Posted on 02/03/2013 8:22:42 AM PST by SeekAndFind
've been asked more times than I can remember by secular people and the secular press if Christianity is now, truly...finally...a dying religion.
The scenario plays out a bit like this.
A reporter, after rattling off a steady stream of apocalyptic examples "supported by research," then asks something like: "Given the decline of Christian influence in our society, and around the world, is Christianity on a respirator?"
At this moment, I think they expect me --us -- to jump on the blame bandwagon, and moan on about why Christianity is in danger of being relegated to history's dustbin.
If you're a young leader, as am I, they expect us to unleash a torrent of criticism about what Christians and their standard bearers have done wrong.
The conversation, then, is supposed to take on a "change-or-die" funeral tenor to advance the cultural narrative that the relic of Christianity is on its way out. Our world, it is inferred, is evolving beyond religion -- especially the evangelical kind.
So, you can imagine the wrench it throws into their gears when I declare my fanatical optimism for Christianity's future.
Think about it.
The evidence is everywhere.
Never before have masses of evangelicals and Catholics been more engaged in the public square. The novelty of Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority has been multiplied thousand times over, cementing the role of evangelicals and Catholics in every major election since Ronald Reagan. This was especially apparent in 2012 when evangelicals represented 27% of the electorate (the highest ever) with 78% of them voting for a single candidate, a Mormon nonetheless.
Prominent Christians, like Mike Huckabee, have the ability to instantly mobilize millions of Christians in support of causes that matter to them, and the Obama administration's hostility toward religious liberty didn't shove people of faith into obscurity.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Plus the good news is that the younger people are coming to faith in Jesus all the more.
The one place that will soon be empty is the fence sitters. The way things are going, you all will have to make a final decision on spiritual issues. There is no living with it now.
This dog simple don't hunt. When Christianity was the norm, freedom abounded, now as we change to the worlds idea that freedom is the right to sin, everyone is becoming slaves. Christianity exists quite well underground and it will in the future also. But everytime it is forced underground, Society collapses upon itself and millions die.
Not a change to hope for...
“The law says otherwise. The law in the United States is very clear that the Common Law definition of marriage is one man and one woman.”
So we didn’t really need to pass those amendments? Not sure what you mean here.
In any case when folks are being punished with the powers of the state for not buying into whatever impossibility the state considers marriage at the time, I’m not sure it will be of great comfort to them.
As far as the state is concerned, marriage is simply whatever judges, pols, or the voting majority think it is at any one time. Many have been conditioned to think that marriage comes from and is defined by the state, so they accept things like ‘gay marriage.’ Pope Leo XIII warned about this 130 years ago.
Freegards
yeah that whole, Adam is now God thing is a mite off.
“Hey ... Mormons are just Christians on steroids!”
So drug use explains the deep problems with rewriting history, rewriting the Bible, and the idolatry that makes God into a created thing?
Your post is the most honest mormon defense I’ve seen so far...
Look for more Christian missionaries to come from the global south work with the Lord’s help to bring the good news of the Gospel of Jesus back to the west from the lands that western Christianity did many years agoYes, you are correct.
Yes, even if, and that is becoming a bigger if every day, the Supreme Court upholds Prop 8 the voters are being educated by California’s education system that homosexuality is normal. So when they reach voting age they will vote to make it legal anyway.
God is not dead. Self centered human nature will be.
Look for more missionaries to be sent from the global south nations to America and the west.
Someone who can't accept the Nicene Creed isn't Christian no matter what their favorite flavor of the great delusion teaches.
The Anglicans and Methodist churches both are held to an orthodox moral course by their Third World members. This infuriates the liberals in England and America, who despite their liberal piety have little respect for the non-whites in those churches. As someone has mentioned, China may soon have more Christians than the nominally Christian countries of Europe and elsewhere.
They are already are. It reminds me of the course of Christianity history in Europe: Though Ireland was outside the Roman Empire, it served as a vehicle for finally establishing Christianity in the West,after the fall of the western Empire.
There is a huger gap between Joseph Smith and Athanasius than you seem to realize.
“As far as the state is concerned, marriage is simply whatever judges, pols, or the voting majority think it is at any one time/”
And American law says something very different. The fact that you’ve accepted this erroneous assessment shows to me that you believe something that is contrary to American law.
The law is very explicit - but it’s hard enough when so-called ‘conservatives’ adopt the exact same reasoning as the statists. The state may attempt but it cannot succeed in doing so.
Dinesh D’Souza says in his new book that China is on its way to having the world’s largest Christian population. Not percentage-wise but in terms of absolute numbers. And Christianity is exploding in Africa and South America. Meanwhile it withers in classical Christendom. Kind of ironic.
“And American law says something very different. The fact that you’ve accepted this erroneous assessment shows to me that you believe something that is contrary to American law.”
If the law says something very different, why did everyone bother with the state amendmends as concerns the definition of marriage? And as far as an erroneous assesment, if one doesn’t think the state determines the definition it uses to recognize marriage by whatever judges, pols, or the voting public think about it at any one time, how does the state determine this?
“...it’s hard enough when so-called ‘conservatives’ adopt the exact same reasoning as the statists. The state may attempt but it cannot succeed in doing so.”
The state doesn’t define marriage for me, I doubt if it does for you either.
Freegards
AMEN!!
Look at the area where Christianity started. It is now almost gone. Europe is failing, and North America will follow soon.
Yes the rest of the world is looking better, but that doesn’t mean we will be around to see it.
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