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The Winning Team.
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Topic Started: May 22 2009, 10:13 PM (400 Views)
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the breeze
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May 22 2009, 10:13 PM
Post #1
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WE ARE ON THE WINNING TEAM! IT IS WONDERFUL to know as Christians we are on the winning team. There is no way, short of apostasy itself, that a Christian can lose. In every way Christ has already gotten the victory for us, and we are now to live out this victory in our lives as we trust him ("…this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith," I John 5:4). Christ conquered sin, death and the grave, and consequently has delivered all "who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage" (Hebrews 2:15). He came that we might have life and have it more abundantly (John 10:10). We have been delivered from the power of darkness and translated into his kingdom (Colossians 1:13). Jesus declared that the gates of hell would not prevail against his church (Matthew 16:18), and that is what we are, his church. "Greater is he that is within you, than he that is in the world" (I John 4:4). We are now reigning with Christ, as he is the Lord of all in our lives. All things are subservient to us, or least they serve us as we serve him (I Corinthians 3:21-23)—even death itself! "We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose" (Romans 8:28)—even "bad" things! We should not look upon ourselves as victims of any circumstance. Everything is a challenge to be faced with the express purpose of accomplishing the glory of God in it. "Nay in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:36-39). "But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord" (I Corinthians 15:57,58). Too many times we are whining wimps. We wring our hands, and say, "Look what the world is coming to!" How unlike the early church. They didn’t say, "Look what the world has come to," but rather, "Look what has come to the world!" The good news of salvation, hope and victory in Jesus Christ! We are on the winning team!
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ngc1514
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May 22 2009, 11:15 PM
Post #2
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Defining losers as winners. The dechristianizing of America continues apace... It ain't looking good for the long term survival of the home team!
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The End of Christian America
The percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 points in the past two decades. How that statistic explains who we are now—and what, as a nation, we are about to become. Jon Meacham NEWSWEEK From the magazine issue dated Apr 13, 2009
It was a small detail, a point of comparison buried in the fifth paragraph on the 17th page of a 24-page summary of the 2009 American Religious Identification Survey. But as R. Albert Mohler Jr.—president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, one of the largest on earth—read over the document after its release in March, he was struck by a single sentence. For a believer like Mohler—a starched, unflinchingly conservative Christian, steeped in the theology of his particular province of the faith, devoted to producing ministers who will preach the inerrancy of the Bible and the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the only means to eternal life—the central news of the survey was troubling enough: the number of Americans who claim no religious affiliation has nearly doubled since 1990, rising from 8 to 15 percent. Then came the point he could not get out of his mind: while the unaffiliated have historically been concentrated in the Pacific Northwest, the report said, "this pattern has now changed, and the Northeast emerged in 2008 as the new stronghold of the religiously unidentified." As Mohler saw it, the historic foundation of America's religious culture was cracking.
The whole article: http://www.newsweek.com/id/192583/output/print
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A nation facing problems of biblical proportions appears to be looking less and less to religion for answers. According to a new NEWSWEEK Poll, the percentage of Americans who think faith will help answer all or most of the country's current problems dipped to a historic low of 48 percent, down from 64 percent in 1994.
The poll - http://www.newsweek.com/id/192915
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Fundamentalism and the Decline of Christianity
The cover story in The New York Times Magazine for March 27, 2005, featured an Assembly of God megachurch in Surprise, Arizona, about 45 minutes northwest of downtown Phoenix. The pastor, Lee McFarland, founded Radiant Church in 1996, and now weekend attendance has now reached 5,000 people. Impressive? Yes, until you stop to think what the impact of this kind of Christianity has been on the Christian enterprise as a whole. Many people have failed to realize that the success of fundamentalism in this country has been gained at a terrible price, the loss of respect for Christianity among people who want to think for themselves.
The story of Surprise, Arizona, is a good example of what has been happening around the country. The author of the Times story, Jonathan Mahler, notes that Surprise, a town of 80,000 people, has 27 other churches, but he dismisses them with the observation that "none of them are growing at anything that approaches the pace of Radiant." He does not supply statistics – maybe they are not available – but we can make some guesses based on national averages. Half of the churches in the United States have fewer than 100 members, and only 10% have more than 400 members, which puts them in the class of "large churches". Let us give those 27 churches the benefit of the doubt and assume that on the average they are large churches with a membership of 500, for a total of 13,500. If you add in Radiant’s 5,000 members, you will see that 18,500 church members are the most you are likely to find in Surprise. On the basis of my informed guesses, at least 73% of the Surprise citizens have no church connection at all.
Would other churches in town have better luck if Radiant were not giving Christianity a reputation for being anti-intellectual, anti-scientific, anti-gay, and anti-choice in medical decisions such as the end of life and the termination of pregnancy? No one can say for sure, but the statistics collected by the National Council of Churches and various polling agencies suggest that while groups such as the Assemblies of God and the Southern Baptists grew rapidly in the latter half of the 20th century, church membership as a whole declined. The so-called main line churches suffered serious losses, but the most significant trend may have been among those who claim no religious affiliation. In 1952, only 2% of the people polled claimed no connection with organized religion. By 1990, the figure had climbed to 10%. According to a survey conducted by the City University of New York, by 2001, 19% of the people in this county did not identify themselves with any particular religion. According to this survey, during the same period, 1990 to 2001, the percentage of Americans identifying themselves as Christians declined from 86% to 77%.
From my college course in logic, I am aware of the weakness in any argument based on post hoc ergo propter hoc, after this therefore because of this, so I will admit that I cannot prove the decline in American Christianity as a whole is entirely the result of fundamentalism’s success in winning converts. I do think, however, that in the minds of most people who read newspapers and magazines the word "Christian" has become identified with extreme conservatism. Only a generation ago, according to most dictionaries, you could call someone a Christian and mean a decent, respectable human being. Today, if you identify someone as a Christian, most of the people I know will assume that you mean a narrow-minded, self-righteous bigot.
The negative connotation has made considering Christianity as an option unlikely for many well-informed people. To get their attention, churches reaching out to them can never use the word "Christian" without a qualifying adjective, such as progressive. Even when we do, we have a hard time convincing the skeptical that we are different from the politically influential right-wing Christians they read about in the news. Is it any wonder that a shrinking number of people in America are willing to call themselves Christians?
The Center for Progressive Christianity http://tcpc.blogs.com/better/2005/04/fundamentalism_.html
Edited by ngc1514, May 22 2009, 11:24 PM.
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ngc1514
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May 22 2009, 11:21 PM
Post #3
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A piece by Dr. Albert Mohler.
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Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., serves as the ninth president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary-the flagship school of the Southern Baptist Convention and one of the largest seminaries in the world.
It would appear the question asked by Dr. Mohler was answered in the information shown in Mohler's comments in the message I posted before this one. Yes, America *IS* next.
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Christianity Recedes in Europe--Is America Next?
Thursday, August 18, 2005
"I don't go to church, and I don't know one person who does." That statement, taken from Brian Kenny, a 39-year-old graduate student in Dublin, Ireland, launches readers of USA Today into a consideration of Christianity's receding influence in Europe.
In "Religion Takes a Back Seat in Western Europe," USA Today considers the rapid pace of secularization in Western Europe, and the social, moral, and political impact that has resulted from Europe's loss of faith.
The newspaper obviously believes that something important is at stake in this analysis, for this article by Noelle Knox appeared on the front page of the August 11, 2005 edition of the paper. As it stands, the article offers considerable information and insight. Something remarkable and newsworthy has taken place in Western Europe over the last two decades. Once the very cradle of Christian civilization, Europe has embraced a secular future, and the residual memory of the Christian tradition is fading fast.
For at least half a century, researchers have been observing massive shifts in Western cultures. The increasingly secular shape of European civilization has been evident for some time, though a realization of this can sometimes come as an explosive insight. When Brian Kenny reported, "I don't go to church, and I don't know one person who does," he understood that something had changed. "Fifteen years ago, I didn't know one person who didn't," he reflected.
The statistics documenting European secularization are now impossible to ignore. Ireland, still one of the least secular nations in Western Europe, has seen church attendance fall by at least 25 percent over the last three decades. Ireland is predominantly Roman Catholic, of course, but the paper reports, "Not one priest will be ordained this year in Dublin."
On the Protestant side, the picture is not much better. Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands, once the cradles of the Reformation, are now prime examples of Europe's secular shape.
Throughout the European continent, Islam is the only religion growing in the number of adherents. According to the Center for the Study on Global Christianity, at the Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in suburban Boston, the decline in Christian influence "is most evident in France, Sweden and the Netherlands, where church attendance is less than ten percent in some areas."
Why has this happened? Ronald Inglehart, Director of the World Values Survey in Sweden, suggests that Christianity has been a comfort to people in times of crisis. "For most of history, people have been on the borderline of survival," he explains. "That's changed dramatically. Survival is certain for almost everyone (in the West). So one of the reasons people are drawn to religion has eroded."
In other words, Mr. Inglehart believes that religion fulfills a social function. Once that function is no longer needed, the entire structure of Christian belief becomes unnecessary.
This kind of reductionism is now common in the social sciences, where religious faith is seen in functional terms rather than in theological categories.
Others, looking at the same pattern of secularization, point to the impact of theological liberalism, the rise of a technological society, and the cultural shift towards autonomous individualism as the main factors behind Christianity's decline.
At the dawn of the 20th century, the vast majority of European citizens identified themselves as Christians. Even now, 75 percent of Europeans identify themselves as Christians. What is going on here? If three out of four Europeans claim to be Christians, how can Europe have become so pervasively secularized?
For some years, sociologists and observers of church life have suggested that younger persons are developing a pattern identified as "believing without belonging." In other words, these researchers have suggested that low levels of church attendance may be offset by the fact that individuals still hold residual Christian beliefs. The more recent shape of secularized Europe indicates that the opposite must be true--that millions of Europeans must be "belonging without believing." In other words, these persons identify themselves as Christians simply as a matter of family heritage or superficial identity. Evidently, their Christian identity is not based in deep levels of Christian belief, high levels of church participation, or traditional markers of Christian discipleship. In Sweden, the government reports that 85 percent of Swedes are church members, yet only eleven percent of women and seven percent of men attend church services.
The most documented evidence of Europe's secularization comes in moral terms. As USA Today reports, the number of marriages is dropping throughout much of Europe. "There is virtually no social stigma for unmarried parents," the paper explains. "More than half of the children in Sweden and Norway are born to unmarried mothers, according to the European Union." In other nations, the statistics are similar.
Interestingly, the paper reports that one of the "most striking consequences" of Christianity's decline in Europe has been fewer children. As Knox explains, "The birth rate throughout much of Western Europe has fallen so drastically that the population in many countries is shrinking . . . ." As Ronald Inglehart argues, "The biggest single consequence of the declining role of the church is the huge decline in fertility rates."
The pattern doesn't stop there, of course. USA Today also acknowledges that the decline of Christian belief in Europe "also has brought a change in attitudes and laws on issues such as divorce, abortion, gay marriage and stem cell research."
Without doubt, the decline in Christian belief and the massive transformation of European lifestyles and moral expectations go hand in hand. As a matter of fact, it may be impossible to determine just how these trends work together within the process of secularization. As Christian conviction declines, Christian morality gives way to the ethos of moral individualism, sexual libertinism, and eroding commitment to marriage, children, and family.
USA Today's cover story on the decline of Christianity in Western Europe raises the question of America's future. In many ways, America seems to be following the European example, though several years behind. Yet the pace of moral transformation in the United States may indicate that America is fast catching up with the European model of secularization.
All this should remind seriously-minded Christians to analyze survey data with caution. Even as the vast majority of Americans claim to be Christians, the indicators of social morality and commitment to marriage and children indicate that America may be moving closer to the European precedent.
The evidence is mounting, and the current shape of secular Europe should serve as a powerful warning. Without a robust commitment to Christian truth, Christian morality simply fades away.
Forgot the linkie.... http://www.albertmohler.com/commentary_read.php?cdate=2005-08-18
Edited by ngc1514, May 22 2009, 11:22 PM.
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