Posted on 08/06/2023 3:20:47 AM PDT by spirited irish
THE BIG REVELATION of the last two weeks is that forty million Americans have stopped attending church in the past 25 years. That’s something like 12 percent of the population, and it represents the largest concentrated change in church attendance in American history.
Many husbands and wives with faith are asking whether the institutions and communities that have helped them preserve their own faith, still exist for their children.
(Excerpt) Read more at patriotandliberty.com ...
ping
Churches are increasingly defending and promoting the homosexual normalization agenda - so, no.
And many are just luke warm Christian social clubs that don't want to be about giving one's life to Jesus.
First, the situation is much worse than this would indicate. Not only are fewer people going to church, but much fewer people are going to a church that preaches Christ and Him crucified, desiring heaven and avoiding hell, and what discipleship costs, in terms of life choices, and willing to give it all to God. For all the doctrinal differences between denominations, this was not an issue 100 or 150 years ago, outside of high criticism which might be found in big cities but nowhere else. Today, at least half of the churches preach everything except the Bible, the Gospel, and discipleship, so attendance there doesn’t count.
Second, the church throughout most of its history has been able to balance the devotional with the martial, the monks with the knights, the prayer warriors with the antidevil warriors. Today, “manliness” is not a part of church practice, whether it be the man who stands before God in prayer, or the man who stands before Satan with the full armor of God. Discipline is nonexistent in the church, and so there is nothing to be gained from going there, or associating with those who go there. Even the secular world recognizes this in some ways, such as the rise of the martial arts—if you wanted to be a disciple of Christ and didn’t have a Bible to guide you, bushido would be a good place to start.
Third, there is little, outside the Eucharist, that you get at church that you can’t get at home, usually at a higher aesthetic quality. Church services from large churches with music and nationally-recognized pastors come over the TV, livestreamed on the internet, or through your church app. Why should I go to the dinky church that has 20-30 or even 100 people with volunteer musicians and average preachers, when I can save my time and my gas and watch the Big Dogs of the church, often while I’m multitasking like eating breakfast or cleaning the house or scrolling through Facebook? (FD: I go to such a dinky church and find Christ there, but I am the only one in my family that attends.)
So how is all of this going to change? It will take a massive move of the Spirit over the whole land, and that will most likely take a massive collapse of the peace and prosperity that we have come to expect for the last 80 years, requiring people to beg God to come back into their lives and our society. Until then, it’s just going to get worse and worse, because there is nothing outside of hell that is lost by being anything other than a disciple of Christ.
The headlined is misleading—40 million former Church goers no longer attending.
I’m guessing your average Sunday sees close to one hundred million in the pews than 200.
If one doesn’t have a solid sacramental system and views the Church primarily as pedagogical, why not go virtual?
A solution that is really convenient, heady, and anti-incarnational.
Verbum caro factum est et habitavit in nobis
Roll Angelus, Roll.
I read a very similar post on a very similar thread yesterday. However, it is a post that ought to be read multiple times, so I applaud.
Many more than 40 million Americans don’t attend church.
That is just how much church attendance has dropped in recent decades.
Christianity was built on house churches (and even underground churches).
It started with Vatican II IMO. Now it’s all about your own personal conscience, meaning right and wrong has become subjective.
A very good and important article. Along with the author’s conclusions, here are the three reasons for the decline, not in any order:
1) The moral failings of many church leaders.
2) Generally, the church’s drive to continually try and contour to, or reflect, society. The church is fearful of distinguishing itself from culture and has ceased being salt and light.
3) The church has become fixated on fixing everyone’s emotional or psychology boo-boo rather than pointing people to The Great Healer.
Watch Putin's move to the gold standard; the USD schitts the bed and we all come back to reality.
There would be no small irony in the US bringing down communism in Russia, and then Russia returning the favor a few decades later.
It started with Vatican II IMO. Now it’s all about your own personal conscience, meaning right and wrong has become subjective.
JPII helped to keep things together, and was respected by most of the Protestants who kept the faith.
And now we have a Jesuit. And when the sound of the trumpet is uncertain, who will prepare for battle? Who am I to judge.
I hope you’re right.
The west in general, and the U.S. in particular, needs taking down a peg or two.
40 million Americans don’t attend church. Probably closer to 300 million and that’s fine. You don’t need a Church to be close to God. That’s a personal issue.
Religion is free but church cost money and like corporations many are corrupt and infected with psychotic pedophiles that are anything but religious. Just look at the law suits.
I didn’t say “all” either I said many. Just a fact.
I teach my kid myself from the Bible. This way leftist politics and propaganda don’t infect the lesson.
“1) The moral failings of many church leaders.”
Bishop Accountability
Abuse Tracker
Daily guide to media coverage of clergy abuse worldwide, and especially in the US Roman Catholic church. More than 100,000 articles blogged since 2006.
https://www.bishop-accountability.org/
The west in general, and the U.S. in particular, needs taking down a peg or two.
It would be disruptive, but it wouldn't involve the destruction of large swaths of former Christendom (as took place during the world wars).
I grew up with the Latin Mass. Nothing against bringing the word to people in language they can understand. But it seems to me that was the beginning of the church contouring itself to social norms, or at least their interpretation thereof.
So the norms (which are getting weirder by the minute) are leading the church, rather than vice versa.
Kind of like those politicians who say “I didn’t leave the Democrat party, the party left me”.
I didn’t leave the church, the church left me.
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