Posted on 05/27/2016 6:12:41 AM PDT by marshmallow
The head of the Russian Orthodox Church received a delegation from the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople on May 24 and lamented the secularization of Europe and the United States.
“We are deeply worried to see what is going on in the Christian world,” said Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, who referred to the “ongoing de-Christianization of the European and American civilization” as “an apocalyptic scene: sin is affirmed by law.”
“As you know, we underwent a period of state atheism,” he said in reference to over seven decades of Soviet Communist rule. “However, the moral paradigm remained Christian in its major aspects. This is what saved us: our literature and fine arts were permeated with Christian ideas, hence the morality of our people remained Christian.”
Patriarch Kirill added that today the Russian Orthodox Church “has universities of her own, as well as over 40 seminaries, a thousand monasteries, Orthodox TV channels, journals, newspapers.”
His Holiness Patriarch Kirill meets with representatives of Patriarchate of Constantinople ((Moscow Patriarchate)
AXIOS!
The Christian faith is growing very fast in Africa.
Oh yeah, that'll work.
Some gibbering foreign n00b who was previously chewing on Oncle Mombata's
thighbone is going to show up and lecture me about the Christianity
my people have practiced for a thousand years and more.
Yeah, that'll work.
I am surprised, humblegunner. I didn’t know you self-identified as a Christian.
It’s nice to see you, humblegunner. I hadn’t noticed your posts recently.
Storms, floods, outages.. a new power pole.. just one danged thing after another!
Nope.
The Christian spirit is very strong in parts of Africa, probably because the harsher circumstances under which they live, while the Episcopal and Presbyterian Churches here have become apostate.
I know for a fact that the ‘noobs’ could give them a good talking to.
And only the Lord knows what is going on in Rome...
Not to intrude on an Anglican discussion, but since you mentioned Presbyterianism, take a look at the role of Korean Presbyterians who are doing much the same thing to Presbyterianism that African bishops are doing to Anglicanism.
Far too often, people look at the chaos in the American and European church and despair. There is simply no good reason for that. The rise of the "Third World" to prominence in Anglicanism is a story repeated in quite a few other denominational traditions, though you get more attention because of the way Anglicanism is structured and the role of the Lambeth Conference.
South Korea, with a population a bit less than twice the population of the state of Texas, has more Presbyterians — most of whom are in strongly conservative denominations — than every conservative and liberal Presbyterian and Reformed denomination combined in the United States, Canada, England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand, i.e., the historic centers of the English-speaking Reformed world. Furthermore, those membership stats are comparing apples to oranges since Korean churches tend to have high membership standards while too many of the liberal Presbyterian denominations have huge numbers of members in name only.
On a true apples-to-apples comparison, there are far more conservative Korean Presbyterians than the total membership of every confessional Presbyterian denomination in the world, not just the English-speaking world but also other historic centers of Calvinism such as the Netherlands, South Africa and Switzerland.
On top of that, Korean Presbyterianism is currently sending more missionaries overseas than the Southern Baptist Convention in the United States, and that's not even counting the Korean Presbyterian congregations and missionaries already in the United States who are members of conservative Presbyterian bodies like the PCA, OPC, and ARPC, or the Korean American Presbyterian Church or the Kosin Presbyterian Church's American sister-church. Even in the old well-established conservative Presbyterian seminaries in the United States, large and growing percentages of the seminary students are ethnic Koreans whose parents immigrated to the United States.
While their numbers are considerably smaller, similar things can be said about the mission work of the Korean Baptists and Korean Assemblies of God.
It doesn't take much to know what happens in about two generations when a national church is strongly committed to high standards at home and aggressive evangelism overseas.
There are reasons why many of the world's conservative evangelical denominations trace their roots to Britain or the United States during a period when both countries had a number of denominations which met both of those criteria.
(Side point: one of these days we're going to see a Republican presidential nominating contest actually make it to California, and whoever the social conservative candidate is that year will give his GOP-e rival a **REALLY** nasty surprise with turnout by Asian and Hispanic evangelicals, as well as traditional Catholic Hispanic voters. California is a blue state today, but I am not at all convinced that will continue long-term if immigrant Asians and Hispanics continue to grow in population. Church-going small businessmen do not make good Democrats once they figure out what the party actually stands for.)
I think demographics may fix our problems in America since liberalism destroys itself by literally killing its own children, but Europe's problems are much too far gone to be solved without massive conversions. If we end up in two generations with an African-born Archbishop of Canterbury trying to keep Britain from capitulating to Islam, and with lots of African and Asian evangelicals sending missionaries to the West, that would not be a bad result. God will raise up new people to follow Him if his covenant people prove unfaithful.
God is, after all, a King, and a King will sovereignly bring new people into His service while punishing those who claim to serve Him but actually serve Satan.
Koreans are serious about Christianity, too, and they bring it with them to the US. It is good to have them.
But the collapse of Christianity in the West is catastrophic. As de Tocqueville wrote, the US Constitution was written for a moral people, and will not work otherwise.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.