A New Exodus? Americans are Exiting Liberal Churches

BreakPoint ^ | June 14, 2005 | Albert Mohler

[Lee N. Field]

I remember reading a statistic in the early 1990s claiming that the probability of a person raised in the Presbyterian Church (USA) staying in that denomination in adulthood was below 25%. Those who move toward a more Biblical position will probably head toward an evangelical denomination, Calvinist or not.

Count me as one of the 75%. When we moved to this town in the early '90s, we visited various churches. At First Pres (PCUSA, naturally) the pastor lead the Lord's Prayer as "Our Father and Mother,. . ."

Needless to say, we didn't go back. We started going to the local Evangelical Free Church (which I guess could be classified as generic evangelical), and have been members there for 5+ years at this point.

[voix libre]

I think that the churches that stand for something treat the human person with dignity. They don't talk down to him/her, making things easy because of a 'poor little person, he/she just couldn't hack it otherwise' mentality.

God dignifies us with difficult challenges, assuring us all the while that "underneath are the everlasting arms" to catch us when we inevitably trip up.

Churches experiencing the exodus do so because of their lack of respect for the human person,

[polymuser]

"Many people believe any homosexual activity is purely prohibited by Scripture . . . . But other Christians who take Scripture seriously believe that the Biblical writers were not addressing the realities of people with a permanent homosexual orientation living in faithful, monogamous relationships, and that the relevant scriptural support for those relationships is similar to the expectations of faithfulness Scripture places on marriage."

That is patent nonsense, of course, but this is what passes for theological argument among those pushing the homosexual agenda.

It is also almost verbatim out of the ELCA's "Journey Together Faithfully" study of homosexuality, about which they blatantly ignored member feedback.

[ItsOurTimeNow]

Ping for later reading

[GreyFriar]

Ping.

Also there are a number of posts on the UCC church synod now meeting. I wonder if some of the UCC proposals are going to be at the DoC General meeting?

[zot]

Thanks for the ping. Excellent article. The UCC and the DoC are trying to merge, and it looks like they are both trying to see how fast they can lose members.

[RobbyS]

Many of these people are not atheists but neo-platonists, or something like it. They make Augustine's choice in reverse.

[SPARTAN08]

Although this article gives well researched information, there has been one thing that the author as well as those posting have left out. Mainline liberal denominations are still Christian. They believe in Jesus Christ as the Lord and savior as much as conservative churches. Their doctrine may arguably be slanted but they are indeed still Christian. For that reason alone they still need to be given credit.

[RobbyS]

Many of them do not accept the divinity of Jesus.

[Mr. Lucky]

Somebody is going to look at your sign up date and wonder what you're up to you know.

[Wallace T.]

No mainline denomination has formally denied the divine inspiration of Scripture. None of the mainline Protestant denominations have formally abandoned the Reformation era creeds like the 39 Articles of Faith, the Augsburg Confession, the Westminster Confession, and so forth. However, they treat the Bible as essentially a human work, bound by the cultural and scientific limitations of its authors. The old doctrinal statements are regarded more as historical relics of their past than as documents binding upon their clergy. These positions, which have their origins in the French Enlightenment and German "higher criticism" of the Bible, characterize the hierarchy of the mainline denominations. The same holds true for a majority of their clergy, since the mainline seminaries have been dominated by liberals for decades, and in some cases (Harvard Divinity School) for well over a century. God's inspiration may, in some sense, be in what they would consider the good parts of the Bible, like the Sermon on the Mount or the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Their hermeneutic is not based in Scripture or church tradition, but in humanism. The passages of the Bible that condemn sex outside of monogamous heterosexual marriage, restrict the offices of deacon and elder to married men, and declare that salvation is through faith alone in Christ alone are regarded as unloving and therefore rejected, as befits their humanistic hermeneutic.

J. Gresham Machen, an early 20th Century conservative Presbyterian theologian, declared that Christianity and liberalism (in the theological sense) are rival and incompatible religions. The judgment of history has proven Machen right.

[JCEccles]

and the funny thing is, the liberals are claiming that people are pouring out of The Catholic church and other orthodox churches and into theirs.

The AntiChristus of the Episcopal Church, retired Bishop of Newark, John Shelby Spong, authored a book about a decade ago entitled "Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism." His thesis was that only liberal theology, one that rejects the divinity of Jesus Christ and denies any belief in a personal God, can save Christianity.

He must be profoundly depressed these days. Evangelical, fundamental Chrsitianity is thriving while liberal churches are withering and decaying into lifeless irrelevance.

[JCEccles]

What do you make of the following statement? Does it evidence Christian belief, in Paul's words, "the faith once delivered"?

"If the resurrection of Jesus cannot be believed except by assenting to the fantastic descriptions included in the Gospels, then Christianity is doomed. For that view of resurrection is not believable, and if that is all there is, then Christianity, which depends upon the truth and authenticity of Jesus' resurrection, also is not believable."

Suppose this statement were made to any of the eyewitness Apostles, to Peter, James, or John (essentially calling them liars). Can you conjecture what the response might be?