Posted on 05/26/2015 8:18:48 AM PDT by Kaslin
"This is a Christian nation," said the Supreme Court in 1892.
"America was born a Christian nation," echoed Woodrow Wilson. Harry Truman affirmed it: "This is a Christian nation."
But in 2009, Barack Hussein Obama begged to differ: "We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation."
Comes now a Pew Research Center survey that reveals the United States is de-Christianizing at an accelerated rate.
Whereas 86 percent of Americans in 1990 identified as Christians, by 2007, that was down to 78 percent. Today only 7 in 10 say they are Christians. But the percentage of those describing themselves as atheists, agnostics or nonbelievers has risen to 23. That exceeds the Catholic population and is only slightly below evangelicals.
Those in the mainline Protestant churches -- Presbyterians, Lutherans, Methodists, Episcopalians -- have plummeted from 50 percent of the U.S. population in 1958 to 14 percent today. By accommodating the social revolution of the 1960s to stay relevant, mainline churches appear to have made themselves irrelevant to America's young.
The decline in Christian identity is greatest among the young. While 85 percent of Americans born before 1945 still call themselves Christians, only 57 percent of those born after 1980 do.
If we want to see our future, we should probably look to Europe, where Catholic Ireland just voted in a landslide to legalize same-sex marriage and where cathedrals and churches are being turned into tourist attractions and museums and even bars and restaurants.
What are the causes of a de-Christianized America?
High among them is the Supreme Court, which, since the Earl Warren era began, purged Christianity from all public schools and the public square -- and has been met with a puzzling lack of resistance from Middle America to the secularist revolution being imposed upon it.
Second, an anti-Christian elite captured the cultural heights -- the arts, elite universities, popular culture, the media -- and began, through movies, books and magazines, an assault on Christian beliefs and morality.
Third was the social revolution of the 1960s, which began with the arrival of the baby boomers on campus in 1964. Five years on, Woodstock Nation was wallowing in the mud, listening to Country Joe & the Fish.
The counterculture of the '60s would be used as a foil to build 49-state landslides for Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, but then the '60s views and values were embraced by the elites and came to dominate the culture in the time of Bill and Hillary Clinton. Given his baggage, "Slick Willy" of Yoknapatawpha County would have been a comic figure in the 1950s. Today he is the Democratic Party's beau ideal of a statesman.
Many churches came out to meet the cultural revolution halfway. The results were irrelevance and scandal -- too many Elmer Gantrys in televangelist pulpits and too many predators in priestly cassocks.
What are the consequences of a de-Christianized America and West? Si monumentum requiris, circumspice. (If you would seek its monuments, look around you.)
Half of marriages end in divorce. Fewer children are being born, and of these, over 40 percent are out of wedlock. Record drug use rates and dropout rates and soaring crime rates that have declined only because we have an incarceration rate that rivals South Africa's.
Despite astonishing advances in medicine, we have far more and far more varied and deadly STDs.
As Christianity dies, individualism, materialism and hedonism replace it. "Selfies" could be the name for the generation for whom Easter Sunday long ago took a back seat to Super Bowl Sunday. More than a million abortions a year, assisted suicide and euthanasia are seen as the milestones of social progress in the new America.
"Panem et circenses," bread and circuses, were what the late Roman Empire was all about. With us, it is sex, drugs and rock, with variations on all three.
Historically, as the faith dies, the culture and civilization to which it gave birth die, and then the people die. And a new tribe with its own gods comes to occupy the emptying land.
On the old and new continents, it is the native-born of European ancestry who are de-Christianizing, aging and dying. And the nations they created are the ones depopulating.
To occupy Rome, the barbarians came from the east and north. To occupy the West, they are coming from the south. And like the Romans of the fourth century, we seem paralyzed and powerless to stop them.
Christianity was the founding faith of the West. That faith and the moral code and culture it produced once united this disparate and diverse nation and civilization.
As Christianity fades away and the moral code and culture it generated recede into irrelevance, what will hold us together?
Economically, we are dependent on foreigners for the necessities of our national life. Our politics are poisonous. Our racial divisions, once ameliorated by shared belief in the same God and Bible, are rawer than they were in the 1950s.
As for equality, diversity and global democracy, who will march and die for that?
Historian Arnold Toynbee said it well: "Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder."
Riiight, you want to hold the Catholic Church up to us as an example of moral leadership. Riiight. If you want to be here after THE Church is taken out, departed, Raptured, then being a faithful Catholic is probably as good a way as any to avoid the event. But be careful, because if you believe that Jesus IS the only way to obtain the Grace of God, you might get sealed by His Holy Spirit and find yourself departed from your ‘Catholic Chruch’. You will miss all the wrath of God poured out during the last seven years of the Daniel prophecy for God dealing with Israel and the rejecting world. The reality of this Universe is much beyond your sensing but it is there, for sure. [[ See I Thess 4:13-18 II Thess 2:1-3 John 14:1-4 I Cor 15:51-53 I John 3:2 Rev 4:1 2 Kings 6:15-17 Daniel 5 etcetera ]]
When I was a catholic, I thought there were many ways to be "saved." One example is, my dad told me, that If a person died while fighting for his country, he would go to Heaven. Have you ever heard of anything so ridiculous? I wonder if there are any here on FR, that actually specifically believe that drivel? Anyway, keep up the good work.
I have members of my extended family who were priests and a nun and I was told that because of that, their grandmother was guaranteed a place in heaven.
Boy did the family ever cater to her. And the smug look she wore.
It was sickening.
Way to hijack a thread.
For all the complaints about the Catholic versus Prot thing, did you really need to chime and and stir the pot by posting a comment not relevant to the topic at hand?
We are riding on the coattails of the heritage we were given and wasted.
What we sow in the wind we will reap in the whirlwind, and what we’re sowing now makes me dread what is coming.
I think it’s going to be far worse than we can imagine unless God intervenes in a very unusual way.
Probably more like 7 out of 10 SAY they’re Christians.
Based on the way the voting goes and the moral decay, the evidence does not back up the claim.
Is that the official definition of a Christian? A tithing, regular church goer? You sound like a minister. :)
Ah, don’t know who you are responding to, but your response had no bearing on what I posted...other than introducing in some favored straw men.
If you can provide the Catholic infallible teaching on the verses I provided, or even an approved commentary I will welcome such. So what I am really telling you is, I don’t value the private interpretations of Catholics who have no authority to expound on these matters.
Other than that, have a nice day.
Then you don't believe in the "Rupture taking everyone away, good, cause it's not in the Bible.
Well 'rapture' or 'harpazo' IS in the Bible. We 'fundies' got that rapture word from y'alls Latin Bible:
deinde nos qui vivimus qui relinquimur simul rapiemur cum illis in nubibus obviam Domino in aera et sic semper cum Domino erimus(1 Thes. 4:17)
So established it is there. And the passage does address being with the Lord during this event; and meeting Christ in the clouds. Am I 'dogmatic' about 'when' this occurs...No. From my research nor is the Catholic church. So if you have an infallible read on this let us know.
Irenaeus did opine on the matter briefly:
In the previous books I have set forth the causes for which God permitted these things to be made, and have pointed out that all such have been created for the benefit of that human nature which is saved, ripening for immortality that which is [possessed] of its own free will and its own power, and preparing and rendering it more adapted for eternal subjection to God. And therefore the creation is suited to [the wants of] man; for man was not made for its sake, but creation for the sake of man. Those nations however, who did not of themselves raise up their eyes unto heaven, nor returned thanks to their Maker, nor wished to behold the light of truth, but who were like blind mice concealed in the depths of ignorance, the word justly reckons “as waste water from a sink, and as the turning-weight of a balance— in fact, as nothing;” Isaiah 40:15 so far useful and serviceable to the just, as stubble conduces towards the growth of the wheat, and its straw, by means of combustion, serves for working gold. And therefore, when in the end the Church shall be suddenly caught up from this, it is said, “There shall be tribulation such as has not been since the beginning, neither shall be.” Matthew 24:21 For this is the last contest of the righteous, in which, when they overcome they are crowned with incorruption.
Against Heresies (Book V, Chapter 29)
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103529.htm
Take whatever you like out of context, weave whatever mess you want out of it, but there ain't no Rapture coming to save Christians from the turmoil.
That trash is exactly the same sort of lie as, "No, you shall not die the death.", something to encourage the sap listening to go their own way rather than following Christ.
Perhaps we should avoid the invective and address the passages?
Frankly, Christians have suffered since the beginning of the church at the hands of men and Satan. Revelation makes it clear, that at some point in space and time, God will pour out His wrath on all who inhabit the earth. Some 'set aside' will be preserved and the rest will receive His wrath. It's there in the text if you want to explore along with me. Do I think everyone will be raptured away before any major persecution of Christians? I don't know for sure because it is not clear in the Bible of the time and space for such.
If you also want to opine on what Irenaeus wrote and I quoted, please let me know. His use of words as translated are not very clear. On the one hand he says the church will be tested and then 'caught up' and then after that the last test of righteousness. Notice he did not say 'the last test of the church.'
Christian dogma never accepted any such surrender by Christ accompanied by an evacuation and whether a single individual theorized on that possibility or not makes no difference any more than all the other Self and Self Alone personal opinions make any difference.
The whole Rupture scam was dreamed up in part based on the private revelations of a child in the 1830s and has come and gone as a popular and bestselling line of trash periodically ever since. Even the majority of non-Catholics don't accept that bad joke, especially outside of the US where establishing doctrine based on what becomes a Bestseller isn't the norm.
have a lovely day
Aside from Paul writing of the event in three of his letters, and Jesus referring to the event in John 14, the early believers wrote about it, pro and con, also. The Epistle of Barnabas (100AD), Iraeneus in 'Against Heresies', Justin Martyr in 'Dialogue With Tryphus', Ephraem of Nisibis (fourth century), Peter Jurieu "The Approaching Deliverance'(1687), Doddridge's 'Commentaries on The New Testament; (1738), James McKnight 'Commentaries on The Epistles' 1763, Thomas Scott 'Commentaries on The Holy Bible' 1792 ... all these and many more BEFORE Margaret McDonald to whom you refer with such haughty posting.
You appear to want to remain ignorant of the Truth, so I leave you to your ravings.
I don't see surrender at all. But if you would like to discuss the passages, I will respond.
Christ comes and dies on the cross and in doing so totally defeats Satan. But, someone actually believes that sometime later Christ comes, evacuates all those who believe in Him and leaves the world completely in Satan's hands again but that's not surrender at all ? Funny thing, though, that's exactly what Satan was trying to tempt Christ into doing, accepting Satan as the ruler of this world and all those in it.
If someone wants to believe that Christ is a failure and will have to evacuate His people in order to regroup, that's their business, but the Bible says Christ has already conquered Satan and that means Satan won't be given total free reign over it again. Not for seven years, not for three and a half years, not even for three and a half minutes. Period.
Why not discuss, Obey your prelates, and be subject to them. . . . in Hebrews ?Refusing to believe that explicitly stated instruction in Scripture is the root cause for all the deluded Self and Self Alone folks falling for whatever bestselling twisting of Scripture suits their personal preferences.
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