The End of Evangelical Innocence In The Church

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Today I’ll be in the studio with John MacArthur, taping an interview about the contemporary evangelical obsession with sex. “The Case Against the R-Rated Church” is the working title, but the interview is unscripted, so we’ll see where it goes.

Anyway, I was looking up facts and various news items on the subject and three things struck me.

One: This is a huge and widespread problem. The “Christian” districts of the World Wide Web are filled with places that aren’t safe for family viewing—everything from “Christian” sex shops to lurid advice columns.

Two: Modesty is all but gone from the evangelical movement. Not only have today’s evangelicals cast aside innocence as if it were something to be ashamed of; they are proud to have done so. They are keen to show a comfortable familiarity with the very things Scripture says it is shameful to speak of in public (Ephesians 5:12), and they would be embarrassed to be thought squeamish about such things.

Three: Sermons with graphic sexual themes and church-wide sex challenges are merely symptoms of a much bigger problem. In short, the church is fornicating with the world and intoxicated with the spirit of the age. Some of neo-evangelicalism’s favorite jargon—missional, contextualization, authenticity—has been tortured and misappropriated in order to justify and institutionalize gross worldliness.

via Pyromaniacs: The End of Evangelical Innocence.

Christians Risk Rejection And Discrimination

The first poll of Britain’s churchgoers, carried out for The Sunday Telegraph, found that thousands of them believe they are being turned down for promotion because of their faith.

One in five said that they had faced opposition at work because of their beliefs.

More than half of them revealed that they had suffered some form of persecution for being a Christian.

The findings suggest a growing hostility towards religion in this country, which has been highlighted by a series of clashes between churchgoers and their employers.

Church leaders, including the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, have urged Christians to “wake up” and defend their beliefs after the suspension of Caroline Petrie, a community nurse, for offering to pray for a patient.

Churchgoers are likely to be further concerned by new guidelines that warn that employees face dismissal if they share their faith with colleagues at work.

Employers have been given new advice in a campaign, funded by the Government’s equality watchdog, that says people who evangelise in the workplace are “highly likely” to be accused of harassment.

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Catholic Church Is Making A Comeback

Catholicism appears to be growing in popularity and attendance.

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Most U.S. Christians Don’t Believe Satan, Holy Spirit Exist

Nearly six out of ten Christians either strongly agreed or somewhat agreed with the statement that Satan “is not a living being but is a symbol of evil,” the survey found.

Forty percent strongly agreed with the statement while 19 percent of American Christians somewhat agreed.

In contrast, about 35 percent of American Christians believe Satan is real. Twenty-six percent strongly disagreed with the statement that Satan is merely symbolic and about one-tenth (9 percent) somewhat disagreed.

The remaining eight percent of American Christians responded they were unsure what to believe about the existence of Satan.

Interestingly, the majority of Christians believe a person can be under the influence of spiritual forces, such as demons or evil spirits, even though many of these same people believe Satan is merely a symbol of evil. Two out of three Christians agreed that such forces are real (39 percent agreed strongly, 25 percent agreed somewhat).

Likewise, most Christians in the United States do not believe that the Holy Spirit is a living force. Fifty-eight percent strongly or somewhat agreed with the statement that the Holy Spirit is “a symbol of God’s power or presence but is not a living entity.”

Only one-third of Christians disagreed with the statement that the Holy Spirit is not just symbolic (9 percent disagreed somewhat, 25 percent disagreed strongly). Nine percent expressed they were unsure.

Interestingly, about half (49 percent) of those who agreed that the Holy Spirit is only a symbol but not a living entity, agreed that the Bible is totally accurate in all of the principles it teaches. The Bible states that the Holy Spirit is God’s power or presence, not just symbolic.

“Most Americans, even those who say they are Christian, have doubts about the intrusion of the supernatural into the natural world,” commented George Barna, founder of The Barna Group and author of books analyzing research concerning America’s faith.

“Hollywood has made evil accessible and tame, making Satan and demons less worrisome than the Bible suggests they really are,” he said. “It’s hard for achievement-driven, self-reliant, independent people to believe that their lives can be impacted by unseen forces.”

via Most U.S. Christians Don’t Believe Satan, Holy Spirit Exist| Christianpost.com.

Twitter and Facebook Could Harm Moral Values

Today’s fast-paced media could be making us indifferent to human suffering and should allow time for us to reflect, according to researchers.

They found that emotions linked to moral sense are slow to respond to news and events and have failed to keep up with the modern world.

In the time it takes to fully reflect on a story of anguish and suffering, the news bulletin has already moved on or the next Twitter update is already being read.

As activities such as reading books and meeting friends, where people can define their morals, are taken over by news snippets and fast-moving social networking, the problem could become widespread, researchers warn.

Children could be particularly vulnerable because their brains are still developing.

“If things are happening too fast, you may not ever fully experience emotions about other people’s psychological states and that would have implications for your morality,” said Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, from the University of Southern California, and one of the researchers.

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US Religious Right Concedes Defeat

Editors Note- The defeat is only temporary, if you read the back of The Book, ultimately we win…

Leading evangelicals have admitted that their association with George W. Bush has not only hurt the cause of social conservatives but contributed to the failure of the key objectives of their 30-year struggle.

James Dobson, 72, who resigned recently as head of Focus on the Family - one of the largest Christian groups in the country - and once denounced the Harry Potter books as witchcraft, acknowledged the dramatic reverse for the religious Right in a farewell speech to staff.

“We tried to defend the unborn child, the dignity of the family, but it was a holding action,” he said.

“We are awash in evil and the battle is still to be waged. We are right now in the most discouraging period of that long conflict. Humanly speaking, we can say we have lost all those battles.”

Despite changing the political agenda for a generation, and helping push the Republicans to the Right, evangelicals have won only minor victories in limiting the availability of abortion. Meanwhile the number of states permitting civil partnerships between homosexuals is rising, and the campaign to restore prayer to schools after 40 years - a decision that helped create the Moral Majority - has got nowhere.

Though the struggle will go on, the confession of Mr Dobson, who started his ministry from scratch in 1977, came amid growing concern that church attendance in the United States is heading the way of Britain, where no more than ten per cent worship every week.

Unease is rising that a nation founded - in the view of evangelicals - purely as a Christian country will soon, like northern Europe, become “post-Christian”.

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America A Mission Field

The president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary says a recent article in Newsweek magazine about the decline of Christianity in America poses some challenges to believers. The cover story of the April 13, 2009, issue of Newsweek — titled “The End of Christian America” — points to studies that show the number of Americans who say they have no religious affiliation. For example, the American Religious Identification Survey found that the percentage of self-identified Christians has dropped by 10 percentage points since 1990.

Addressing the topic on his daily radio show, Dr. Albert Mohler, who was quoted in the Newsweek article, says Christians must take every opportunity to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ.

“It’s easier to have an honest conversation with someone about Christianity who knows that he or she is not a Christian, than [to have a conversation with] someone who thinks they are because of some vague, family tie or cultural kind of alliance or allegiance,” he says. “But we’re now looking at an America that knows itself to be increasingly secular.”

Albert Mohler, Jr.Another challenge, says Mohler, is how many people view Christianity. Many, he believes, see Christianity as merely a moral system.

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Obama - US Not A Christian Nation

Barack Obama told an audience in Turkey that the US is not a Christian nation. Sean Hannity aired the video.

Christian College Creates Homosexual Housing

The church-affiliated Texas Christian Read more

Newsweek: The End of Christian America

It was a small detail, a point of comparison buried in the fifth paragraph on the 17th page of a 24-page summary of the 2009 American Religious Identification Survey. But as R. Albert Mohler Jr.—president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, one of the largest on earth—read over the document after its release in March, he was struck by a single sentence. For a believer like Mohler—a starched, unflinchingly conservative Christian, steeped in the theology of his particular province of the faith, devoted to producing ministers who will preach the inerrancy of the Bible and the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the only means to eternal life—the central news of the survey was troubling enough: the number of Americans who claim no religious affiliation has nearly doubled since 1990, rising from 8 to 15 percent. Then came the point he could not get out of his mind: while the unaffiliated have historically been concentrated in the Pacific Northwest, the report said, “this pattern has now changed, and the Northeast emerged in 2008 as the new stronghold of the religiously unidentified.” As Mohler saw it, the historic foundation of America’s religious culture was cracking.

“That really hit me hard,” he told me last week. “The Northwest was never as religious, never as congregationalized, as the Northeast, which was the foundation, the home base, of American religion. To lose New England struck me as momentous.” Turning the report over in his mind, Mohler posted a despairing online column on the eve of Holy Week lamenting the decline—and, by implication, the imminent fall—of an America shaped and suffused by Christianity. “A remarkable culture-shift has taken place around us,” Mohler wrote. “The most basic contours of American culture have been radically altered. The so-called Judeo-Christian consensus of the last millennium has given way to a post-modern, post-Christian, post-Western cultural crisis which threatens the very heart of our culture.” When Mohler and I spoke in the days after he wrote this, he had grown even gloomier. “Clearly, there is a new narrative, a post-Christian narrative, that is animating large portions of this society,” he said from his office on campus in Louisville, Ky.

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Faith of Conservatives, Liberals Differ Greatly

Social, political conservatives differ significantly Read more

Following Atheist Trend, Britons Seek De-baptism

More than 100,000 Britons have recently downloaded “certificates of de-baptism” from the Internet to renounce their Christian faith.

The initiative launched by a group called the National Secular Society (NSS) follows atheist campaigns here and elsewhere, including a London bus poster which triggered protests by proclaiming “There’s probably no God.”

“We now produce a certificate on parchment and we have sold 1,500 units at three pounds (4.35 dollars, 3.20 euros) a pop,” said NSS president Terry Sanderson, 58.

Following atheist trend, Britons seek ‘de-baptism’

Supporters of ‘Antichrist’ Minister Protest Miami-Dade Judges

Wearing white T-shirts emblazoned with ”666”, about a dozen followers of Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda, the Miami-based minister who proclaimed himself the Antichrist, protested his ”persecution” by the justice system in front of the family courthouse on Tuesday.

Last year, after a bitter divorce that featured dueling claims of lesbianism and physical abuse, Miami-Dade judge Roberto Pineiro awarded more than $2.2 million to the minister’s ex-wife, Josefina de Jesus Torres.

In his ruling, Pineiro determined that de Jesus’ Growing in Grace church was a personal business, rather than a religious nonprofit, so the ex-wife was entitled to half of its assets.

Jo-Ann de Jesus, the minister’s daughter who also handles the church’s finances, said the judge based his decision on a ”prejudice against my dad” and not on evidence.

De Jesus and her father’s followers are hoping to get the multimillion dollar judgement overturned.

Pineiro could not be reached for comment Tuesday afternoon.

The minister, who claimed his teachings have replaced those of Jesus Christ and therefore he should be known as the Antichrist, has refused to pay up.

He has been ”moving around a lot lately”, his daughter said, to avoid the arrest warrant issued against him for contempt.

”My father is afraid if he is captured, people will sell their houses to help him because they love him so much,” she said.

Many of de Jesus’ followers say his clash with the secular justice system is further proof that he is the Second Coming. The original Messiah also faced significant legal difficulties, they note.

”It just makes me more secure,” said 38-year-old de Jesus follower Angel Toro. “His persecution means he’s really divine.”

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Americans Calling Themselves Christians Drops 11% In One Generation

When it comes to religion, the USA is now land of the freelancers.

The percentage. of people who call themselves in some way Christian has dropped more than 11% in a generation. The faithful have scattered out of their traditional bases: The Bible Belt is less Baptist. The Rust Belt is less Catholic. And everywhere, more people are exploring spiritual frontiers — or falling off the faith map completely.

These dramatic shifts in just 18 years are detailed in the new American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), to be released today. It finds that, despite growth and immigration that has added nearly 50 million adults to the U.S. population, almost all religious denominations have lost ground since the first ARIS survey in 1990.

“More than ever before, people are just making up their own stories of who they are. They say, ‘I’m everything. I’m nothing. I believe in myself,’ ” says Barry Kosmin, survey co-author.

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