Tag Archives: Feminized Church

Commentary

Are Christian churches and parents producing solid young Christians?

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Let’s look at the facts from a recent Pew Research survey.

Excerpt:

A recent report by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life seems to validate concerns among Christian leaders that younger generations of Americans are losing the spiritual moorings that have helped keep their nation strong from its founding.

Analyzing the extent to which the religious views of America’s “millennials” — adults between the ages of 18 and 29 — differ from those of adults over 30, the Pew Forum’s “Religion Among the Millennials” report found that they are in general less affiliated with a particular religious faith than their over-30 counterparts, attend religious services less often, and say that religion is less important to them.

Here are some of the findings of the report:

  • Twenty five percent of 18-to-29-year-old adults say they are religiously unaffiliated, describing themselves variously as “atheist,” “agnostic,” or “nothing in particular.” By contrast, about 19 percent of adults in their 30s, 15 percent of those in their 40s, 14 percent of those in their 50s, and less than ten percent of those 60 and older identify themselves as unaffiliated.
  • Only 45 percent of adults under age 30 say that religion is important to them, compared with almost 60 percent of adults 30 and older.
  • Sixty-five percent of 18 to 29-year-olds say they are “absolutely” certain of the existence of God, compared with 73 percent of their 30-and-older counterparts.

What about surveys conducted by Christians?

The findings of the Pew report appear to reflect the results of similar surveys conducted by both Catholic and evangelical researchers. For example, a recent survey by the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion found that over 80 percent of Catholic adults aged 18 to 30 think that “morals are relative” and that “there is no definite right or wrong for everybody.”

Similarly, a 2008 study by evangelical pollster George Barna found that half of all adults in America say that Christianity is just one of many faith options… Barna found that unlike previous generations, over 70 percent of American adults today have jettisoned an organized approach to their faith and are more likely to come up with their own set of religious beliefs, with over 80 percent of young Americans under the age of 25 inclined to customize their faith.

And from Christian Newswire:

“In today’s world Christian children and teens are in serious crisis,” says Larry Fowler, Executive Director of Global Training for Awana and author of the new book Raising a Modern-Day Joseph: A Timeless Strategy for Growing Great Kids, (David C. Cook, January, 2009.) “What we see happening in the world is merely a reflection of what is happening in the church. Most Christian teens succumb to the world and fall away from the Lord by the time they leave home.” According to Josh McDowell Ministries, denominations are seeing anywhere from 69 to 94 percent of teens leave the church after high school.

[…]Statistics show that even children who grow up in Christian homes, go to church on a regular basis, and participate in youth group activities are abandoning their faith at an alarming rate.

Naturally, my approach to fixing this failure of churches and parents is to leverage philosophical theology to define Christian claims and then leverage apologetics to sustain those claims in the public square. I would emphasize mainstream science apologetics in order to do that. As for the problem of young people being uncomfortable with moral judgments, we need to do a better job of explaining to them WHY some things are wrong.

Here are some -isms that the church and parents may want to try to address:

  • postmodernism – the view that truth, especially religious and moral truth, cannot be known
  • relativism – the view that each person defines their own reality by personal preferences
  • pluralism – the view that all religions are basically the same – they make us act good
  • universalism – the view that all religions are valid ways of knowing ultimate reality
  • syncretism – the view that the truth claims of all religions do not conflict

Perhaps we should be focusing more time talking about truth and morality, using reason and evidence. I think that the critical mass of people in the church are against my plan – they have decided that the purpose of Christianity is to make people have happy feelings and to be part of an inclusive community. It’s not clear to me how happy feelings and an inclusive community are related to the goals of the Christian faith, but that’s what people seem to have decided on, anyway. They didn’t ask me, and they don’t ask me.

Apologetics advocacy

Polemics

Is it necessary to use words to preach the gospel?

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The Pugnacious Irishman has some thoughts on it.

Here’s the problem he ran into at church last week:

The message today was a message that contradicts the biblical witness, yet it is a message I hear frequently in the 21st century.  I cannot see Jesus proclaiming the message that was proclaimed today.

[…]Our pastor’s main intention was to press home that our actions need to match our beliefs.

[…]Things started going off the rails, though, when a very obvious second message was proclaimed: the whole “actions-proclamation” dichotomy.

[…]Here’s why I say that: I thought I was just reading into the message, but that was put to rest when I heard the worship leader’s application: “go out and proclaim the gospel at all times.  Use words if necessary.”  He got it loud and clear.  When we got to my car, my wife, who is not an apologetics freak like myself (she’s normal, thank God!), turned to me and said, “I know what his intentions were, but do you get the notion that he was saying that you don’t need to talk to others about Jesus?”

Go here to read Rich’s answer to the problem.

I will surprise no one by stating that it is impossible to preach the gospel without using words, which is why Jesus used them, and why we have people writing letters, preaching sermons and disputing in public throughout the New Testament. In fact, it is literally impossible for someone to be saved without hearing about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. The propositional content about these events is required, not optional.

Basically, the message of Christianity is that we are all sinful, and in need of a Lord and Savior so that we can be rightly related to God again. Works are just epiphenomena that occur after you have already been saved, showing that you really are saved. The message of the feminized church, on the other hand, is “do nice things because it makes you feel good, and it makes other people feel good – and that’s what Christianity is about”. So, saying things that make non-Christians feel bad, or that imply that they should be studying to change their beliefs is intolerant or harassment or a hate-crime.

Well, I haven’t been snarky, since, oh… yesterday. So let me tell you exactly why people in the feminized church emphasize actions instead of words, by referring to some of my favorite posts from way back when the blog started. That way, all you new readers can read stuff from back when I actually wrote really good posts on Christian apologetics, instead of really bad posts on politics.

Here are some of my thoughts on why people in church want to do nice things instead of telling others the good news and defending it against attacks. (If you only have time to read one of them read this one)

Polemics

Are there objective truths about God?

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In a lecture entitled “Are there Objective Truths About God?”, philosopher William Lane Craig address the postmodern skepticism of logic that seems to be so fashionable these days, especially on campus and in the “emergent church” movement.

Here’s the link to the lecture audio and the lecture outline.

What is a self-refuting statement?

The main concept in the lecture is the logical concept of self-refutation. A self-refuting sentence is a sentence that, if true, makes itself false or meaningless. For example, if someone said to you: “there are no meaningful sentences longer than 5 words”. Or if they said, “it’s wrong to make moral judgments”. Those statements are self-refuting.

What is truth?

Craig assumes the common-sense correspondence theory of truth. This theory holds that “truth” is a property of a proposition such that if the proposition is true, then it corresponds to the external world. For example, if I claim that there is a crocodile in your closet and we find a crocodile in your closet, then my statement was true. No crocodile in your closet means my statement was false.

Are there objective truths about God?

There are 3 objections discussed in the William Lane Craig lecture. Each objection seeks to make religion subjective, (true for each person, like food preferences), in order to minimize the incumbency and prescriptive force of Christian theology and Christian moral teachings.

Objection #1:The Challenge of Verificationism

The first challenge is that religious claims cannot be verified using the 5 senses, and therefore religious statements are objectively meaningless.

Consider the statement “Only propositions that can be verified with the 5 senses are meaningful”. That statement cannot be verified with the 5 senses. If the statement is true, it makes itself meaningless. It’s self-refuting.

Objection #2: The Challenge of Mystical Anti-Realism

The second challenge is that religious claims, and claims about God, are neither true nor false.

Consider the statement “No statements about God can be true or false”. That statement itself is a statement about God. If the statement is true, then it is neither true nor false. It’s self-refuting.

Objection #3: The Challenge of Radical Pluralism

The third challenge is that each person invents an entire reality of their own, and that there is no mind-independent objective world shared by individuals.

Consider the statement “There is no objective reality shared by all individuals”. That statement is a statement that applies to all individuals. If the statement is true, then it only applies to the speaker’s subjective reality, not to everyone else. It’s self-refuting.

Conclusion

Craig ends the lecture by arguing that it is OK to think that other people’s views are false. It does not follow that just because Christians think other people’s views are wrong that they am going to mistreat other people. In fact, in Christianity it is objectively true that it is good to love your enemies. It is objectively true that all human beings have value, because human beings are made by God.

In Christianity, I am absolutely obligated to treat people with whom I disagree with respect and gentleness (1 Pet 3:15-16). The more convinced I am about that belief, the better my opponents will be treated. A stronger belief in Christianity means more tolerance for those who disagree.

My personal experiences with “Christian” postmodernism

Growing up, I was often confronted with the idea that God was beyond logic and beyond reason. Imagine my surprise as a conservative young Christian to find out that church and campus club leadership had embraced postmodernism, and were very skeptical of controversial doctrines like Hell, exclusive salvation, inerrancy and authorial intent.

As I grew older, I began to uncover why the postmoderns in leadership believed that God is not bound by the laws of logic. It was because of their desire for popularity. They did not want to have to confront people with exclusive and judgmental Christian claims. They did not want to have defend these ideas as true, using evidence – because that would involve work.

Postmodern Christians would say to atheists, “Christianity is true for me, and atheism is true for you“, in order to be accepted. And they would feel, emotionally and intuitionally, that non-judmentalism and non-exclusivism was right. Postmodernism was their way to avoid wasting time on theology and apologetics, (although technically, it did involve lying to people about God’s character).

Postmodern Christians were also very hostile towards apologetics, because “knowing for certain” took away their ability to doubt. They could keep God at arms-length when he was morally demanding, while keeping him within arm’s reach for emotional support. God existed for postmoderns when they needed comfort, and he didn’t exist when they wanted autonomy.

For further study

A debate between a Christian and a postmodern. You can see for yourself how gentle Peter Williams is during this dialog with someone with whom he disagrees. His objective is to persuade – to win her over. Also, what about those who have never heard of Jesus? What about the problems of evil and suffering?

Also, for extra credit, Super-commenter ECM sent me this post from David Thompson a few days back, in which Thompson interviewed Dr. Stephen Hicks on postmodernism in academia. The post also describes the link between postmodernism and socialism. This is a great post!