Posted on 04/12/2019 8:57:34 AM PDT by Persevero
Religious faith in America is going the way of the Yellow Pages and travel maps, we keep hearing. It’s just a matter of time until Christianity’s total and happy extinction, chortle our cultural elites. Is this true? Is churchgoing and religious adherence really in “widespread decline” so much so that conservative believers should suffer “growing anxiety”?
(Excerpt) Read more at thefederalist.com ...
There will always be exactly as many Christians as God wants there to be.
So is Mexican and African American support for Trump. The Dems are doomed!
No its not.
In 20 years, you are going to see churches of all denominations crushed by debt.
I agree with this as a Hollywood resident...also that young American Catholics are more passionate than their predecessors overall and not leaving in droves even in light of all the scandals.
However it will take some time before Christians figure out how to be culturallly influential...meaning producing and dispersing the arts and culture of the day, setting the tone for academic dialogue in the mainstream, holding meaningful l positions of leadership in industry,etc...
“New Harvard Research Says U.S. Christianity Is Not Shrinking, But Growing Stronger”
“Religious faith in America is going the way of the Yellow Pages and travel maps, we keep hearing. It’s just a matter of time until Christianity’s total and happy extinction, chortle our cultural elites. Is this true? Is churchgoing and religious adherence really in “widespread decline” so much so that conservative believers should suffer “growing anxiety”?
Two words: Absolutely not.”
“Mainline churches are tanking as if they have super-sized millstones around their necks. Yes, these churches are hemorrhaging members in startling numbers, but many of those folks are not leaving Christianity. They are simply going elsewhere. Because of this shifting, other very different kinds of churches are holding strong in crowds and have been for as long as such data has been collected. In some ways, they are even growing. This is what this new research has found.
The percentage of Americans who attend church more than once a week, pray daily, and accept the Bible as wholly reliable and deeply instructive to their lives has remained absolutely, steel-bar constant for the last 50 years or more, right up to today.”
Same link as above
Encouraging article, if valid. I question the meaningfulness of this point “They found that the percentage of church-attending Americans relative to overall population is more than four times greater today than it was in 1776.“ The population was almost entirely rural, which would certainly hinder attending a church when the only transportation was by horse or by foot.
Interesting.
While mainline churches are slipping around here badly, evangelical churches are growing here. The PCA church is over-crowded. The non-denom I attend is too crowded. People seem to be more interested in Biblical teaching rather than vignette sermons. we had 4 baptisms a few weeks back. One from Vietnam and 3 from China.
“God laughs at Social Darwinists”
They aren’t making babies. They don’t believe in life. This is the deathknell for all these progressives. They can only recruit, which is why they go at spreading the death gay message with a grim passion so they can keep recruiting kids and adopting poor children without mothers or fathers and ruining them.
Then Christians or Jews show up with a stable, well ordered and happy family of five and they SCREAM. We had a family of eight on my block, some adopted, and the liberal neighborhood I lived in was beside themselves with evil gossip. I mean, they were ADOPTED. No difference. It was against the social order of the progressives...
These little storefront churches are just exploding all over the place, and I doubt anyone tracks their membership.
I grew up in a Catholic family of six. Back in the 70’s Liberals first started to get really annoying. My dad used to grouse that whenever he took us all out someplace people would look at him like he was stealing their air.
I grew up in the Congregational Church, and still now I believe in God and Jesus, I am in a non-denominational church.
Yeah, how is that women pastors, gay marriage, Chrislam, and/or rejection of scriptural authority working out for ya, ELCA, PCUSA, UCC, ELCA, RCC, UMC?
Good news. Praying for revival.
Why is this so? Can you please give us more detail?
Too bad it is probably linked to the largely Catholic, 40 million illegals who have moved in on us.
They are simply going elsewhere.... other very different kinds of churches are holding strong... In some ways, they are even growing.
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I should be clearer...this is the good news part. Still praying for a revival though.
I had the same thought. Many rural churches were served by circuit-riding preachers who could only be there every other week or once a month. And, most homes only had one book: the Bible; but today, more people can quote hundreds of advertising jingles than a single memory verse from scripture, even if they go to church. Many of the evangelical churches replace the instructive old hymns, those with multiple verses based on the scriptures, in favor of simplistic, repetitive "praise songs", and ditch the organs, pianos and choirs in favor of rock bands.
Still, the church has usually thrived under persecution, and liberal culture is certainly helping out with that these days.
I got you. It's not enough to seek. One also has to find, and to walk the talk in our families and communities. Nationally, we have our work cut out for us to roll back discriminatory legislation and regulations against Christians, such as the Christian baker case, as just one issue among many.
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