is all about social climbing since they believe they are climbing to heaven to sit by God if they live a good Christian life. Furthermore, seeking "power" is central to Christianity. The "power of prayer" is a key Christian concept.
Wonder why man thinks his little views of the world are more true than what God has said for man to do?
I don't think many people think their views of the world are more true that what God has said, I just think that there is a lot of understandable disagreement about what God has communicated. The fact that God has spoken to earthly man so little (if at all) strongly suggests to me that He wants to remain a mystery to people on earth. Churches seem to me to be acting in direct contradiction to God's intentions by pretending to know what He wants us to do. By telling people how to conduct their lives based on such flimsy evidence of God's intentions, churches have caused a lot of problems for mankind.
I'm sure that there are churches who are doing better than others, but you can't deny that church going, especially among young people in America, is at an alltime low.
You could say this if all churches and denominations had falling membership, but this is clearly not the case. There are a number of churches, especially Catholic and Baptist, who are growing. Some churches see their memberships even doubling year by year. Given your stated hypothesis, how then do you account for these growing churches?
Read the whole article. The NATIONAL leader is calling for the impeachment of George Bush, declared the war on terror to be terroristic, and wants the Defense budget cut by 80%. I'd say the National level is even farther left than Minnesota.
Church membership statistics are very difficult to come by, but even accepting your assertions as true, here is a well researched article that suggests that the Catholic church has has expanded its membership by Protestantizing their church. Also, churchgoing is easier for Catholics because they have so many choices on which Mass(es) to attend each week. They've probably also been helped by having had a very personable Pope (John Paul II) recently and by requiring fiancés and fiancées to join the church in order to be married in it. The aging of the American population and the influx of Latinos has probably also swelled their numbers relative to other churches.
I would attribute an increase in Baptist membership to rapid population growth in the South -- where church membership is still a virtual social necessity.
The Methodist church had a fairly uninspiring minister. Nothing really politically left or right - minister was probably slightly left of center, but tolerable. But spoke with a lisp (but wasn't gay, has four kids). I didn't really mind it, but wasn't gung-ho about it either. One funny thing is that for the children's sermon, they decided, week after week, to have this prop for the kids for them to put their problems and then they could pray to Jesus or something. The prop was called "the big hairy box" and they kept talking about the big hairy box, which was really sort of awkward...
We tried the PCUSA church in New Canaan, CT, one of the wealthiest towns in the country. Absolutely fanatically left-wing preacher. Progressive, Spong, nuclear freeze, progressive, no war, progressive, help the poor, help the environment, green, progressive. Did I mention they were progressive? We progressed out of there.
Went to a PCUSA church in South Salem, NY. About 10 people showed up on any given Sunday, in this rather large old church. Clearly it had seen better days. Fairly liberal sermon by some woman pastor.
ennui bump
That's all that they left us with.
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