10 March 2009

To The Catacombs?

A piece in The Christian Science Monitor today has some dire warnings on the future of Evangelical Christianity in America. Being an orthodox Anglican, I especially found this bit interesting:
We Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. Ironically, the billions of dollars we've spent on youth ministers, Christian music, publishing, and media has produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology, or the experience of spiritual discipline and community. Coming generations of Christians are going to be monumentally ignorant and unprepared for culture-wide pressures.
Do I believe Christianity will collapse in the US as this article predicts? Well, no. I think that conclusion is a bit alarmist. But Christianity dramatically receding in some areas, such as parts of California and (ironically for the The Christian Science Monitor) large parts of the Northeast, is a very real possibility. And secularist efforts to demonize and marginalize Faith when it conflicts with secularist purposes, is already upon us. UPDATE: Stunts like this make those efforts to demonize and marginalize that much easier.

Read the whole thing. I don't agree with the meta conclusion, but it is good food for thought that should provoke reflection.

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