Post Christian

[Daniel]

http://www.newsweek.com/id/192583

A very interesting article, with a study showing that the number of people who identify as Christian has decreased by 10 points in the last decade.

The United States of America may be entering - from the view of self-identified Christians - a post Christian age.

[Eugene]

If Mohler wants to make Christianity more palatable to Americans, I suggest that he disavow his beloved Calvinism. It is really incompatible with evangelizing the nation, and it is contrary to what most people know instinctively.

Then he could ask himself if the SBC has preached anything in the past 20 years since the fundamentalist takeover that is truly helpful to people whose lives are more complex than the average middle class, married heterosexuals in the pews.

(Speaking as someone who sat in those pews for decades, I can say that I already know the answer to that one.)

Finally, he could ponder the damage the evangelical church has done to itself by dabbling in politics.

Conservative evangelicals are insecure. Despite their having held sway over the government for 3 of the past 4 administrations, they ALWAYS talk about how godless America has become and how they're persecuted, etc., etc., etc. If America isn't to their liking, they've been pulling most of the strings. I guess they bungled it.

[Rick336]

I think the evangelical right and its campaign of intolerance has turned off a lot of people. Hate is very unloving.

But I think the decline in Christianity is also because more people are beginning to ask questions. And for many, the old reply, "You just got to have faith," is no longer working.

Unless the church can come up with better answers, the exodus from Christianity will continue.

Rick

[BenL]

I can't help wonder if the percentage of truly committed Christians has changed all that much. How many people in the "golden age" of the 1950s really believed in the deep truths of Christianity, and how many were in the pews on a Sunday morning because they were expected to be there?

Expectations began to change radically in the 1960s, and for the better, I believe. I'm not at all surprised that fewer people are self-identifying as Christian. And I'm thinking of a much broader definition of Christian than either fundamentalism or evengelicalism does.

I believe that with very few exceptions the people who come to my church on a Sunday morning want to be there and find something for their hearts and souls. I like being with that group of people better than I would if the church were jammed with people who couldn't wait to get out of there.

[antiochian]

This is hardly surprising. People are sick of the crap. For every good, decent, tolerant Christian, there are 50 nuts on an ego trip who are convinced everyone has to believe exactly what they do and sign on to their agenda for the world's christianization, and that includes putting those God-profaning homosexicles in their place.

[Eugene]

the old reply, "You just got to have faith," is no longer working

It works for me just as well as it always did. When I was a conservative Southern Baptist, I was convinced that if I ever "gave into" my "homosexual tendencies", I would become an unbelieving reprobate.

But I have found that there is just as much evidence that God takes care of me as there was before. I've never had difficulty seeing and believing that God works in my life. But as a disclaimer, I must admit that even as a moderate, gay Christian, I still believe there are choices that would make me a reprobate. Accepting my homosexuality wasn't such a choice.

Unless the church can come up with better answers, the exodus from Christianity will continue.

The Church has two thousand years worth of history and theological development. The answers don't need to be invented. The shortcomings of 20th century American fundamentalism are no reflection on the wealth that exists in the Church.

[Daniel]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...es-defeat.html

US religious Right concedes defeat



By Alex Spillius in Washington
Last Updated: 4:18PM BST 10 Apr 2009

US religious Right concedes defeat

Leading evangelicals have admitted that their association with George W. Bush has not only hurt the cause of social conservatives but contributed to the failure of the key objectives of their 30-year struggle.

James Dobson, 72, who resigned recently as head of Focus on the Family - one of the largest Christian groups in the country - and once denounced the Harry Potter books as witchcraft, acknowledged the dramatic reverse for the religious Right in a farewell speech to staff.

“We tried to defend the unborn child, the dignity of the family, but it was a holding action,” he said.

“We are awash in evil and the battle is still to be waged. We are right now in the most discouraging period of that long conflict. Humanly speaking, we can say we have lost all those battles.”

Despite changing the political agenda for a generation, and helping push the Republicans to the Right, evangelicals have won only minor victories in limiting the availability of abortion. Meanwhile the number of states permitting civil partnerships between homosexuals is rising, and the campaign to restore prayer to schools after 40 years - a decision that helped create the Moral Majority - has got nowhere.

Though the struggle will go on, the confession of Mr Dobson, who started his ministry from scratch in 1977, came amid growing concern that church attendance in the United States is heading the way of Britain, where no more than ten per cent worship every week.

Unease is rising that a nation founded - in the view of evangelicals - purely as a Christian country will soon, like northern Europe, become “post-Christian”.

Recent surveys have suggested that the American religious landscape has shifted significantly. A study by Trinity College in Connecticut found that 11 per cent fewer Americans identify themselves as Christian than 20 years ago. Those stating no religious affiliation or declaring themselves agnostic has risen from 8.2 per cent in 1990 to 15 per cent in 2008.

Despite a common distaste among evangelicals for the new Democratic president, who is regarded as at best a die-hard, pro-abortion liberal and at worst a Marxist, a serious rift is emerging among social conservatives in the wake of his election victory.

A growing legion of disenchanted grassroots believers does not blame liberal opponents for the decline in faith or the failures of the religious Right. Rather, they hold responsible Republicans - particularly Mr Bush - and groups like Focus on the Family that have worked with the party, for courting Christian voters only to betray promises of pursuing the conservative agenda once in office.

“Conservatives became so obsessed with the political process we have forgotten the gospel,” said Steve Deace, an evangelical radio talk show host in Iowa who broadcast a recording of Mr Dobson’s address, which he said had appeared on Focus on the Family’s website before disappearing.

Mr Deace added: “All that time spent trying to sit at the top table is not time well spent. Republicans say one thing and do another.”

In the southern Bible belt, many like the Rev Joe Morecraft, head of a small Presbyterian church near Atlanta, judge that the Christian movement failed not because its views were unpalatable for moderates and liberals, but because “it was not Christian enough”.

A deserter from the Republican Party, he said Christians had been corrupted by politics and needed to return to the basics of local social work and preaching the gospel, rather than devoting their “energies to getting a few people elected”.

He is not alone in questioning how evangelical leaders such as Mr Dobson could spend a career campaigning against abortion and then eventually support a candidate like Senator John McCain, who has dubious “pro-life” credentials.

Ray Moore, president of Exodus Mandate, a South Carolina-based group which organises home-schooling for Christian children, said: “Political involvement by Christians is not wrong, but that’s all the big groups did for 25 years. They were more concerned with fund-raising and political power than they were with our children’s welfare.”

“It’s a failed movement,” he said. “We will end up like England, where the church has utterly lost its way.”

Michael Spencer, a writer who lives in a Christian community in Kentucky, said the religious Right had suffered from its identification with Mr Bush, the most unpopular president in living memory, and the extremist rhetoric of some on the religious Right.

One of the more notorious outbursts was the Rev John Hagee’s assertion that the deadly Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was God’s judgment on New Orleans for hosting a gay parade.

In an online article in the Christian Science Monitor that has became a touchstone for disaffected conservatives, Mr Spencer forecast a major collapse in evangelical Christianity within ten years.

“Evangelicals have identified their movement with the culture war and political conservatism. This will prove to be a very costly mistake,” he wrote.