Our Catholic church in Miami overflows on Sundays and is always very active.
Hollywood and the public school system is wining the moral battle for our young people.
“Merely having an open mind is nothing; the object of opening a mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.”
G.K. Chesterton
Baptist ping
What does the writer mean by affiliation? I know Christians who are no longer members of a church because of that church's position on homosexuality.
I did not read the entire CBS report, but it is possible to not be a member of a denomination and still believe in the Lord, Bible etc.
I would like to know how many have left “the church” but not Christ?
If true, America will die along with it.
Those of us who believe knew it was coming....just seems to be happening at light speed.
bmflr
Does this include declining Zer0 worship?
If one studies human deities over the ages one would see a transition, evolution as it were, from many gods (polytheism) to one g(G)od (monotheism). It is not surprising that nonotheism would be the next step. As an agnostic I still have strong feelings on the subject, probably from my religious upbringing (including many years as an altar boy when the Mass was still said in Latin). After assembling all of the evidence, I still don’t know...but I’ll keep looking. I promise to never burden this, a conservative political site, with my religious angst.
Maybe because our public schools teach that evolution is their GOD; and there is no other. (A fool has said in his heart, there is no God...
Don’t buy it. Since I’ve been seeing this message consistently in the MSM, I doubt it. Pew works for the FEDS. They lie, wishfull thinking.
A discussion I had with a teenager a couple of years ago illustrated this mindset well. After he espoused some relativistic sentiments, I pointed out that if everything is relative, he couldn’t rightly say that “racism” or “sexism” was wrong. He actually agreed, saying (I’m paraphrasing), “It sometimes scares me that there’s no Truth, and sometimes I wish there was, but that’s just the way it is.” He ended the conversation shortly thereafter, before I could marshal further arguments. And the real tragedy is that this wasn’t done out of anger — but ennui. But how culpable was he for his indifference? He had been taught that there are no treasures to be found, no answers — only preferences. Thus, searching for them made no more sense than laboring long and hard to discover whether chocolate, vanilla, or strawberry is the “best” flavor. A quick taste tells you all you need to know because it’s whatever works for you, man. So from his relativistic perspective, his intellectual incuriosity was entirely logical.
And unless we reverse this cultural decline, tomorrow is something we may not want to see.
Tough times are the only thing that will get us to turn to God.
We were in church every time the door was open and sometimes when it was not.
Twice on Sunday for a minimum of 3 hours each. Tuesday for an hour. Wednesday for 2 hours. Thursday for 2 hours. Every week.
Then, there were the endless potluck dinners and "special" events.
The only thing that saved my sanity was that the church had a library. I read all of the Hardy Boys, all of the Nancy Drew series. All of everything I could get my hands on to avoid listening to the drivel emanating from the crowd and the pulpit.
They did make a mistake in that library, which was to put works by Isaac Asimov in there; I think because he was a biblical scholar. However, he wrote a number of other things and those led me to be even more impatient with the drill.
I've never gone back, except for the occasional wedding or funeral, and never intend to do so again.
Mainline denominations are losing people at rapid rate because of:
1 not teaching and preaching Scripture as was handed down by generations past.
2, are adopting worldly ways
3. are accepting and promoting liberal ways especially the homosexual agenda.
4. have been making those with conservative beliefs unwelcome.
5 have substituted diversity in place of welcoming - there is a profound difference
6. etc.
Wisdom: Joshua 24:15
We've been fighting a battle at the political level that must first be won at a deeper level.
We are a fifty-fifty nation, teetering on the edge. Even the elections we win we only win by fractions, and too often with politicians with scarce understanding of the fundaments of the American system. And the trends are against us; every year we graduate another wave of young people with no clue of the principles they must grasp if they are to remain free. Every year our hold on freedom is that much weaker. We keep scratching around, looking to the next election to turn the tide but you don't turn such a tide with elections.
This problem is moral, and its spiritual. Cede the moral and spiritual battle and it doesn't much matter who wins the political one.
You have to build the culture you want to live in, and you have to pass it on to the people who come after you, and you can't do that without teaching and evangelizing. And you can't do that when you cede control of the infrastructure of the battlefield of ideas to your enemies. That is to say, the schools and universities, the information and entertainment media. And you can't do it when what passes for the church loses its way and stops actively evangelizing and winning souls.
Win the moral and spiritual battle, and the political one will naturally follow. Lose the moral and spiritual battle and again, the political one will naturally follow and things will take their inevitable course. When you consider who writes history, once we lose the America we once aspired to be, no one will believe it ever was.
I'm as interested and passionate about the upcoming elections as anyone, but that is only a temporary answer, it is clutching at a straw. We either rededicate this country to God, and rededicate ourselves and our families too, or we resign ourselves to a long and dark road. I think most of us here know this and are on the same page, most of us here know where the real battle is.
Looks like The Devil has finally got his act together.
I think that many young people, having read more on religion on the internet than they would have ever been exposed to in earlier times, have decided that it is “Okay” to not believe.
They probably never did, but were afraid of “coming out” as nonbelievers.
As a fifty-something who never really believed, I understand this. A few years ago I decided that the only thing I TRULY believed in was the existence of God. Too bad there’s no church for Deists! (and no, I’m much too conservative to become a Unitarian!)