Posted on 02/20/2018 6:36:41 PM PST by marshmallow
(CNSNews.com) - The majority of Americans in 2017 did not identify themselves as Protestants, according to Gallup surveys conducted during the year, and the differing religious denominations tended to be concentrated in certain geographical areas.
“About half of Americans (48 percent) identify as Protestants or other Christians who are not Catholic or Mormon,” said Gallup in its analysis of its polling.
The numbers from the Gallup survey align with numbers derived from a Pew Research Center survey published in 2015. That survey indicated that from 2007 to 2014, Protestants had dropped from 51.3 percent of the population to 46.5 percent. At the same time, according to that Pew survey, Catholics dropped from 23.9 percent of the population to 20.8 percent.
In Alabama, according to the newly released Gallup data for 2017, 77 percent said they were Protestant, making Alabama the most Protestant state in the country.
--In Rhode Island, 44 percent said they are Catholic, making Rhode Island the most Catholic state in the country.
--In Hawaii and Alaska, 33 percent said they had no religion, making them the most non-religious states.
--In New York, 8 percent said they were Jewish, making New York the most Jewish state.
--In Utah, 55 percent said they were Mormons, making Utah the most Mormon state.
Gallup derived these numbers from surveys it conducted throughout 2017 in which it interviewed 130,959 respondents in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
The survey showed that certain religious denominations tend to be concentrated in certain geographical regions.
“Americans continue to be geographically segregated by religion,” said Gallup in its analysis. “Protestants dominate in the South, while Catholics are most common in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic, with some representation in the Midwest.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...
Such was and is your argument.
All those countries have also rebelled against the one holy catholic and apostolic Church;
Meaning your unholy modern church which is populated by liberals and provided a liberal official American Bible and elected your liberal pope. Rome requires obedience to the pope in more than just infallible teaching, and devotion to the pope today means devotion to such liberal causes as Climate Change.
It is true the devotion to historical Catholic teaching would prevent the devotees being morally liberal; however, in Catholicism the one duty of the laity is to follow their pastors as docile sheep, and not ascertain the validity of teaching by their own judgment of what conforms to historical church teaching, which is what evangelical do (with historical church teaching being the NT). And thus, when leadership goes South - which Scripture never does - then so do its followers, as seen past Catholic history and now in the present.
Meanwhile, the same argument of rebellion (as explaining moral declension) applies to those countries which once grow in Godliness in proportion to their devotion to Scripture, and thus such are the most conservative today, thereby nullifying the argument against devotion to Scripture as supreme (based on another generation rebelling against it).
By your own logic since the Kingdom of Judah followed the Kingdom of Israel into rebellion and apostasy, the unbroken chain of God's servants would be trashed even though they spoke the word of the LORD to those kingdoms.
What are to talking about? It was leadership overall - which in Catholicism the laity is to submit to as docile sheep - which fell into apostasy, not doing as Josiah did, while those leadership rejected - which dissidents in Catholicism you are to reject - were the remnant who spoke the word of God.
Unless there is a new vernacular translation that substitutes reading for hearing,
A false argument against the written word, for what hear what was read is hear the word of God, which hearing is what the king did, with the point being that it was not oral tradition (which by definition is not written) that preserved the Truth of God and brought revival, but the written word and the hearing of it.:
And Shaphan the scribe shewed the king, saying, Hilkiah the priest hath delivered me a book. And Shaphan read it before the king. And it came to pass, when the king had heard the words of the book of the law, that he rent his clothes. (2 Kings 22:10-11) :
And the king went up into the house of the Lord, and all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem with him, and the priests, and the prophets, and all the people, both small and great: and he read in their ears all the words of the book of the covenant which was found in the house of the Lord. And the king stood by a pillar, and made a covenant before the Lord, to walk after the Lord, and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all their heart and all their soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book. And all the people stood to the covenant. (2 Kings 23:2-3)
And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
A hypocritical misuse of Scripture , for there is no hypocrisy on my part here in correcting your fallacious argument, which would be the case if I impugned esteem of Scripture since people rebelled against it, while if like a liberal, you want to condemn judging in general then it leaves you guilty of doing so.
I warned you against trying to defend your fallacious argument and thus digging yourself a deeper pit, and now look what you have done. Shall we continue?
After picking a fight and your absurd reasoning being reproved you respond with this? Insolence and hypocrisy. Bye.
Now for your next trick you go from arguing against the viability of "Bible only" - strawman that that is - based on rebellion against the Bible, to arguing against availability of the Bible based on rebellion against the Bible! All the while blissfully ignoring that where your alternative, Catholicism, predominates so does liberalism, and that most liberal are those who hold the Bible in the least esteem, while it remains that the most conservative are those who most strongly affirm the authority and integrity of Scripture and read it the most. Which is what you must attack if you will attack us.
Instead, all you can do is use a strawman as an argument, that the mere availability of the Bible is not enough to preserve society, which is not in debate, nor it is any argument against availability and esteem of it, since it does effect righteousness to those who can read and or hear it as being the wholly inspired and accurate word of God. And thus all attempts to attack this remain utterly vain.
Despite the prevalence of the Bible translated into the vernacular the Christian faith continues to decline ... Having the Bible in the hands of the people did not make them more Christian as a nation, or at least not sustainably. This experiment already occurred in Europe so that it is not a recent generation or two. 54 posted on 2/21/2018, 6:27:31 AM by af_vet_1981 (The bus came by and I got on, That's when it all began.) [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies | Report Abuse]
Which is a false an argument against the availability and esteem of Scripture as would be asserting that Christ being available in His own country did not effect much change. Yet in both cases great change is effected when the power is available and received as being what it claims to be. Thus it remains that you have no argument except one of absurdity.
... that the mere availability of the Bible is not enough to preserve society, which is not in debate ... So, absent the noise it seems to me you agree with the point ..
So, absent the noise it seems to me you agree with me that you have no argument except one of absurdity. Either argue that the availability and esteem of Scripture correlates to moral decline among those who hold to it as the wholly inspired and accurate word of God, in contrast to the overall fruit of Catholicism, or admit it does not. Or at least just stop posting foolishness.
Oh good grief Metmom, John was a baptizer, hence baptist and catholic MEANS universal.....AND IT IS THAT.....SIGH
sure you are, you're in a church founded while you were alive.
uhhhhh, yeah, it does....always has.
I am reasonably sure, that you are eons older than me, so maybe the First United Church of the Navigators was founded in your lifetime. 😆 You should join it, since the OTC won’t get you anything, except the lake of 🔥 maybe. 😀👎 Just think bro, you could have assurance of salvation. Correct me if I am wrong, but you don’t have any. Am I right? Sigh.
So, how do you plan to bluff your way into Heaven? I have a feeling, it’s a different way than I will use.
Mark17;
If all someone has is a worldly religion, they measure time and surround themselves with worldly titles and costumes and worldly rituals.
When someone comes to Christ in faith alone and receives salvation, he becomes part of the eternal church, conceived in the heart of God before time began. He realizes worldly rituals don’t save, titles are meaningless, costumes are just “the king’s new clothes.
This is a powerful reality that a guy in a worldly religion can’t comprehend. It is spiritually discerned.
Such were we, but for God’s amazing grace!
Amen bro. 1st Corinthians 1:18 “For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.” I understand why they don’t understand. Neither did we at one time. Thank God we got out of the OTC, while the gettin was good.
My wife and her sister are also ex OTC members. It’s a beautiful thing. All the rest of the family, are OTC members, even though it is in name only. Another brother jumped out of the frying pan, and into the fire, leaving the OTC, to become a Muslim, though also in name only. I can’t really discuss anything with them, as my wife and her sister, are the only ones who can speak English. Kind of reminds me of a Limerick. 😀😆
No members in the family can speak Greek
So in THAT language, we are all up a creek
Not knowing a word
From what I’ve heard
Into the meaning of salvation, I want to peek.
Amen, brother.
...before we find:
"It is written..." also including statements such as "thus saith the Lord," "the word of God/the Lord," "the Lord/God said," "the Law," the prophet..said," "Moses said..." "Scripture," "have ye not read.." etc., which are abundant , while the references to oral tradition are rare, and refer to contemporary teaching of Scriptural truths, the veracity of which being subject to testing by Scripture, (Acts 17:11) and do not refer to a body of historical passed-down ancient teachings, though Scripture can included instances of Truths from tradition as well as from pagans, as well as teachings from eyewitnesses and inspired remembrances of such.
Thus the argument is that since Scripture came out of oral tradition (though this is only partially true) as infallibly magisterially determined by Catholicism (but which is not the actual basis for its establishment and authority), then whatever else she says is inspired by God is also the word of God. Meaning that rather than the Spirit of Christ via His inspired writers making a difference btwn the chaff of oral tradition and the wheat, then the infallible, but not wholly inspired-of-God magisterium takes this place.
And how do we know Catholicism is this infallible magisterial authority? It cannot be first by Scripture, since Catholicism teaches one cannot assuredly correctly know what is of God apart from instruction from and faith in her, and thus appeal to Scripture in order to prove Catholicism is this infallible magisterial authority would be circular ("we know Scripture is true because Catholicism says so; and we know Catholicism is true because Scripture says so").
Thus when faced with this then the more experienced Catholic apologists resort to appealing to Scripture as merely being a reliable historical sources, and abstract altogether from their inspiration, which they purport establishes her claim to be that infallible magisterial authority, by reliance upon which one may also then be assured that Scripture (and whatever she channels out of her amorphous oral tradition) is the word of God.
However, what this means is that Catholics presume souls can discern that their (impure) church is of God but that they cannot discern the pure inspired words of God are just that until they assent to the former. Which position is simply untenable, for by the time of Christ a body of inspired writings of God had already been established, as is abundantly evidenced, which did not require an infallible magisterial authority to do so (nor was the inspired status of the writings the Lord and .NT invoked for support ever contended against by those who sat in the seat of Moses).
And of course, rather than Scripture establishing Catholicism's claim to be the one true church with an infallible magisterial authority, Catholic distinctives are not what is manifest in the only wholly inspired record of what the NT church believed (including how they understood the gospels).
And thus many novice Catholic apologists resort to the "we gave you the Bible = we are the infallible authority on what it is and means" argument, yet based upon that logic 1st century souls should have followed the historical magisterial stewards of Scripture (a body of which had been established) which sat in the seat of Moses.
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