Thread: Western Church Decline Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.
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Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
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There are two threads on the decline or otherwise of Evangelicalism and Catholicism.
In this thread I would like to discuss the possible reasons for the across-the-board, consistent and seemingly terminal decline of all Christian groups in Western Europe.
Possible explanations / discussion startes:
- Two world wars in Europe.
- Liberal theology (mostly German)
- Increased prosperity since the end of the war.
- eschatologically expected?
The answer might also include the question why the church that is in freefall in the west is actually blossoming elsewhere. Why is it the case that in other countries the church is growing and growing?
Just a brief history lesson from my perspective. In the 13 years of The Christian Mission it crawled along. In 1878 it changed its name to The Salvation army and grew at an astounding rate, reaching 50+ countries by the beginning of WWI. it was the fastest growing evangelical mission/church in Victorian England in the 1880s.
In 1890 Catherine Booth, our co-Founder with William, died and coincidentally or otherwise the growth continued at a slower pace.
In 1929 we had a leadership crisis and in the UK for the first time our numbers started to decline and they have continued to decline at a disastrous rate ever since. There are no around 35 - 40,000 of us in the UK.
Europe has an even sorrier tale to tell.
BUT. Worldwide The Salvation Army is bigger than it has ever been. Some territories have seen a 45% growth in the number of members in the 15 years to 2010.
The General at the turn of the century came up with a challenge: A Million Soldiers Marching into the Millennium (try saying that on too much coffee!).
We had just over 900,000 members worldwide. We now have nearly 1 and a half million!
I am certain this could be relocated in the other churches.
So I ask, what is going on?
Why is Europe dying while the rest of the world is growing at amazing rates?
Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
While the rest of the world is growing at amazing rates?
Mass urbanisation - it only happens once.
Posted by pydseybare (# 16184) on
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I think it is because there are actually two gospels: one for the poor and one for the rich.
The Salvation Army has done an excellent job of speaking to the poor, forgotten, misused etc - speaking out the gospel of hope, forgiveness, worth, encouragement and so on.
Unfortunately that gospel doesn't really wash when people are rich, self-satisfied, contented, well-fed and so on. Most people turn off immediately as being irrelevant, those that remain become more and more self-centred, more involved in a form of me-first religious spiritual development project.*
The gospel for the rich is that repentance is necessary, that there is no offer of free grace to the wealthy, and that following Jesus Christ involves the rich becoming humbled - including a costly self-sacrificial taking off of the riches and coats of respectability.
*that said, in more difficult times (in Europe etc), I suspect this message will become again more relevant.
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
- Increased prosperity since the end of the war.
Yep, that's the one.
quote:
Why is it the case that in other countries the church is growing and growing?
Because those countries are still (for the most part) poor.
Christianity is a religion that has a lot to offer to poor people - you don't have to read the Bible for long to see that. But all it has to offer to rich people* is condemnation, and the choice between becoming poor or going to Hell. Is it any wonder that rich people turn away from it in droves? And in the West, where we are pretty much all rich, does anyone doubt that it will continue to shrink until only the hardcore of faithful true believers is left?
.
*= of course, that's in the context of a world where Christianity is no longer the best and easiest route to political power - back when it was Christianity had much to offer to the rich, albeit maybe not the sort of things its founder would want to be offering. But the days of popes being more powerful than kings are gone. A memory of those days lingers in some Western countries - notably the USA - but will disappear once political power cannot be gained simply by appealing to the Christian Voter.
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
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*scratches head*
Hhhmmnnn.....not sure about this rich/poor divide and attraction.....
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
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Interesting thread.
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
Possible explanations / discussion startes:
- Two world wars in Europe.
- Liberal theology (mostly German)
- Increased prosperity since the end of the war.
- eschatologically expected?
Decline in the UK started well before WW1. Arguably, church attendance has been in decline since the 1850s if not before.
In the 1850 church census 50% of people in the UK attended some kind of church service - an unbelievably high figure in today's terms.
That still begs the question as to what the other 50% were doing ...
The rapid growth of the Salvation Army, in that sense, represents something of an anomaly ... a short kick-back against prevailing trends.
Liberal theology? Yes, I can see the deleterious effects of that but I don't see that many people rushing to embrace more conservative forms of theology. One could argue that conservative forms of theology merely slow the decline rather than halt it ...
Increased prosperity ... yes, I'd agree that this is a factor and I expect to see a plateauing of church-growth in future across developing countries as they become ... developed.
I remember an interesting chat with a Romanian chap who told me that as soon as the Ceaucescu era ended everyone flocked back to the churches - to the Orthodox and Catholic churches and to the various Protestant denominations.
He felt that this initial burst of enthusiasm had now waned and that as Romania became wealthier and more Westernised this trend would discontinue and that the forces of secularism would gain ground.
On the eschatological issue, I'm not sure how that affects things. One could argue that people would be flocking to church if they thought the end of the world was nigh.
I'd add a few other factors:
- The move away from supernaturalist explanations to apparently scientific ones.
- A move away from creedal certainties towards a looser, more laisser-faire approach.
- A reaction against Victorian moralism and pietism.
- More leisure choices. I'm serious. A study in Huddersfield found that church attendance dropped off dramatically in the 1920s with the introduction of buses and cinemas. People had more choices of leisure activity than attending services on Sundays.
There's more we could add.
Posted by deano (# 12063) on
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quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
I think it is because there are actually two gospels: one for the poor and one for the rich.
The Salvation Army has done an excellent job of speaking to the poor, forgotten, misused etc - speaking out the gospel of hope, forgiveness, worth, encouragement and so on.
Unfortunately that gospel doesn't really wash when people are rich, self-satisfied, contented, well-fed and so on. Most people turn off immediately as being irrelevant, those that remain become more and more self-centred, more involved in a form of me-first religious spiritual development project.*
The gospel for the rich is that repentance is necessary, that there is no offer of free grace to the wealthy, and that following Jesus Christ involves the rich becoming humbled - including a costly self-sacrificial taking off of the riches and coats of respectability.
*that said, in more difficult times (in Europe etc), I suspect this message will become again more relevant.
But that fails when you consider the USA. Arguably the richest economy and containing massive numbers of wealthy people - relatively speaking - and Christianity is overwhelmingly followed by the majority of the population.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
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quote:
Originally posted by chris stiles:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
While the rest of the world is growing at amazing rates?
Mass urbanisation - it only happens once.
This must be one factor. I think that in England the working class began to abandon religion from 1800 onwards, although of course, not uniformly, and the middle class stuck to it more.
I grew up near Manchester, and I knew very few religious people, mainly Irish. I don't think people were hostile, it just didn't enter their minds.
Yet they were pretty poor, so the poverty thing may not be the only factor.
I went to a very posh school, and there were tons of religious kids. So for me, it seemed to operate the other way round - poverty seemed to incline people to atheism, and affluence to religion. There are many confounding factors!
Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on
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quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
quote:
Originally posted by chris stiles:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
While the rest of the world is growing at amazing rates?
Mass urbanisation - it only happens once.
This must be one factor. I think that in England the working class began to abandon religion from 1800 onwards, although of course, not uniformly, and the middle class stuck to it more.
Yes, I think the working classes abandoned religion earlier - starting at the tail end of the Industrial Revolution. In other countries, mass urbanisation has led to the rise of their own varieties of mass religion (pentecostals in Brazil, Nigeria etc).
In reference to Romania - I have heard similar reports from other former Soviet Bloc countries - in that to start with there was a huge explosion of interest in Christianity (specially non Orthodox and RC variants of Christianity) and in fact anything spiritual. These days, in many of the same places Christianity is seen as increasingly passe, and people get their spiritual kicks from a melange of casual Buddhism/Hinduism etc.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
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With reference to the 'casual melange', Jung had the interesting idea that great cycles of images came and went in human cultures, very slowly, and sometimes, not so slowly.
So he argued that the Christian set of images had worked well as a kind of 'objective correlative' for human desires/hopes/fears and for the experience of the transcendent, but would itself come to an end.
Big problem with ideas like this is that they are v. difficult to test - you would have to wait maybe a 1000 years to see.
Posted by que sais-je (# 17185) on
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quote:
Originally posted by deano:
But that fails when you consider the USA. Arguably the richest economy and containing massive numbers of wealthy people - relatively speaking - and Christianity is overwhelmingly followed by the majority of the population.
I don't know how reliable the wikipedia article is but it would suggest a slow decline (though from a higher level) and quite a big economic/social divide. In keeping with what others have said, the richer states (from my limited knowledge) seem to have much lower church attendance at least than the poorer ones. Even so, it is still more twice as high even in Vermont than Europe.
For reasons not explained, on the demographic map Washington State, Wyoming, Oregon and Montana don't seem to have any Christian denominations. Is this something one of the US shipmates could explain? Perhaps they just don't like surveys!
Posted by Arethosemyfeet (# 17047) on
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quote:
Originally posted by deano:
But that fails when you consider the USA. Arguably the richest economy and containing massive numbers of wealthy people - relatively speaking - and Christianity is overwhelmingly followed by the majority of the population.
I wonder whether it is instructive to note that the US is probably the western country in which one is most likely to live in abject poverty - the social safety net is much weaker than in other countries so perhaps the same rules about increasing wealth do not apply. It may help to consider that Britain was wealthy in the 19th century but the steep decline in religious activity could perhaps be traced to the introduction of the welfare state in 1945. Is it social democracy rather than wealth that leads to the decline of religious observance?
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
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Although religious attendance began to decline among working class people from 1800, and some argue, even earlier (in England). No welfare state then.
Posted by que sais-je (# 17185) on
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quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I went to a very posh school, and there were tons of religious kids. So for me, it seemed to operate the other way round - poverty seemed to incline people to atheism, and affluence to religion. There are many confounding factors!
A N Wilson (in "God's Funeral") and John Gray (in "The Immortality Commission") both, in their very different ways, suggest that in the 19C many of the middle and upper classes believed that religion was necessary as a curb to vice and immorality. Atheism would lead to a break down of society - something which worried the rich more than the poor! Maybe that's one reason the rich kids families were often 'religious'.
On the whole the European experience has been that the collapse of society hasn't been due to a spread of atheism. As far as I know nobody has ever assumed I'm probably dishonest because I'm an atheist or even prey to exciting vices. The American situation does seem different because of a different founding myth maybe. Nobody asks British politicians if they believe in God but it my impression is that saying you are an atheist in America would have a more significant impact on your election chances.
Posted by ken (# 2460) on
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Church attendance probably increased in late 18th and early 19th century in England. Mass urbanisation and the industrial revolution were on the whole good for churches. Crime rates went down as well. And people in general cleaned up their act a little, society becoming rather less violent and more humane.
But the bad things that still went on became more visible because more concentrated in restricted areas of towns and cities.
Churchiness peaked sometime in the late 19th century and declined after that with minor blips for the Great War.
There always was a large group of the working classes who were barely if at all churched. Successive generations of evangelists and slum preachers and statisticians kept on rediscovering them from the 1700s to the 1960s, by which time no-one was surprised any more, because by then the educated middle classes had become overwhelmingly anti-Christian and secular, a process that had been creeping along for centuries as well.
Of course those classes don't remain stable with time. At the beginning of the 19th century maybe less than a quarter of the population were culturally part of the urban industrial working classes, by the end of the century an actual majority were, by the end of the 20th century back down to less than a quarter. So large numbers of the cultural middle classes these days are the children or grandchildren of the cultural working classes.
Posted by otyetsfoma (# 12898) on
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In the days when the workers were agricultural they were individually known to their "betters" and felt compelled to go to church. Industrialisation (when they removed to towns) took away that compulsion.
Posted by stonespring (# 15530) on
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China is an interesting case because you have rapid mass urbanization, industrialization, economic development, a growing middle class getting used to certain material comforts and getting exposed to ideas from around the world, etc., but you still have massive rural poverty and an oppressive government that keeps religion (and only the officially permitted religious groups) on a very short and tight leash.
I have heard China described as an area of great potential for missionaries of any religion. But if the government became democratic and respected human rights, and if economic development came to the countryside, would this continue to be true?
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
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One factor in my own family (anecdote alert), is a kind of link between religion and class. In other words, in blunt terms, clergymen are posh bastards.
I don't know how far you can generalize upon this - of course, you tend to think of the squire and the vicar having port together, while the plebs outside did the manual work, and thought they were rich fat twats.
Well, my grandad came back from WWI, with two firm beliefs: 1. Officers were bastards. 2. Clergymen were absolute bastards.
Of course, clergymen are not all posh, and not all bastards, as I later found out.
Posted by stonespring (# 15530) on
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In Africa you have competition between Christian denominations (including various African-founded denominations and movements) and Islam for converts among practicioners of traditional religions. Often, joining Christianity or Islam gives someone a social network that helps their family to progress economically.
In Latin America, various protestant and especially pentecostal churches are attracting converts from Roman Catholicism who also benefit from the social networks, religious charities, and ethic of social mobility.
Immigrants from all parts of the world who come the west often join religious groups in their new countries, some of which are founded and led by immigrants, for similar reasons.
Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on
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quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Although religious attendance began to decline among working class people from 1800, and some argue, even earlier (in England). No welfare state then.
The Established church in England was seen as in cahoots with the squire and other authority figures and quite disliked. People went to church to be respectable but anti-clericalism was strong, and has always been a feature of English religion. I would also wager that the French Revolution had an impact on the English working classes. Nonconformists and RCs were still penalised by the law at this time too.
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
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Gaamaliel, can you answer this: Is it the case that the charismatic/restoration stuff of the late 1970s into the '90s was quite a middle-class thing?
I seem to remember reading that stuff like Gerald Coates in Cobham and the Icthus fellowship in London was all very 'stockbroker' oriented.
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on
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Ichthus might have had a few stockbrokers, but there's no way I'd describe it as stockbroker-oriented. I attended a congregation meeting once on a very down-at-heel South-East London estate.
[ 20. December 2013, 16:26: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on
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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian
quote:
Christianity is a religion that has a lot to offer to poor people - you don't have to read the Bible for long to see that. But all it has to offer to rich people* is condemnation, and the choice between becoming poor or going to Hell.
I would add hope. Rich people do not need hope the way poor people do.
quote:
Originally posted by deano:
But that fails when you consider the USA. Arguably the richest economy and containing massive numbers of wealthy people - relatively speaking - and Christianity is overwhelmingly followed by the majority of the population.
To add onto que sais-je's reply: Control. Religion serves the powerful well in influencing the poor to vote against their own interest.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
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quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian
quote:
Christianity is a religion that has a lot to offer to poor people - you don't have to read the Bible for long to see that. But all it has to offer to rich people* is condemnation, and the choice between becoming poor or going to Hell.
I would add hope. Rich people do not need hope the way poor people do.
quote:
Originally posted by deano:
But that fails when you consider the USA. Arguably the richest economy and containing massive numbers of wealthy people - relatively speaking - and Christianity is overwhelmingly followed by the majority of the population.
To add onto que sais-je's reply: Control. Religion serves the powerful well in influencing the poor to vote against their own interest.
But surely, Jesus likes a low-tax low-welfare economy, with the leveraged buy-out as the financial tool of choice? I'll be back in a minute, with the correct Biblical quotation.
Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on
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I suspect a major reason is that most of us do not live as though we really take seriously what we say we believe. So is it any wonder we don't have much cutting edge?
Posted by Sober Preacher's Kid (# 12699) on
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quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian
quote:
Christianity is a religion that has a lot to offer to poor people - you don't have to read the Bible for long to see that. But all it has to offer to rich people* is condemnation, and the choice between becoming poor or going to Hell.
I would add hope. Rich people do not need hope the way poor people do.
quote:
Originally posted by deano:
But that fails when you consider the USA. Arguably the richest economy and containing massive numbers of wealthy people - relatively speaking - and Christianity is overwhelmingly followed by the majority of the population.
To add onto que sais-je's reply: Control. Religion serves the powerful well in influencing the poor to vote against their own interest.
And then there's Canada, which serves as a counterpoint to that. None of the Big Four Protestant Churches (United Church, Anglicans, Baptists and Presbyterians) have a strong history of right-wing economic political positions. The Anglicans have traditionally been indifferent politically while the United Church and the Baptists are the churches the Social Gospel built.
The Christian Left has been in power more often in Canada and has a more extensive and lasting record than the Christian Right ever had. The only church that was notably right-wing was the Roman Catholic Church in Quebec (elsewhere it was politically indifferent) and that changed quickly in the 1960's during the Quiet Revolution.
Posted by South Coast Kevin (# 16130) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
I suspect a major reason is that most of us do not live as though we really take seriously what we say we believe. So is it any wonder we don't have much cutting edge?
A hundred times yes. And a big part of why we (those of us who are comfortably off) don't act like we believe Christianity is, I think, that we have other things to hope in (things that we don't always want to give up...).
I agree with those upthread who have said that Christianity is particularly good news for those who don't have much in this life.
Posted by Palimpsest (# 16772) on
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I remember a comment from an Italian that his grandparents were Catholics and his parents were Communists and his generation were neither. It is possible that the Christianity in Europe was too coupled to the class order to be fondly regarded by the lower classes.
The question about the Northwest United states is best answered by a comment made half in jest by an author of a book on the religious regions of the U.S. "The Northwest is just a bunch of tree worshipping pagans". When I've mentioned this to various people here in the Northwest there's an acknowledgement that it's pretty true. It's hard to ignore the trees here.
The U.S. seems to be going through the secularization that happened in Europe. Atheism is the largest growth group. This makes arguments that sect x is growing and will pick up the survivors of shrinking sect b hard to believe. To a certain extent secularization is slowed down by the still high immigration from non first world countries into the US. If you read the article on the Crystal Cathedral becoming a Catholic church, the immigration from Mexico of Catholics is mentioned.
Posted by ken (# 2460) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
Ichthus might have had a few stockbrokers, but there's no way I'd describe it as stockbroker-oriented. I attended a congregation meeting once on a very down-at-heel South-East London estate.
I'd have called it - in fact I did call it at the time - mostly what the Victorians would have called the "respectable" working class, verging on lower-middle-class. Skilled industrial workers, low-paid office-workers, a lot more nurses than doctors, people in "caring professions", a few engineers, technicians, builders, computer programmers, printers. Some teachers and academics, and even the odd accountant, but not a lot of stockbrokers or estate agents. As well as a lot of poorer of course.
Same with early NFI. And probably more or less all new autonomous religious movements for all of mediaeval and modern history. And most political ones as well. Lots of people without university degrees - and quite a lot who were the first generation in their family to go to college.
Of course that is more or less my own class position so maybe I'm sensitive to it.
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on
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Mudfrog
I agree with a lot of what's been said. There are no doubt many contributing factors to church decline, each of which stepped into the fray at different times in different places and added new levels of complexity.
I'm personally intrigued by the notion that Christianity contains the seeds of its own decline. On the one hand the Bible teaches that there will be decline in the last days, and warns about believers falling away, becoming too rich or too poor to concern themselves with God, having only the outward form of religion, being lukewarm, etc. And then there's the more recent claim that certain aspects of Christianity inevitably lead to individualism and self-reliance, and so to less faith.
Church/sect theory too posits decline as something generated inside not outside Christianity. The idea is that Christian movements are often fairly democratic and socially mixed to begin with, but as they formalise and institutionalise themselves they focus more and more on developing a class of well-educated specialists and leave less and less for poorer or untrained members to gain spiritually or psychologically from church attendance. Some leave to join new movements, but most just leave.
And some say the founding of new movements (such as the Salvation Army) in the late 19th c. didn't undo the secularising process but rather added to it. The weakening of older religious ties led to a far more provisional and vulnerable replacement that was inadequate to withstand the rapid pace of social change that was to take place in the 20th c.
As for other parts of the world, they're different, but not entirely immune to some of these phenomena.
Posted by PaulBC (# 13712) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Sober Preacher's Kid:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian
quote:
Christianity is a religion that has a lot to offer to poor people - you don't have to read the Bible for long to see that. But all it has to offer to rich people* is condemnation, and the choice between becoming poor or going to Hell.
I would add hope. Rich people do not need hope the way poor people do.
quote:
Originally posted by deano:
But that fails when you consider the USA. Arguably the richest economy and containing massive numbers of wealthy people - relatively speaking - and Christianity is overwhelmingly followed by the majority of the population.
To add onto que sais-je's reply: Control. Religion serves the powerful well in influencing the poor to vote against their own interest.
And then there's Canada, which serves as a counterpoint to that. None of the Big Four Protestant Churches (United Church, Anglicans, Baptists and Presbyterians) have a strong history of right-wing economic political positions. The Anglicans have traditionally been indifferent politically while the United Church and the Baptists are the churches the Social Gospel built.
The Christian Left has been in power more often in Canada and has a more extensive and lasting record than the Christian Right ever had. The only church that was notably right-wing was the Roman Catholic Church in Quebec (elsewhere it was politically indifferent) and that changed quickly in the 1960's during the Quiet Revolution.
The Anglican church of Canada was the church of the monied class along with the Methodidt/Prysbeterians to a point, the Baptists were there but non aligned with a class, as far as I can tell. The RCC mainly n Quebec was a bastion of the Francophene population , became some what ultramontanist in mid to late 19th century . then mid last century they found the young looking for solutions elsewhere, Quebec nationalism and so forth.
I am an optomist that the church, all of us will rebounnd . I prefer to live in hope than wallow in despare/ blessings all and merry Christmas PaulBC
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
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In response to Mudfrog's interesting question about class and the UK restorationist movement in the 1970s - 1990s ...
To quote Max Boyce, 'Boyce the Voice', from another context, 'I know, 'cos I was there.'
To quote Andrew Walker the sociologist and still, to my mind, the best and most incisive writer on the restorationist thing, 'A charismatic is a middle-class Pentecostal.'
Gerald Coates was based in Cobham but he was always something of an outlier ... his 'flamboyant' style alienated some of the more conservative, and northern restorationists. There was certainly a north/south divide in the whole thing.
Down south, though, it never struck me as at all stock-broker belt-ish. On the whole, I would say that the demographic was as Ken described ... with some elements of the older, public school 'Bash Camp' brigade in some quarters. Yes, the offspring of an older and well-heeled form of revivalism were involved ... even up north there were public school kids and the sons and daughters of missionaries who'd sent their kids home to be boarding-school educated and who subsequently encountered restorationism at university.
On the whole, though, as Walker notes, the northern end of things (which I was involved in) was rather more working class than the southern equivalent. The southern end also had a fringe of more bohemian artsy types ... although these gradually disappeared as things hardened and became more doctrinaire.
To be quite frank, the church I was involved with in those days was probably the most mixed in terms of demographic than any I've come across since.
There were labourers and lecturers, nurses and consultants, white working class and West Indians, students and unemployed.
The core of the thing was, I would say, rather as Ken suggests, the kind of skilled working-class, lower middle class ... which was very much the kind of demographic you'd find in Pentecostalism and in Brethren assemblies in Yorkshire and South Wales at that time. In essence, the Yorkshire end of things was a peculiar northern/South Walian fusion.
The head-honchos were either former South Walian Pentecostals or 'house-church' types from Brethren or 'Wally North' backgrounds. They'd not been to university and although they valued and respected education and certainly weren't anti-intellectual, they weren't intellectual heavy-weights either. I don't mean any disrespect here, but they found it hard to handle students from some of the less technical or vocational disciplines and also people in the congregation (particularly women) who might be brighter than them ...
But I've seen this in other settings too.
Walker made the insightful observation that the restorationist churches tended to attract the more 'directive' thinkers - engineers, medics, nurses - people who got things done - rather than the more 'discursive' thinkers - the philosophers and poets as it were. It's not surprising I had a hard time to a certain extent as I was certainly in the latter camp.
Provocatively, perhaps, I'd say that this was/is generally the case with evangelicalism as a whole.
How many evangelical poets have there been?
![[Biased]](wink.gif)
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
Mudfrog
I agree with a lot of what's been said. There are no doubt many contributing factors to church decline, each of which stepped into the fray at different times in different places and added new levels of complexity.
I'm personally intrigued by the notion that Christianity contains the seeds of its own decline. On the one hand the Bible teaches that there will be decline in the last days, and warns about believers falling away, becoming too rich or too poor to concern themselves with God, having only the outward form of religion, being lukewarm, etc. And then there's the more recent claim that certain aspects of Christianity inevitably lead to individualism and self-reliance, and so to less faith.
Thanks for that - it's what I meant when I suggested an eschatalogical reason which Gamaliel misunderstood as meaning 'people who believed the end was nigh'.
I did mean the predicted apostacy, the lukewarmness of the church, the question as whether the returning Christ will find faith on the earth, the fact that it's the 'overcomers' who will be saved - suggesting that a lot of people will not 'overcome' and that there will be a remnant.
It's my view that in the realms of Biblical prophecy the 'world' is the world of the Roman
Empire, or western civilisation; the Bible doesn't seem to predict anything outside the middle-east, North Africa and Europe. Therefore, the decline in Europe is mirrored in the narrative of the seven churches (This is going to get me into trouble):
Ephesus (Revelation 2:1-7) - the early church that had forsaken its first love (2:4).
Smyrna (Revelation 2:8-11) - the church that would suffer persecution under the Romans (2:10).
Pergamum (Revelation 2:12-17) - the church that was united to the world under Constantine and needed to repent (2:16).
Thyatira (Revelation 2:18-29) - the medieval church that had a false prophetess (2:20).
Sardis (Revelation 3:1-6) - the post reformation church that had fallen asleep - alive in doctrine but dead in spirit. (3:2).
Philadelphia (Revelation 3:7-13) - the missionary church that had endured patiently and faced an open door of revival and expansion (3:10).
Laodicea (Revelation 3:14-22) - the church of the last generations that was lukewarm and insipid (to God) (3:16).
It may be that the western church really is the final church - hot in many places, cold in more and therefore overall lukewarm and nondescript.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
I remember a newspaper clipping - from The Sunday Times I think - which I kept hold of for a while, with an article headlined, 'Pentecostalism goes middle-class.'
It made the observation that the newer breed of NFI and other 'new church' streams were more middle-class in tone and make-up than the traditional Pentecostal denominations ... the AoG, Elim and the Apostolic Church.
This was certainly the case in South Wales, but there were loads of former Pentecostals involved with the 'new church' scene down there ... and the more 'forward-looking' among them (as they'd have seen it) often used to commute down the Valleys to the more 'happening' churches in Newport, Cardiff or Swansea. This was often seen as detrimental to struggling chapels up in the former mining-valleys.
To an extent, I'd say there was a certain amount of upward mobility involved ... people from working-class Pentecostal backgrounds getting supervisory jobs and so on.
As far as the demographic went - and I'm not looking back with rose-tinted specs, I would say that one the whole, the restorationist churches of the 1980s and '90s had a broader demographic than subsequent movements such as the Vineyard (very studenty), New Wine and so on.
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
How many evangelical poets have there been?
We have quite a few. Two of our Generals were poets and another officer was quite a mystic.
We've had a lot of hymn writers too, from a chap called Herbert Booth right up to the modern day with some stunning poetic lyrics being written for people to sing (as you would expect - we don't listen to poems being read, we sing them. ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
)
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
Well, I'm sorry Mudfrog, but you probably already know what I think about your eschatology ...
Back in my restorationist days, of course, I'd have hotly contested the idea of things wasting away and the kind of 'remnant theology' which the restorationist leaders took to be defeatist. But then, I can't say I was ever convinced by all of the rhetoric in the opposite direction.
It wouldn't surprise me that there'll be increasing levels of apostasy and so on. But I'm not sure I'd want to speculate about end-times timetables and so on.
I don't see biblical prophecy working quite as neatly as that.
As for the Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia Minor in Revelation ... these are letters to the Seven Churches of Asia Minor ...
They are what they are and were written to particular people at a particular time and for a particular purpose.
Any attempt to use them as a template or mind-map for subsequent phases of church history in Europe and elsewhere is just bonkers in my view.
I'd go as far as to suggest that it is hermeneutically delinquent.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
I'm talking about poetry not doggerel, Mudfrog ...
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
Hymns can be quite servicable as poetry, but they rarely hit the heights of Parnassus.
And no, Isaac Watts wasn't evangelical and he ended his life with dodgy views about the Trinity. Charles Wesley gets there at times and poor old Cowper tried very hard ...
Aside from hymn-writing (and I'm not knocking that) there have been very few evangelical poets - and very few evangelical philosophers come to that. It's an activist faith and often doesn't have time for such niceties ..
Neither Herbert nor Donne would last five minutes in a contemporary evangelical setting.
There's probably a tangent or another thread here, but when it comes to poetry, philsophy, the use of the grey-matter and various forms of political or social activism, evangelicals often end up co-opting people who weren't even evangelical in the first place ...
C S Lewis, Martin Luther King ...
I could list other examples.
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Well, I'm sorry Mudfrog, but you probably already know what I think about your eschatology ...
Back in my restorationist days, of course, I'd have hotly contested the idea of things wasting away and the kind of 'remnant theology' which the restorationist leaders took to be defeatist. But then, I can't say I was ever convinced by all of the rhetoric in the opposite direction.
It wouldn't surprise me that there'll be increasing levels of apostasy and so on. But I'm not sure I'd want to speculate about end-times timetables and so on.
I don't see biblical prophecy working quite as neatly as that.
As for the Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia Minor in Revelation ... these are letters to the Seven Churches of Asia Minor ...
They are what they are and were written to particular people at a particular time and for a particular purpose.
Any attempt to use them as a template or mind-map for subsequent phases of church history in Europe and elsewhere is just bonkers in my view.
I'd go as far as to suggest that it is hermeneutically delinquent.
Then tio be consistent you'd have to apply that exact same hermeneutic to every word of prophecy from Genesis 3 v 15 right through to the epistles of John.
I don't know any evangelical who, in interpreting the seven letters as covering the church age, would not say that in the first instance they were applicable to those seven actually church fellowships. All prophecy has at least 3 meanings - the immediate context, the future fulfilment and the ever-present truth.
It's like the theories of the atonement - it's one of them and all of them together. Take which one applies to you and leave the rest, but be aware that the other interpretation still stands without detracting from your own.
Ironically, not one of the 7 churches exists today which perhaps serves as a salutary reminder that no church/denomination can stand on a 'right to exist'.
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
I'm talking about poetry not doggerel, Mudfrog ...
And you've read a lot of Salvationist poetry in your quest to be an expert in all things pertaining to the church.
![[Disappointed]](graemlins/disappointed.gif)
Posted by balaam (# 4543) on
:
I'm not usually one to stand up for liberalism, but... quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
- Liberal theology (mostly German)
...is not really fair. I'd say that it is more a case of the church failing to be seen as different from society at large. Yes some liberal churches are guilty of this, but they are not the only ones. On the other hand where Christians are seen as being different it is because they are being reactionary, against change and standing for the status quo. Opposing change when they should be leading reform.
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by balaam:
I'm not usually one to stand up for liberalism, but... quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
- Liberal theology (mostly German)
...is not really fair. I'd say that it is more a case of the church failing to be seen as different from society at large. Yes some liberal churches are guilty of this, but they are not the only ones. On the other hand where Christians are seen as being different it is because they are being reactionary, against change and standing for the status quo. Opposing change when they should be leading reform.
I agree with you on this, as far as the church not being different enough; but i would suggest that Liberal biblical and doctrinal theology has emptied the churches - when people know longer believe, then churches die and become empty.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
Send me some. I'll soon tell you whether it's doggerel or not.
I thought you'd know me well enough by know to tell when I'm yanking your chain or flicking at the brim of your cap.
In fairness, I've met plenty of Pentecostals and independent evangelicals who have had a way with words. I've come across some who write poetry too. At its best it can be direct and muscular.
At its worst it can dissolve into sentimentality.
And, to be fair, the outpourings of liberal hymn-writers are hardly exemplary. There're some real turkeys about in that stable ... he said, mixing metaphors ...
You are being rather too po-faced, Captain.
On the eschatological thing. Yes, I know that biblical prophecy can have three layers or tiers - a contemporary application, a future one that might refer to the time of Christ and a third that may refer to something yet to take place.
But I'd suggest that things aren't always quite as clear cut as that.
As for the Seven Churches of Revelation ... they are what they are and the fact that they no longer exist is indeed an object lesson.
I'd suggest that this is one of the ways they can be understood and applied. As object lessons.
They've got nothing whatsoever to do with neatly demarcated 'ages' and epochs in church history or predictions in the uber-specific sense.
To read them that way is to engage in eisegesis not exegesis.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
Apologies. Major.
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Hymns can be quite servicable as poetry, but they rarely hit the heights of Parnassus.
And no, Isaac Watts wasn't evangelical and he ended his life with dodgy views about the Trinity. Charles Wesley gets there at times and poor old Cowper tried very hard ...
John Wesley said something about poetry being the handmaiden of piety. He was thinking of hymns, though.
As you know, literature (especially great literature) and piety often have little to do with each other. Still, without a dose of childhood or adolescent evangelicalism quite a few authors would be lacking in a useful theme for their work.
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
I agree with you on this, as far as the church not being different enough; but i would suggest that Liberal biblical and doctrinal theology has emptied the churches - when people know longer believe, then churches die and become empty.
The problem with this theory is that the conservative churches are now emptying as well. The churches growing the most are the "prosperity gospel" churches -- the ones that have most firmly taken on secular values.
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Apologies. Major.
Try THESE WORDS
(You'll need to scroll down to the fourth panel and maybe zoom in to make the words bigger.
The artwork is from a CD of Salvation Army songs sung by the King's Singers (so no doggerel here then!)
If you want to hear a salvation Army choir sing them - and yes, this is music by a salvationist composer - try HERE and make sure you have highlighted 'Reflections' on the play list in the box - it turns red)
And yes, I am aware this is a significant tangent but please humour me just this once
Thanks
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
I want to hear or read these 'stunning poetic lyrics'.
I've twice attended large Salvation Army rally/recital type events in northern town halls and enjoyed them. The music was a lot more varied than I'd anticipated and was of a very high standard indeed.
It's a long time ago now, but can't remember any of the lyrics being particularly arresting. In fact, I can't remember any of the words but they didn't strike me as either execrable or outstanding at the time.
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
We've had a lot of hymn writers too, from a chap called Herbert Booth right up to the modern day with some stunning poetic lyrics being written for people to sing (as you would expect - we don't listen to poems being read, we sing them. )
I don't have a problem with congregational singing or poems being read in services and so on ... but that's not the point I was making.
The point I was making was that, by and large, evangelicalism attracts 'directive' rather than 'discursive' thinkers ... the activist rather than the reflective types.
I'm not saying that's right or wrong or making a value judgement - we need the 'directive' types to get things done.
I was simply answering your question about the demographic make-up of the restorationist scene when I was involved with it and noting that it was more varied than many independent evangelical outfits ...
I then went on, though, to qualify that by saying that it appealed to and attracted a particular personality type ... more activist, more extrovert on the whole.
I used the 'poetic' personality as an example of characteristics that might not necessarily fit that mould ... although I was being broad-brush because poetic types can also be activist types too ... there's no clear-cut demarcation.
So the question I asked about evangelical poets was a rhetorical one.
There have certainly been plenty of evangelical hymnwriters and lyricists ... no-one is disputing that. But I can't think of many arts-for-arts sake poets from an evangelical background.
There have been a few. But they'd be outnumbered by poetic types from among some of the other Christian traditions.
[fixed declining code]
[ 20. December 2013, 20:32: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
I think this is where TSA is quite different from (to?) other evangelical traditions; we are very reflective in much of our writing, especially when it comes to devotional and holiness writings. There is almost a medieval mysticism to some of the stuff that's written. Possibly not in the literary sense but certainly in the spirit behind it all. I would not describe it as doggerel.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
Sorry, Mudfrog, I didn't find the lyrics 'stunningly poetic' at all. They're not bad, they're not awful. But hardly 'stunning'/
They are competent and conventional in sentiment, expression and tone. I'm sure it's a good CD.
Incidentally - 'doggerel' refers to words not to whoever happens to be singing them, Kings Singers or pub singers or whoever else it might be.
As for the recordings ... yes, some variety there and not just the kind of oompah-oompah or barber-shop-quartet arrangements we might associate with SA hymnody.
It's all very well and good but not my style. Although I'd probably enjoy it live.
Anyway, the point I was trying to make was rather different. I wasn't thinking about hymn lyrics and spiritual songs necessarily but 'poetic' and 'philosophical' sensibilities as opposed to 'directive' ones.
I think you rather missed the point I was making, but that may say more about me than it does about you.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
I'll grant that you've got a point to some extent, Mudfrog, in that I think it's axiomatic that the SA has inherited the 'almost medieval mystical' element from the Wesleyan tradition, which arguably revived that in a post-Reformation form.
Early Methodist hymnody contained passionate references to Christ's heart, blood and wounded-side and so on in ways that hadn't been done since before the Reformation ... and which some commentators such as E P Thompson in 'The Making of The English Working Class' found highly distasteful and almost homo-erotic.
I reiterate my point, I was talking about restorationism initially (and that had a very pronounced Wesleyan streak in it too, largely imbibed through the Pentecostal streams that went into it) and then made a rather cheeky comment about the lack of poetic sensibility within evangelicalism as a whole ... with some smilies, I think,, to show that these were cheeky ...
I get told off for using the emoticons but I generally use to them to show when I'm 'having a laff' or making a point hyperbolically.
As I was in this instance.
Some of the restorationist leaders I knew used to write poetry. It wasn't very good poetry ... but they did write it.
I wasn't at all intending to go off on a tangent about how poetic or otherwise SA hymnody might be - an interesting diversion though this was.
For my part, being dead-pan and serious, I think that SA music takes more 'risks' than the lyrics do but even there you pretty much know what you're going to get ... as indeed you do with contemporary choral music on the whole.
Whether it's up there with Tavener and Part is a moot point ... or Britten's carol settings and so on ...
But we're not comparing like with like. SA music is SA music. It's written for that purpose and it does its job in that context.
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
We NEVER do barbershop!
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
You must admit, Mudfrog. I do know what buttons to press ...
Posted by gorpo (# 17025) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by deano:
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
I think it is because there are actually two gospels: one for the poor and one for the rich.
The Salvation Army has done an excellent job of speaking to the poor, forgotten, misused etc - speaking out the gospel of hope, forgiveness, worth, encouragement and so on.
Unfortunately that gospel doesn't really wash when people are rich, self-satisfied, contented, well-fed and so on. Most people turn off immediately as being irrelevant, those that remain become more and more self-centred, more involved in a form of me-first religious spiritual development project.*
The gospel for the rich is that repentance is necessary, that there is no offer of free grace to the wealthy, and that following Jesus Christ involves the rich becoming humbled - including a costly self-sacrificial taking off of the riches and coats of respectability.
*that said, in more difficult times (in Europe etc), I suspect this message will become again more relevant.
But that fails when you consider the USA. Arguably the richest economy and containing massive numbers of wealthy people - relatively speaking - and Christianity is overwhelmingly followed by the majority of the population.
Thanks to evangelicals and other conservative forms of Christianity. Liberal denominations in America are dying at their feet, even worse then in Europe.
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by gorpo:
Liberal denominations in America are dying at their feet, even worse then in Europe.
That would be an achievement. Have you been to Europe?
On the internet, one comes across quite a lot of anxiety about 'mainline' church decline in the USA, but rather less anxiety about such decline Europe. This isn't because European churches are more successful. It's because European churches have had longer to experience and internalise decline and have mostly stopped worrying about it. In the UK there have been attempts to meet the decline with fresh ideas and evangelistic vision, but in many (and I'd say most) cases there's an acceptance of decline as a simple fact of British church life, even if partial signs of growth are welcomed.
[ 20. December 2013, 21:37: Message edited by: SvitlanaV2 ]
Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on
:
I've an answer for this - and one I've been saying for some time.
Christianity ultimately stands or falls based on its moral authority - and there are two forms of moral authority that a group can hold. True moral authority based upon lighting a path for the surrounding world, and the fake moral authority that comes from a better justification for self interest.
The Prosperity Gospel fits the niche that Ayn Rand does. Fake moral authority. The excuse to not listen to their conscience.
But when it comes to true moral authority, the impulse to help our fellow humans, the Churches are mostly on the wrong side. While the Sally Army was a big bastion of fighting poverty it thrived. Now the state fights poverty many thousands of times better than the Sally Army can, its influence is diminished. And when the Sally Army, the CofE, the Roman Catholic Church, and others come out as actively homophobic organisations, they are ones actively fighting to stop us helping our fellow humans. Which means that they have less moral authority than polticians. Politicians are at least generally lightly corrupt rather than trying to teach us that evil (homophobia) is good.
The Sally Army at the moment is growing where it's leading forward - places that don't have a welfare state. It's shrinking where it's getting in the way of helping people - places that have a welfare state and that gay marriage is on the cards. There the Church is not providing moral leadership, quite the reverse. And so it is at best irrelevant. And the little churches normally stand or fall on the behaviour of the big ones.
(America has a much worse welfare state than most of Europe, of course).
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
Sorry, what has gay marriage got to do with it? You imply that decline has only set in recently whereas in European terms the decline started 100 years ago.
Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on
:
Homophobia certainly didn't start the decline, but it definitely is helping to speed the decline up. It's one way in which churches are showing themselves to be irrelevant to most people in developed nations.
Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
Sorry, what has gay marriage got to do with it? You imply that decline has only set in recently whereas in European terms the decline started 100 years ago.
The truth is, no one really knows when the European decline began - because it was masked for some time by church as a third space of sorts for the burgeoning middle classes.
Probably there was a one time hit from the urbanisation that accompanied industrialisation in the various countries. Ironically, the 'most religious' parts of europe are ones where the working class as a whole had the least understanding of religion if you go back 150 years or so.
Posted by ken (# 2460) on
:
Elizabeth Barrett.
Christina Rossetti was already a poet before the Oxford Movement got to her.
The Bronte sisters. Not poets of the first division (Rossetti is, and Barrett likely too) but decent poets, and great prose writers, full of imagery that can be poetic.
(IIRC George Eliot was raised an evangelical as well?)
Posted by gorpo (# 17025) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
I've an answer for this - and one I've been saying for some time.
Christianity ultimately stands or falls based on its moral authority - and there are two forms of moral authority that a group can hold. True moral authority based upon lighting a path for the surrounding world, and the fake moral authority that comes from a better justification for self interest.
The Prosperity Gospel fits the niche that Ayn Rand does. Fake moral authority. The excuse to not listen to their conscience.
But when it comes to true moral authority, the impulse to help our fellow humans, the Churches are mostly on the wrong side. While the Sally Army was a big bastion of fighting poverty it thrived. Now the state fights poverty many thousands of times better than the Sally Army can, its influence is diminished. And when the Sally Army, the CofE, the Roman Catholic Church, and others come out as actively homophobic organisations, they are ones actively fighting to stop us helping our fellow humans. Which means that they have less moral authority than polticians. Politicians are at least generally lightly corrupt rather than trying to teach us that evil (homophobia) is good.
The Sally Army at the moment is growing where it's leading forward - places that don't have a welfare state. It's shrinking where it's getting in the way of helping people - places that have a welfare state and that gay marriage is on the cards. There the Church is not providing moral leadership, quite the reverse. And so it is at best irrelevant. And the little churches normally stand or fall on the behaviour of the big ones.
(America has a much worse welfare state than most of Europe, of course).
Sayng exactly what secular people wants it to say doesn´t make a church more relevant. Proof of that being the fact that mainline churches become more irrelevant year after year.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
:
Saying 95% of your post as 100% of someone else's large one doesn't make one inclined to read it again to see what your point is. At least twice.
[ 20. December 2013, 23:42: Message edited by: Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard ]
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by chris stiles:
The truth is, no one really knows when the European decline began - because it was masked for some time by church as a third space of sorts for the burgeoning middle classes.
To a certain extent it's possible to isolate changes in working class churchgoing habits, though. I've seen a few studies that explore the changing demographics of English churchgoing over several centuries. The focus isn't always on middle class churchgoing.
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
Elizabeth Barrett.
Christina Rossetti was already a poet before the Oxford Movement got to her.
The Bronte sisters. Not poets of the first division (Rossetti is, and Barrett likely too) but decent poets, and great prose writers, full of imagery that can be poetic.
(IIRC George Eliot was raised an evangelical as well?)
Okay, I love googling for stuff about writers and religion, and if you're going to include any half-decent poet who was raised by evangelicals and who went through an evangelical phase or who was in any way influenced by evangelicalism there must be many of those.
I've come across James Baldwin, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Gerald Manley Hopkins, John Bunyan and Phillis Wheatley, for a start. There also seem to be a number of books and articles suggesting that John Wesley and 'enthusiasm' along with the Enlightenment love of reason had an influence on English Romanticism in general.
So, even if signed-up, born again revivalists weren't writing odes to make the TLS critics swoon evangelicalism still had an influence on poetry.
Getting back on topic, we could ask whether evangelicalism influencing poets aided or undermined the cause of evangelicalism.
[ 20. December 2013, 23:42: Message edited by: SvitlanaV2 ]
Posted by Arethosemyfeet (# 17047) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by gorpo:
Sayng exactly what secular people wants it to say doesn´t make a church more relevant. Proof of that being the fact that mainline churches become more irrelevant year after year.
There's a big difference between "not advocating positions that any sane person can see are immoral" and "saying exactly what secular people want it to say".
Posted by ken (# 2460) on
:
Cristina was a lot more than "half-decent"!
Anyway, there were loads of popular evangelical poets in early 19th century, mostly women, mostly not much regarded these days. So the accusation that there were no evangelical poets really boils down to saying that the kind of poetry 18th and 19th century evangelicals wrote is not to the taste of 20th and 21st century critics.
Then if we dismiss all hymn writers - then as now worship songs were the main outlet for evangelical poetry, which is not the same thing as poems written by evangelicals - we end up with the rather odd position, from a Christian point of view, of rejecting poetry that is embedded in the worship of the church, as if the only true poetry was private, introspective, and disconnected from the world.
And we can drop Isaac Watts for being An Heretic (which he was) and therefore No True (proto-)Evangelical. Which is a neat pre-emptive strike against Milton (who would be the clincher for the opposite view were he allowed into the argument, at least for those who dismiss Victorian women poets)
And I guess Bunyan can be ignored for writing doggerel. Bloody good doggerel - but then so did Hank Williams and Johnny Cash write good doggerel.
But Cowper? One of the best-known and most-read serious poets of the period? What did he do not to count as an evangelical poet?
Add to that the rather odd rejection of Cowper
Posted by Beeswax Altar (# 11644) on
:
Yes, but the mainline denominations are dying a far faster rate than the conservative denominations. So, if the Dead Horses are responsible for the decline of conservative Christianity, then why aren't the mainline churches growing exponentially?
Are most Christians insane?
Justinian would likely say yes. Sometimes I don't see much difference in the more liberal members of my denomination and atheists. Technically, they believe in God but have an obsession with being loved and respected by nonbelievers. They seem to be waiting for Richard Dawkins to pat them on the head and say, "There, there, I know you aren't like those bad ol fundamentalists. Your faith is perfectly rational. We will make you honorary atheists even." So...I can see why calling all conservative Christians insane would be tempting to some liberal Christians...
For the record, the Dead Horses do contribute somewhat to the decline of conservative Christianity. Before long, those conservative Protestant Christians with conservative views on the Dead Horses will be as marginalized as fundamentalist separatists became in the middle of the 20th century. Others will adapt just like the neo-fundamentalists adapted. However, as a priest in a mainline denomination, I'm more concerned with why my denomination is dying at a much faster rate. My suspicion is because people don't believe we really have anything to offer. Sometimes I don't think we believe we have anything to offer.
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
Cristina was a lot more than "half-decent"!
Of course. I was referring to some vague minimum standard that might be acceptable.
I don't know what Gamaliel's standards are for either poetry or evangelicalism, but he can explain himself later, if it's not too much of a diversion.
Posted by gorpo (# 17025) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
quote:
Originally posted by gorpo:
Sayng exactly what secular people wants it to say doesn´t make a church more relevant. Proof of that being the fact that mainline churches become more irrelevant year after year.
There's a big difference between "not advocating positions that any sane person can see are immoral" and "saying exactly what secular people want it to say".
And the "positions that any sane person can see are immoral" always vary acording to the taste of the wider, secular society. What a coincidence. Wouldn´t it be a lot more honest if they just admit they don´t believe that God stuff and just went on to become a secular institution with rituals?
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
quote:
Originally posted by balaam:
I'm not usually one to stand up for liberalism, but... quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
- Liberal theology (mostly German)
...is not really fair. I'd say that it is more a case of the church failing to be seen as different from society at large. Yes some liberal churches are guilty of this, but they are not the only ones. On the other hand where Christians are seen as being different it is because they are being reactionary, against change and standing for the status quo. Opposing change when they should be leading reform.
I agree with you on this, as far as the church not being different enough; but i would suggest that Liberal biblical and doctrinal theology has emptied the churches - when people know longer believe, then churches die and become empty.
HA!
Higher biblical criticism brought about faith decline?
Only for weak and unexamined faith.
So perhaps the wheat are being sorted from the chaff and that's a good thing.
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on
:
I don't think anyone has mentioned the gender issue.
There is an argument that in the UK, at least, the more precipitous decline which began in the sixties was a result of women catching up with men in rejecting religion - which leaves the question of why this happened.
It seems to have started a trifle early to have been a result of Second Wave feminism.
Posted by Arethosemyfeet (# 17047) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by gorpo:
And the "positions that any sane person can see are immoral" always vary acording to the taste of the wider, secular society. What a coincidence. Wouldn´t it be a lot more honest if they just admit they don´t believe that God stuff and just went on to become a secular institution with rituals?
It might be if that were actually true, rather than a bullshit strawman you're building.
The idea that morality can be derived without direct reference to scripture - that there is a natural law - is very much a part of mainstream Christianity. The RCC has maintained its position on various Dead Horses largely on that basis, but there are other interpretations.
Also, the secular view is not the same as a (certainly my) liberal Christian view. I do believe that gay people should be able to marry, but I believe that sex outside of marriage is wrong, and that marriage is for life (in general, there are areas like abusive relationships where this breaks down). Some conservatives seem to have this weird idea that valuing marriage for all people somehow makes you an advocate for no limits, do whatever makes you feel good sexual permissiveness.
Posted by Arethosemyfeet (# 17047) on
:
Oh, and while I think of it, if we're going to go down this "following the spirit of this age" line I should point out that there is nothing particularly special about the spirit of the 1950s conservatives seem to follow.
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
Some conservatives seem to have this weird idea that valuing marriage for all people somehow makes you an advocate for no limits, do whatever makes you feel good sexual permissiveness.
True story. Odd that. Yet maybe not. Fundies are often all or nothing people within their own particular frameworks.
I'm a theological liberal and a social conservative.
Posted by Russ (# 120) on
:
In thinking about decline, may be helpful to distinguish
- why there are more people who no longer really believe
- why those who don't really believe no longer attend church and identify as members
Television and related technologies may have something to do with the second of these.
But for the first, it seems to me that the answer has more to do with the rise of scientific thinking and the failure of the churches to move away from pre-scientific ideas.
Best wishes,
Russ
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
I'll start a new thread on evangelicalism and poetry because people seem to have got the wrong end of the stick and it'd cause a diversion here.
The interesting point about people like Elizabeth Barrett (Browning) and Christina Rossetti - who is certainly front-rank - is that they didn't remain evangelical.
What I'm suggesting is that there is something not conducive in the longer term to having a poetic or philosophical 'bent' and remaining within a strictly or traditionally evangelical setting.
That may sound snobby but it's based on observation.
Evangelicalism attracts the activists and the 'directive' thinkers - the do-ers rather than the reflective thinkers. Sure, you'll find those in evangelicalism too but generally speaking they have a harder time in terms of fitting in with the prevailing evangelical sub-culture.
It's a bit like Mark Noll with his famous - and largely disregarded - plea for evangelicals to re-engage with the 'life of the mind'. Remember 'The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind'?
Towards the end of that marvellous book he observes that US-style evangelicalism in particular can only cultivate the 'life of the mind' by drawing on insights from the older traditions - be they older forms of Protestantism, be they Roman Catholicism or Orthodoxy.
I've said all along that there are examples of poetry and a 'way with words' within evangelicalism ... come on, mun, I grew up in South Wales and all forms of evangelicalism down there were touched by the gift of the gab.
I'm going to stick my neck out and suggest that whilst evangelical influence can create good poetry - and in hymns and worship songs too - it rarely creates 'great' poetry.
As for Bunyan - yes, I'd rank him highly for some passages in Paradise Lost and elsewhere - but have you ever read any of his more doggerel efforts?!
Cowper? yes, he's important but I wouldn't place him in the front rank.
Evangelicalism has often acted as something to react against when it comes to the arts rather than something that has inspired artistic endeavour.
That said, there's a strain of it within Romanticism just as there is with any of the other cultural influences that arose at the time of the Enlightenment.
I'm afraid I regard evangelicalism in its contemporary form as more a product of the 18th than the 16th and 17th centuries, although its antecedents clearly lie there.
Posted by CL (# 16145) on
:
quote:
As for Bunyan - yes, I'd rank him highly for some passages in Paradise Lost and elsewhere
![[Confused]](confused.gif)
Posted by Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras (# 11274) on
:
Bunyan, Milton, Cotton Mather. A Puritan by any other name would smell as sweetly (not).
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
Aagghh ... I meant Pilgrim's Progress of course, not Paradise Lost ...
I was thinking of two things at the same time.
Note to self. Must.edit.posts.
![[Hot and Hormonal]](icon_redface.gif)
Meanwhile, I wouldn't write-off everything about the Puritans ... they've had a bad press. Saying that ... my youthful enthusiasm for them has long since waned.
I am neither Cavalier nor Roundhead. I'd probably have been a Clubman and tried to fend off both sides.
Posted by Horseman Bree (# 5290) on
:
I'll believe that there is some hope for the church when the sports leagues release their grip on the young people, so that "going to church" will become an option.
Oh, and Sunday shopping. Ten years ago, there was a lot of wailing about how one shouldn't let the stores open on Sunday. My retort was that, if the Christians were serious, they would boycott the shops on Sundays. The exact opposite happened - all the Christians went out for lunch and then to the malls immediately after service - and after a while, they became bored with church and went for brunch instead, while Little Johnny played in weekend-long tournaments, usually in another town.
Can't run churches on the strength of the non-shopper, non-hockey people.
Oh, and you can't make churches the moral arbiters when, by their actions, they are seen to be immoral (anti-women, anti-LGBTs, abortion-doctor killers, right-wing "It's--all-the-poor's-fault-they-are-poor" non-givers....)
(ETA that I thought we were debating the Western church)
[ 21. December 2013, 16:00: Message edited by: Horseman Bree ]
Posted by Augustine the Aleut (# 1472) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
I don't think anyone has mentioned the gender issue.
There is an argument that in the UK, at least, the more precipitous decline which began in the sixties was a result of women catching up with men in rejecting religion - which leaves the question of why this happened.
It seems to have started a trifle early to have been a result of Second Wave feminism.
Older friends tell me that their youth (variously) during the 1940s, 1950s or 1960s, was marked by frequent and consistent clerical counsel against sexual activity. As mores shifted, and it was seen that good girls could (and did), they came to reject this advice and questioned the credibility of clergy generally. As the clerical stance was so much at odds with their personal experience, they began to assume that this really applied to anything which they said. This, perhaps, might have been an aspect of proto-second-wave or a late first-wave feminism which reduced female participation.
One interlocutrix told me that this was less of a problem in Latin RC territory for: a) one could always confess and be absolved and, b) ignoring the clergy had been a tradition.
Posted by gorpo (# 17025) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
I'll believe that there is some hope for the church when the sports leagues release their grip on the young people, so that "going to church" will become an option.
Oh, and Sunday shopping. Ten years ago, there was a lot of wailing about how one shouldn't let the stores open on Sunday. My retort was that, if the Christians were serious, they would boycott the shops on Sundays. The exact opposite happened - all the Christians went out for lunch and then to the malls immediately after service - and after a while, they became bored with church and went for brunch instead, while Little Johnny played in weekend-long tournaments, usually in another town.
Can't run churches on the strength of the non-shopper, non-hockey people.
Oh, and you can't make churches the moral arbiters when, by their actions, they are seen to be immoral (anti-women, anti-LGBTs, abortion-doctor killers, right-wing "It's--all-the-poor's-fault-they-are-poor" non-givers....)
(ETA that I thought we were debating the Western church)
You seem to be confusing cause and effect. People don´t stop going to church on sunday mornings because of sports and shopping. They do sports and shopping on sunday mornings because they have stopped going to church long ago and thus sunday mornings are free time. Atheists will not magically start believing in God in case they don´t have any entertainment available on sundays.
The same applies for the Dead Horses issues. Society didn´t become secular because of the church´s opinion on the dead horses. Society changed its opinion on the dead horses because it had left the church. Hence churches changing their opinions of that issues to please society will not bring more people (scandinavian churches are still empty despite having lesbian bishops, ELCA and TEC are dying even faster after they openly embraced homossexuality and abortion). Secular people have left the church because they no longer believe in supernatural things. And one doesn´t need a belief in God or anything supernatural in order to be a LGBT or abortion activist.
Posted by Wesley S Chappell (# 4186) on
:
One thing that hasn't been mentioned much is if there ever really was a period of mass, genuine Christian belief.
We don't know what individuals believed; Christianity for much of its history was simply imposed on them from above and they didn't have much of a choice.
Decline in organised religion only really set in when individuals were able to make their own choices about what they believed (largely through increased literacy, which ironically was given to them to help them be more religious) and were able to make more choices about what they did in their spare time.
Consider that in the sixteenth century, it was a criminal offence not to attend an Anglican place of worship.
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
Thank you Gorpo, that was excellently said.
Wew have a gay church in Newcastle. I don't think it's full of ex-Anglicans/Methodists/ Salvationists/Atheists.
I don't think it's full at all!
Maybe the gay thing is a total straw man.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
Yes, I agree with Wesley.
For much of the middle ages most lay people wouldn't have understood a word of what was said in church. That doesn't mean that they didn't have faith, necessarily ... but much of it would have been of a fairly folk-religion kind. How could it have been otherwise?
Even in the middle ages there are intriguing records of people who'd come to the conclusion that the Bible stories were myths or fables and that there mightn't necessarily be any form of life beyond the grave. I once read a very fascinating historical article which gave examples from the 14th century onwards.
Certainly by the 17th century there were a number of atheists around who were prepared to openly acknowledge as much.
So, yes, the lack of engagement with faith etc comes with the availability of personal choice.
Only eternity will reveal how many people did or didn't engage with the Christian faith in any meaningful way - or ways in which we might consider meaningful according to the criteria of our respective traditions.
But I doubt if the redeemed will be going round with labels on to show to what extent they believed accurately, orthodox-ly or behaved correctly etc etc.
They'll just be the redeemed.
Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
Thank you Gorpo, that was excellently said.
Wew have a gay church in Newcastle. I don't think it's full of ex-Anglicans/Methodists/ Salvationists/Atheists.
I don't think it's full at all!
Maybe the gay thing is a total straw man.
MCC (Metropolitan Community Churches) have been around for some time. Not sure if it's the one you have in Newcastle, but it's the main LGBTQ-specific denomination that I know of. Given the pain and abuse suffered by LGBTQ people in many mainstream churches, clearly there is a need.
Oh and your local Anglo-Catholic and RC churches will be absolutely heaving with gays, guaranteed.
I don't think the LGBTQ thing is a straw man. Most non-Christians in the UK and increasingly elsewhere view Christians as homophobic cunts, unless they're homophobic themselves. Given the abhorrent behaviour of many mainstream Christians in this area (even very recently with Andrea Minchinello Williams in Jamaica), it shouldn't come as a surprise. LGBTQ people and allies who object to this don't go to more liberal churches, they just quit Christianity altogether.
Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Yes, I agree with Wesley.
For much of the middle ages most lay people wouldn't have understood a word of what was said in church. That doesn't mean that they didn't have faith, necessarily ... but much of it would have been of a fairly folk-religion kind. How could it have been otherwise?
Even in the middle ages there are intriguing records of people who'd come to the conclusion that the Bible stories were myths or fables and that there mightn't necessarily be any form of life beyond the grave. I once read a very fascinating historical article which gave examples from the 14th century onwards.
Certainly by the 17th century there were a number of atheists around who were prepared to openly acknowledge as much.
So, yes, the lack of engagement with faith etc comes with the availability of personal choice.
Only eternity will reveal how many people did or didn't engage with the Christian faith in any meaningful way - or ways in which we might consider meaningful according to the criteria of our respective traditions.
But I doubt if the redeemed will be going round with labels on to show to what extent they believed accurately, orthodox-ly or behaved correctly etc etc.
They'll just be the redeemed.
Indeed. King John gets his dire reputation in part from the fact that he was an atheist, and the monks writing his biographies weren't best pleased at this. His elder brother Richard I was not really much use as a king, spending 10 months out of a 10 year reign in England, but did go on crusades so was much more favourably regarded by the monks.
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
Higher biblical criticism brought about faith decline?
Only for weak and unexamined faith.
So perhaps the wheat are being sorted from the chaff and that's a good thing.
The trouble is, that sort of thing is usually kept as the preserve of intellectuals. Rarely is it explained and explored with the ordinary people in the pews. They're generally expected to carry on as though nothing has changed. But people aren't stupid - they can feel that something's changed, even if they can't always put their finger on what it is.
The church can't claim to be 'on the side of the poor' but then exclude ordinary people from this secret knowledge. The priestly hierarchy feels that by shielding people it's protecting their faith, but that doesn't seem to be the case in the long run.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
This has come up before ... I'm not sure that it's a case of a 'priestly caste' deliberately withholding secret knowledge so much as ...
- In the case of some ministers/clergy a refusal to accept Higher Criticism, for good, bad or indifferent reasons.
- In the case of others a refusal to get to grips with the implications for themselves and their 'flock' if they do accept Higher Criticism and so on.
Of the two vicars where I live, one is very liberal and makes no attempt whatsoever to sugar any pills and he's more than happy to introduce some of this so-called secret knowledge as you put it into Bible studies and sermons and ordinary everyday conversation.
The other is very evangelical and never mentions these things. Presumably because he doesn't believe them.
Both are 'what you see is what you get'.
I also think that other clergy aren't quite clear where or how to pitch things in this respect.
I don't think there's a clear cut, binary divide in all cases between those who hold to Higher Criticism type views and those who don't.
Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on
:
Also, some congregations (especially more elderly ones) are not especially interested in higher criticism.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
Besides, higher criticism itself is rather old-hat too.
It's already had its hey-day.
SvitlanaV2 has only just noticed. Some wicked priestly caste has been hiding these things from her, obviously ...
Posted by Beeswax Altar (# 11644) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Wesley S Chappell:
One thing that hasn't been mentioned much is if there ever really was a period of mass, genuine Christian belief.
We don't know what individuals believed; Christianity for much of its history was simply imposed on them from above and they didn't have much of a choice.
Decline in organised religion only really set in when individuals were able to make their own choices about what they believed (largely through increased literacy, which ironically was given to them to help them be more religious) and were able to make more choices about what they did in their spare time.
Consider that in the sixteenth century, it was a criminal offence not to attend an Anglican place of worship.
US religious history would suggest that isn't the case.
Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on
:
Good to know that people are not engaging and instead trying to find one single point to dismiss what I'm saying. Let me try again.
In the sixteenth century when it came to helping the poor, and curing the sick, the Church was most of it. They were obviously trying to make the world better.
Through the nineteenth century
The ideal world the Christian view is pointing to is somewhere in the late Nineteenth Century. One based on charity as the highest means of helping the poor rather than the fact that "The poor shall be with you always" is rawest defeatism and the need for charity is a demonstration of failure.
The "better world" most of the Churches preach we should make this one was already being caught up with in Western Europe and America at the end of the nineteenth century. It was left in the dust in the mid twentieth.
To take various illustrations:
* Christian Charity assumes that there will be no Welfare State. Not that charity isn't needed (there are always gaps) - but if Churches genuinely care about the poor they should be stumping for the Welfare State rather than trying to show how giving they are. Otherwise what you have left is what is openly called by some opportunities for compassion. ![[Projectile]](graemlins/puke2.gif)
* Christian sexuality makes sense when you assume that contraception doesn't work, and that abortion is either poisoning the mother and hoping the foetus dies faster (e.g. Pennyroyal), infanticide, or leaving a foundling. Things have changed a lot in the past hundred years.
In both cases mainstream Christian teaching wants to bring us to a brave new world that looks something like the 1890s. Ignoring, or in at least some cases actively trying to overturn a century of progress so that the remedies they preach will once more become relevant. Most branches of Christianity are not ready for, and indeed actively recoil from a world in which "The poor shall always be with you" is an expression of defeatism about a problem that should be soluble rather than a simple truism. And they certainly aren't ready for a world where unwanted children aren't a major problem and where sex needn't have a serious risk of ruining lives (which is why some of the more conservative Churches are trying to stop this world from existing - if we reinstitute the old problems, the old answers become relevant rather than at best laughable again).
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
Also, some congregations (especially more elderly ones) are not especially interested in higher criticism.
Of course they're not interested in it. And they won't ever be, unless those who are 'leading' them tell them it matters.
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Besides, higher criticism itself is rather old-hat too.
It's already had its hey-day.
SvitlanaV2 has only just noticed. Some wicked priestly caste has been hiding these things from her, obviously ...
Indeed! Why didn't the wise ones who know these things tell me? Or at least give me an up-to-date reading list?? Are we only paying them for pious platitudes and pastoral visits??
But that's very rude of me. I do like most of the clergy I meet. I belong in their orbit and can't escape. But so many other people can and do....
Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
The church can't claim to be 'on the side of the poor' but then exclude ordinary people from this secret knowledge.
So do you want them to be told about it in it's entirety, or don't you? Or is this just another tangent?
Because higher criticism isn't a a unified thing, it's a series of separate and contradictory ideas that you then have to make an informed judgement on.
Also, it's mostly run it's course, and most denominations have come to some understanding with it on a clerical level - so it's completely inaccurate to say 'everything has changed' - because in most cases that's just not true.
Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on
:
It's not that difficult to find out about higher criticism and other different approaches to Scripture and faith, now we have the internet. While I'm not condoning clergy keeping things from their flock, in a lot of cases the congregation is much less interested in new things than the clergy. A lot of older church members are not interested in higher criticism because that's not what church is for, for them, particularly in more liturgical denominations. Not everyone cares about academic approaches to their faith.
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by chris stiles:
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
The church can't claim to be 'on the side of the poor' but then exclude ordinary people from this secret knowledge.
So do you want them to be told about it in it's entirety, or don't you? Or is this just another tangent?
Because higher criticism isn't a a unified thing, it's a series of separate and contradictory ideas that you then have to make an informed judgement on.
Also, it's mostly run it's course, and most denominations have come to some understanding with it on a clerical level - so it's completely inaccurate to say 'everything has changed' - because in most cases that's just not true.
I was responding to Evensong's post, which implied that an inability to cope with higher criticism meant having a 'weak and unexamined faith'. If this is in fact true then you'd think that getting congregations to become engaged in that would be a priority. I'm not sure that it is.
There was a series of letters in 'The Methodist Recorder' a few years ago bemoaning the fact that members weren't being given the space or the encouragement in their churches to explore some of the issues together. In fact, a theologian I know said that trainee clergy were discouraged from exploring some of the controversial stuff, for fear that they'd destroy people's faith. In the Methodist circuit I know there's now a forum for some of the old issues to be discussed, which is a good thing.
I don't think this is a 'tangent' at all. Some people (obviously not all) will leave churches if they don't feel they can talk about some of troubling theological issues from the past that they've vaguely heard of, or read about. Yes, the theologians and the denominational leaders might have moved on to something else, but how does that help the people in the congregations who might still be very hazy on some of the arguments of the past?
I accept that people are free to go and read books and websites on their own.
Posted by Beeswax Altar (# 11644) on
:
Higher criticism is a broad term. What specifically do you think the clergy are keeping from you? I often use historical criticism in my sermons and teaching. I just present it for what it is...a crap shoot.
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on
:
Well, if they're keeping something from me, I won't know what it is until I see it, will I??
I can see that no one gets where I'm coming from on this, which is surprising to me but I accept it. The comments I have in mind about the clergy being reluctant to present certain theological material to congregations come from Methodist and URC sources. Other denominations may be different.
Posted by Lyda*Rose (# 4544) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by gorpo:
quote:
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
quote:
Originally posted by gorpo:
Sayng exactly what secular people wants it to say doesn´t make a church more relevant. Proof of that being the fact that mainline churches become more irrelevant year after year.
There's a big difference between "not advocating positions that any sane person can see are immoral" and "saying exactly what secular people want it to say".
And the "positions that any sane person can see are immoral" always vary acording to the taste of the wider, secular society. What a coincidence. Wouldn´t it be a lot more honest if they just admit they don´t believe that God stuff and just went on to become a secular institution with rituals?
I'm a Piskie, liberal on many social issues, and can say the Nicene creed without crossing my fingers. Why would I want "a secular institution with rituals"?
Posted by Beeswax Altar (# 11644) on
:
Exactly...which might say something about why our church is declining faster than more conservative ones.
Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on
:
^ What Lyda*Rose said. I'm not going to admit to not believing in that God stuff, because I do believe in it. I just also don't believe in a God that requires institutional homophobia/sexism/racism etc. Why is that apparently impossible?
Posted by Beeswax Altar (# 11644) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
^ What Lyda*Rose said. I'm not going to admit to not believing in that God stuff, because I do believe in it. I just also don't believe in a God that requires institutional homophobia/sexism/racism etc. Why is that apparently impossible?
And if that was all it was, mainline denominations wouldn't be in such rapid decline. It's not. So, we are.
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
Well, if they're keeping something from me, I won't know what it is until I see it, will I??
I can see that no one gets where I'm coming from on this, which is surprising to me but I accept it. The comments I have in mind about the clergy being reluctant to present certain theological material to congregations come from Methodist and URC sources. Other denominations may be different.
I getcha. One of my theological professors whinges the clergy don't do enough of it in sermons even tho they get taught it all through their degrees.
In my diocese however, most good liberal preachers will engage the congregations in higher criticism in sermons or bible studies.
More conservative preachers won't bother because they don't believe the text exists in context and are hermeneutically blinkered.
I currently have a lovely supervisor in the placement I'm in and she went hard core on the differences between Matthew's annunciation and Luke's this morning in her sermon. Then went through the meaning of the genealogies at the beginning of Matthew etc.
A parishioner at morning tea was so enthused he wanted her to start up a bible study.
Posted by Lyda*Rose (# 4544) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
^ What Lyda*Rose said. I'm not going to admit to not believing in that God stuff, because I do believe in it. I just also don't believe in a God that requires institutional homophobia/sexism/racism etc. Why is that apparently impossible?
And if that was all it was, mainline denominations wouldn't be in such rapid decline. It's not. So, we are.
So what would be your solution? Serious question.
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
:
Incense.
(Probably)
![[Snigger]](graemlins/snigger.gif)
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
the differences between Matthew's annunciation and Luke's
the meaning of the genealogies at the beginning of Matthew etc.
Those are perfectly legitimate issues, with which conservatives would be quite happy to engage not only in a sermon, but also in a Bible College lecture on the one hand, or a weekly Bible Study group on the other.
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
:
Well then. Conservatives are engaging in liberal theology.
![[Ultra confused]](graemlins/confused2.gif)
![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
THE HORROR!
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
Well then. Conservatives are engaging in liberal theology.
THE HORROR!
I think you misunderstand conservatives then. We are more than happy to engage in theology and hermeneutics and examining texts. It's just that we also have a hermeneutic of 'God as author' - something that liberal theologians don't have. We are well-prepared to analyse and evaluate texts but we do so recognising that the Bible is more than just an ancient literary document.
[ 22. December 2013, 05:58: Message edited by: Mudfrog ]
Posted by Oscar the Grouch (# 1916) on
:
I think that part of the reason for the decline is that over the past 100+ years, the Christian Church has been persistently on the wrong side of any important issue or change in attitudes.
"It's sinful to go dancing"
"It's sinful to go to the cinema"
"It's wrong to to encourage women to seek equality with men"
"Rock music is Satanic"
"It is wrong to subject the Bible to any kind of literary criticism."
"Contraception is sinful"
"Sunday shopping is sinful"
"Homosexuality is evil"
Time after time, the Church has made pronouncements which later have to be backtracked on. Quite frankly, I am astonished that Church leaders like the Pope or the Archbishop of Canterbury still have the gall to try and make moral pronouncements about anything. We've got it wrong just about every time. No wonder people no longer take us that seriously.
We seem to have taken as our Patron Saint, the Blessed Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff (aka Groucho Marx): "Whatever it is, I'm against it"
Posted by Arethosemyfeet (# 17047) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Those are perfectly legitimate issues, with which conservatives would be quite happy to engage not only in a sermon, but also in a Bible College lecture on the one hand, or a weekly Bible Study group on the other.
Really. That must be why the recently retired Baptist minister at our Bible study was so adamant about insisting that both genealogies must be accurate and that the one from Luke HAD to be Mary's. It's pretty hard to have a meaningful discussion when one side won't countenance the possibility of error in the Bible. And uses out of context quotations from the Bible to support that view. ![[brick wall]](graemlins/brick_wall.gif)
[ 22. December 2013, 06:39: Message edited by: Arethosemyfeet ]
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
Well then. Conservatives are engaging in liberal theology.
THE HORROR!
I think you misunderstand conservatives then. We are more than happy to engage in theology and hermeneutics and examining texts. It's just that we also have a hermeneutic of 'God as author' - something that liberal theologians don't have. We are well-prepared to analyse and evaluate texts but we do so recognising that the Bible is more than just an ancient literary document.
This liberal doesn't see the bible as just an ancient literary document.
I suspect the main difference between a conservative and liberal biblical hermeneutic is that liberal's believe Jesus is the eternal word of God whereas conservatives believe the bible is the eternal word of God.
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Those are perfectly legitimate issues, with which conservatives would be quite happy to engage not only in a sermon, but also in a Bible College lecture on the one hand, or a weekly Bible Study group on the other.
Really. That must be why the recently retired Baptist minister at our Bible study was so adamant about insisting that both genealogies must be accurate and that the one from Luke HAD to be Mary's. It's pretty hard to have a meaningful discussion when one side won't countenance the possibility of error in the Bible. And uses out of context quotations from the Bible to support that view.
Since I don’t know the minister to whom you refer, I don’t know whether he has formulated a defensible theory about the genealogies on the basis of extensive reading and research, or whether he has retreated into blind dogmatism and obscurantism because he feels confused and threatened.
What I do know, is that if the latter, it is no more legitimate to dismiss conservative scholarship and integrity in toto on the basis of your experience of this single old man, than it is to dismiss liberal scholarship in toto on the basis of its loonier offerings – magic mushroom cult, anyone?
[ 22. December 2013, 08:23: Message edited by: Kaplan Corday ]
Posted by que sais-je (# 17185) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Oscar the Grouch:
"Sunday shopping is sinful"
But Christmas shopping is Hellish.
Happy Yule to all.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Oscar the Grouch:
I think that part of the reason for the decline is that over the past 100+ years, the Christian Church has been persistently on the wrong side of any important issue or change in attitudes.
"It's sinful to go dancing"
"It's sinful to go to the cinema"
"It's wrong to to encourage women to seek equality with men"
"Rock music is Satanic"
"It is wrong to subject the Bible to any kind of literary criticism."
"Contraception is sinful"
"Sunday shopping is sinful"
"Homosexuality is evil"
Time after time, the Church has made pronouncements which later have to be backtracked on. Quite frankly, I am astonished that Church leaders like the Pope or the Archbishop of Canterbury still have the gall to try and make moral pronouncements about anything. We've got it wrong just about every time. No wonder people no longer take us that seriously.
We seem to have taken as our Patron Saint, the Blessed Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff (aka Groucho Marx): "Whatever it is, I'm against it"
There is something in that, but don't you think that it goes even deeper, that the idea of 'making pronouncements' seems antiquated today? I suspect that most people are postmodernists today; that is, they reject grand narratives and positions of power and privilege. Of course, they don't do this in a thought out or intellectual way, but some kind of revolution has occurred under our noses. I'm not sure what name it might have.
Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
whereas conservatives believe the bible is the eternal word of God.
I'm not sure this is an entirely helpful characterisation. I've also heard this thrown around in conservative circles at anyone who is more conservative than the current group.
Rather both groups different models of how inspiration works itself out.
Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
... I suspect the main difference between a conservative and liberal biblical hermeneutic is that liberal's believe Jesus is the eternal word of God whereas conservatives believe the bible is the eternal word of God.
I would hope that we all believe Jesus is the eternal word of God. That is what John 1 says.
Oddly, perhaps, for someone who is theologically fairly conservative with a high view of scripture and its status as authoritative record of the revelation, I try to discourage people from referring to scripture as 'the word of God'. Scripture doesn't so describe itself. It says that Jesus is.
Some of us, though, would say that from a conservative position, the difference between a liberal and a conservative hermeneutic looks more like this. A conservative accepts that as a matter of obedience, one believes in and follows what scripture says about the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and how we should live. A liberal regards themselves as free to decide whether to believe in and follow or not, depending on how it suits them. To put it a different way, in the interior debate between oneself and God, one's own wishes and critical faculties take priority over his.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
I'd agree with Chris Stiles ...
On the clergy deliberately withholding some aspects of theology from their congregations for fear of undermining their faith ... I can't speak for the Methodists and URCs but I have heard of a CofE Archdeacon who apparently advocated such a strategy ... to the horror of some of the clergy who heard him.
I really don't think there's any kind of nefarious clerical or ministerial plot out there to deny people access to these things.
Beeswax Altar has already told us how he uses references to 'higher criticism' ie. in order to debunk it.
Whether we agree with that approach or not, what it tells us is that he's presenting it in the light of his own beliefs and convictions. The same as if a more liberal cleric or minister were to present it all as a done deal and worthy of all acceptation.
Would Mudfrog be nefarious, neglectful and delinquent for not presenting 'higher criticism' to the people in his own congregation for fear that they would lose their faith? No, I'd suggest not. What Mudfrog is doing is presenting the Gospel to them as he understands it and no-one could ask any more or less of him.
The same with the evangelical vicar at our local parish here. He's not presenting 'higher criticism' to people because he's unaware of it but because, for whatever reason, he doesn't accept it.
Whereas the liberal vicar further down the road has no qualms at all in presenting higher criticism type views to his congregation because that's what he believes.
I really don't get where you're coming from on this one, SvitlanaV2. Twice over the years, in conversation with liberal clergy, they've loaned me very liberal theological books to show me more about their particular position.
The same has happened in conversations with more conservative church leaders.
Leprechaun is an evangelical minister. If I attended his church I'd expect to hear him presenting material in a way that was in accordance with his particular paradigm. Shamwari is a liberal minster. If I attended his church I'd expect to hear these things presented differently.
Same with Hatless who is a Baptist minister with a liberal theological persuasion.
You're tilting at a straw-man. You think you're missing out or have missed out for whatever reason and are looking for some nefarious clerial or ministerial heirarchy to blame it all on.
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by chris stiles:
Rather both groups different models of how inspiration works itself out.
Agreed.
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
Some of us, though, would say that from a conservative position, the difference between a liberal and a conservative hermeneutic looks more like this. A conservative accepts that as a matter of obedience, one believes in and follows what scripture says about the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and how we should live. A liberal regards themselves as free to decide whether to believe in and follow or not, depending on how it suits them. To put it a different way, in the interior debate between oneself and God, one's own wishes and critical faculties take priority over his.
And the liberal would laugh and say what the conservative accepts as a matter of "obedience" is a matter of his or her own interpretation (or more likely - their churches') and not what scripture says about the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
The liberal gives more reverence to the scriptures than the conservative because they attempt to understand the scriptures in their own context to know and understand what they meant at the time.
Only then can we extrapolate for our own time.
Because even tho God inspires, humankind is limited by time and space, history and context. Words on a page in a book are HUMAN mediums and therefore subject to HUMAN limitations.
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
I really don't get where you're coming from on this one, SvitlanaV2. Twice over the years, in conversation with liberal clergy, they've loaned me very liberal theological books to show me more about their particular position.
[...]
You're tilting at a straw-man. You think you're missing out or have missed out for whatever reason and are looking for some nefarious clerial or ministerial heirarchy to blame it all on.
I'm speaking from my own experience, as you are. Ministers and theologians have TOLD me that this has been an issue. I also refer to the discussion I mentioned in 'The Methodist Recorder'.
Perhaps it's a class thing - liberal clergy with largely professional middle class congregations may feel more comfortable encouraging debate. I've heard that one minister whose congregation contained numerous students and lecturers from the local university worried that his sermons weren't intellectual enough for them, and no doubt he tried to do something about it. It seems likely that a good many Shipmates attend such churches and so don't really have much connection with what I'm saying. However, I'd suggest that many churches aren't like that.
I'm glad to hear that many of the churches brought into the discussion so far (including the successful effort I mentioned in my old circuit) are moving forward on this. But it's very late in the day. Many of our churches have declined in the meantime.
Posted by A.Pilgrim (# 15044) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
...
The liberal gives more reverence to the scriptures than the conservative because they attempt to understand the scriptures in their own context to know and understand what they meant at the time.
Only then can we extrapolate for our own time.
...
We do seem to have a problem with labels, or different experiences. What you have described there has been my experience of the standard evangelical method of exegesis and hermeneutics. Maybe I've been fortunate to have moved in scholarly (mildly-conservative) evangelical circles for most of my Christian experience. I guess I've been fortunate to avoid the literalist mindset that ignores original literary and cultural context. (Incidentally, if you'd like an example, I hope to post imminently on the 'He descended into hell' thread with a good example of what I'm talking about.)
Angus
Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
The liberal gives more reverence to the scriptures than the conservative because they attempt to understand the scriptures in their own context to know and understand what they meant at the time.
Again, what you describe as a 'liberal' position I would see as quite common in conservative circles - outside fairly wooden literalistic circles which are a tiny minority (coinciding with KJV-only quite often).
It is how each group interprets context and how they feel that context can be extrapolated forward is where the difference lies.
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2 I'm speaking from my own experience, as you are. Ministers and theologians have TOLD me that this has been an issue.
The problem usually is that in order to properly contextualise HC, you'd need a lot more time (and attention) that most people have available for their sermon. An incomplete relating of HC is worse than no HC at all (you can't just leave with a cliff hangar like "Ezra probably wrote the OT" without a hell of a lot of background, plus a significant amount of discussion of competing ideas).
Posted by Russ (# 120) on
:
Not wishing to point fingers at anyone in particular, I'm hearing the sound of hobby horses being ridden. Guess it's difficult for all of us to detach what we personally dislike or think is wrong with the various churches from reasons for long-term decline.
No offence...
Russ
Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
I've heard that one minister whose congregation contained numerous students and lecturers from the local university worried that his sermons weren't intellectual enough for them, and no doubt he tried to do something about it. It seems likely that a good many Shipmates attend such churches and so don't really have much connection with what I'm saying. However, I'd suggest that many churches aren't like that.
I think that there are loads of Baptist (BU) churches where the Ministers would decry an open-ended and investigative approach to the Bible and (dare I say) tend to preach a pietistic faith rather than one which connects with the issues of the world around - even though they will have been trained to do so at theological college.
I am considered wildly liberal by many of my colleagues, but rather conservative by "card-carrying" liberals! But I do want to be at least mildly intelligent in my approach.
Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
Well then. Conservatives are engaging in liberal theology.
THE HORROR!
I think you misunderstand conservatives then. We are more than happy to engage in theology and hermeneutics and examining texts. It's just that we also have a hermeneutic of 'God as author' - something that liberal theologians don't have. We are well-prepared to analyse and evaluate texts but we do so recognising that the Bible is more than just an ancient literary document.
Many liberals engaging in theology DO believe in 'God as author'. Certainly, a lot do not believe the Bible is just an ancient literary document. It is possible to believe in position other than 'the Bible is it inerrant Word of God' and 'the Bible is just an ancient literary document'.
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Same with Hatless who is a Baptist minister with a liberal theological persuasion.
gentle hostly touch/
Gamaliel, it would lead to a lot less potential for misunderstanding if you could refrain from asserting what you think other posters are in real life, what their standpoint is, and what their views or practices can be expected to be - sometimes even when they are not on the thread. The above is just one of many examples of this - there are two more in the same post!
Even if these things are no secret, it's not up to you to speak on their behalf. You have plenty to contribute on your own account without having to tell us what you think others think.
/gentle hostly touch
Posted by gorpo (# 17025) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
The liberal gives more reverence to the scriptures than the conservative because they attempt to understand the scriptures in their own context to know and understand what they meant at the time.
Only then can we extrapolate for our own time.
Because even tho God inspires, humankind is limited by time and space, history and context. Words on a page in a book are HUMAN mediums and therefore subject to HUMAN limitations.
So how do you explain the BIG coincidence of opinions about anything between liberals and non-christians? If liberal theology is really developed from the bible (which it isn´t), then why does it always get to the same conclusions as atheists and other who have never claimed the Bible as a source of inspiration? The Bible is not necessary for the liberal world view. It is only necessary for liberal pastores to keep their jobs cause they would be dropped if they openly admitted they don´t believe it.
[code decline]
[ 22. December 2013, 20:56: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by gorpo:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
The liberal gives more reverence to the scriptures than the conservative because they attempt to understand the scriptures in their own context to know and understand what they meant at the time.
Only then can we extrapolate for our own time.
Because even tho God inspires, humankind is limited by time and space, history and context. Words on a page in a book are HUMAN mediums and therefore subject to HUMAN limitations.
So how do you explain the BIG coincidence of opinions about anything between liberals and non-christians? If liberal theology is really developed from the bible (which it isn´t), then why does it always get to the same conclusions as atheists and other who have never claimed the Bible as a source of inspiration? The Bible is not necessary for the liberal world view. It is only necessary for liberal pastores to keep their jobs cause they would be dropped if they openly admitted they don´t believe it.
There is more than one liberal worldview and liberal theology. As myself, Lyda*Rose and others have said, many liberals consider the Bible and God to be essential or at least important. And not all conservatives come to the same conclusion about the Bible - there are many areas in which liberals and conservatives agree. There are many areas in which liberals and atheists/other non-Christians disagree. Why the generalisations?
[more code decline]
[ 22. December 2013, 20:56: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
Ok, thanks for the nudge, Eutychus.
What I should have done was to make the same point but without using real-life Shipmate examples. Although I felt I was on safe ground using Hatless as an example as I've met him real life and know the position he holds because he's told me.
But I take the point and will refrain from this sort of thing in future.
Posted by Arethosemyfeet (# 17047) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by gorpo:
So how do you explain the BIG coincidence of opinions about anything between liberals and non-christians? If liberal theology is really developed from the bible (which it isn´t), then why does it always get to the same conclusions as atheists and other who have never claimed the Bible as a source of inspiration? The Bible is not necessary for the liberal world view. It is only necessary for liberal pastores to keep their jobs cause they would be dropped if they openly admitted they don´t believe it.
You keep coming back to this same bullshit strawman. I don't accept the premise of the question. Liberal views sometimes align with atheist ones, sometimes they don't. The same is true of conservatives. There are more than a few Rand fans among conservatives, both Evangelicals and Roman Catholics (watching the apoplexy resulting from the Pope's recent comments on capitalism was hilarious). It is possible for people to arrive at the truth independently of the Bible (though not independently of God, who is the source of all truth), and possible to arrive at falsehood in spite of the Bible.
Posted by Beeswax Altar (# 11644) on
:
Indeed
Both the religious right and religious left have sanctified the political opinions of their atheist allies. Both religious right and religious left have made politics more important than the gospel. The right obsessed over Dead Horse issues to such a degree that nothing else mattered and in so doing lost their credibility. Jesus told us we can't serve God and Mammon. For the left, I sometimes wonder what their faith consists of apart from political ideology. For them, the welfare state is the Kingdom of God.
[ 22. December 2013, 21:57: Message edited by: Beeswax Altar ]
Posted by Horseman Bree (# 5290) on
:
Amazingly easy to say that "they" (the ones I don't agree with) aren't basing their conclusions in the Bible, innit?
How about allowing that people have actually thought about things, using the same texts as you did, but they came up with different answers? If you seriously want to debate/discuss, then you'll have to work with some form of expecting different answers.
I know, ITTWACW, but there are clearly a lot of ways of doing Christianity, and most of those ways aren't exactly like yours.
I actually came in here to point out bilgrimage's posting on what the take-away is for Church doctrine.
Following the link in his blogpost, one finds that:
quote:
• only 9% of self-identified Catholics think that the use of contraceptives warrants guilt; the percentage rises to 12% amongst churchgoers
• almost 90% of British Catholics agree that an unmarried couple with children is a family
• two-thirds say that a same-sex couple with children is a family
• British Catholics are in favor of permitting same-sex marriage by a margin of 3%
• only a third of British Catholics approve of the Church’s policies on women
• only 19% of British Catholics support a ban on abortion
• over half of British Catholics under 50 say that "same-sex marriage is right," compared with 16% of over-60s
• support for a ban on abortion has fallen to 14% among under-40s compared to a quarter among over-60s
• only 36% of Catholics say that the Church is a positive force in society
• just 8% of Catholics say they look to "tradition and teachings of the Church" for guidance as they make decisions and live their lives, 7% to God, 2% to the Bible, 2% to the religious group to which a person belongs
• zero percent report that they look to religious leaders for guidance as they make decisions and live their lives
That last one is a bit of a shocker for the professionals in this business, I'll bet.
But I doubt that you'd find the average British RC is "liberal", unless you are comparing to certain high-profile Evangelicals in the US
I came to respond to Oscar the Grouch's comment upthread, but seem to have got into a tighter spot!
And I would say that the slide away from "being churchy" was built seriously in the aftermath of WW1, and was polished up for better sliding by WW2.
Who would want to accept "the authority" from the people who did much of the cheerleading for the wars?
Posted by Arethosemyfeet (# 17047) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
For them, the welfare state is the Kingdom of God.
I would suggest that seeing (to an extent) the hungry fed, the naked clothed and the sick healed is but a glimmer of a reflection of the Kingdom of God. It would be great if it happened spontaneously and didn't require taxation to fund it, but it's closer to the Kingdom than the other options that have so far been tried.
Posted by stonespring (# 15530) on
:
My observations from where I've lived in the US is that a lot of people have grown up now having been raised "spiritual but not religious." Some of these people identify as having no religious affiliation (and therefore get put in the same category as atheists and agnostics in religion surveys- the "nones" (the fasted growing group in this country which now outnumbers evangelicals)). Many of these people "believe in God" and in an afterlife but either don't want to be pressed on the details or have a confident set of beliefs but don't feel a need to have churchy fellowship with people who believe similar things.
Others of these "spiritual but not religious" people identify as Christian when you ask them but don't attend church or feel any need to. The younger ones were probably raised in a family that called itself Christian but never attended Church. Some might be evangelicals who are perfectly happy with a Bible to read and don't need to go anywhere on Sundays, but many are people who don't even feel much need to read the Bible or believe in the finer points of Christian doctrine. They want to go to Heaven to be with Jesus, and they're perfectly happy in believing little more than that.
I was basically raised as one of the latter at first, but then became one of the former before I decided - much to the confusion of my parents - to become a practicing Roman Catholic (which was the religion most of my family originally came from). My attempts to avoid being a heretic only lasted a few years, and now I'm perfectly comfortable being a cafeteria Catholic who still goes to Church every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation, engages with Scripture and Church tradition, prays, tries to stay active in my parish, etc. I grew up as a lonely shy only child, so I felt a need for community that I found at church. Most of my peers who were raised in spiritual but not religious households like mine, though, have had relatively little difficulty having a social life without going to church.
You could add that the culture people my age (28) and younger were brought up in (at least in the upper middle class) was all about fluid identity, choosing one's peers, having little social niches based on specialty interests, etc. Baby boomers were also spiritual seekers, some of whom filled the pews of megachurches - but people my age don't seem to want to "find ourselves" - we're too jaded from too young of an age to be that ambitious- we just want to explore moving from one identity to the next while living a reasonably comfortable life (since many of us have given up on getting richer than our parents because of the dearth of jobs in the current economy). Give us food, sex, friends, fresh air, and some cool spiritual experiences from time to time (which could be as simple as climbing a mountain, doing some yoga, or visiting a Cathedral on vacation), and we'll be happy enough. There really is no need for traditional religious membership in this framework.
Posted by Timothy the Obscure (# 292) on
:
I think that speaks to the real issue. It's not theology, because most people--even the regular churchgoers--don't actually understand or even care much about the nuances of that (the Ship is a very atypical sample). It's the failure of churches to create a community (any church is to some degree a granfalloon, though it can be more). People adhere to a denomination (even if they don't call it that) because it gives them an identity and a feeling of belonging. That's harder to get in late-capitalist societies (see Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam). The churches that have grown have been those that created some sense of group identity. I suspect the evangelical megachurch phenomenon will be petering out soon, as people come to realize that being a member of a 10,000 member church is like being a "member" of Sam's Club*--you're really just a customer.
I do think the anti-gay stance of some churches is a factor--as more people, especially young people, have openly gay friends, they are unlikely to want to join a community that excludes the people they are close to.
*For non-US shipmates--Sam's Club is Wal-Mart's wholesale buying division--you pay your dues and get to buy less-crappy merchandise at nearly reasonable prices.
Posted by Beeswax Altar (# 11644) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Lyda*Rose:
quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
^ What Lyda*Rose said. I'm not going to admit to not believing in that God stuff, because I do believe in it. I just also don't believe in a God that requires institutional homophobia/sexism/racism etc. Why is that apparently impossible?
And if that was all it was, mainline denominations wouldn't be in such rapid decline. It's not. So, we are.
So what would be your solution? Serious question.
For TEC?
I don't know that there is one. I'll wait and see what's left when the current generation of leaders finally retire. The current batch just doesn't get it. We are so focused on being inclusive of everybody but political conservatives that we've neglected to provide a reason why anybody would want to be included in the first place. In my opinion, we got rid of that reason to attend long before we started including everybody. Don't know if that can be reversed. It will take a miracle.
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
And I would say that the slide away from "being churchy" was built seriously in the aftermath of WW1, and was polished up for better sliding by WW2.
The effects of the twentieth century’s two world wars on Christian belief in the West is difficult to assess.
Some see WWI as a salutary antidote to glib, nineteenth and early twentieth century, progressivist optimism, both secular and liberal Christian.
The emergence of Barthian Neo-Orthodoxy, being discussed on another thread, is sometimes seen as evidence of this return to a more lapsarian anthropology.
There was certainly a feeling of cynicism about the war, in view of the horrific four years of losses coming straight after the unrealistic jingoism which accompanied the war’s outbreak, and the seeming failure of the war to achieve anything worthwhile.
How much of this involved anti-church sentiment is hard to say.
WWII, however, was viewed from the start as an unpleasant necessity by nearly everyone, Christian and non-Christian – the only significant group to oppose it were communists supporting the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
In Australia, at least, the gradual decline in church-going since the 1890s plateaued out between the end of the war and the 1960s, with Sunday Schools bursting at the seams with “baby boom” kids.
Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on
:
I understand that, in England at least, the highest year for church-going (expressed as a percentage of the population) was around 1904 (i.e. it was already in decline before WWI.
According to Callum Brown's book "The Death of Christian Britain" there was a mini-return to the churches in the 1950s which (from memory) I think he ascribes to a strong desire to go back to a mythic "status quo" that was presumed to have existed before WW2. But the seeds of decline were already present, in moves to overthrow established authority and in the changing relationship between genders.
If he is right then the reasons for decline largely lie outside, rather than within, the churches - which means they can do little to stop it. I would have thought that "liberal", questioning expressions of faith would fit in well to the current intellectual milieu; my impression though is that people want "simple-answer" and introvertedly pietistic churches as places of refuge from a confusing world.
Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on
:
I think it's a bit more nuanced than that - people who do want straightforward answers find that in some parts of the church as you describe; the vast majority of people IME don't, or at least are unconvinced by religious ones. They are not particularly drawn to churches generally because of a number of factors (a) they think all churches do try to offer straightforward "fundamentalist" answers; (b) they don't think that churches have answers at all, straightforward or otherwise; (c) they aren't very interested in religion, or find its exclusiveness problematic - they're unconvinced that anyone can really make a claim that their God, amongst the millions that are and have been worshipped down the years, is the real one.
Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
... I suspect the main difference between a conservative and liberal biblical hermeneutic is that liberal's believe Jesus is the eternal word of God whereas conservatives believe the bible is the eternal word of God.
I would hope that we all believe Jesus is the eternal word of God. That is what John 1 says.
Oddly, perhaps, for someone who is theologically fairly conservative with a high view of scripture and its status as authoritative record of the revelation, I try to discourage people from referring to scripture as 'the word of God'. Scripture doesn't so describe itself. It says that Jesus is.
Some of us, though, would say that from a conservative position, the difference between a liberal and a conservative hermeneutic looks more like this. A conservative accepts that as a matter of obedience, one believes in and follows what scripture says about the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and how we should live. A liberal regards themselves as free to decide whether to believe in and follow or not, depending on how it suits them. To put it a different way, in the interior debate between oneself and God, one's own wishes and critical faculties take priority over his.
This liberal would say that he cannot make himself believe something as a matter of "obedience" or anything else, and I can no more make myself believe an explicitly outlandish statement (e.g. "go and commit genocide against the Amelakites; that's a really good thing to do") than I can make myself believe that grass is blue. Don't have the mental furniture for it. Never have had.
In other words, if the Bible says something wrong, it's still wrong, even though the Bible says it.
[ 23. December 2013, 09:57: Message edited by: Karl: Liberal Backslider ]
Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on
:
Triple posting - and perhaps it's my hobby horse out for its daily canter - but the main reason for decline in the Western church IMNAAHO is that it's generally as boring as fuck if you don't want a social club specialising in beetle drives, garden fetes and coffee mornings for the elderly.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
Karl wrote:
This liberal would say that he cannot make himself believe something as a matter of "obedience" or anything else, and I can no more make myself believe an explicitly outlandish statement (e.g. "go and commit genocide against the Amelakites; that's a really good thing to do") than I can make myself believe that grass is blue. Don't have the mental furniture for it. Never have had.
In other words, if the Bible says something wrong, it's still wrong, even though the Bible says it.
I'm echoing you really. It baffles me how one can believe out of obedience. Presumably, this is not carte blanche, is it? Does anybody believe that one should strike one's hand off, after masturbating?
Then I looked at the title of the OP, well, hmmm. Maybe here is a possible cause of decline - I don't think people today are prepared to believe anything out of obedience, or because someone else believes it. Most people are postmodernists today, without realizing it.
Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on
:
I'm not sure it's about postmodernism. Fact is that it's hard to not notice these days that for virtually any religious belief you might mention (except possibly "God exists"; can't remember the figures on that, and it depends how narrowly you define "God"), most people don't believe it. Folk know that there are loads and loads of different religious beliefs, some contradictory, and no-one really knows, because there's no particularly compelling evidence for any of them. How do you convince someone that your particular collection of religious beliefs are worthy of their serious consideration? Buggered if I know.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
Well, I mean a kind of unconscious postmodernism, which just rejects grand narratives. I think people today are suspicious of any narrative, whether political or religious.
But I think some people are drawn to certain images, rituals, and so on, so that will probably continue, in a diminished form.
And I even think that there is a sort of God-shaped hole in some people, or transcendence-shaped hole, but it can be satisfied by different things today.
I was just thinking about my friends, and they are mostly fairly spiritual/religious type people, but only one of them is a Christian. It's too off-putting.
[ 23. December 2013, 10:33: Message edited by: quetzalcoatl ]
Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on
:
Heh. I wonder if anyone on this thread has asked people who don't go to church why they don't go to church? Might be an interesting exercise. From the people I know I think the answers would be along the lines of:
1) Priests are a bunch of child abusers
2) My religious parents made my childhood terrible
3) Do you have any evidence this God person of yours really exists?
4) I'm gay, and my/my partner's family take every opportunity to tell us how we're evil and going to Hell
5) I can think of at least four better things to do on a Sunday morning
6) The vicar's a cunt who wouldn't let my father have the headstone he'd chosen when he knew he was dying
7) Meh
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
8. It's so boring.
Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on
:
Yeah, but that's my Hobby Horse and mentioning it too often upsets people.
Posted by South Coast Kevin (# 16130) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
How do you convince someone that your particular collection of religious beliefs are worthy of their serious consideration? Buggered if I know.
Perhaps a trite answer but, as Jesus is recorded as saying, hopefully our good deeds and the way we love one another will show that there's something special and indeed unique about our particular collection of religious beliefs!
This is my particular hobby horse (Russ was on the money upthread, I think) - that people without a personal / family heritage of Christian belief will only bother checking out what we have to offer if they see something distinctive about us and our communities. Otherwise, like Karl says, Christianity is just one worldview among many.
Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on
:
You know, I post on two main fora - this one, and one almost entirely composed of atheists, many of them quite virulently anti-religion.
I don't see any more love, care or compassion on this one than that. Less, quite possibly. They don't need a Hell board, for starters.
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
You know, I post on two main fora - this one, and one almost entirely composed of atheists, many of them quite virulently anti-religion.
I don't see any more love, care or compassion on this one than that. Less, quite possibly. They don't need a Hell board, for starters.
Yes they do - every forum needs a hell board!
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
I am no Calvinist but there are three verses that intrigue me:
"No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him." John 6 v 44
"And when he (The Holy Spirit) comes, he will convict the world of its sin, and of God's righteousness, and of the coming judgment." John 16 v 8
"And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved." Acts 2 v 47
Taken together they tell me that people come to salvation firstly because the Holy Spirit who reveals sin in their lives, then the Father reveals Jesus to them as their Saviour, then he brings them into the life of the Body of Christ.
I have been coming to the conclusion for a long time now that the reason the church is unpopular, irrelevant and ignored is down to one fact: people no longer believe they need salvation and redemption from sin.
Until and unless they have that inner conviction anything the church says about morality and sin is going to sound judgmental and proscriptive - understandably so because we are talking to the mind and not to the heart.
I think therefore we have a spiritual problem.
Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on
:
But the full outworking of your model there, Muddy, is that it's the Holy Spirit's fault for not convicting people of sin
Posted by hatless (# 3365) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Ok, thanks for the nudge, Eutychus.
What I should have done was to make the same point but without using real-life Shipmate examples. Although I felt I was on safe ground using Hatless as an example as I've met him real life and know the position he holds because he's told me.
But I take the point and will refrain from this sort of thing in future.
Hi Gamaliel!
Although I am still a theologically liberal Baptist minister, I now work as a chaplain in a psychiatric hospital. When I preach a sermon or talk about the faith it is to people who may well have a learning disability, and are likely to be emotionally fragile. Intellectual discourses are not needed.
But although the things I say may be very simplified, there is still theology behind them. A conservative chaplain will operate and present the faith differently, and I think that everyone is aware of that, chaplains and patients alike.
It's a bit like maths when I was at school in a previous century and constantly urged to show my working out. In the hospital I don't show my working out, but I have to do it, and it makes a difference to the outcome.
In the churches I think the working out can helpfully be shared more extensively, but it's the outcome, the gospel we proclaim that counts.
Posted by hugorune (# 17793) on
:
I think the issue is that the church has a ruined image. From the outside looking in, which is where I was for a very long time, I saw little more than self-righteous hypocrisy, what I considered to be a vain pre-occupation with tribulation and the world's destruction, and in some of the worst cases, an active longing for unbelievers to burn in hell.
That's the only sort of Christianity which a lot of Americans understand, and by extension those parts of the world which are under American cultural domination, such as suburban Australia. If you have a feeling of love for all humanity, a respect for the backgrounds of other peoples, and a good grasp of scientific truth, than that fundamentalist approach is very unappealing.
The other side of it, is that most people in the West either don't feel - or won't admit to feeling - that there is anything wrong in their actions on a day to day basis. While I'm not on a crusade to judge others, I disagree. But for me, if I was not conscious of my own sin, would I be a Christian? The grace of God would have little meaning for me personally if I was blameless (ignoring the theological complexities of original sin). Am I more blessed that I feel guilt and shame, and thus the gift of Christ's redemption overwhelms me with gratitude, than those who are naive and know not that they need forgiveness from God? I'm really not up to telling them that they're going to hell, because I don't think that's what Christianity is really 'about'.
In short - I think most people a) really don't know what Christianity is, even if they think they do b) don't believe they need it and don't want to be told why they do c) think we're all stupid, hypocrites, or both.
Do I think it's going to improve? No, not really. But I'm not too distraught by it, to be honest. I would love it if every person on this planet repented, rejecting their selfish natures, found grace through Christ, proclaimed Him King, and pursued a sanctified life. But in as much as many people won't - either because they are satisfied to wallow in self and sin, or because (heresy mode) God has a different path for them (/heresy mode) - we should not let ourselves be discouraged that we live in a world where hearts are turned away from God. It is the nature of the Christian's path, just as it has always been. I know not whether this will change in the future, the exact meaning of Revelation has never been as clear to me as it apparently is for some. I think we can only put our best foot forward, and try to be the sort of Christian who humbly reflects the love and mercy of Christ, not the pride and self-satisfaction that too often we show.
[ 23. December 2013, 14:54: Message edited by: hugorune ]
Posted by SusanDoris (# 12618) on
:
Watching this thread with much interest, I have tried to join it, but my software has been disrupted by a 'patch' and an involuntary move to IE10.
However, I think one of the principal reasons for the decline must surely be the awareness most of us have of the way clever and inventive people have produced amazing and useful technology, enabling us to have some knowledge of the universe and
providing us with explanations that make more sense than the religious stories and which do not need any prayers to, acknowledgement of,orfaith in a god..
Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on
:
That'd be no. 3 on my list on the previous page.
Posted by hugorune (# 17793) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Triple posting - and perhaps it's my hobby horse out for its daily canter - but the main reason for decline in the Western church IMNAAHO is that it's generally as boring as fuck if you don't want a social club specialising in beetle drives, garden fetes and coffee mornings for the elderly.
For me, it's impossible to find church boring, but that's because I discovered that I felt something really powerful in Eucharist. Like, soul-transforming.
But for people who don't have their mystical side switched on, or who don't celebrate Eucharist regularly, yeah, it could be boring. And just how you get a non-believer to understand that without a really good background in theology... I have nfi.
[ 23. December 2013, 15:05: Message edited by: hugorune ]
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
hugorune wrote:
The other side of it, is that most people in the West either don't feel - or won't admit to feeling - that there is anything wrong in their actions on a day to day basis. While I'm not on a crusade to judge others, I disagree. But for me, if I was not conscious of my own sin, would I be a Christian? The grace of God would have little meaning for me personally if I was blameless (ignoring the theological complexities of original sin). Am I more blessed that I feel guilt and shame, and thus the gift of Christ's redemption overwhelms me with gratitude, than those who are naive and know not that they need forgiveness from God? I'm really not up to telling them that they're going to hell, because I don't think that's what Christianity is really 'about'.
I took this para from your interesting post, as I think it sets out an interesting conundrum - is the key to Christianity an awareness of guilt?
This sounds rather negative to me, as if the path to God lies via self-recrimination.
It might be better to say that it lies via love. But even then, I'm not sure that people will be convinced by that.
In a country such as the UK, church has a bad reputation, I think - hypocrisy, stuffiness, reactionary attitudes. But the greatest enemy today is indifference not hostility. It's not an accident that 'whatever' is the mot du jour (the current catch-phrase).
Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by hugorune:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Triple posting - and perhaps it's my hobby horse out for its daily canter - but the main reason for decline in the Western church IMNAAHO is that it's generally as boring as fuck if you don't want a social club specialising in beetle drives, garden fetes and coffee mornings for the elderly.
For me, it's impossible to find church boring, but that's because I discovered that I felt something really powerful in Eucharist. Like, soul-transforming.
But for people who don't have their mystical side switched on, or who don't celebrate Eucharist regularly, yeah, it could be boring. And just how you get a non-believer to understand that without a really good background in theology... I have nfi.
My mystical side is as turned on as I think it's capable of being, I belong to a tradition that celebrates the Eucharist regularly, and my theological background is not too bad, but nevertheless, it's frequently boring. Especially the intercessions. It's not like we're just not gaining people - we're losing them. I think this is why. Great it works for you, but it frequently leaves me cold. Not the Eucharist itself, you understand, but the service that surrounds it is not infrequently a yawnfest.
Posted by hugorune (# 17793) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
However, I think one of the principal reasons for the decline must surely be the awareness most of us have of the way clever and inventive people have produced amazing and useful technology, enabling us to have some knowledge of the universe and
providing us with explanations that make more sense than the religious stories and which do not need any prayers to, acknowledgement of,orfaith in a god..
As someone (Dawkins, maybe?) observed, Christians worship 'the God of the gaps' and as gaps decrease, there's less room for God to hide within them. I remember reading that. I remember understanding it, and agreeing with it. But I'm not a Christian because I believe in, for example, a literal Creation story. I'm quite happy to accept science's explanation of exactly what happened, and interpret the first chapter of Genesis in a mythical sense. Likewise, the fact that there are small contradictions in some Biblical accounts really doesn't bother me. Regardless of those, the mysteries of faith are very clearly set out, and taught down the ages by the apostles and their successors. The incarnation, the crucifixion, the resurrection, and the new life that we are given through Christ. That spiritual gift transforms us in spiritual reality, which is transcendent to the physical reality, and then will transform us in that physical reality as well.
This all makes sense to me. I don't know if it's a copout, in that I have no need to argue with secular scientists on those points where they and fundamentalists traditionally disagree, or if I'm just being pragmatic.
Posted by hugorune (# 17793) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
My mystical side is as turned on as I think it's capable of being, I belong to a tradition that celebrates the Eucharist regularly, and my theological background is not too bad, but nevertheless, it's frequently boring. Especially the intercessions. It's not like we're just not gaining people - we're losing them. I think this is why. Great it works for you, but it frequently leaves me cold. Not the Eucharist itself, you understand, but the service that surrounds it is not infrequently a yawnfest.
I can appreciate that service can be a chore, particularly when you've been doing it for a long time - and liturgy is by it's very nature repetitive. I'm not sure what the answer is. One answer might be to pray (in a transformative as least as much as intercessionary sense, as all prayer should be) that your heart might be attentive, but you probably do that already. But tbh I'm really not qualified to give you advice. It's easy for me because I'm recently returned to the faith (and in a different tradition and with a different mindset) so I'm often discovering new things in the service, new insights, knowledge, and ways of thinking about things. The rest of the time, I'm just grateful to be there.
Posted by SusanDoris (# 12618) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
That'd be no. 3 on my list on the previous page.
Yes, and apologies for not quoting it and what several other people said and which I noted when listening through.
Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by hugorune:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
My mystical side is as turned on as I think it's capable of being, I belong to a tradition that celebrates the Eucharist regularly, and my theological background is not too bad, but nevertheless, it's frequently boring. Especially the intercessions. It's not like we're just not gaining people - we're losing them. I think this is why. Great it works for you, but it frequently leaves me cold. Not the Eucharist itself, you understand, but the service that surrounds it is not infrequently a yawnfest.
I can appreciate that service can be a chore, particularly when you've been doing it for a long time - and liturgy is by it's very nature repetitive. I'm not sure what the answer is. One answer might be to pray (in a transformative as least as much as intercessionary sense, as all prayer should be) that your heart might be attentive, but you probably do that already. But tbh I'm really not qualified to give you advice. It's easy for me because I'm recently returned to the faith (and in a different tradition and with a different mindset) so I'm often discovering new things in the service, new insights, knowledge, and ways of thinking about things. The rest of the time, I'm just grateful to be there.
Finding a variety of ways of doing it, that suit people of differing temperaments, probably helps. I am aware that the practice of our church is quite unusual and scares the horses over in Eccles, but for me I'm glad I found it.
Posted by hugorune (# 17793) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I took this para from your interesting post, as I think it sets out an interesting conundrum - is the key to Christianity an awareness of guilt?
This sounds rather negative to me, as if the path to God lies via self-recrimination.
I think it is, yeah. Do you have a better way of spinning it?
I think it's pretty clear in the Bible that we all fall short of God's expectations to various degrees. It's sort of central to the whole point of why we need redemption in the first place. If anyone thinks they're good enough to stand in front of God and not be condemned, without being cleansed by Christ's blood, I would urge them to examine their consciences. And I don't think the church should ever shy away from that. We are not in the business of condeming anyone - but we are here to spread the good news - that God so loved the world, including all of us sinners, that he sent his Son to die on the cross, that we might be saved and have life eternal. Take any part of that away, and you lose the meaning. It's not a negative thing, but a positive, because that grace - of having your sins forgiven by a pure and just God - is such a powerful thing. For us, it transcends all the evil of the world, whatever happens when we die, we will be together in spiritual union with God and all the saints past present and future.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
Religions mostly seem like guesswork to me. I'm not against guesswork, as it is probably important in human existence, but I think today in some cultures, people have become impatient with it.
On the other hand, there is a very fine aesthetic side to Christianity, and this is very important. For me, the eucharist seems to summarize existence, and as a guess, it is a beautiful one. Maybe that's good enough.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
hugorune
Thank you again for an excellent post.
I suppose it brings up several problems for me - first, guilt, since I have seen too much of it in my work (as a therapist). It is pernicious and destructive, and also ridiculously narcissistic.
Second, the notion of evil. Hmm. I suppose again the most 'evil' people I've met personally were violent (and self-destructive) men, but generally they were also very damaged people. Well, this could go off into a mini-dissertation, so I will spare you that!
Posted by SusanDoris (# 12618) on
:
hugorune
Pragmatism sounds like a very good idea to me! \I know exactly when I have suspended my disbelief to enjoy the myths!
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
But the full outworking of your model there, Muddy, is that it's the Holy Spirit's fault for not convicting people of sin
Yes I see that - I had that in the back of my mind when I was writing the post. I wouldn't use the word 'fault' - as if the HSp isn't doing his job properly, but maybe there is a case for saying that he is doing his task of convicting of son but that people's hearts are so hardened that the response to that conviction is not repentance but hostility and greater rebellion.
in these last days, while grace abounds, is God also allowing people to be given up to their passions, uncleanness and sin?
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
Watching this thread with much interest, I have tried to join it, but my software has been disrupted by a 'patch' and an involuntary move to IE10.
However, I think one of the principal reasons for the decline must surely be the awareness most of us have of the way clever and inventive people have produced amazing and useful technology, enabling us to have some knowledge of the universe and
providing us with explanations that make more sense than the religious stories and which do not need any prayers to, acknowledgement of,orfaith in a god..
And yet there are many professors and doctors who work in the fields of the sciences and who have a deep Christian faith because they can combine their knowledge and wonder at creation with faith in the creator.
The problem, I think, is media-led. As with politics, faith has a bad name because those with attractive, rational voices are often silenced in favour of cynical, populist, popular indeed, celebrity faces who combine atheism with comedy, science, art, music and lifestyle choices.
The voices the young hear - Stephen Fry, Frankie Boyle, Alun Davies, Jimmy Carr, Tim Minchin, etc, etc, etc are atheists and they speak loudly.
I was on the way home this afternoon and on the radio came THIS OFFERING
From the very second line it's an atheist's rant against faith. The song was played by Miranda Hart (one of my favourite comedians) and someother bloke, who both, at the end of the song said how wonderful it was, one of Minchins best - and so you have the BBC celebs endorsing and promoting the views held in that song.
Notice also that the Youtube clip of this atheist 'comedian' is from BBC Children in Need - an entire evening's telethon that is massively popular with young and old alike; and here in song is an atheistic cynical view being publicised to a vast audience that most singers never get on the BBC.
A slight bias here? Y'think!?
The younger generation is listening to thios comedy, listening to godless music and there is nothing to compete with it - what could compete with it? The church simply isn't resourced in a way that we can compete with the voices of cynicism and atheism.
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
The younger generation is listening to thios comedy, listening to godless music and there is nothing to compete with it - what could compete with it? The church simply isn't resourced in a way that we can compete with the voices of cynicism and atheism.
Strangely lacking from your analysis is the frequency with which Christians in the public sphere open their mouths to say hateful and assholic things. And when one of them gets called on it, a noisy lynch mob of Christians descends on the critic and sullies the names of Christianity, religion, and faith even further. Christians really don't need noisy atheists; they're doing a good job killing off the church all by themselves.
And of course it's the assholity of certain things Christians in the public sphere say that creates noisy atheists. The cause of their militancy isn't that Christians are universally demonstrating the love of Christ. We are not being criticized and mocked for following Christ's model. We're being criticized and mocked for NOT living up to our savior's example, and slamming people who don't want to join us, or who don't follow the moral codes we think God has promulgated.
[ 23. December 2013, 17:02: Message edited by: mousethief ]
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
The younger generation is listening to thios comedy, listening to godless music and there is nothing to compete with it - what could compete with it? The church simply isn't resourced in a way that we can compete with the voices of cynicism and atheism.
Strangely lacking from your analysis is the frequency with which Christians in the public sphere open their mouths to say hateful and assholic things. And when one of them gets called on it, a noisy lynch mob of Christians descend on the critic and sully the names of Christianity, religion, and faith even further. Christians really don't need noisy atheists; they're doing a good job killing off the church all by themselves.
And of course it's the assholity of certain things Christians in the public sphere say that creates noisy atheists. The cause of their militancy isn't that Christians are universally demonstrating the love of Christ. We are not being criticized and mocked for following Christ's model. We're being criticized and mocked for NOT living up to our savior's example, and slamming people who don't want to join us, or who don't follow the moral codes we think God has promulgated.
I gave some names and an example - can you do the same?
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
I think Muddy is onto something - but wouldn't necessarily see the outworking of God drawing people to himself in as prescriptive a way ... although I'd certainly say that it includes the things he's mentioned ... but is way, way, way, way, way bigger than that ... as I'm sure he'd agree.
The tricky part comes in what we do about it. If people have lost a sense of sin and the need for salvation, how do we somehow restore that sense ... without coming over as preachy, judgemental and holier-than-thou?
That's a tricky thing to achieve.
In medieval times they stuck momento-mori about the place and painted lurid frescoes of hell-fire and damnation ...
As Mudfrog has noted elsewhere on these boards, taken in a highly literalised way - demons with horns and tails and so on - such depictions can be counter-productive.
It may surprise him to hear that I'm not opposed to old-fashioned 'gospel preaching' and so on ... and I'd prefer it to the kind of soft-soap, nicey-nicey 'spirituality makes you feel better about yourself' kind of approach that is prevalent in some quarters.
We need a rigorous and robust approach.
I don't know what the answers are ... but I would say that given the way things have gone in all sectors of Christianity, we now, perhaps more than ever, need to 'earn the right' to a hearing.
I'd suggest that the SA have part of the answer to that as they gain respect through the work they do with the poor, the marginalised and so on. Spot on.
That's not the whole answer of course - and I'd suggest that individually or as individual faith-communities none of us have that and need each other.
But it is a start.
One of the problems we've got is that in a post-modern and cynical age it's hard to project conviction of any kind without coming across as some kind of demagogue or judgmental creep.
I don't share Beeswax Altar's politics and world-view particularly, but I can sympathise with his account of the dilemma the TEC is facing.
Posted by hugorune (# 17793) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
A slight bias here? Y'think!?
The younger generation is listening to thios comedy, listening to godless music and there is nothing to compete with it - what could compete with it? The church simply isn't resourced in a way that we can compete with the voices of cynicism and atheism.
Well, most of the time that the younger generation hear someone represent the church, it's in the context of the 'dead horse' type issues. The young person might hold to a viewpoint on a controversial social issue that they consider to be compassionate and informed, but they see some high-profile pastor quoted as saying that, for example, God sent deadly bushfires to punish a state because it permits abortions in some circumstances.
And the media just laps that sort of rubbish up. People think this is what Christians are all about.
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
I gave some names and an example - can you do the same?
Pat Robertson
Phil Robertson
Anti-gay rape threats
Church votes to exclude blacks from membership
Christian death threats aimed at atheist
Reverend Dennis Terry tells liberals and non-Christians to get out of America.
Good now?
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
:
Oh, and if those are too American, Ian Paisley and Mary Whitehouse.
Posted by que sais-je (# 17185) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
We need a rigorous and robust approach.
Presumably, somewhere there are studies showing relative rates of decline for different denominations and then within them find out what seems best at slowing the decline ... then follow the example.
I can see a few problems however.
quote:
I'd suggest that the SA have part of the answer to that as they gain respect through the work they do with the poor, the marginalised and so on. Spot on.
The other most highly respected group (in my experience) are Quakers. Even friends who turn purple and emit steam from their ears at the word 'religion' tend to add ... 'except the Quakers of course' (to which some add the SA).
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
Yes, I'd second that ... the Quakers are almost universally admired and most people - at least on this side of the Pond - seem to respect the SA.
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
I gave some names and an example - can you do the same?
Pat Robertson
Phil Robertson
Anti-gay rape threats
Church votes to exclude blacks from membership
Christian death threats aimed at atheist
Reverend Dennis Terry tells liberals and non-Christians to get out of America.
Good now?
Must be confined to your country then.
Posted by Grokesx (# 17221) on
:
@Mudfrog quote:
From the very second line it's an atheist's rant against faith.
You really think that's a rant? It's more about loving your family, surely?
The Pope one, yeah, that's a rant.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
Mudfrog, Mousethief has mentioned Ian Paisley and Mary Whitehouse so he's not restricting 'assholic' tendencies to the US.
Mind you, if he is exporting them then he ought to adopt the idiom of the intended destination and refer to them as 'arseholic'.
Of course, it's both/and rather than either/or ...
Christians have acted like berks ... when have they not done so? we are all sinners and all imperfect.
'My name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you ...'
I don't believe, though, that we can blame the decline of Christianity in the West entirely on the churches and individual Christians though.
There are a whole range of factors, many of which have nothing to do with how well, badly or indifferently Christians have or haven't behaved.
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Oh, and if those are too American, Ian Paisley and Mary Whitehouse.
Hardly contemporary, I feel.
Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
I am no Calvinist but there are three verses that intrigue me:
"No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him." John 6 v 44
"And when he (The Holy Spirit) comes, he will convict the world of its sin, and of God's righteousness, and of the coming judgment." John 16 v 8
"And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved." Acts 2 v 47
Taken together they tell me that people come to salvation firstly because the Holy Spirit who reveals sin in their lives, then the Father reveals Jesus to them as their Saviour, then he brings them into the life of the Body of Christ.
I have been coming to the conclusion for a long time now that the reason the church is unpopular, irrelevant and ignored is down to one fact: people no longer believe they need salvation and redemption from sin.
Until and unless they have that inner conviction anything the church says about morality and sin is going to sound judgmental and proscriptive - understandably so because we are talking to the mind and not to the heart.
I think therefore we have a spiritual problem.
As much as you may think of me as a godless liberal, I think I rather agree with you. I think I might highlight different areas that are indicative of spiritual emptiness and sin - for instance, IMO corporate greed is a major one, as are things like the lack of healthcare provision in the USA and other countries - but I absolutely believe in sin and absolutely believe in the need for people to be cleansed of that sin by repentence and belief in Christ.
Posted by South Coast Kevin (# 16130) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Christians really don't need noisy atheists; they're doing a good job killing off the church all by themselves.
And of course it's the assholity of certain things Christians in the public sphere say that creates noisy atheists. The cause of their militancy isn't that Christians are universally demonstrating the love of Christ. We are not being criticized and mocked for following Christ's model. We're being criticized and mocked for NOT living up to our savior's example, and slamming people who don't want to join us, or who don't follow the moral codes we think God has promulgated.
Agreed. I know it's harder to get media coverage, but wouldn't it be great if there were more stories of Christians and churches doing wonderful, self-sacrificial things than of those things mousethief mentioned? One example of the former does come to mind, and that's when a Christian responds with forgiveness and a lack of judgement after, for example, a loved one has been murdered. That seems to be considered newsworthy and is a great example of living as our Saviour did.
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Oh, and if those are too American, Ian Paisley and Mary Whitehouse.
Hardly contemporary, I feel.
...and unlike Stephen Fry et al, they are not on the TV every night.
Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
I gave some names and an example - can you do the same?
Pat Robertson
Phil Robertson
Anti-gay rape threats
Church votes to exclude blacks from membership
Christian death threats aimed at atheist
Reverend Dennis Terry tells liberals and non-Christians to get out of America.
Good now?
Must be confined to your country then.
Thanks to the internet, they are well-known to young people in the UK, so it's not confined to the US at all.
Given the Dead Horse issues the church is dealing with in the UK, why does it surprise you that people have a negative reaction towards church? It's not atheist comedians and others making people feel this way, rather people feel this way and this is reflected in the people they enjoy watching on TV and elsewhere in the media.
Perhaps if the church worked harder not to be joyless, sexist, homophobic idiots who are totally out of touch with people's lives and needs, this wouldn't happen as much. Where are the non-sexist, non-homophobic Christian youtube stars? Where are the churches speaking out against issues that matter to people, instead of Dead Horses that make the church into an irrelevant dinosaur?
Some groups like Church Action on Poverty with the 'Britain Isn't Eating' poster and so on are helping, but there's a lack of joined up thinking. Sexism is a justice issue tied up with poverty, for instance - women are consistently the lowest-paid workers.
Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Oh, and if those are too American, Ian Paisley and Mary Whitehouse.
Hardly contemporary, I feel.
...and unlike Stephen Fry et al, they are not on the TV every night.
Perhaps has something to do with the fact that Stephen Fry is a better example of Christian goodness than Mary Whitehouse and Ian Paisley ever were or ever will be.
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on
:
Mary Whitehouse meant well, and I certainly don't hate her for campaigning against what she saw as the corruption of the nation's morals. John Wesley and others whom the church still expects us to admire would probably have been just worried. But she made the mistake of envisioning Britain as a Christian nation, even though Christendom, as the 'emergents' have it, was irretrievably dying.
Despite arguing above that clergy in nice MOTR churches should share their liberal theological perspectives with intellectuals and non-intellectuals alike in their congregations, I realise that this will only happen sporadically, because even the liberals don't want to upset the old church ladies with this sort of thing. So there may well be misguided old ladies like Mary Whitehouse in the future who for want of knowledge don't realise that the world has moved on and that what they have to say is irrelevant.
Even my Pentecostal mother doesn't think Mary Whitehouse achieved very much.
Posted by South Coast Kevin (# 16130) on
:
For a contemporary version of Mary Whitehouse, what about Christian Voice? (Their website and Wikipedia article) They - or rather 'he' as it always seems to be 'Stephen Green of Christian Voice' - have said some pretty controversial and IMO unpleasant things over the last few years, haven't they?
Posted by Horseman Bree (# 5290) on
:
And how about the dichotomy of the ever-so-Loving God who will have conniptions if you ever do anything wrong, and who will go so far as to cast you into a fiery pit (while still loving you, of course)
Back to my suggestion about WW1 as a turning point: The idea that the church wasn't cutting it developed in the Edwardian era, but was made popular by the terrible events of WW1. This was particularly true for the people who had grown up in the class society prewar, and who had seen what a bunch of incompetents, bullies and liars the "better" people were. The church had supported "the rich man in his castle and the poor man at his gate" and was then seen as the supporter of the class divide (just as the church is now seen as the supporter of homophobia and misogyny)
WW2 just set the anti-class thing firmly, by confirming the suspicions of the workers, plus getting rid of the idea of Empire, which left many of the upper-middles bereft and servantless.
I read a book by John Humphrey (In God We Doubt, I think) in which he described being at his grandmother's on holiday. The lady did not go to church one Sunday, so the Parson took it upon himself to erupt into her kitchen, berate her for the lack of attendance and demand that she attend the next Sunday (not request). That scene probably set JH on a career of church-avoidance, if not outright atheism: why would one go to a place where that kind of demand and that anger were seen as proper?
The same happened in Quebec: until the 1950's Quebec was more Catholic than Poland. Even the swear-words of the workers were religious terminology (rather than bodily function). Then, suddenly, everyone realised that the Emperor had no clothes, and the church-attendance arte is now the lowest in Canada. The disruptions of WW2 plus the advent of television probably explain this.
Posted by stonespring (# 15530) on
:
The US is different because there never was one national church that was associated with the elite but also could enforce the socioeconomic order because of the diversity of its members and its power over them. The Episcopal Church in colonial Virginia, the Congregational Church in Colonial Massachusetts, and the Dutch Reformed Church in parts of Colonial New York came close, but once denominational diversity and disestablishment came to these areas they lost much of their power. The Episcopal Church and the Presbyterian Church (USA) are still associated with the wealthy and professional upper middle class, but have become small enough that they really don't exerting influence on popular culture. The Roman Catholic Church certainly enforced social hierarchies among its own members - but at the same time fought for a more fair distribution of income/wealth in society. It never became associated with the establishment because of the anti-Catholicism that was very widespread in this country for much of its history.
Young people raised outside of a religious context do see conservative Evangelical Protestantism and Roman Catholicism as being in bed with right-wing politicians, but this is a phenomenon of only the last few decades.
America is secularizing, but much later and much more slowly than Europe. Immigrant groups often come to resemble the wider population in terms of religious observance in the third or fourth generation. African-Americans do report a high degree of religious belief in surveys, but I'm not sure that church attendance is not also decreasing among them only more slowly.
Society has become so individualistic and people are so able to construct their own identities that the normative community offered by church congregations (or even by fraternal or benevolent organizations like Rotary) no longer really seem necessary for a lot of young people. People are too Moore and attention spans are too short to grow deep roots in any tradition. Of course there are exceptions but I think they will continue to get rarer and rarer.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
That word 'individualistic' seems important to me. I keep thinking of people that I know who are spiritual or religious, and many of them have rather idiosyncratic blends of ideas, New Age, pagan, Eastern, and so on, which they don't attempt to turn into something coherent.
Of course, probably there are a large number of people who are not even interested in stuff like that. In the UK, secularism has gone pretty deep now - I remember after the royal wedding hearing people say, 'what is that stuff they were spouting?', meaning the religious service. It sounds alien to many.
I think this is irreversible, but still, I think some people have a spiritual need, so I haven't a clue how that will be met in the future, incoherently I suppose.
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
:
If the super-star philosopher Charles Taylor is to be believed, the prime virtue of the young people today is not striving to conform oneself to an ideal, but authenticity—to express one's true, inner self through carefully chosen religious beliefs, political ideas, taste in art and music, and through consumer products.
Posted by ExclamationMark (# 14715) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Yes, I'd second that ... the Quakers are almost universally admired and most people - at least on this side of the Pond - seem to respect the SA.
The SA yes - every officer I've known has been a real example to me and to others.
But, the Quakers? Most people have never heard of them outside of a brand of porridge. Many in the evangelical wings of the church who have heard of them, wouldn't recognise many of the UK manifestations of Quakers as fellow Christian travellers. They have to have their own "status" in local groups of Churches Together and won't assent to a belief in Christ just one to a belief in the "spirit of Christ." On a personal level the passive - aggressiveness I've encountered from many Quakers is not winsome or at all attractive. They've strayed a long way from their roots IME.
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by hugorune:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
A slight bias here? Y'think!?
The younger generation is listening to thios comedy, listening to godless music and there is nothing to compete with it - what could compete with it? The church simply isn't resourced in a way that we can compete with the voices of cynicism and atheism.
Well, most of the time that the younger generation hear someone represent the church, it's in the context of the 'dead horse' type issues. The young person might hold to a viewpoint on a controversial social issue that they consider to be compassionate and informed, but they see some high-profile pastor quoted as saying that, for example, God sent deadly bushfires to punish a state because it permits abortions in some circumstances.
And the media just laps that sort of rubbish up. People think this is what Christians are all about.
And yet week by week there are ministers, youth leaders, Christian parents, friends, maybe a couple of teachers, who speak lovingly, act kindly, teach the truth in love.
If I were to ask my 3 sons (18, 22 &25) who Mary Whitehouse, Ian Paisley, Stephen Green and Dennis Terry were (even I don't know who he is), they would have no idea. These people are not on their radar.
However they know who Stephen Fry, Russell Brand, Dr Brian Cox, Alun Davies, Tim Minchkin, and the like, are.
My point is that they don't listen to religious conversations, they don't listen to political dialogues but they do watch QI, they do watch Mock the Week, they do know that Brian Cox presents science from an atheist's view, they are aware that the media-beloved Richard Dawkins uses his elevated education to sneer, ridicule and scorn anyone with any kind of religious sensibilities. They do know that late night comedians like Frankie Boyle frequently and sarcastically cynically mock all forms of religion.
They do know that there is hardly anyone on popular television who would be allowed to speak up for the Christian faith without being entirely shot down in flames.
I can't remember the last time Stephen Green was interviewed over an issue - it must be 3 or 4 years ago and even then he's only wheeled in to a morning TV chat show.
Speaking of which, I've seen these programmes, presented by Nicky Campbell usually, where the producer has so arranged the programme - and even the seating - so that whenever a Christian speaks they are immediately barracked by the obligatory ex-priest, the atheist, the sneering critic and the so-called 'Christian' who it appears is more universalist than any Universalist Unitarian minister! I have watched these programmes and been amazed at how any view expressed by a Christian, however rationally and gently, is greeted with abuse and rarely does the Christian voice get a fair hearing and the ability to explain his argument.
So, I do not agree that young people are exposed on a regular basis to 'Christian' voices that speak into their culture with hateful language that proves Christian faith to be all those things we are condemned for.
I don't believe that the true voice of Christianity is given a fair hearing within the media - though thank God for people like John Sentamu, Justin Welby and Pope Francis - though they are hardly on MTV, Mock the Week or QI!
I do believe that there is a media bias towards the young and that entertainment for the teens and twenties is godless, lacking in compassion and spirituality, foul-mouthed, immoral and anti-authority.
And because young people respect those who make them laugh and are 'cool' they listen to their views, they take on those views believing them to be the majority view: when in actual fact those views and attitudes are not representative, though sadly, increasingly so.
[ 24. December 2013, 07:03: Message edited by: Mudfrog ]
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by ExclamationMark:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Yes, I'd second that ... the Quakers are almost universally admired and most people - at least on this side of the Pond - seem to respect the SA.
But, the Quakers? Most people have never heard of them outside of a brand of porridge. Many in the evangelical wings of the church who have heard of them, wouldn't recognise many of the UK manifestations of Quakers as fellow Christian travellers. They have to have their own "status" in local groups of Churches Together and won't assent to a belief in Christ just one to a belief in the "spirit of Christ." On a personal level the passive - aggressiveness I've encountered from many Quakers is not winsome or at all attractive. They've strayed a long way from their roots IME.
That view resonates with me. In all the years I have been associated with Churches Together - and I've been both vice-Chair and Chair - I have been surprised at the 'strength' - if I can put it that way - of the Quaker approach to discussing issues and the issues themselves! They have their agenda and are not averse to forcing that agenda onto the local CT programme and getting rather shirty when people don't agree. I;'ve seen CT meetings taken over by rants and demands about getting rid of trident and how we must all fight climate change. They didn't seem to be interested in any actually local church worship or outreach. The consequence of having a Quaker Chair (and, I kid you not, a Unitarian secretary) who followed an aggressively Sea of Faith Chair who had been in power for a number of years, means that the CT in my City which includes two Cathedrals, three parish churches, a large Methodist church, a University Church, the Quakers (sadly) and The Salvation Army, is basically non-existent and when it does meet basically talks amongst itself about liberal issues and the hobby-horses of those who can be bothered to attend - which includes no clergy and about a dozen people who fit well together.
Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on
:
Muddy - Mock the Week may not be your best evidence. One of the regulars, Milton Jones, is a Christian.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
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Christianity today strikes me as an echo-chamber. If you are inside, all the words and ideas make sense, and you can communicate with each other, and have disagreements and so on.
But from the outside, it looks like a group of people gesticulating and using words, in ways that seem bizarre and exotic.
I suppose historically, the culture at large used to embrace this sub-culture, and there was a kind of interchange, but today, that link seems to be very frayed.
It seems quite sad, like being at a wake.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
@Exclamation Mark - on the following ...
quote:
Originally posted by ExclamationMark:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Yes, I'd second that ... the Quakers are almost universally admired and most people - at least on this side of the Pond - seem to respect the SA.
The SA yes - every officer I've known has been a real example to me and to others.
But, the Quakers? ... They've strayed a long way from their roots IME.
On the level of personal experience, I would agree - both with your comments on the SA and on the Quakers. I've had positive interactions with Quakers more recently but during my university days found them to be obnoxious and self-righteous politically-correct pains in the arse.
But I can only speak as I find, and as I speak to people I find that those with something of an historical awareness admire the Quakers for their early stance against slavery, for the philanthropic work of Quaker industrialists like the Cadbury's and Rowntrees etc. I know people from Birmingham and York who would never hear a bad word said about either dynasty.
I'm not talking about a groundswell of public opinion here but if I were to list the Christian - or quasi-Christian - groups I've heard most positive comments about from people who aren't regularly involved in churches of any kind, then the SA and the Quakers would top the list.
In fact, they would be the list. They ARE the list ... The SA first and Quakers second after a wide margin.
Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
The consequence of having a Quaker Chair (and, I kid you not, a Unitarian secretary) who followed an aggressively Sea of Faith Chair who had been in power for a number of years, means that the CT in my City which includes two Cathedrals, three parish churches, a large Methodist church, a University Church, the Quakers (sadly) and The Salvation Army, is basically non-existent and when it does meet basically talks amongst itself about liberal issues and the hobby-horses of those who can be bothered to attend - which includes no clergy and about a dozen people who fit well together.
We had a similar situation here some years ago; the mainstream Christians and (especially) the Evangelicals would have nothing to do with our CT group. The Evos had their own group too, with very little crossover between the two. Eventually we closed down the CT group and the Evo group collapsed for other reasons; a new "network" was formed but it hasn't been too successful in crossing the denominational and theological barriers.
Posted by ExclamationMark (# 14715) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
@Exclamation Mark - on the following ...
I find that those with something of an historical awareness admire the Quakers for their early stance against slavery, for the philanthropic work of Quaker industrialists like the Cadbury's and Rowntrees etc. I know people from Birmingham and York who would never hear a bad word said about either dynasty.
An historical influence but hardly a contemporary one. My experience resonates with that of Mudfrog: Quakers getting out of their tree on Nuclear Weapons and somehow missing the real issues on their doorstep.
They can get pretty nasty when put to proof on some stuff too and as for insisting on their form of prayer to open meetings .... well the next time I want to centre, I'll use a com pass mate.
Posted by ExclamationMark (# 14715) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
That view resonates with me. In all the years I have been associated with Churches Together - and I've been both vice-Chair and Chair - I have been surprised at the 'strength' - if I can put it that way - of the Quaker approach to discussing issues and the issues themselves! They have their agenda and are not averse to forcing that agenda onto the local CT programme and getting rather shirty when people don't agree. I;'ve seen CT meetings taken over by rants and demands about getting rid of trident and how we must all fight climate change. They didn't seem to be interested in any actually local church worship or outreach.
That's all horribly familiar - and it's been so in very part of the UK I've worked in. Tbh a lot of evangelical churches dip out entirely or keep on the margins of Churches Together for these every reason. Quakerism is hardly mainstream Christianity (it allows for no credal beliefs and so basically anything can go) and in a good number of expressions is not Christian at all.
[fixed further code decline]
[ 24. December 2013, 10:17: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
Sure, I agree with all of that ExclamationMark, but the next - first - time I hear someone who isn't connected with church say something positive about the Baptists (or Anglicans for that matter) rather than the SA or the Quakers I'll drop you a line straightaway ...
I rather suspect you'll be waiting for a long time ...
FWIW, I enjoyed the only visit I've ever made to a Quaker meeting, but did notice that one of the Friends had a bee in her bonnet about another Friend bringing chocolate biscuits for the after meeting cuppa rather than some kind of healthy, wholesome Fairly Traded snack ...
Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by ExclamationMark:
Quakerism is hardly mainstream Christianity (it allows for no credal beliefs and so basically anything can go) and in a good number of expressions is not Christian at all.
Yet, strangely, the Quakers are still members of CTE while the Unitarians are only "observers". I think this goes back to some historical precedent in the old British Council of Churches.
Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
The next - first - time I hear someone who isn't connected with church say something positive about the Baptists (or Anglicans for that matter) rather than the SA or the Quakers I'll drop you a line straightaway ...
Easter Sunday's main BBC news led off with "the Baptist Union, the Methodist Church, the United Ref0rmed Church and the Church of Scotland ..." - the item was about a report published jointly on Poverty (and attitudes to it) within Britain. Definitely a first, and could only have happened at Easter or Christmas!
Posted by Truman White (# 17290) on
:
Happy Christmas Mudfrog. I liked your line
Why is Europe dying while the rest of the world is growing at amazing rates?
In more ways than one officer. I've been reading Philip Jenkins (The Next Christendom) who draws some interesting conclusions from demographic change.
Apparently, in 2000 the combined populations of the eight most populous European states was around 535 million. By 2025 this is projected to decline to around 519 million, a decline projected to accelerate significantly by mid-century to around 465 million - a 13% reduction.
In order to keep population stable, it needs a fertility rate of 2.1 children per woman. Of the 23 countries reporting fertility rates lower than 1.5, all but three are European.
Conversely, the southern hemisphere is experiencing a population boom. In 2000 the combined population of the eight largest nations in sub-Saharan Africa numbered around 400 million. By 2050 this will rise substantially, even with the impact of AIDS and could exceed a billion. The same is true for Asia and, in particular, South America. Mexico, for example, grew from 15 million people in 1900 to around 100 million by 2050. Whilst this phenomenal growth is slowing, it is still significantly faster than Europe. Jenkins suggests that between 2000 and 2050, population growth in the eight largest Latin American nations will be around 40%. European nations are getting older (proportion of people 65+ is around 16 -18%), whilst Southern Hemisphere nations are significantly younger (3-4% 65+, with median age under 20, compared to European median ages in their late 30's and rising).
So what? Well it's the countries with the largest population growth that also have large numbers of growing Christian communities. And as Europe ages and needs younger workers it will attract larger numbers from these nations to fill gaps in its labour markets. The effect this has on churches is already being seen in London (where the percentage of the population that are Christians is rising). The church census for 2012 showed around one in four Christians were from black or minority ethnic communities.
There are other - mission focused - churches that are bucking the declining trend. It's no surprise to see trends and counter trends operating in a country with 62 odd million citizens. Characteristics of these churches? Stuff like living relatively simply (counter materialism), believing in an interventionist God (as opposed to functionally atheistic), open and embracing (as opposed to sectarian) and who build communities that people of no faith see as relevant to their daily lives.
So keep up the sterling work Mr Mudfrog - we're not ready to be retired just yet.
Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Truman White:
Well it's the countries with the largest population growth that also have large numbers of growing Christian communities. And as Europe ages and needs younger workers it will attract larger numbers from these nations to fill gaps in its labour markets. The effect this has on churches is already being seen in London (where the percentage of the population that are Christians is rising). The church census for 2012 showed around one in four Christians were from black or minority ethnic communities.
All this is true ... yet it seems to be a kind of statistical cheating. For the percentage of Christians within most traditional white British or European communities seems to be falling like a stone. So, clearly, the Church and/or the Faith aren't ticking these folks' boxes, whatever may be happening in other sectors of society.
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
:
I really wonder what will happen in Brazil. In the last Century, more and more people were Catholic in name only. Evangelicalism (driven mostly by the exodus from the inland) spurred some kind of a revival, but I'm not sure whether it can hold up when the country continues to modernize.
Posted by Truman White (# 17290) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
quote:
Originally posted by Truman White:
Well it's the countries with the largest population growth that also have large numbers of growing Christian communities. And as Europe ages and needs younger workers it will attract larger numbers from these nations to fill gaps in its labour markets. The effect this has on churches is already being seen in London (where the percentage of the population that are Christians is rising). The church census for 2012 showed around one in four Christians were from black or minority ethnic communities.
All this is true ... yet it seems to be a kind of statistical cheating. For the percentage of Christians within most traditional white British or European communities seems to be falling like a stone. So, clearly, the Church and/or the Faith aren't ticking these folks' boxes, whatever may be happening in other sectors of society.
Seasons greetings Mr T. No cheats here - just looking a bit deeper under the headlines to see what's going on in more detail. So yeah, you're point is dead right. My point is that there are trends within trends. So despite the overall trend of decline, there is also a strain of church growth. Remains to be seen in the long one which will be more significant, but there's enough evidence knocking around to show that the church is not inevitably doomed to be swallowed up by the prevailing secular culture.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
quote:
Originally posted by Truman White:
Well it's the countries with the largest population growth that also have large numbers of growing Christian communities. And as Europe ages and needs younger workers it will attract larger numbers from these nations to fill gaps in its labour markets. The effect this has on churches is already being seen in London (where the percentage of the population that are Christians is rising). The church census for 2012 showed around one in four Christians were from black or minority ethnic communities.
All this is true ... yet it seems to be a kind of statistical cheating. For the percentage of Christians within most traditional white British or European communities seems to be falling like a stone. So, clearly, the Church and/or the Faith aren't ticking these folks' boxes, whatever may be happening in other sectors of society.
There is something endearing about it though; we're losing all the white folks, but we're really packing in the immigrants! Aw, bless. How to make the best of a bad job. Next week, how to move a few statistics around, so that a decline is actually a kind of patchy increase.
Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on
:
Does this mean that UKIP, the Daily Mail and the Express are inherently anti-Christian?
Posted by Truman White (# 17290) on
:
@Q
Festive felicitations to you too me ol' mate .
You said
There is something endearing about it though; we're losing all the white folks, but we're really packing in the immigrants! Aw, bless. How to make the best of a bad job. Next week, how to move a few statistics around, so that a decline is actually a kind of patchy increase.
There's a "both/and" here - the decline is a decline, and the patchy increase is a patchy increase. That's my point mate - in a large cohort data set you can have a trend and a counter-trend. Given the size and complexity of the sample that shouldn't be a great surprise.
By the way, it's not just immigrant churches that are growing. I'm Christmasing with rellies in God's own county (Yorkshire for you good people overseas from here). There are significant large and growing - mainly white British - churches in Sheffield and Leeds (for example), and since around 1980 to about 2005 (when I stopped counting) York had a new Christian congregation popping up at a rate of one a year.
Life in the old dog yet I'd say.
[code]
[ 24. December 2013, 14:31: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
Posted by Arethosemyfeet (# 17047) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Does this mean that UKIP, the Daily Mail and the Express are inherently anti-Christian?
I thought we knew that anyway.
Posted by Grokesx (# 17221) on
:
@TW quote:
So what? Well it's the countries with the largest population growth that also have large numbers of growing Christian communities. And as Europe ages and needs younger workers it will attract larger numbers from these nations to fill gaps in its labour markets. The effect this has on churches is already being seen in London (where the percentage of the population that are Christians is rising). The church census for 2012 showed around one in four Christians were from black or minority ethnic communities.
I for one find this chillingly grotesque. Those countries with the largest population growth, as well as the growing Christian communities also have grinding poverty, staggeringly high levels of child mortality, starvation and malnutrition, lack of basic health care and the rest of it. Are you really saying that getting a few lucky ones over here boosting church numbers is a good thing?
How would it be from your perspective if these countries became more prosperous and egalitarian, and at the same time - as seems to be the case nearly everywhere else - less populous, but also less religious?
Posted by Truman White (# 17290) on
:
@Grokesk
Sounds like you're saying Christianity only thrives in areas of grinding poverty etc . Bit over simplistic that one. Christianity's proved highly resilient in the US, even as its wealth and general prosperity has increased, Brazil has a higher GDP than the UK (yeah, and more entrenched social problems among its poor) and immigrants don't seem to be losing their faith by coming into the 'affluent' UK.
Mind you, I reckon you're right in saying that increased affluence is one of the factors in the decline of Western European Christianity - affluence as a damper to faith is an issue as old as Amos. But it's not a universal given.
Have a cool Yule Mr G - catch up in 2014.
[ 24. December 2013, 13:44: Message edited by: Truman White ]
Posted by que sais-je (# 17185) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by ExclamationMark:
Quakerism is hardly mainstream Christianity (it allows for no credal beliefs and so basically anything can go) and in a good number of expressions is not Christian at all.
And yet, in the popular imagination it is highly regarded, as are the SA.
The OP asked why Western churches are in decline - and lots of people have given answers many of which seem to reflect their views as Christians. They may not be the best people to know why people don't go to church.
But many non-church going people do seem to see Quakers/SA as admirable - including a lot who have absolutely no time for any other denomination. There are no doubt many obnoxious Quakers and Salvationists. Maybe Quakers aren't really Christians at all, but they are seen by many as what Christianity should be about: comforting the afflicted and speaking truth to power.
I doubt than most of those you'd like to see in your churches care much about creeds, theologies and doctrinal niceties. Indeed that's why lots of us don't belong. If you want lots of people in your churches you either try to be the sort of people that most of us outside admire and would like to emulate, or convince us that Christianity isn't really about doing what Jesus would have done.
Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on
:
![[Overused]](graemlins/notworthy.gif)
Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on
:
It's little things as well. We're visiting aged parents this Christmas, but found no information on the parish church noticeboard or website as to the times of Christmas services. Now, as an "insider" I was determined enough to find out (via their Facebook site as it happens), but what would the message to a complete outsider have been?
Not intended, but nevertheless...
Posted by ExclamationMark (# 14715) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
1. Sure, I agree with all of that ExclamationMark, but the next - first - time I hear someone who isn't connected with church say something positive about the Baptists (or Anglicans for that matter) rather than the SA or the Quakers I'll drop you a line straightaway ...
I rather suspect you'll be waiting for a long time ...
2. FWIW, I enjoyed the only visit I've ever made to a Quaker meeting, but did notice that one of the Friends had a bee in her bonnet about another Friend bringing chocolate biscuits for the after meeting cuppa rather than some kind of healthy, wholesome Fairly Traded snack ...
1. Please do - I'll be as surprised as you when it happens.
2. Yep that's about the long and short of it for them - all the while there'll be families on the doorstep who can't afford either.
Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on
:
That last point goes for every last one of us.
http://www.lyricsfreak.com/j/jethro+tull/christmas+song_20071052.html
Posted by que sais-je (# 17185) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by ExclamationMark:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
FWIW, I enjoyed the only visit I've ever made to a Quaker meeting, but did notice that one of the Friends had a bee in her bonnet about another Friend bringing chocolate biscuits for the after meeting cuppa rather than some kind of healthy, wholesome Fairly Traded snack ...
Yep that's about the long and short of it for them - all the while there'll be families on the doorstep who can't afford either.
Some Quakers are small minded and petty. Not everyone gives all they have to the more needy. How unlike .... (fill in your preferred denomination/group).
Posted by Grokesx (# 17221) on
:
quote:
Sounds like you're saying Christianity only thrives in areas of grinding poverty etc . Bit over simplistic that one. Christianity's proved highly resilient in the US, even as its wealth and general prosperity has increased, Brazil has a higher GDP than the UK
Which is why I was careful to say more prosperous and egalitarian. Still simplistic, but it's a hypothetical that doesn't affect the questions I asked. Which it doesn't look like you are going to answer. Fair enough.
Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Does this mean that UKIP, the Daily Mail and the Express are inherently anti-Christian?
They have much the same relationship to Christianity as the sort of pre-exilic temple Judaism that Isaiah and Jeremiah lay into, had to the true worship of the LORD.
By the way, Karl, I'd be rather more impressed with the bona fides of the song you linked us to, if its proprietors hadn't pleaded copyright to block our ability to hear its message. Did Isaiah and Jeremiah say 'this is the word of the LORD but if you want to hear what He might be saying to you, you've got to buy our CD?'
quote:
Originally posted by que sais-je
Maybe Quakers aren't really Christians at all, but they are seen by many as what Christianity should be about: comforting the afflicted and speaking truth to power.
Do the Quakers these days do much of either of those?
I suspect for most of those who say they admire the Quakers, what they like is the idea of the Quakers and a vague sense that they are totally unthreatening, so that you don't have to do anything about them. I suspect next to none of those who say they admire them have ever been to a Meeting.
Posted by que sais-je (# 17185) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
quote:
Originally posted by que sais-je
Maybe Quakers aren't really Christians at all, but they are seen by many as what Christianity should be about: comforting the afflicted and speaking truth to power.
Do the Quakers these days do much of either of those?
I suspect for most of those who say they admire the Quakers, what they like is the idea of the Quakers and a vague sense that they are totally unthreatening, so that you don't have to do anything about them. I suspect next to none of those who say they admire them have ever been to a Meeting.
For all I know the Quakers are an appalling bunch of misfits, wimps and hypercrites - and probably vegetarians as well. That isn't the point which was that many people are put off religion by what they think religious people are like and what sort of things seem important to them. What they think (perhaps wrongly) Quakers and Salvationists are like seems more admirable.
Maybe the outsiders perception is wrong, nevertheless if you are concerned with Church decline it would be worth looking at what many outsiders think a church should be like rather than what insiders think should change.
A vague sense that they are totally unthreatening, so that you don't have to do anything about them. Like you I live in Bristol, in my case the edge of St Pauls. I haven't come across any threatening churches. They all seem very friendly and unthreatening to me.
Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on
:
Mudfrog, did you bother reading my reply to you regarding 'atheist' comedians? Milton Jones and Tim Vine are both Christians and regularly on TV. Rev Richard Coles has been a guest on QI several times. It would help if you knew what you were talking about, and could spell Alan Davies' name....
Re the SA being well-respected, the SA's homophobia is definitely affecting this amongst young people. Many people I know boycott the SA and refuse to donate because of this. Have had it confirmed by SA collectors that they refuse to help LGBTQ people and will ask them to leave the premises. And you know, all this.
Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by ExclamationMark:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
@Exclamation Mark - on the following ...
I find that those with something of an historical awareness admire the Quakers for their early stance against slavery, for the philanthropic work of Quaker industrialists like the Cadbury's and Rowntrees etc. I know people from Birmingham and York who would never hear a bad word said about either dynasty.
An historical influence but hardly a contemporary one. My experience resonates with that of Mudfrog: Quakers getting out of their tree on Nuclear Weapons and somehow missing the real issues on their doorstep.
They can get pretty nasty when put to proof on some stuff too and as for insisting on their form of prayer to open meetings .... well the next time I want to centre, I'll use a com pass mate.
Would that more mainstream Christians were as politically aware as the Quakers. Their stance on equality, liberty and justice for all puts many churches to shame. Their stance on Dead Horses no doubt attracts a lot of people.
Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
Would that more mainstream Christians were as politically aware as the Quakers. Their stance on equality, liberty and justice for all puts many churches to shame. Their stance on Dead Horses no doubt attracts a lot of people.
I think you will find that strand of thought very much present in the URC and among some Methodists.
Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
Would that more mainstream Christians were as politically aware as the Quakers. Their stance on equality, liberty and justice for all puts many churches to shame. Their stance on Dead Horses no doubt attracts a lot of people.
I think you will find that strand of thought very much present in the URC and among some Methodists.
Oh absolutely. But do they shout loud enough about this?
Posted by Garasu (# 17152) on
:
a. Do the Quakers?
b. I'm not sure their stance does attract too many people. It may possibly attract people who have got fed up with another denomination, I'm not sure how good it is with drawing people in from outside Christianity entirely.
(To take one example: is it liable to attract a proponent of women priests to discover a denomination that thinks a separated priesthood of whatever gender makeup is a bad thing?)
Posted by ExclamationMark (# 14715) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
1. Their stance on equality, liberty and justice for all puts many churches to shame.
2.Their stance on Dead Horses no doubt attracts a lot of people.
1. It's a pity that all too often so little of it is mediated in their own back yards. They are very good (as are most church groups tbh) are doing stuff overseas but not so good at making a stand against things like benefit reform.
2. ... and repels others
[fixed code]
[ 24. December 2013, 19:50: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
Posted by ExclamationMark (# 14715) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
1. Re the SA being well-respected, the SA's homophobia is definitely affecting this amongst young people. Many people I know boycott the SA and refuse to donate because of this.
2. And you know, all this.
1. I've never come across it. In this town the SA are respected by everyone - because they help anyone.
2.That wouldn't be the article by the gay blogger on the gay section of Huffington Post would it? Ah yes, thought so - hardly unbiased is it?
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
Yes, all that is true, yet they still command respect.
One of the leading lights among the (very few) Quakers around here had what she describes as a very powerful encounter with God during a serious car accident - from which she escaped apparently miraculously unscathed.
The experience convinced her that there was a God and after the accident she determined to find a faith community so that she could worship him there.
The question was, which one?
Her father and one or two others said, 'Well, I don't know much about them, but the Quakers seem to do a lot of good stuff ...'
They didn't say, 'Oh, the Baptists/CofE/Catholics etc etc ...'
Why not?
It might be purely based on speculation but there is a residual respect for the Quakers - perhaps because they fit the zeitgeist in some way through their non-creedal and non-dogmatic approach?
Although, that said, it seems counter-intuitive that there are struggling numerically. One might expect that they'd be bucking the trends but they aren't.
As an Orthodox friend of mine says about the reactions his parish gets when they process through the streets at Easter or other major festivals, 'People round here like to see other people doing religion, but they don't like to do it themselves ...'
Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by ExclamationMark:
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
1. Re the SA being well-respected, the SA's homophobia is definitely affecting this amongst young people. Many people I know boycott the SA and refuse to donate because of this.
2. And you know, all this.
1. I've never come across it. In this town the SA are respected by everyone - because they help anyone.
2.That wouldn't be the article by the gay blogger on the gay section of Huffington Post would it? Ah yes, thought so - hardly unbiased is it?
Yes but you're not a younger person who spends a lot of time on tumblr, instagram etc, are you? And actually I asked a SA collector for clarification on their policy and they said that they would ask LGBTQ people to leave the premises and would not provide help for them. And the SA's track record on LGBTQ rights is a matter of public record - it's not difficult to find out that they campaigned against the repeal of Section 28. All the points raised by the HuffPo article can be proven. Of course a gay rights section would be interested in how organisations treat gay people, but that doesn't make it untrustworthy.
Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by ExclamationMark:
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
1. Their stance on equality, liberty and justice for all puts many churches to shame.
2.Their stance on Dead Horses no doubt attracts a lot of people.
1. It's a pity that all too often so little of it is mediated in their own back yards. They are very good (as are most church groups tbh) are doing stuff overseas but not so good at making a stand against things like benefit reform.
2. ... and repels others
[fixed code]
The Quakers local to me are active in local issues, and most ones I know nationally are more focused on national issues rather than international ones. There's some Quaker involvement in SCM which is mostly concerned with national issues. I don't think the Quakers are worse than any other church in this area, and at least the Quakers have good principles in the first place. Better than cold Reformed types.
The number of people who would reject the Quakers on Dead Horses is declining, surely? That's a problem a lot of churches are having, people leaving because of a conservative stance on Dead Horses.
Posted by Horseman Bree (# 5290) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by ExclamationMark:
1. I've never come across it. In this town the SA are respected by everyone - because they help anyone.
2.That wouldn't be the article by the gay blogger on the gay section of Huffington Post would it? Ah yes, thought so - hardly unbiased is it?
ISTM that your comment is also just the wee-est littlest bit biased, innit?
If a writer is writing for a group of people, he may acknowledge their problems. Just because you don't accept that those problems exist doesn't mean that the problems don't actually exist.
Please go back to your safe little bubble.
[guys, preview post! the code decline on this thread is record-breaking!]
[ 24. December 2013, 20:53: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
Posted by Horseman Bree (# 5290) on
:
Recently, there was a squabble in Quebec, given the proposed legislation about visible religious symbols. The Quebec Francophone community was once reliably RC, until the Quiet Revolution of 1960, when everyone suddenly realised that the Emperor had no clothes. Now Quebec is the least religious province in Canada
The law would prevent the wearing of religious symbols, and is particularly aimed at Muslim ones. When the question arose about the Legislature meeting a room dominated by a huge crucifix, this was brushed off, since the carving was "simply a cultural symbol" not a religious one!
Now I read this article about Europe becoming a more secular area as the result of immigration by such "other" groups as Muslims, and non-"ordinary" Christians.
The tacit assumption that the visibility of religion could be maintained so long as everyone agreed to leave it that way was observed. But the Cartoons fiasco in 2005 showed that was not possible if there were enough fanatics around.
Plus, of course, the rise of the noisily atheistic, up from 15% to 25% didn't help.
So get rid of the tacit agreement and bring in rules that spell it out. The blasphemy law in England, for instance, disappeared, since there might otherwise be a need to enforce it.
Oh, and Ireland has gone the same way as Quebec: crucifixes are allowed, because they are "cultural symbols", while Sikh turbans are not allowed for the Garda, because that was religion intruding. Sounds like religion trumping rights to me.
Does this contribute to the non-religious condition of Europe, or is it a symptom?
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
Have had it confirmed by SA collectors that they refuse to help LGBTQ people and will ask them to leave the premises.
That is absolutely NOT the case.
[ 25. December 2013, 00:38: Message edited by: Mudfrog ]
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
And actually I asked a SA collector for clarification on their policy and they said that they would ask LGBTQ people to leave the premises and would not provide help for them.
That person was wrong.
Posted by Palimpsest (# 16772) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
quote:
Originally posted by que sais-je
Maybe Quakers aren't really Christians at all, but they are seen by many as what Christianity should be about: comforting the afflicted and speaking truth to power.
Do the Quakers these days do much of either of those?
I suspect for most of those who say they admire the Quakers, what they like is the idea of the Quakers and a vague sense that they are totally unthreatening, so that you don't have to do anything about them. I suspect next to none of those who say they admire them have ever been to a Meeting.
As a non Christian I often see the actions of the American Friends Service Committee in a number of places where people are being afflicted these days. They are usually admired for what they do rather than preach.
[ 25. December 2013, 01:17: Message edited by: Palimpsest ]
Posted by que sais-je (# 17185) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
Plus, of course, the rise of the noisily atheistic, up from 15% to 25% didn't help.
What about us (relatively) quiet ones? And more interestingly what metric determines in which group I fall?
Posted by ExclamationMark (# 14715) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
quote:
Originally posted by ExclamationMark:
1. I've never come across it. In this town the SA are respected by everyone - because they help anyone.
2.That wouldn't be the article by the gay blogger on the gay section of Huffington Post would it? Ah yes, thought so - hardly unbiased is it?
1. ISTM that your comment is also just the wee-est littlest bit biased, innit?
2. Please go back to your safe little bubble.
1. Of course it is, otherwise I wouldn't be posting!
2. Actually it's not very safe where I am for all sorts of reasons. I think too you're playing the man now not the issue!
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on
:
There is a variety of Quakers, and not just historical Foxite mystical or contemporary lefty-trendy.
Some are theologically orthodox - a friend of ours has been invited to pastor an evangelical Quaker congregation in the US.
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on
:
The Salvation Army’s opposition to homosexual practices is in line with the theological orthodoxy which all churches subscribed to until recently, and which most Christians still do.
In some cases this no doubt does put Western young people off Christianity, but Christianity is not (or at least shouldn’t be) in the business of maximizing consumption of a product the marketing of which justifies any sort of compromise.
Once again , the point has to be made that opposition to homosexual practice is not the same as homophobia.
Christians don’t agree with the beliefs and practices of Hindus, and deny that a person can be at the same time a Hindu and a Christian, but are happy for them to enjoy the same religious freedom as themselves, to treat them with friendliness and dignity, and to recognize that some Hindus are nicer and better people than some Christians.
To label such an attitude as Hinduphobia would be sheer lunacy, despite the fact that there are no doubt a handful of Christians who hate and fear Hindus ( just as there are a number of Hindus who fear and hate Christians).
I realize that this is DH stuff, but so is the use of homophobia/homophobic, so as long as its usage persists, its refutation is justified.
Constant iteration of the terms homophobia/homophobic is an example of Big Lie strategy, a piece of Orwellian manipulation aimed ultimately at cowing and silencing opponents.
It is no use protesting that the terms are now an ineradicable part of the discourse and we are stuck with them forever, because other objectionable smear terms which were also part of everyday language for decades or even centuries are now unacceptable.
Posted by Arethosemyfeet (# 17047) on
:
While the SA (and the RCC, and many Protestants, and some Anglicans) continue to campaign against legal rights for gay people, I'll continue to call them out for being homophobic. Stop doing that and we can talk about the limits of homophobia. When there are still evangelicals going to Jamaica and Uganda to support violently anti-gay laws, I'm going to continue to worry more about the persecution of gay people than the poor hurt feelings of bigots.
When the anti-gay brigade start trying to ban Hindus from getting married, from telling others about Hinduism, from protecting young Hindus from bullying, then there might be a valid comparison (and, yes, I would consider that Hinduphobia).
[ 25. December 2013, 21:58: Message edited by: Arethosemyfeet ]
Posted by gorpo (# 17025) on
:
If churches conservative stance on the dead horses were the reason for their decline, then people would be leaving the conservative churches to become members of the more progressive/liberal ones, instead of becoming atheists and agnostics. In multi-denominational countries like the USA, that would mean "progressive" churches like ELCA and the Episcopal Church would be gaining members crazily, and not shutting their doors everywhere like it´s happening nowadays.
Posted by Zappa (# 8433) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
As for the Seven Churches of Revelation ... they are what they are and the fact that they no longer exist is indeed an object lesson.
I'd suggest that this is one of the ways they can be understood and applied. As object lessons.
They've got nothing whatsoever to do with neatly demarcated 'ages' and epochs in church history or predictions in the uber-specific sense.
To read them that way is to engage in eisegesis not exegesis.
I could recommend a fine book on the subject, but 'm not allowed to .. besides I'm far too modest
[ 26. December 2013, 04:56: Message edited by: Zappa ]
Posted by Arethosemyfeet (# 17047) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by gorpo:
If churches conservative stance on the dead horses were the reason for their decline, then people would be leaving the conservative churches to become members of the more progressive/liberal ones, instead of becoming atheists and agnostics. In multi-denominational countries like the USA, that would mean "progressive" churches like ELCA and the Episcopal Church would be gaining members crazily, and not shutting their doors everywhere like it´s happening nowadays.
It doesn't necessarily follow. The conservative churches tend to feed people a line of "everyone except us is a hellbound Christ denier" so when people reject them, they still have that dichotomy in their mind and not all will manage to let go of the bullshit and keep their faith. The tend to chuck the baby out with the bathwater. Then there's the fact the many people don't even realise that there are different Christian opinions on these issues - they assume that all Christians share the conservative view because that's who shouts the loudest.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
Yes, I think Arethosemyfeet is right.
There's something so full-on and all-or-nothing about the more fundamentalist end of things that when people leave it they tend not to settle in other forms of Christianity but abandon faith - or at least organised church/organised religion altogether.
My brother-in-law grew up in a strongly Pentecostal family. At the moment, none of his many siblings are involved in any form of church life whatsoever. I wouldn't say they'd lost their faith, it's just that they've been in churches that are so full-on that any form of church that isn't all revivalistic and expecting five miracle before breakfast seems pointless to them.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
They've also been sold the line that people in the Anglican, Methodist and other 'mainline' churches are irredeemably liberal or not 'born again' and so on ...
So even though they've fallen out with their own rather authoritarian and full-on church settings, they can't possible envisage getting involved anywhere else.
Posted by Arethosemyfeet (# 17047) on
:
Incidentally, I've actually seen this in practice. A gay man I was at university with had been involved in a fairly con-evo church in the past but couldn't reconcile it with his sexuality. In accepting his sexuality he felt that he had to reject his faith because he'd been told that the two were incompatible, and he was dismissive of any theology that was able to reconcile the two.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
Yes, I've seen this happen with a transexual friend too.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
It often amazes me, if I am discussing something with a hard-core atheist, how often they were religiously fundamentalist in the past, and have now become a sort of atheist fundie. I suppose they retain some sort of black and white mind-set, it's the focal point which has changed.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
Coming back to Mudfrog's complaint about ungodly comedians and so on ...
Well, I think he has got something of a point but I also think he's missing the full picture.
Sally Phillips, who plays Miranda Hart's friend in the hit TV series, is a Christian and speaks to Joan Bakewell about her faith on the BBC Radio 3 programme, Belief.
Milton Jones gets plenty of namechecks in there too.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03lzny8
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
One of the leading lights among the (very few) Quakers around here had what she describes as a very powerful encounter with God during a serious car accident - from which she escaped apparently miraculously unscathed.
The experience convinced her that there was a God and after the accident she determined to find a faith community so that she could worship him there.
The question was, which one?
Her father and one or two others said, 'Well, I don't know much about them, but the Quakers seem to do a lot of good stuff ...'
They didn't say, 'Oh, the Baptists/CofE/Catholics etc etc ...'
Why not?
It might be purely based on speculation but there is a residual respect for the Quakers - perhaps because they fit the zeitgeist in some way through their non-creedal and non-dogmatic approach?
Although, that said, it seems counter-intuitive that there are struggling numerically. One might expect that they'd be bucking the trends but they aren't.
I've read that the Quakers were actually growing around the turn of the 21st c., although their numbers were falling beforehand, and have fallen again somewhat in the last couple of years. In my city they have more 'churches' than the SA, which has suffered a far steeper decline and whose members are older.
The Quakers have apparently spent some money on promoting themselves in recent years. They often have a stall at my local street fair as it's on the city's Quaker corridor. Uni chaplaincies generally have info about them, and even meetings.
OTOH, they don't seem to produce public spokesmen and women. The SSM issue could have provided them with a platform for media appearances by some telegenic and articulate representatives, but I didn't hear of anything. No erudite Quaker articles in the broadsheets!! They seem to rely on their distinctive heritage and image above all.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
Yes. I'd go along with all of that, SvitlanaV2 and the Quakers I know acknowledge that they are lacking in terms of the proclamation element ... but some of their publicity/outreach material is actually quite good and well produced.
As has been observed, there are more evangelical and evangelical-style Quakers in other parts of the world - the USA, Africa and even some parts of Northern Ireland.
On the whole, though, they remain pretty non-creedal and non-dogmatic.
The ones I know, though, aren't at all judgemental or critical of other churches/denominations and would claim, of course, that the Inner Light and so forth can be found everywhere. Some have told me that they feel something of an affinity with the more contemplative and meditative brand of Roman Catholic, for instance.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
I've also come across a number of Quaker poets ... which is probably something I should acknowledge on the poetry thread and the Quakers I've met have been well aware of these poets and rate them highly.
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on
:
I hear a lot of reference to growth among traditional or evangelical churches in the developing world. But (barring the benefits of immigration) I'm not sure what that has to do with the 'Western Church' at this point. I don't see how the success of evangelical Quakerism in West Africa, for example, is relevant to the circumstances, good or bad, of highly liberal Quakers in England.
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
When there are still evangelicals going to Jamaica and Uganda to support violently anti-gay laws
Demanding the death penalty for homosexual practices is a egnuine example of homophobia, but is not remotely representative of mainstream evangelicalism.
quote:
When the anti-gay brigade start trying to ban Hindus from getting married
Gay marriage is opposed by all sorts of people, of various religions or lack thereof, and for all sorts of reasons.
It is an immensely complex issue, and to reduce it to "everyone who opposes gay marriage hates and fears gays" is a gross generalisation verging on the obscurantist.
quote:
from telling others about Hinduism
Straw man.
It would be impossible to grow up in the West these days without learning about gay issues.
Christians might tell others that gay beliefs and practices are wrong, just as they would that Hindu beliefs and practices are wrong, but as long as they are not doing so in a context of inciting hatred or violence, that is their prerogative in a liberal, pluralist culture..
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on
:
On the subject of Quakers, I am currently reading Robert Colls's just-published George Orwell:English Rebel, and was reminded of Orwell's famous reference to 'every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex maniac, Quaker, Nature Cure quack, pacifist and feminist in England...who come flocking towards the smell of 'progress' like bluebottles to a dead cat".
I had forgotten that he included "Quaker" in the list.
At least he didn't include "pansy", which he uses elsewhere.
Posted by Arethosemyfeet (# 17047) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Gay marriage is opposed by all sorts of people, of various religions or lack thereof, and for all sorts of reasons.
Non sequitur.
quote:
Straw man.
It would be impossible to grow up in the West these days without learning about gay issues.
Christians might tell others that gay beliefs and practices are wrong, just as they would that Hindu beliefs and practices are wrong, but as long as they are not doing so in a context of inciting hatred or violence, that is their prerogative in a liberal, pluralist culture..
They didn't stop there though did they. Within the last decade they fought to maintain Section 28 of the local government act that they knew, THEY KNEW, was being used to prevent schools giving young people information about gay relationships and to scare teachers off dealing with homophobic bullying. The problem is that the anti-gay folks aren't stopping at saying, they continue to try to have their views maintained in law.
[ 27. December 2013, 08:41: Message edited by: Arethosemyfeet ]
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on
:
hosting/
Folks, if you want to discuss the gay/anti-gay aspect of this debate in more detail, you know this isn't the place to do it: Dead Horses is.
/hosting
Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on
:
Enoch - knock yourself out
https://play.spotify.com/track/6Rm8BurCR2QHJLmtLCTWYp
Posted by ToujoursDan (# 10578) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by gorpo:
If churches conservative stance on the dead horses were the reason for their decline, then people would be leaving the conservative churches to become members of the more progressive/liberal ones, instead of becoming atheists and agnostics. In multi-denominational countries like the USA, that would mean "progressive" churches like ELCA and the Episcopal Church would be gaining members crazily, and not shutting their doors everywhere like it´s happening nowadays.
About 80% of my parish is made up of ex-evangelicals and ex-Catholics, so this is occurring. Many other Episcopal churches would undoubtedly report the same. (I think the overall number of denomination switchers in the TEC is closer to 40%, though.)
The problem the TEC and other mainline denominations is that people aren't having enough kids to replace those who are dying off or leaving due to the normal drop-out rate. The birthrate amongst Episcopalians and Presbyterians was recently estimated at 1.3 per couple, which is well below the 2.1 needed to keep a [membership] population stable. Up to 40% of Episcopalians may be switching from other denominations but isn't making up for the birthrate gap, so the decline continues. The grim news is that given our birthrates, even if no one dropped out we'd still be in decline.
Membership decline affected mainline denominations before conservative denominations because, historically, the membership of mainline denominations was more urban, higher educated and more likely to adopt birth control and therefore had fewer kids. It's no coincidence that this decline, in the U.S. started soon after the widespread introduction of the pill.
Unfortunately the demographic bomb is going to continue indefinitely. The TEC and other mainline denominations grew historically because of higher birthrates and immigration. Birthrates are continuing to decline because people are putting off marriage, choosing to have fewer or no kids, coming out as gay, embracing lifetime singlehood - none of which carries the stigma it used to. Also, the average age of Episcopalians and other mainline denominations is around 55, way past child-bearing age anyway. Immigration comes from countries with strong Christian traditions (Latin America,etc.), or from groups of people that historically do not convert to Christianity in large numbers (like the middle East.) Few of these people would find Protestant denominations attractive as much for cultural reasons as theology.
The TEC could become a conservative denomination with a belief in Biblical inerrancy and with the evangelicalistic efforts of the Mormons tomorrow and it wouldn't change anything at all. (Because both the LCMS and Mormons within the U.S. are in decline for similar demographic reasons themselves.)
Posted by Horseman Bree (# 5290) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Enoch - knock yourself out
https://play.spotify.com/track/6Rm8BurCR2QHJLmtLCTWYp
I tried the link, and was told that "Spotify is not available in your country, unless you are a registered user from another country"
Weird way to gain membership.
Stephen Colbert tells me that his show is not available in Canada, because we have "free" medical care. Apparently he is jealous and angry.
The Internet does recognise borders in odd cases, it seems.
[ 27. December 2013, 16:24: Message edited by: Horseman Bree ]
Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Enoch - knock yourself out
https://play.spotify.com/track/6Rm8BurCR2QHJLmtLCTWYp
I tried the link, and was told that "Spotify is not available in your country, unless you are a registered user from another country"
Weird way to gain membership.
Stephen Colbert tells me that his show is not available in Canada, because we have "free" medical care. Apparently he is jealous and angry.
The Internet does recognise borders in odd cases, it seems.
I can't access this either, and I'm in the same country as Karl. Apparently I have to be already a member of something else first.
Posted by stonespring (# 15530) on
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quote:
Originally posted by ToujoursDan:
Immigration comes from countries with strong Christian traditions (Latin America,etc.), or from groups of people that historically do not convert to Christianity in large numbers (like the middle East.) Few of these people would find Protestant denominations attractive as much for cultural reasons as theology.
The TEC could become a conservative denomination with a belief in Biblical inerrancy and with the evangelicalistic efforts of the Mormons tomorrow and it wouldn't change anything at all. (Because both the LCMS and Mormons within the U.S. are in decline for similar demographic reasons themselves.)
You may be right about Muslim immigrants from some Middle Eastern countries not being good targets for Christian proselytism, but other than that there is a Pentecostal or Evangelical church in the US or Europe that targets immigrants from just about any country you can imagine and that is doing quite well in terms of numbers. Here in NYC I also note quite a few immigrants converting to Seventh-Day Adventism, Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, etc. When I was at university, the students who tried hardest to get me to come to Intervarsity Christian Fellowship meetings were often immigrants.
I think the problem is that European-North-American Mainline Protestantism (and, to a certain degree, Anglophone Catholicism) is just not very appealing to immigrants from the global South (other than social conservatism, individualism vs. the family/community ethic, and length of services as a time to socialize being viewed as a good thing by immigrants, I am not sure why). The RCC at least has a good number of existing non-Anglophone priests and communities, which also exist in mainline denominations but in considerably smaller numbers. I should note that stereotypical suburban megachurch Evangelicalism is also not that appealing to many immigrant communities, but there are a whole lot of Evangelical and especially Pentecostal churches, many of which are immigrant-led, that are very appealing to many immigrants.
Posted by ToujoursDan (# 10578) on
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We have a fair number of immigrants in the Episcopal Church Diocese of Long Island. In fact, this diocese is the most diverse diocese in the TEC.
But I often wonder if I was someone from the Congo, Albania or Paraguay how comfortable I would feel walking into a WASPY Episcopal Church and taking part in worship, even if the congregation was welcoming. I'd expect the culture gap would be huge - too huge for many. The JWs, SDAs and Pentecostals etc. have less of an ethnic legacy than the English Episcopalians, Scot Presbyterians or German/Scandinavian Lutherans. Perhaps that will change someday, but it is still there now.
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on
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quote:
Originally posted by stonespring:
I think the problem is that European-North-American Mainline Protestantism (and, to a certain degree, Anglophone Catholicism) is just not very appealing to immigrants from the global South (other than social conservatism, individualism vs. the family/community ethic, and length of services as a time to socialize being viewed as a good thing by immigrants, I am not sure why). The RCC at least has a good number of existing non-Anglophone priests and communities, which also exist in mainline denominations but in considerably smaller numbers. I should note that stereotypical suburban megachurch Evangelicalism is also not that appealing to many immigrant communities, but there are a whole lot of Evangelical and especially Pentecostal churches, many of which are immigrant-led, that are very appealing to many immigrants.
The British mainstream Protestant denominations have benefited from immigration since the 1950, and in some areas their congregations are now majority non-white. Many of the immigrants from the Caribbean and from Africa would have had a background in the Anglican, Methodist, Baptist or Congregationalist, etc. churches, and a small minority of Asians would also have backgrounds in these denominations.
Unfortunately, these churches were in a state of low morale in the 50s and 60s, especially in the rough areas where the immigrants were obliged to live. It's a cliché among elderly Afro-Caribbean churchgoers that they were often made unwelcome at such churches, even to the extent of being asked by the clergymen not to return. In addition, the more restrained worship style, less communal spirit, preaching that lacked the conviction and energy that they were used to, combined to make worshipping in these churches difficult for some. Increasing secularisation in British society also made some of them realise that going to church wasn't a status-enhancing or socially beneficial activity in the UK as it had been in the Caribbean, which made it easier for many of them to stop going to church altogether. For others, founding or attending separate churches was the answer.
The immigrants from those days who remained within the mainstream churches made a deliberate choice to be there. Loyalty to 'their' denomination is part of it, even if they might not be terribly impressed at how some things are done. Some of them may still feel that being in the CofE or Methodist Church has more status than being a Pentecostal. And though there be admiration for Pentecostal spiritual energy, there will usually be a critique of their strictness.
Today's immigrants, though, have so much choice that there's no real need for them to subject themselves to mainstream worship experiences unless they're very comfortable in those churches. The colonial sentiment that made the mainstream churches appealing has declined, and with an increasing diversity of churches in their homelands, more of them are already likely to arrive as Pentecostal/charismatic/other than would have been the case in the 50s - 70s.
Posted by LutheranChik (# 9826) on
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As Dan notes, as much as social conservatives want to blame mainline-denominational membership dropoff on sociopolitical factors, it's really a demographically-driven drop: More educated members with fewer kids; and, in the US and other places, no more boatloads of simpatico immigrants coming to shore up the numbers. In addition, there's far less societal pressure in most places for families to affiliate with a church.
[ 27. December 2013, 18:51: Message edited by: LutheranChik ]
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