Posted on 07/04/2014 6:17:34 PM PDT by ReformationFan
"Id respond with my own guarantee. The best way to destroy a faith is to abandon it. Just ask mainline Protestants. Theyre no longer recognizably Christian, theyre prone (like the PCUSA) to embrace vile evils like abortion and anti-Semitism, and they conform to the culture and lose adherents by the hundreds of thousands. After all, why go to church when you can get the same sermon from the Sunday New York Times?"
Exactly.
This is an excellent article.
The irrationality that is so prevalent today is frightening.
It is difficult to have the patience to address it in such a manner as French has here.
M4L
Why do we as Christians so easily give up our beliefs to be a part of the culture? God did not say to be double minded or to walk on both sides of the fence. We became a problem when we stopped saying no. We accept anything the schools hand down, we avoid worship to watch football, we accept the fare on television and at the theatres, and generally go along with the culture.
This distinction, between status and acts, or between and among different acts themselves, used to be a matter of common sense. And it certainly still is amongst lawyers. No one (yet) is telling me that to maintain my law license I have to represent anyone who asks for help, no matter the case or cause. But if I have artistic talent, now the rule is different: My talents are the communitys talents, or Im seceding from society. So the Christian baker, whos more than willing to bake a cake for anyone, gay or straight, man or woman, black or white, for say a birthday party or an office celebration, is now seceding from society if theyre unwilling to help celebrate a gay wedding.
Thats the contention of Jonathan Rauch, a guy Ive long respected and whose book, The Kindly Inquisitors, is a must-read for anyone who questions the value of free speech in a pluralistic society. Unfortunately, his latest essay in The Atlantic, gets things exactly backwards. Accusing Christians of a great secession, of walling themselves off from secular society, he says this:
"Culturally conservative Christians are taking a pronounced turn toward social secession: asserting both the right and the intent to sequester themselves from secular culture and norms, including the norm of nondiscrimination. This is not a good idea. When religion isolates itself from secular society, both sides lose, but religion loses more. "
PFL
No wonder. Christians have abandoned the culture in the USA and we lost it to evil.
This is because Christians bought a demonic lie sold to them from those working to create a hedonistic secular oligarchy over us: don’t judge.
Because Christians in America by and large have grown biblically ignorant, it was easy for the Secular Hedonists to use the scriptures, out of context - against them.
A society that would not be governed by God and His Laws - will be ruled by the tyranny of men, and theirs.
And it always results in men rejecting God’s Laws and biblical morality and imposing their own morality upon their subjects.
Here we are.
>>Some mainline Protestants have walked away from their Christianity, not all. For every mainline protestant branch where an organization has walked away from God (and is decreasing in size dramatically as a result) there is another organization who has stayed true to the Gospel and is increasing at a much faster rate.
Exactly. The ELCA has caused Lutherans to move to the WELS and LCMS. The PCUSA has caused Presbyterians to move to the PCA. The members of the UMC who are faithful to the bible are talking about splitting the denomination. For every apostate denomination in mainline Protestantism, there is a mirror denomination. And the SBC and various non-denoms are picking up the rest of the faithful.
True Christian Churches will increase under persecution. Up until now it has been a time of withering. Only recently are people being directly attacked because of their faith. The Church has always grown under persecution - the difference between the world and the Church becomes so more stark and the Church becomes the haven for those who no longer have a fence to sit on!
Doesn't "Mainline" (or "Mainstream" Or "Oldline" or even "Sideline") refer to those denominations which belong to the NCC and the WCC, who are theologically liberal, and who are abandoning the faith and morals of historic Christianity?
That would be, roughly, the UMC, the ELCA, the PCUSA, the Episcopal Church (EC), the American Baptist Churches (ABC), the United Church of Christ (UCC), and, I guess, the Disciples of Christ, and Reformed Church in America.
I think, though, that the relatively new, renewed, faithfully Christian organizations which are growing --- the WELS, the LCMS, the PCA, the various Episcopal/Anglican exiles and offshoots --- are not referred to, and do not call themselves, "mainline" Protestants.
So, yeah, the LCMS is Lutheran, but it isn't "mainline" Lutheran. The "mainline" Lutherans, ELCA, are the ones down the street with the rainbow banners, living on endowments from people now interred in the Lutheran graveyard.
Now I'm no expert on this type of taxonomy, so if I am wrong, please correct me.
You nailed it spot on.
>>I think, though, that the relatively new, renewed, faithfully Christian organizations which are growing -— the WELS, the LCMS, the PCA, the various Episcopal/Anglican exiles and offshoots -— are not referred to, and do not call themselves, “mainline” Protestants.
That’s what I was saying, that the mainline denominations are spawning a non-mainline/non-progressive version of themselves. When they do, the old mainline version goes into steep decline while the new, non-mainline version grows.
You got it right, Mrs. Don-o.
Also, call it what it is -- An attempt by the ruling class to expel certain people from the common culture.
“As far as I know, during the divorce revolution it never occurred to, say, Catholic bakers to tell remarrying customers, Your so-called second marriage is a lie, so take your business elsewhere. That would have seemed not so much principled as bizarre.”
Maybe if they had, nobody would be shocked today when Christians refuse to recognize ‘gay marriage’ or whatever other impossibility the state decides to call marriage at the time.
FReegards
In the Religion forum, on a thread titled Are Christians in the Midst of a Social Secession?, SoConPubbie wrote:
Some mainline Protestants have walked away from their Christianity, not all. For every mainline protestant branch where an organization has walked away from God (and is decreasing in size dramatically as a result) there is another organization who has stayed true to the Gospel and is increasing at a much faster rate.
In the Religion forum, on a thread titled Conservatives on the Supreme Court: All Catholic (vanity), verga wrote:
...you should also understand that here are almost no formal conservative evangelical/protestant churches. With the “decentralized authority” that you all so proudly tout when it is convenient it should be no surprise.
Catholicism has a stated position consistent with Conservatism. Baptists, Presbyterians, Anglicans all support gay marriage. Lutherans, Methodists and Presbyterians have women pastors. The list of inconsistencies with the Bible and Conservatism goes on and on...
Individual members may be Conservative to one degree or another, but none of the churches have an enforceable manifesto against abortion, Gay marriage, Euthanasia, etc....You all want the church of “Que sera sera” now live with the consequences.
(Minor corrections made by me.)
We could have different definitions of mainline. Mainline does NOT include Baptists, assemblies of God, etc.
Mainline Protestantism pretty much came out of the protestant reformation or were first generation progeny. We’re talking Lutheran, Anglican, Reformed, Presbyterian and their immediate progeny.
The only Baptist denomination that would be considered “Mainline” that I know of would be the American Baptist Churches for their affiliation with the NCC and the WCC.
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