We joined a church so the kids would be familiar with so when it was time to make their own decisions they had a good idea what it was all about. The activities and sense of community were a big plus.
Here’s a simple test to determine whether we’re living in a theocracy. Find out if anything bad happens you if you insult churchgoers.
There is certainly value to a belief system, a code, etc. and there are clear benefits to Christianity over others as it's focus on an individual relationship with God is the source of a lot of our Western concepts about human rights, freedom, etc. But, man, does it need to update. It's always going to be hard - and even harder in a tech driven society - to accept a literal translation, to the point of being impossible. As I've said before, how is a literal translation of the Bible any more plausible than the Iliad? And yet one is considered inherently true while the other is considered clear fiction (or heavily embellished history). If you're selling it as a metaphor for larger truths, then I think you'd get a lot of takers. But if you're selling dinosaurs and humans living together. . . good luck with that.
Totally. Just hilarious how this basic fact sails over the heads of the true-believer class. Or maybe it's the fact they either blatantly ignore or just embrace the hypocrisy.
Perhaps, but it has little if any power. It has been soundly defeated in the cultural wars. Prior to mass-derangement (Covid) my wife and I were attending a UMC church close by. Since then the denomination has removed strictures to LGBTQ from presiding over congregations as clergy. Note: the strictures were removed by a 97 to 3 vote. dissenting congregations have essentially been chased out of the denomination.
The question underneath the question is "What is Christianity?" A true understanding of the answer to that question is what is needed. Many things that masquerade underneath the label of Christianity, redefining and reinterpreting its vocabulary and stories, are the crux of the problem here. There are not many adherents of the religion of Christianity in the US, and many of those that adhere to anti-Christian religious systems do so under the banner of Christ and Christianity. J Gresham Machen's work Christianity and Liberalism was written 100 years ago, but it is as relevant to the discussion today as the day it was written.
That's consistent with what I have heard over the years. I wonder whether and how much that might affect polling. I imagine, for example, that many folks who start going to church when they have kids already loosely identified as Christian in a cultural sense.
It’s easy to become a cultural Christian. Recently, the world’s leading atheist, Richard Dawkins, has announced he’s joined the ranks.
1st tenet of your beloved communism is to outlaw God. "...religion is the opiate of the ppl...". Why do you suppose that is? Why must your godless scum sucking ideological peers feel the need to officially pretend God does not exist? (...and declare themselves deity over their moronic subordinate minions who fall for the stupidity of "the ppl" actually being represented by their overlord slave masters???) And most saliently...how do purportedly college educated folk such as yourself continue to fall for that utter stupidity, in spite of so mach historical precedent of that horseshit system being nothing more than a ruse/guise for tyranny???
You'd probably be surprised if you actually darkened the door of a real faith community, but your comment tells me you would rather just parrot the nonsense.
A small but possibly significant number of church dropouts may be believers who have opted to meet in homes. Remember that early Christians didn’t “go to church” or have “worship services.”
What would be your takeaway from church attendance being in decline while Christian identity being relatively stable?
We’ve done this before … you can go to church if you want in china or Cuba lol. My parents once went there on a mission trip!
I know you didn’t ask me, but partly because “I’m a Christian” is a cultural norm and therefore there is little to gain by not sleeping in on Sunday.
It's always been secular. That's what separation of church and state means, and has always meant. Fortune for both/all of us--Catholic, atheist, Jew, Muslim, and even most flavors of Protestantism, alike. Your commie colleagues are not quite so tolerant. It's their godless Church of Government, or.... [not good].
Not until after the churches were neutered, and their (commie's) system has been exposed as woefully inadequate to the task of providing a decent life for their slave subjects. (Then they allow for a little religion, to release some steam pressure).
