Posted on 08/22/2014 5:17:27 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
By now, we’ve all heard the refrain that U.S. churches need liberalize their teachings on sexuality and homosexuality or rapidly decline. The logic behind the argument is simple: more and more Americans are embracing homosexuality and same-sex marriage, including growing numbers of religious Millennials. So long as churches remain the face of opposition to gay marriage, those churches will shrink into irrelevancy when gay marriage (inevitably, we are told) becomes a settled political issue.
These arguments often see church acceptance of homosexuality as a carrot as well as a stick. It isn’t so much that denouncing homosexuality will drive people away from church, but that embracing it will also lead people into church. LGBT individuals and their supporters, many of whom hold a dim view of religion after a decades-long culture war, will reconsider church if denominations remove their restrictions on gay marriage and ordination.
But a number of Christian denominations have already taken significant steps towards liberalizing their stances on homosexuality and marriage, and the evidence so far seems to indicate that affirming homosexuality is hardly a cure for membership woes. On the contrary, every major American church that has taken steps towards liberalization of sexual issues has seen a steep decline in membership.
(Excerpt) Read more at thefederalist.com ...
And people.
...and their souls.
Exactly. If the church doesn’t believe in anything absolutely, then it’s just a social club with vaguely spiritual language.
The progressive movement fundamentally changed the church a little more than a century ago. On one hand it created the social gospel, which was and still is pushed by baptist and pentecostal type churches. (prohibition is a good example of the social gospel. On the other hand progressive “higher criticism” infected the mainline protestant churches. It began with questioning whether miracles occurred and having concluded that most Biblical miracles are just stories these churches quickly devolved into sexually perverse, progressive wastelands that don’t believe in anything absolutely.
Agreed completely. And notice that original sin resulted from the reversal of gender roles, with Adam following Eve’s lead into sin.
Woman are poorly suited to preach the Word boldly, to insist on unwavering obedience to it. Their role has been as more of a peacemaker and compromiser to get everybody to get along. As a result, invariably, inexorably, any denomination that ordains women also embraces all manner of moral sin shortly thereafter.
Scripture, of course, declares that the “bishop” or pastor be the husband/man of one wife/woman. (1 Tim. 3:2 and Titus 1:6) So there’s really no question that women clergy are in disobedience to God’s Word. And that’s just the first step down that slippery slope to rebellious apostasy.
That or convert your liturgy into an incomprehensible hodgepodge of arcane, obsolete English and a dead language from the time of Christ.
...and what liturgy would that be, pray tell...?
That or convert your liturgy into an incomprehensible hodgepodge of arcane, obsolete English and a dead language from the time of Christ.
...and what liturgy would that be, pray tell...?
...or, better yet, allow me to hazard a guess...you refer to the revised missal, with its tighter adherence to the Latin promulgation of the Pauline Missal of 1970...and that examples of ‘incomprehensible, arcane’ English would be ‘consubstantial’...am I correct...?
...you know, God allowed men to create dictionaries for a reason...
People aren’t going to church to be fed the world’s latest debauchery.
Essentially, those who attend church want to hear the Truth.
That or convert your liturgy into an incomprehensible hodgepodge of arcane, obsolete English and a dead language from the time of Christ.
...and one last belated note, actually kind of advice, as I hate to see people in a quandary...I’m sure your parish offers some sort of kiddie mass, which I’m sure doesn’t challenge the boundaries of verbal commonality...just a tip...
“These days, the folks filling the pews at leftist churches tend to have gray hair.”
And I think that’s because most of them don’t have a clue as to what is happening to their church at the national level. And as these gray hairs pass away, they are not being replaced with new members, thus eventually shrinking their congregations until no one is left.
This Disco (Used To Be A Cute Cathedral)
What Steve says about it:From Now The Truth Can Be Told Liner Notes & Song-By-Song Essays, Now The Truth Can Be Told Insert Booklet, August 23rd, 1994:
"In the heart of Manhattan stands an old Presbyterian church that was converted in the mid '80s into New York's famed Limelight Club. My on-the- scene investigation began with the required ritual of waiting with the anxious crowd outside the entrance until a neo-nazi type doorman decided my shoes wouldn't scuff up the dance floor. He then escorted my friends and me through the vestibule, past rows of authentic looking crypts, then up to the cashier ringing up fifteen dollar admissions underneath a large cross.
We followed the beat to the sanctuary, just in time to catch a giant video screen being lowered over the pipe organ to show Madonna's latest for the two thousand boogie pilgrims jammed on the dance floor. My mind began to wander (like it always does during Madonna songs), and I started to imagine it was Sunday night, and that the church elders had devised all this as a way to attract new members.
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