I grew up with Hindu and Muslim families around me. The kids I played with are now 50 and neither devout Hindus or Muslims.
I heard recently about a Kenyan church whose leaders noticed as soon as the young people become established in America they drift away from church.
I heard from a Christian school teacher today that his students in the school which is located next to a megachurch don’t know anything about the Bible.
I have noticed people in church without Bibles either paper or on their phone. Just sitting there with their hands on their lap. In the Bible Belt.
I notice apologetics is not popular in the Christian bookstore compared to ceramics or self-help books.
I heard a Barna study which found many so-called Christians were really “moral therapeutic deists”.
Is something dying here, now, in this era?
Is real concern about the existence of an invisible world dying?
Is such a concern now irrelevant as people flip through their Netflix options alone at night?
As an EC I am almost tempted to agree with YECs that something is going wrong in America.
I think you’re right to be concerned. That is one area where I can sympathize with YEC zeal, but I think the leaders of that movement horribly misdiagnose the problem, so I’d want to approach it carefully before developing too much zeal myself.
I hear some say it’s not a big deal, that the church is being “purified” by getting rid of people who were only hanging around because of cultural obligations, and maybe there is something to that, but since I have a brother who’s left the faith, I have a hard time seeing it as not a big deal.
I wonder if this is heading in the right direction… of course, there seem to be plenty who are “spiritual but not religious,” so maybe it has more to do with institutions, but perhaps there is a hyper-rational bent in our culture that steers people away from committing themselves to something that seems so far outside themselves.
I doubt it will be gone in 20 years. Some YEC believers now are in their early 20s snd will still probably be YEC in 20 years when their kids are teens being taught it.
I doubt science and faith issues will ever go away. They will just change focuses. Such as how China is supposedly mixing human genes into mice to grow organs. I believe eventually cloning will exist. When cloning exists and if it’s becomes normal I could see debates over souls and life showing up. I thought I saw a few years back they helped engineer a kid with the genes of three different parents.
Even now there is a growing debate over transsexuals and the nuances of gender and sex and I’m sure in 20 years there will still be debates over it. I believe a trans woman and a man would still have to face issues over science and faith.
Not bringing these topics up to discuss them directly just using examples of how I believe science snd faith debates will persist in 20 years from now and probably forever.
The only problem is that you read people writing the same kind of thing just like you did, century after century. And yet the demise of religion never happens… and never will. Sure people drift away. Then most often they come back. And for as many that don’t come back, people like me raised without religion discover it for themselves and so you keep getting new converts. And yes you have periods where numbers in churches drop greatly, and then you have revivals and the numbers soar again. This is just how religion is – always has been – always will.
BUT… there are revivals because there are changes… shedding old skins … and find new ones which resonate with the new generation. There is certainly a lot in religion that I very much do hope will die and never return – good riddance!
Sorry to step in there,but i dont think this phenomenon has happened again. From the 90s till now the christian rate had droped in massive numbers here in the West compare to the rising in the East. So even if Christianity is rising to the east as we previously discussed in another post the numbers falling from the faith are twice bigger thatn the numbers coming to faith . So i think its pretty ear this hasnt happened before
I think Mitch is right, actually. Just look at The Great Awakening. There are times where religious influence wanes, and then there is an explosion of religiosity. It has happened throughout human history.
Remember that “from the 90s till now” is only 30 years. In the scope of history, that’s a very small amount of time. To give you some perspective, the Elizabethan Era lasted a little over 40 years, and the Victorian Era lasted a little over 60 years. Those are eras named after just one monarch, and both of those eras ran longer than the time frame you mentioned.
It helps to have perspective.
Take care, friend. May you stay safe and healthy, and may God be with you always.
Yeah maybe it is. But i think the intensity of the numbers is more than enough. If we combine the hostility to Christians now which has grown immersively and the numbers droping as well as cultural atheism ,i think a religious awaking happening again is pretty much imposible in my opinion. Keep in mind that those Great Awakenings (i think there were four in total) lasted for very few years. One of them if i remember correctly lasted only for a three year period. Compare that to the 30 years off the numbers falling its pretty clear that the chances if it happening are very little ,close to none i would say. Of course thats just my opinion ,and my perspective since ive been keeping a close eye lately into the politico-economic-culture and sociology of the West. But again i might be wrong. Sorry for the long post
And I think it will drop even more for a considerable time to come. New life cannot come in great numbers until the old corpses give up the last of life they cling to, because nobody wants to be a part of that anymore. But the new life is there already in smaller numbers – people finding new value in religion apart from all the old nonsense.
And why do I think it will rise again? Because there are ultimately no answers and life in what people are turning to. There is only a poverty of spirit in that direction which will not satisfy the vast majority of people. It will do while they are reacting against the mess Christianity has become, but not for long. How do I know all this. Because this is my life. I came not from the old Christianity which is on it last fetid breaths, but from the vacuum which is left when it has been abandoned. You can embrace science with a whole heart as I did, but in the end I think that can only lead you back to sifting through the ashes of religion for something to revive.
Its sad to hear that church tradition is now a bad thing. If the church becomes way to “secular” (i would said more things ,but are sensitive topics so i wont put them here) then a lot of people i think will leave. Including me i must add.
It is not the good traditions which are a problem. Those will revive when Christianity does. It is ways of thinking which become poisonous and unsupportable. Perhaps the good traditions will find new creative expressions… but that is way good traditions have always survived. If you think any of those old traditions are exactly they way they were thousands of years ago… all I can say is you have got to be kidding!
maybe it is a question of what you mean by tradition
Is human sacrifice a tradition? Is beating your wife a tradition? Is slavery a tradition? Why in the world would you lament the end of things like that?
No not all of them . But 1 generation christians had traditions. Thats why i said if we exclude these specific traditions(not the newly added ones) then im out. I would like it if we actually established these lost traditions and abolish recent created ones. But if we abolish some things alltogether just for the church to be more “inclusive” then i have no reason to support Christianity anymore. Ill just keep my faith to myself
If you like that sort of thing then I am sure there will be others who do so too. And thus there will be churches who do it. Me? Not so much. When I was talking about things I would be happy to see the end of, I wasn’t talking about things like that. And I certainly wasn’t talking about religious diversity. I, at least, see that as a good and healthy thing.
I don’t know. There has been quite a movement of evangelicals to Eastern Orthodox (especially Antiochan Orthodoxy) and to Catholicism. Some of us really like the ritual; I know I do, and wish my Baptist church incorporated some of the formal prayers, like the Anglican ones @beaglelady is one (Episcopalian).
Agreed. But the most ancient church for me i think which has some traditions that first christians actually did(not all of them are from that time of history of course)are the Orthodox branches. (Eastern Orthodox ,And Coptic)
