Thanks for your answers Jay and Eddie. This stuff kind of make more sense now, but obviously I still have a lot more to learn
Finally, pt. 2. So much here that I would like to reply to, it will probably come off as just scatter-shooting, but here goes:
This is what concerns me, and why I showed up at BioLogos in the first place. The U.S. is following Europe in becoming a “post-Christian” society, and that trend is accelerating. Millennials are leaving the church in even greater numbers than their parents, the Baby Boomers. Why? The reasons are legion, but my research so far points in a much different direction than most leaders of the Evangelical church would guess. I have found very little that suggests the problem is a rejection of traditional Christian morality or worldview, which includes a Creator-God and miracles. Rather, much of the problem can be laid at the feet of the leaders of the Evangelical church, specifically the shotgun marriage between them and conservative politicians. Fifty-plus years of the “culture wars” have resulted in nothing but self-inflicted wounds, and the bleeding victims are our own children. It will take me a whole book to make that case fully, so please don’t ask for it now! Haha. Onward…
You’re certainly right about definitions changing over time. I would be happy to be called a fundamentalist in the original sense that the term was applied: One who believes in the fundamentals of the Christian faith. But as that word took on negative connotations, “evangelical” supplanted it. Now that “evangelical” has acquired decades of negative associations of its own, I’m guessing that a new descriptive will soon emerge. For now, we’re stuck with “evangelical” to describe Christians who believe the Bible to be the word of God. As I mentioned above in regard to the statistics, this covers a lot of disparate groups and beliefs, so organizations such as BL that cater to all those constituencies must try to find “umbrella language” that all can agree to. It’s not always easy, and often leads to mealy-mouthed statements of faith that actually say very little. Not sure that they’ll ever satisfy someone like you, who favors precision of language, on that front. Oh well. It’s the world we live in.
I agree, mostly. I’m persuaded by men like Dallas Willard and Richard Foster that we shouldn’t neglect the spiritual disciplines that previous generations practiced. People tend to focus on those aspects of spirituality that they prefer and neglect those that they don’t. So, guys like you and me emphasize reading and study, and perhaps neglect fasting or service. That caveat aside, I just read Psalm 119 over again, and it beautifully expresses my thoughts:
How sweet are your words to my taste,
sweeter than honey to my mouth!
Through your precepts I get understanding;
therefore I hate every false way.
Ha! I was just thinking of Tozer and his great image of the sacrifice portioned and laid on the altar, but no fire comes down from heaven. This discussion reminds me of another great book, The Race Set Before Us: A Biblical Theology of Perseverance and Assurance. (I seem to be on a book-recommending binge today, but this one is a must-read.) As the authors say, “No single metaphor can encompass God’s saving work, for our salvation exceeds the capacity of any one image or metaphor.” “Personal relationship” may be a modern metaphor, but it, like the biblical metaphors, cannot say everything that can (or should) be said. Metaphors for salvation in Scripture: Deliverance metaphors (Salvation, the Kingdom of God, Redemption), Renewal metaphors (Regeneration, New Creation, Resurrection, Conversion, Eternal Life), Family metaphors (Adoption, Children of God, Heirs, Reconciliation), Cultic metaphors (Saints, Sanctification, Holiness), Legal metaphors (Forgiveness of Sins, Righteousness). Each of these reveal facets of the subject; none exhausts it.
1 Like
Jay - Last time I fasted I wrote off my Saab and nearly myself! Though that’s a reason not to do it in the middle of busy medical practice, rather than not at all!
1 Like
Now, for my final trick, I will attempt to bring all these various ideas back to the OP:
But this is precisely the divide between East and West, and believe it or not, much of the reason brings us back to the discussion of original sin. If I may be forgiven for quoting from my own unpublished work:
"When we speak of culture, as opposed to society, we are speaking of the shared values that unite people into communities. In first-century Palestine, Judaism obviously was the common thread that stitched the people together. But even if the Jews regarded themselves as set apart by God from their pagan neighbors, Jewish culture shared much in common with the rest of the Mediterranean world of antiquity. Primarily, this found expression in the honor-shame culture that still holds sway over 70% of the world’s population (the exceptions being Europe and North America).
"Our post-industrial Western culture, which developed under the influence of Christianity, places high value on the uniqueness, rights, and responsibilities of the individual, and when someone violates our cultural norms, we expect them to feel inner guilt for their behavior. Anthropologists refer to this as a guilt culture. Honor-shame cultures, however, operate along very different lines. Within them, people are much more sensitive to hierarchy and rank, and they do not think of themselves separately from their network of relationships. Individual identity is subservient to group identification; personhood is considered collectively and directly tied to family and community, so much so that, in first-century Palestine, paternity and communal origin were thought sufficient to predict one’s destiny.
"At its most fundamental level, honor involves public recognition of social standing. A child inherits the status of the family, and future honor for the group is acquired through a perpetual struggle with others for recognition and acclaim. All members bask in the honor that any of them receive, and all likewise share in any shame. This type of environment produces a personality that values itself according to others’ opinions. People learn to keep the core of themselves hidden behind a façade of social norms and conventions – doing what brings honor and avoiding anything that may cause shame. Shame, in this case, is not personal guilt, but “losing face” in the eyes of others, to put it in the vernacular of Asian culture. In positive terms, to “have shame” means to have proper concern for one’s reputation, and to lack this outlook is simply “shameless,” actively disrespecting others and their opinions. Negatively, since shame is the result of public disapproval, a person who has done wrong may feel no inner guilt for a shameful act as long as it remains hidden and unpublicized…
“Jesus, for his part, operates within the accepted norms of his culture, yet simultaneously critiques and redefines them. … Not only his opponents, but the public at large cannot fathom how the son of Joseph, a mere carpenter from lowly Nazareth, could possibly be God’s Anointed, which explains why Matthew and Luke go to such great lengths to present Jesus’ genealogy and true birthplace. At the same time, Jesus criticizes his culture for its folly in seeking honor from men rather than God, its hypocrisy in judging by outward appearances, and its shallowness in defining one’s worth in comparison to others. He redefines power as serving rather than being served, and he redefines personal identity by teaching that God is Abba, Father, and all whom he adopts into his family become brothers and sisters. Ultimately, Jesus dies the most shameful death possible in his culture, crucifixion, but he not only accepts this fate, he embraces it as his path to honor and instructs his disciples to take up the cross and follow him.”
In the end, the value of the individual in Western culture comes right back to the doctrine of original sin, because it is this doctrine (as well as Paul’s assertion that we are all one in Christ Jesus) that sets all people on equal footing, for we are all sinners. I wonder what critique the Lord would offer of current Western culture? Perhaps we should find a better balance between East and West?
EDIT: Sorry, but missed a paragraph in the original cut-and-paste. It is the one that begins, “When we speak of culture…”
2 Likes
There are two aspects to this discussion. The first deals with human nature as such, and the great scepticism that aspects such as human consciousness and personhood can be adequately dealt with by evolution. Biblical teaching is that Adam and Eve were the first true humans who came into existence through a direct act of God. Sin entered their world through temptation and disobedience - I cannot see why we need a lengthy discussion on this Biblical teaching. Sin is acting contrary to God’s will and breaking God’s law, and its power is death. Since clearly, we understand all have sinned and have come short of the glory of God, I consider the matter closed regarding human nature. We are all like Adam in that we have been born into a sinful race, and are ourselves sinners. The important distinction is that God created us as good, and since Adam we have consciously acted as sinful creatures.
On the second aspect, we are in agreement - for Christ to have been without sin, God caused His birth, and for humans to be saved, they must put of their sinful nature and be reborn as children of God, This is the salvation of the human race through and in Christ. Christ took on human flesh, lived amongst as as one of us, and yet was without sin - directly facing temptation and all its force.
At no point in ToE can we discuss or deal with these central teachings of the Christian faith.
I want to avoid pointless exchanges that lead us nowhere, but I feel the subject of salvation may be lost in some of the comments made to me - so with the hope that this may be useful to this thread, I offer the following as a summary only (and I hear someone say, "If this is a summary, oh boy !!! 
- so here it is:
The central question to humanity is that of sin and redemption. Yet these terms are formalisms in today’s culture. The forgiveness of our sins through the blood of Christ, however, is the centre-piece of the faith. Such a discussion needs to be initially ‘separated’ to show a distinction between the sacred and the material. The overall ‘meaning of Christ’ may now be discussed within the context of the first Adam and the last Adam. The sum total of (good) human possibilities may be comprehended within a context of the beginning and end of humanity. To this, I add the practical, which is to consider Christianity proper as the means by which humanity progresses (or reaches its destiny) into human beings who are like Christ. Human beings may progress from our present state (symbolised by the first Adam) into that revealed by the actions and teachings of Christ (the final Adam). This thesis would require a careful review of human attributes as they are now, and the attributes (ultimate) of Christ. Overall, it is not what I sometimes regard as a Miltonian view of Christ outwitting or ‘beating’ the Devil, nor a Dantean view of a cosmological order into which people ‘fit’ or ‘act’ so as to aspire to an end result that accords to a human ideal of good and evil that ultimately actualises into a hell for the wicked, a heaven for the blessed, and a purgatory for those ‘in between’.
Christ ‘had to achieve’ in order to provide the forgiveness of our sins. The overall result is the change or ‘conversion’ of human beings ‘dead’ because of sin, into human beings ‘alive’ once again in Christ, with Godly attributes. Humanity is saved from Satan’s attributes, that of sin. This is a practical proposition that does not immediately require a separate entity with a spiritual existence, such as an immortal soul. As a result, salvation can only be an act of Grace from God himself. Immortal souls will always be immortal – thus some type of goal, or end result from this life, would be non-sense to an immortal being. Instead, we as finite human aspire to a Godly life as one in which sin is removed, and with this death is removed, and the result is God’s eternal life, as we are not separated from God by our sins. The question of an ‘afterlife’ is now a Godly life without death - that is eternal life.
Salvation is the change or conversion of human beings into people with Godly attributes, as the children of God, through baptism in the death of Christ, and resurrection into life in Christ. The final change takes place at the last trumpet, or last day, and is determined by God himself.
The contradictions arising from the idea of god are the result of intellectual speculation based on an erroneous premise of being. A person ‘knows’ that he is alive. He may continue to reason and speculate about life, but he cannot become life through an idea.
The term ‘the Grace of God’ is sometimes used to infer that Christianity is unfair - for example, if all the attributes that accord to the one-ness of God were so beneficial, why should not all of humanity be able to access them? Why should God ‘show favour’, so to speak, and choose to be gracious to some and not to others? If God is, as we say, truth and mercy, and so on, He should have ‘converted’ all of humanity by now and thus we would all live in a perfect world without the suffering and misery found on this earth. In this way, we transfer responsibility for our actions to God by virtue of the basic tenant of Salvation, which is that God saves humanity from ‘death’ or sin, into ‘life’ and goodness. The obvious answer to this is that this would not be an act of Grace by God but an act of force - in other words, we would not have a say in this change from dual/plural attributes into singular Godly attribute. The question, however, has far deeper significance and goes to the heart of the matter of man and God. The Christian message is that the Son of God came to live amongst us and although none could find fault with Him, we as human beings (or those human beings who interacted with Christ) decided to put Him to death. This profound message shows that God would not force or insist on our conversion. It also shows that we human being may say we would choose mercy and goodness, but in actual fact we often choose otherwise.
The ideas expressed by those with regret regarding the human condition, when considering such things as cruelty amongst human beings, are found within the intentions and acts of human beings. When these ideas are place within the context, or criticisms as a given idea of God, the result is intent to pass responsibility for the acts and attributes of human beings to something other-than-humanity; yet these same human beings cannot entertain the notion of being any other that their-self, including the right to choose any act they may present to themselves. The result of this jumble of ideas is understood as the pain, rather than the pleasure, of human existence; while the pleasure experienced by human beings is seen by them as a sufficient cause to be satisfied to remain as such particular beings, the pain of human existence may cause them to either appeal to God, or a god, or to argue with gods on the outcomes of their own human actions.
We as human beings make many attempts to deal with this dilemma; one attempt has been to use our own will to arrive at a means by which intention, action, and morality (goodness) were made comprehensible within a community of human beings, and also desirable (freely chosen) by all in that community. The result would be a ‘one-ness’ for each individual, and also the entire community, in intent, act, and all outcomes would be common to every member of such a community. This probably presents the ideal of democracy and is sometimes spoken in theological language – such a notion is also testimony to the spirit of humanity, in that it aspires to such an ideal, albeit vaguely understood and poorly practiced. The freedom of the human spirit (discussed previously) provides the ground for a common good, while the experience and history of humanity argues against the ability for human beings to achieve such an ideal of a communal ‘one-ness’ and common good.
These short remarks provide a background to the essential elements of Christianity and emphasise why Christ is the resurrection and the life; no-one could come to the Father accept through the Son. Christians are totally dependant on Christ, and forgiveness and cleansing of their sins is by the blood of Christ. This dependence shows the relationship between those called by God to faith in Christ, and is the ‘practical’ side of Salvation. This relationship calls for the one-ness within Christian life, Christian thought, and Christian belief in the One-True-God.
I hope the book will not remain unpublished, Jay! The unpacking of the “honour” concept in NT society is an important one in understanding so much of the NT (this was pointed out to me by Bruce Winter of Tyndale House, whose field was the background of, particularly, diaspora and non-Jewish sociology.
Jesus would, and did, cut across both that “shame” culture and our “autonomous” one, but it seems to me that his own model has somewhat more in common with the former, in that the subordination of oneself to the social norm is being replaced with the proper subordination of oneself to God’s kingdom norms - ultimately modelled by Jesus himself as personal obedience to the Father and his ways, and for us put into practice by submission to Christ as to God.
Your link of individuality to original sin strikes a chord (not least in the common and symptomatic western denial of the doctrine of original sin!). My own unpublished book (maybe I should submit it to an Eastern publisher!) traces that individuality to a quite distinct movement in the Renaissance, rightly or wrongly.
2 Likes
Augustine has been called the first modern or Western man. This is based on his Autobiography, which is noticeably introspective. This is what people mean when they say that the West is individualist, while the East is collectivist. I do not think that an Easterner could or would do what Martin Luther did.
Individualism can be good when done right and not good when done wrong, like most things. Jesus defied the collective judgement of the Jewish religious establishment, and Paul defied the Jews, Gentiles, and Pater.
In my opinion humans are both social and individualist. and Augustine’s Trinity is the basis of reconciling both. This is the reason why the Western Church split off theologically from the East. The Augustinian Trinity is the key of the differences between the Eastern and Western Churches.
1 Like
Yes, but your response is that of a reasonable, theologically literate adult. I’m looking at high school and college-age kids, 15-25. They support Bernie Sanders. Most of them have not read the Bible, never mind any theology. @Thanh_C hinted at the problem. Yet, right at the age when most people are making up their minds about the “big” questions, many of the youth ministries in evangelical churches are spending the majority of their time on controversial issues. We talked about some of this a bit in the “Bending the Curve” thread awhile back. Still, as you say, the problem is complex, and many other factors are involved. I certainly can’t say that I have “THE” answer. At least, not yet. Haha[quote=“Eddie, post:50, topic:5550”]
But that is what Jon Garvey is saying. And he is also pointing out that “evangelical” has come to have a different sense – at least in America – over the past 50 or 60 years.
[/quote]
Yes, I was agreeing with him here. But I don’t think that most American evangelicals are focused on subjective experience rather than objective doctrine. The Charismatic tradition is the more “touchy-feely” type, and going back to my post #20, they represent just 15% of the total evangelical population. Interestingly, when I was looking for that number, I ran across a lot more data on the growth of Charismatic churches in Latin America and Africa. In any case, I also agree with your last observation on the tendency of people to compartmentalize and rely on others to form their opinions for them.
Thank you! I’m looking for a new agent at the moment. Publishing is a long haul. I’ve had your book bookmarked for a while. Look forward to reading it!
Well said. And as @Relates points out, as human beings, we are both individual and social. We come to Christ an individual, but we are joined as one in the family of God. "I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. (Jn. 17:20-21)
Out of all your first paragraph, this is the only difference between us. I think that there are good reasons not to read the Biblical creation account literally. For example, the name Adam functions in the narrative more like a title, i.e. “The Man,” than a personal name, which fits well with the fact that the Hebrew adam refers typically to mankind and is also a play on the word adama, or “ground.” There are other reasons, too, but this is where we differ. I do not believe the narrative loses any of its theological force by my reading, although some cannot conceive of that being possible. Forgive me for being ignorant of your branch of Christianity, but does the Eastern Orthodox church require believers to accept its interpretation of Scripture?
Thanks for the summary of your church’s view of salvation. (Or was that your view? Sorry. It wasn’t clear to me if you wrote that or someone else.) It is interesting to see things that we generally agree upon put in such different language than I am used to seeing.
Back to the differences between Eastern and Western views. One thing that cropped up in my research on “shame” culture turned up an interesting side note. Often, missionaries try to present the Gospel in the forensic language of Billy Graham, emphasizing our guilt before God and our forgiveness in Christ. While those things are true, they mostly fall on deaf ears in non-Western cultures.
1 Like
Jesus does not shame people. Jesus forgives people, just as He forgave the woman caught i9n adultery. We need to do likewise.
Christianity is a relational faith based on love, not a legalism religion of shame or individualistic merit.
Roger, I don’t think you understood my use of the parallel - maybe you didn’t understand the cultural distinction Jay was describing, either.
The main distinction Jay drew was between our individualism, in which personal guilt is what sin is all about, and the Eastern culture - in which the gospel actually arose - in which ones social framework was the nexus in which both sin (leading to shame vis a vis ones community) and salvation are to be understood.
Rather as in N T Wright’s treatment of Paul (as far as I have understood it), forgiveness in the latter has to do predominantly with taking one out of the destructive setting and into that centred on God (from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light). Of course, our viewpoint of a guilty individual receiving grace through forgiveness to a state of righteousness gets to the same place, but tends to underestimate the communal nature of “Kingdom” - and thus as a side effect breed that western emphasis on individual beliefs rather than “the faith of the Church”, on my salvation rather than our salvation.
One small example - haven’t you ever been in those discussions where people cast doubt on the likelihood of the stories in Acts where a man and his whole household are saved (including, presumably, the the wife, kids, mother-in-law and servants)? Over here we suspect either exaggeration or coercion - but in many parts of the world, such a thing would be the obvious norm. The chief gets saved, and the village are converted - or even in Europe in mediaeval times, it’s not so strange that the conversion of King Oswald also marks Northumbria becoming a Christian realm.
1 Like
@GJDS In a number of posts on this Forum, I have expounded my ‘solution’ to the ‘paradox’ you pose here. It appears that I have failed in convincing anyone that my view gives a clearer picture of Christ’s combined human/divine nature than was available before we had scientific knowledge of evolution and humanity’s genetic underpinnings. Nevertheless, I will try once more:
Darwinian evolution is the most reliable explanation we currently have of how our species, Homo sapiens, descended from earlier forms of animal life. But this describes only a range of phenotypes that represent the species. At the moment each of us is conceived, the genetic information to ‘construct’ a phenotype is fixed. However, the developmental process that produces the final human being is highly plastic (see e.g. “Develpmental Plasticity & Evolution” Mary Jane Wesst-Eberhard), and environmental effects can dictate different outcomes from the same genetic code. Previously, genetic determinism was the dominant ‘environmental dogma’, but it has now become apparent that developmental causes of variation can be crucial in providing the ‘raw material’ upon which evolution acts. It is important to note that these developmental variations can be expressed by physical and by behavioral differences.
So what has this to do with the belief that Jesus was truly man but still sinless?
Sin (i.e. moral Sin) could come into the world only when the creature involved has a knowledge of right and wrong, and the freedom to chose the wrong. For the first 100,000 yrs on earth our species, Homo sapiens, lacked a conscience and behaved instinctively. Relatively suddenly, their primate brain circuits were ‘programmed’ to behave as Minds, and in a Great Leap Forward, they became the humans we recognize as US–capable of acting with love, compassion and selflessness, but still being guided genetically by what have been labeled "selfish genes". Jesus could have come into this world with the DNA that expressed these selfish genes, but (thru the Holy Spirit) his development proceeded in such a way that expressed the potential that God wishes for each and every one of us. God created us with the potential to sin; i.e., capable of sin, but still as part of a ‘very good’ world. He sent Jesus to show us how we could achieve His Kingdom if we chose not to sin.
Al Leo
This is my summary - I draw heavily on the Bible, Patristic writings, and these are, as far as I know theology, the teachings of the Orthodox Church of God.
My view is that Biblical narrative is meant primarily to teach us and it is both historically relevant, but also contains eternal truths. Thus while Adam and Eve were truly human beings created in the image of God, they are also symbolic of all human beings (by symbolic I mean represent the nature and inclinations of all of us). This also encompasses what you refer to as “The Man”, and made out of the same material as the earth or ground.
One difference that I have noticed regarding the broad classification “evangelical” and “orthodox” is the latter’s emphasis on how we live as individuals and as a community, while the former seems to be focussed in individual and even idiosyncratic readings of the Bible, and a fairly ad hoc approach to theology. For example, it is not uncommon for a church to remove or publicly criticise a member if such were found to hurt or steal from someone, while my impression is that evangelicals are prone to enter into doctrinal arguments and avoid too much criticism of individual acts. However this may be a mistaken impression as I think all Christians seek the good and try to avoid evil in any guise.
While I do not have any problem with group conversions historically, I would not think that they are based on coercion, I would wonder how “real” these mass conversion would be. To be sure a mass conversion can lead to the establishment of real churches and true Christians with time.
I wonder however if you understood the truly historical aspect of what I was talking about. Augustine was a Christian saint, the greatest theologian outside the Bible, and the FIRST Westerner.
The western world view grew out of Augustine’s understand of God and in particularly the Trinity. God as revealed by Jesus Christ is the Trinity Who combines the social and the individual, the one and the many, the unity and complexity.
Of course non-Christian societies are communal. To think that they are like Western society is to commit a egregious anachronism. God is not dead. God is still in the business of revealing Godself through God’s Logos/Word. God is still alive revealing Godself through God’s ongoing Creation. .
Well, I don’t dispute Augustine’s importance to Western theology (and he even influenced the East’s once his work was trandlated into Greek). But I think it’s disputible whether his work on the Trinity is as influential as the earlier work of Athanasius (surely a competitor to Luther for persistence in the Lord’s cause!) and the Cappadocian Fathers on the Western conception of economic Trinity. After all, it’s the Athanasian Creed which was recited in Anglican churches here until saying creeds went out of fsahion (not long before understanding them did!).
As for mass conversions, I’ve heard many instances in our day, in India, Africa, or South America, of a significant healing or a visiting evangelist’s preaching leading to virtually a whole village becoming Christian. Churches a re founded - the issue often is getting adequate doctrinal teaching to them thereafter… but that’s the case in a lot of churches in the privileged west, too, where the seminaries don’t always turn out what the church actually needs.
1 Like
Jon, we argued long over the Augustinian Trinity which I prefer and is the traditional Western view as opposed to the Cappadocian Trinity, w2hich you prefer.
I certainly agree that Athanasius, the African theologian who most like originated the doctrine of Nicaea and certainly was primarily responsible for its long term establishment. This does make him a great theologian that we should recognize in the West.
However besides his Confessions, then first Western autobiography, we have The City of God , which gave the outline for the survival of the Church after the destruction of the Roman Empire about the time of his death.
Also Augustine imported the concept of a monastery from the East and adapted it to the situation in the West, in order to further guarantee the survival of the Church. This is in addition to defining the key Western understanding of the Trinity with his masterful book, On the Trinity, which shapes its understanding of God and Reality.
Luther was an Augustinian monk.
Yes, I would agree with this.
I agree, and I would actually prefer the term “orthodox” over “evangelical,” but the former has already been claimed. We in the west need to recover and re-emphasize the communal aspects of the faith that have been neglected.
As for individual and idiosyncratic readings, remember that 35% of evangelical Christians in the U.S. are Baptists, and Baptist theology places particular stress on the “priesthood of all believers.” Thus, Baptist ministers and theologians are not bound to a particular theological creed, other than dunking instead of sprinkling and “once saved, always saved.” Then, there is the growth of non-denominational churches, which may or may not subscribe to a set of historic creeds or confessions. More often than not, a particular non-denominational church derives its theology from the minister who founded it and his successors. Add to that the Charismatic churches, which stress personal experience over doctrine, and two-thirds of American Protestantism is practically a theological free-for-all.
Sorry. I was speaking shorthand. haha. I’m interested mainly in young adults and kids who are (or were) raised in evangelical churches, but their worldview is still roughly defined and taking shape. By the time they are 25, it is more or less fixed. My experience with this age group suggests that they are leaving or drifting away from the church in greater numbers than past generations. I want to know why, and what we, as Christians, can do about it.
You’re right, that wouldn’t make much sense for a young person who was firmly committed to Christ. But, if you remember that study I cited about the mainline churches’ decline in members, “the single best predictor of church participation turned out to be belief – orthodox Christian belief, and especially the teaching that a person can be saved only through Jesus Christ.” The mainline denominations lost the Baby Boom generation because they failed to teach the “fundamentals” of Christian faith. Now, evangelical churches are at the leading edge of a similar decline in numbers.
My thesis is not that Republican politics has produced a loss of faith in the young. My thesis is that too many evangelical churches similarly “took their eye off the ball,” in regard to teaching our youth. Rather than giving young people a solid foundation in Christ, many of our youth leaders focused on pounding the “right” answers on controversial issues into our children’s heads. Lots of kids heard lots of teaching on sexual purity, abortion, evolution, gay rights, secular humanism, etc., because this is where the “culture wars” were being fought. Not only do these kids fail to receive a proper grounding in the faith, they are left with the impression that if they disagree with the politics attached to these issues, they are not truly Christian.
Yes. This is the result of that type of Christian “education.” Now, imagine the same type of thing going on with high school students, many of whom are still making up their minds about what they do or don’t believe.