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What will American Christianity look like in 50 years? (Predictions for various denominations)
SILOUAN ^ | 12/21/2012 | Silouan Philip Thompson

Posted on 12/21/2012 3:31:33 PM PST by SeekAndFind

I was asked this in an online forum, and my answer got too long to manage. Here’s my infallible prediction. How did I do?

TL;DR: in 50 years you’ll see recognizable Orthodox, Catholics and Reformed… and a vast spectrum of Everybody Else, many of them changing in significant ways and seeing that as a virtue.



TOPICS: Catholic; Evangelical Christian; Mainline Protestant; Religion & Culture
KEYWORDS: christianity; denominations; predictions; trends
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1 posted on 12/21/2012 3:31:41 PM PST by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

“TL;DR: in 50 years you’ll see recognizable Orthodox, Catholics and Reformed… and a vast spectrum of Everybody Else, many of them changing in significant ways and seeing that as a virtue.”

Seems to be a safe projection to make.


2 posted on 12/21/2012 3:34:28 PM PST by Shadow44
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To: SeekAndFind

If Catholics leave because of Homosexual women wanting to be Priests and Clergy not allowed to marry I would call that seperating the harvest from the Chaff.


3 posted on 12/21/2012 3:39:20 PM PST by Venturer
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To: SeekAndFind

Spirit filled Bible believing churches (and I do not mean a building)will survive just like they have from the beginning.


4 posted on 12/21/2012 3:51:38 PM PST by svcw (Why is one cell on another planet considered life, and in the womb it is not.)
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To: svcw
I guess no one here believes in the rapture, or Jesus' Second Coming to take His away.

Hmmm .. go 'head with your denominational thinking, but Christians look for His return.

Now ... at the rate America is decaying we have to first accept America is gone ... unless there is a bloody uprising .. America is gone and we are the only nation sending missionaries out into the world to teach people about Jesus, thus .. with no preacher, the Word cannot be heard nor known.

AntiChrist enters stage left and the planet is done for .... God said so.

5 posted on 12/21/2012 3:57:59 PM PST by knarf (I say things that are true ... I have no proof ... but they're true)
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To: knarf

I meant to add ... what makes anyone think there IS another 50 years ?


6 posted on 12/21/2012 3:59:10 PM PST by knarf (I say things that are true ... I have no proof ... but they're true)
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To: SeekAndFind

Seems like this is an Orthodox perspective. Much is true, but it leaves out much. And he seems ignorant of what’s going on in Baptist circles, both SBC and others.

Yes, Orthodoxy is growing, and a group of dear friends of mine moved there about 30 years ago from a national evangelical ministry. They brought an evangelical perspective into the Orthodox that is still having it’s effect, though with the recent death of Peter Guilquist, an old friend, word is the evangelical influence is diminishing.

What he leaves out is the huge, growing disaffection with old form traditional Christianity - a religion of services, ceremony and outreach works. A troubling “authoritarianism” is growing in many evangelical churches as they see Christians who love God but don’t want to be a part of their membership. Many teach an absolute authority for the local pastor, totally foreign to scripture, and insistence on membership as a means of their control. In the end, this is driving thousands from the organized church. Even while these pastors pound their pulpits in protest and condemnation of same.

The author also leaves out the move of house churches which is growing geometrically. I think he is totally unaware of anything outside denominations. It has it’s share of crazies, but also has a healthy component of wholly committed, strong Christians who emphasize first a close personal relationship with Christ, and second a practical, living means of laying their lives down for one another as it was in the early church. No formal leaders, just Christians loving God and one another - and neighbors - in very real, practical ways. Could be the most real form of Christianity that there is.

BTW, over almost 50 years, I have worked in, alongside, and loved Christians of almost every stripe, color and name both inside denominations and outside of them.....love them all....in each I’ve seen something of Christ the others do not have.....and I can’t wait until our oneness in the body of Christ is a reality.......when we are with Him.....


7 posted on 12/21/2012 3:59:19 PM PST by Arlis (.)
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To: knarf

OooooKaaay?


8 posted on 12/21/2012 3:59:59 PM PST by svcw (Why is one cell on another planet considered life, and in the womb it is not.)
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To: svcw
Well .. is HE coming again or ISN'T HE ?

and if so ... when? What are the signs of His return?

9 posted on 12/21/2012 4:03:54 PM PST by knarf (I say things that are true ... I have no proof ... but they're true)
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To: Arlis
Seems like this is an Orthodox perspective.

No kidding. (Who else takes the name Silouan -- most likely with St. Silouan the Athonite, my bishop's spiritual father's spiritual father, as his patron, but an Orthodox Christian?)

10 posted on 12/21/2012 4:05:52 PM PST by The_Reader_David (And when they behead your own people in the wars which are to come, then you will know...)
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To: SeekAndFind

50 years from now all true Christians will be in heaven with Jesus.


11 posted on 12/21/2012 4:08:13 PM PST by CynicalBear
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To: CynicalBear

RE: 50 years from now all true Christians will be in heaven with Jesus.

Even those who are younger than 25?


12 posted on 12/21/2012 4:13:15 PM PST by SeekAndFind
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To: The_Reader_David

I wrote that for the benefit of our non-Orthodox friends here.......


13 posted on 12/21/2012 4:13:38 PM PST by Arlis (.)
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To: knarf

Does it matter when? It could be tomorrow, or 3000 years from now.

I prefer to live the best I can, so that if it happens tomorrow I’m in as good standing before God as I can be. I could be hit by a car tomorrow as well, more or less the same results about keeping myself in good standing with God.

Just my meager opinion.


14 posted on 12/21/2012 4:14:25 PM PST by Shadow44
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To: knarf
Well .. is HE coming again or ISN'T HE ?

and if so ... when? What are the signs of His return?

"For you know quite well that the day of the Lord's return will come unexpectedly, like a thief in the night."--1 Thessalonians 5:2

15 posted on 12/21/2012 4:16:40 PM PST by Fiji Hill (i)
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To: SeekAndFind

This presumes that things will continue to move in the same direction as they have over the past several decades.

That would seem to be a safe assumption—unless God intervenes with another great revival.

The history of Christianity has, over the centuries, tended to see decay and taking things for granted—until some force intervenes and everything changes.

The Great Awakening is an experience most Americans have heard of—or at least used to have heard of before history ceased to be taught. And there have been many similar awakenings and conversion experiences in the Catholic Church over the years.

And these things can overflow. Methodism not only revived Christianity in England after it had almost died during the eighteenth century, but it overflowed into the Church of England and elsewhere, as well.

Obviously, there is no way to predict such happenings. They happen if and when God wills.


16 posted on 12/21/2012 4:18:45 PM PST by Cicero (Marcus Tullius)
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To: knarf

Yes, He is coming. He said so, the angels in Acts 1 said so, and the scripture says so.

When? Could be any second. Or could be after I’m dead and gone...almost all believers close to God have believed His coming was imminent for 2,000 years.

But the question is not WHEN He is coming - for no one knows.

The question is, as He repeatedly told us - are we ready for His coming? Are we looking for, expecting His coming? Are we even longing for it, crying out as the last words of the Bible, “Come, Lord Jesus!” ??????

Because He told us He is coming when no one is expecting it. No one.

There is nothing here, but a dark, quickly decaying world - that still needs to hear the gospel.

But He is coming for a people who long for, and who are looking for and expecting His coming......


17 posted on 12/21/2012 4:23:40 PM PST by Arlis (.)
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To: SeekAndFind
". . .  not yet old enough to make a virtue of ancient weirdness the way Eastern Orthodox do."

What "ancient weirdness"?

18 posted on 12/21/2012 4:30:17 PM PST by Rashputin (Jesus Christ doesn't evacuate His troops, He leads them to victory.)
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To: SeekAndFind
Things have changed a great deal in the last 100 years and organized religions have changed with them. World events will likely shape organized religions even more as we bounce from one crisis to the next, one war to the next or today's muslim extremists to the next.

Sooner rather than later, especially with obamacare's various legal challenges, we will confront both abortion and same sex marriage and biblical teachings.

We've been dancing around the edges, flirting with making holy what is explicitly forbidden, and ignoring the cognitive dissonance that flows freely from such willful blindness.

More than likely, just as with the rebirth of Israel, we will experience some prophetic event or more come to pass that will call more to scripture and revive a more pragmatic, practical approach (aka "fear of God") to religion. We may choose differently at that point. If so, we'll have a chance to see things through to the end.

Otherwise, I think we'll go down the same dark path every other society so afflicted with modernity as ours has become, with churches becoming less relevant as they move farther away from the principles and teachings that define who and what they are.

When it all comes apart, some will call it Judgment.

19 posted on 12/21/2012 4:40:57 PM PST by GBA (Here in the Matrix, life is but a dream.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Fifty years from now, worldwide secularization will be much more dominant than it is now. Worldwide leftists will continue to criticize Christianity and suppress Christianity much worse than they do now. Worldwide Islam will be much more common. Worldwide Christians will be forced to practice their faith in secret.


20 posted on 12/21/2012 4:43:58 PM PST by johnthebaptistmoore (The world continues to be stuck in a "all leftist, all of the time" funk. BUNK THE FUNK!)
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