Tag Archives: Churchianity

News

Survey: young people losing their Christian faith in record numbers

15 Comments

From the very liberal Washington Post.

Excerpt:

A growing tide of young Americans is drifting away from the religions of their childhood — and most of them are ending up in no religion at all.

One in four young adults choose “unaffiliated” when asked about their religion, according to a new report from the Public Religion Research Institute and Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs.

But most within this unaffiliated group — 55 percent — identified with a religious group when they were younger.

“These younger unaffiliated adults are very nonreligious,” said Daniel Cox, PRRI’s research director. “They demonstrate much lower levels of religiosity than we see in the general population,” including participation in religious rituals or worship services.

Some of them will return to their faiths as they age, “but there’s not a lot of evidence that most will come back,” added Cox, who said the trend away from organized religion dates back to the early 1990s.

The study of 2,013 Americans ages 18-24 focused on the younger end of the cohort commonly known as the “Millennials” or “Generation Y,” which generally includes young adults as old as 29. Interviews were conducted between March 7 and 20.

Across denominations, the net losses were uneven, with Catholics losing the highest proportion of childhood adherents — nearly 8 percent — followed by white mainline Protestant traditions, which lost 5 percent.

Among Catholics, whites were twice as likely as Hispanics to say they are no longer affiliated with the church.

White evangelical and black denominations fared better, with a net loss of about 1 percent. Non-Christian groups posted a modest 1 percent net increase in followers.

But the only group that saw significant growth between childhood and young adulthood was the unaffiliated — a jump from 11 percent to 25 percent.

And this is very interesting:

An overwhelming majority of white evangelical Protestants (68 percent) said they believe that some things are always wrong, compared to 49 percent of black Protestants, 45 percent of Catholics and 35 percent of the unaffiliated.

I’m a non-white evangelical Protestant, and I think that in general, evangelical Protestants are the ones who emphasize theology, apologetics and worldview integration the most. I think that any other church that wants to stop the losses will have to get serious about apologetics and worldview. It’s especially important for churches to emphasize that Christianity is about truth, to emphasize how we know it’s true (science, history) and to explain why some things are wrong and why Hell is fair. We just don’t have the requirements straight right now – too much emphasis on Christian culture and externals, and not enough emphasis on theology and apologetics and moral reasoning. And parents – not pastors – need to take the lead in teaching their own children after church is over.

News

Lay Christians less likely than pastors to hold to exclusive salvation

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J Warner Wallace of Please Convince Me tweeted this alarming news on Friday.

Excerpt:

Nearly eight in 10 Protestant pastors strongly disagree that eternal life can be obtained through religions other than Christianity in a new survey.

The survey, conducted by LifeWay Research, of 1,000 Protestant pastors asked respondents for their reaction to the statement, “If a person is sincerely seeking God, he/she can obtain eternal life through religions other than Christianity.” A full 77 percent of pastors strongly disagreed while 7 percent somewhat disagreed. Another 7 percent somewhat agreed, 5 percent strongly agreed and 3 percent were not sure.

[…]Pastors’ beliefs regarding the exclusivity of Christianity differ from those of their parishioners, according to a new study conducted for the upcoming book “Transformational Discipleship” by Eric Geiger, Michael Kelly and Philip Nation. When presented with the same statement, just 48 percent of adults who attend a Protestant church once a month or more disagreed strongly and 9 percent disagreed somewhat. A total of 26 percent agreed, including 13 percent who agreed strongly and 13 percent who agreed somewhat. Sixteen percent indicated that they neither agreed nor disagreed.

“One fact is clear: pastors are less universalistic than their church members,” Stetzer said. “A few heads nodding or an occasional ‘Amen’ does not indicate everyone believes Christianity is the only way. Church leaders will never know where their congregation stands unless they ask.”

According to the survey of pastors, those in large cities are more likely to believe that other religions lead to eternal life than their counterparts in other settings. Eleven percent of pastors in large cities strongly agreed. In comparison, 4 percent of pastors in small cities, 4 percent in the suburbs and 3 percent in rural areas feel the same.

Pastors identifying themselves as evangelical are less universalistic than those self-identifying as mainline. Compared with mainline pastors, evangelicals are:

  • Less likely to strongly agree that other religions can lead to eternal life (evangelical pastors, 2 percent; mainline pastors, 11 percent).
  • More likely to strongly disagree (85 percent to 57 percent).

I’ve written about how people who do not think that Christianity is true are more likely to think that religion is really about happy feelings, community and being a good person, especially when confronted by nice people doing nice things in other religions. The further a person gets from truth and apologetics, the more likely their theology is going to degrade into people-pleasing. That’s why apologetics is so important.

It’s much easier to say to a person “you are not saved” when you know enough to ask them “did the universe have a beginning?” and “was Jesus crucified?”. When they answer no to both questions, you take the religion question out of the realm of community, happiness and good deeds, and put it in the realm of truth. It is much easier to see why God would separate away from someone who doesn’t care enough about HIM (not other people, but HIM) that they would spend the time to study cosmology and history, etc. in order to form true beliefs.

As an evangelical Christian, it’s easy for me to believe that non-Christians will not be saved. I ask them questions, I find that they have beliefs that are obviously false. Then, when I propose that they do some studying, they tell me they won’t because religion is about being happy and being liked by your family and friends. When you understand salvation as being about truth, it’s very easy to understand why refusing to study religion to see what is and isn’t true isn’t just another flavor of ice cream – it’s sinful. It’s rebelling against God. It’s telling God “I don’t value you enough to know if you are really there and what you are really like”. And God isn’t obligated to spend eternity with people who don’t want him and who don’t want to know him.

People like Rob Bell and Brian Maclaren and Dan Barker start their drift away from orthodoxy by caring more about the people around them than the Person above them. A relationship with God is not the same as happy feelings and popularity. A relationship with God is work and being unpopular. That’s everywhere in the Bible, too. Followers of Judaism and Christianity are always taking the heat for sticking up for God. Nobody likes them except God. They perform for an audience of One, and they don’t care whether anyone approves or not. We need to get that back in the church. We need to get apologetics back in the church. Nobody feels guilty about telling someone who thinks that eating chocolate will prevent cavities. That’s what evangelism is – you tell the truth, graciously. If people get offended, that’s no reason to change your message.

I wrote a post before showing how to falsify a religion using science or history. We need to be comfortable doing that.

Commentary

How well do pro-tithing people perform in debates?

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I was having a debate with pro-tithing people and I asked them whether they thought that pastors today were providing good value for the money they demanded from parishioners. In particular, I told them that at a bare minimum, a Christian pastor ought to KNOW whether God exists and KNOW whether Jesus rose from the dead. If the pastor doesn’t know these things, then how is his flock supposed to KNOW these things and so by knowing them and knowing them to be true, take the final step of trusting in them?

I wrote this:

It seems to me that Christianity requires the existence of a Creator and Designer of the universe as a matter of knowledge. (that they may know FOR CERTAIN that there is a God in Israel). Please tell me some of the initiatives that pastors you know have taken in order to supply the laity with KNOWLEDGE of the existence of a supernatural creator as a matter of objective knowledge, not subjective belief.

The resurrection must also be KNOWN to be a real, objective historical even in order to sustain a robust Christian worldview. Please list some initiatives that pastors have spearheaded to encourage the laity to know the bodily resurrection of Jesus as a historical fact, and to defend against critics ranging from scholarly to popular. In your reply, be sure to reference their leveraging of scholars like Gary Habermas, William Lane Craig, Ben Witherington, Mike Licona, N.T. Wright and Richard Bauckham, which I am sure that most pastors are familiar with. I am especially interested in hearing about pastors who have shown our scholars in formal debates on this resurrection topic in the church, from the pulpit, as was done in Acts 2 by Peter in the early church.

Also, there is a think out there called the New Atheism. Please list some initiatives that pastors you know have taken to equip their flocks to understand and respond to that as well.

And then we got responses from the pro-tithing people.

Well, there was a refusal to answer, ridicule, laughter, personal attacks, accusations of heresy,  etc. No one would answer whether pastors were doing their jobs. (A different debater was in charge of asking them whether tithing was Biblical or not, and they just attacked his character over and over and over). Mostly, people completely dodged the question about whether pastors had to do anything useful in order to deserve the money they were demanding.

Then a pastor responded to me:

As for @Wintery, not sure why you think I’m required to humble myself to your demands. I don’t know you and don’t feel the need to defend myself or the Lord against you.

I leave you with this from Titus 3:9-11
But avoid foolish controversies and genealogies and arguments and quarrels about the law, because these are unprofitable and useless. Warn a divisive person once, and then warn him a second time. After that, have nothing to do with him. You may be sure that such a man is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned.

He has to know me, otherwise he doesn’t have to answer my questions. Otherwise, I’m not worth his time.

This pastor reminds me of a unionized public school teacher. He wants his money whether he performs his duty or not, and if you question whether he is performing his duty, he distorts your words and dismisses you. A person could attend his church for 40 years and not know anything at all about whether the Bible was reliable, whether God exists, whether the universe shows signs of being designed, whether there is a good response to why God allows evil, whether Hell is unjust, whether all religions are true, whether God has a reason for remaining hidden, whether miracles are possible, etc. He doesn’t have to know anything about those kinds of questions, apparently. He just has to collect money and threaten people who don’t pay him with God’s wrath. Nice work if you can get it.

Yes there is a place for theology and preaching from the Bible. But shouldn’t we be presented with some reasons to believe that there is a God, before we find out what he is like? Shouldn’t we have some reasons to think that the Bible is reliable, before using it as an authority? What does it say about the Bible that we treat it as untestable? What does that say that we cannot ask questions in church without having the worship leader try to cast demons out of us?

Maybe I was being harsh but I just want to know why pastors have very definite convictions about people giving them money, but no definite convictions on whether God exists or not, or whether Jesus rose from the dead or not. I am not the nicest most tactful person in the world, but pastors have usually been opposed to what I think is important, so I want to know why I should pay them instead of using the money to bring in a Christian scholar to defend the reliability of the Bible or the resurrection at a university instead. What’s the value proposition for me as someone who is looking to serve God?

There are non-Christians in my office are always telling me about Joel Osteen and preachers they see on TV. When I say that the Bible doesn’t sanction that, they tell me that I ought to go into the ministry. I say “why?” and they respond “because you actually think that Christianity is true and you try to tell use why instead of just asking us for money all the time.”

Some pastors have no clue how they look to non-Christians.

My last comment was really mean:

So you haven’t done anything to equip your flock to defend the existence of God as an objective fact, or to defend the resurrection of Jesus as an objective event in history.

But you want your flock to pay you a mandatory 10% of their… gross income.

What exactly do you think that Christians ought to do in the face of a non-Christian culture that rejects the existence of God and the resurrection of Jesus? What did Paul do in Acts 17 and Peter in Acts 2? What did Jesus do with “the sign of Jonah”? How about some evidence?

Do you care whether people in your church KNOW that God exists the way they KNOW that water boils at 100 Celsius? Do you care whether people in your church KNOW that Jesus rose from the dead the way they KNOW that who won the battle of Waterloo?

And what about the people outside the church? Does God care whether you prepare your flock to deal with them?

You seem to not want to answer these questions… yet you want to have people pay you. What exactly is it that you do? Do you know whether these things you talk about on Sunday are true? Are you able to show them to be true so that your flock can trust in them?

There is only one thing that causes me to lose my temper and it’s leaders in the church who prefer to be lazy, ignorant and cowardly rather than being effective.

And yes, there are good churches where they do amazing things – Lee Strobel Bible studies, showing Bill Craig debates, inviting Christian scholars to lecture and debate at the university and teach classes to the flock. Yes – it happens. It doesn’t happen enough.