Decline of Christianity in America

Awhile back, a friend had asked why I put Revelation 18 on her Facebook page in response to an open question she posted in reference to President Obama.  The following is my response in its entirety.

 If I remember correctly, you asked openly if President Obama missed the National Day of Prayer, and to that, someone commented that the President said that “America (I’m paraphrasing) is no longer just a Christian nation, but a Hindu, a Bud…dist, and Muslim nation.” In short, while America cannot officially claim Christianity as it’s religion – to do so would be in violation of the First Amendment – the United States has been prodominantly a Christian nation for a very long time.

 

When our parents were children, and even our age, God was seen as infallible and His Word as the Truth. Fast forward to today and God is veiwed as not-so-infallible and His Truth not-so-true. By doing this, the enemy has been able to weaken the christians in this country and make them complacent. God was very stern when he told the Israelites “if you obey my laws, your enemies will come at you in one direction and flee in seven. If you don’t obey my laws your enemies will come at you in seven and leave in one.”

America’s problem does not lie with the politicians, although, that is a conundrum. Trust in a politician and you will be surely dissapointed. Our problem rests with our morals. For as Revelation 18 says “her sins are piled up to heaven.”

Now to answer your question. Revelation is considered the bloodiest, most violent, most horrific book in the Bible. Even the most skilled of Bible scholars cannot decipher it’s cryptic messages entirely. In Revelation 18, Babylon is seen as an “evil spirit” residing in a nation or nation’s. “She has become a dwelling for demons, every unclean bird, every detestable animal, and a haunt for every impure spirit.”

What nation does this sound like to you?

Thanks to the sexual revolution of the 1960’s, America is filled with homosexuality, drug and alchohol use, wide spread divorce, and as Carmen put it, “pornography that floods our streets like open sores.”

Rather than view sin as an affront to God, the people of the world see it simply as living in a free and open society. Revelation 18 says that the “merchants of the world will mourn over her because no one buys her cargoes”. “In one hour your doom has come” (v.10)

Consider for a moment that Revelation 18 also says that “she will be thrown down, never to be found again” (vs. 21-24). To help further your understanding – if you haven’t done it yet – I strongly urge you to read Revelation 18 in it’s entirety. However, there is no reason to fear, Jesus Christ is our Savior, and He will always be with us.

 

At this juncture in the post, I would be remiss not to point out the Seven Letters to the Seven Churches in Revelation 1-3 (just for clarification, it is Revelation, not “Revelations”) are seven actual churches.  Also, they represent seven church ages (in the Bible the number seven means “fulfillment”).  And, we today, live in the Seventh Church Age; whereas Jesus Christ said in Revelation 3:14-18, “These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation. ¹⁵ I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! ¹⁶ So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. ¹⁷ You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. ¹⁸ I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see.”

 

The very real fact that Jesus Christ our Lord knows these inequities and feels this way should shake every christian to their core in reverent fear of God.

 

The American Dream
Thursday, January 19, 2012

Is Christianity in decline in America?  When you examine the cold, hard numbers it is simply not possible to come to any other conclusion.  Over the past few decades, the percentage of Christians in America has been steadily declining.  This has especially been true among young people.  As you will see later in this article, there has been a mass exodus of teens and young adults out of U.S. churches.  In addition, what “Christianity” means to American Christians today is often far different from what “Christianity” meant to their parents and their grandparents.  Millions upon millions of Christians in the United States simply do not believe many of the fundamental principles of the Christian faith any longer.  Without a doubt, America is becoming a less “Christian” nation.  This has staggering implications for the future of this country.  The United States was founded primarily by Christians that were seeking to escape religious persecution.  For those early settlers, the Christian faith was the very center of their lives, and it deeply affected the laws that they made and the governmental structures that they established.  So what is the future of America going to look like if we totally reject the principles that this nation was founded on?

Overall, Christianity is still the largest religion in the world by far.  According to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, there are currently 2.2 billionChristians in the world.  So Christianity is not in danger of disappearing any time soon.  In fact, in some areas of the globe it is experiencing absolutely explosive growth.

But in the United States, things are different.  Churches are shrinking, skepticism is growing and apathy about spiritual matters seems to be at an all-time high.

Before we examine the data, let me disclose that I am a Christian.  I am not bashing Christians or the Christian faith at all in this article.  In fact, I consider the decline of Christianity in America to be a very bad thing.  Not everyone is going to agree with me on that, but hopefully this article will help spark a debate on the role of religion in America that everyone can learn something from.

Unfortunately, the reality is that most Americans spend very little time thinking about religion or spiritual matters these days.

Just consider the following quote from a recent USA Today article….

“The real dirty little secret of religiosity in America is that there are so many people for whom spiritual interest, thinking about ultimate questions, is minimal,” says Mark Silk, professor of religion and public life at Trinity College”

This is backed up by the numbers.  For example, a survey taken last year by LifeWay Research found that 46 percent of all Americans never think about whether they will go to heaven or not.

To most Americans, faith is simply not a big deal.  This is particularly true of our young people.  Those under the age of 30 are leaving U.S. churches in droves.  The following comes from a recent CNN article….

David Kinnaman, the 38-year-old president of the Barna Group, an evangelical research firm, is the latest to sound the alarm. In his new book, “You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are Leaving Church and Rethinking Faith,” he says that 18- to 29-year-olds have fallen down a “black hole” of church attendance. There is a 43% drop in Christian church attendance between the teen and early adult years, he says.

But it isn’t just young people that are leaving American churches.  The proportion of Americans that consider themselves to be Christians has been steadily declining for many years.  Back in 1990, 86 percent of all Americans considered themselves to be Christian.  By 2008, that number had dropped to 76 percent.

Meanwhile, the number of Americans that reject religion entirely has absolutely soared.  According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of Americans with “no religion” more than doubled between 1990 and 2008.

So what is going to happen if these trends continue?

Dave Olson, the director of church planting for the Evangelical Covenant Church, has made some really interesting projections regarding what is going to happen to church attendance in America if current trends continue.

According to Olson, only 18.7 percent of all Americans regularly attend church right now.  If this number continues to decline at the current pace, Olson says that the percentage of Americans attending church in 2050 will be about half of what it is today.

Other research has produced similar results.

According to a study done by LifeWay Research, membership in Southern Baptist churches will fall nearly 50 percent by the year 2050 if current trends persist.

If you are a Christian, you should be quite alarmed by these numbers.

But what is happening to the faith of our young people should be even more alarming for Christians.

The American Religious Identification Survey by the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society & Culture at Trinity College is one of the most comprehensive studies on religion in America that has ever been done.

According to that study, 15 percent of all Americans say that they have “no religion”.

That is up from 8 percent in 1990.

That is quite a change.

But the move away from religion is particularly pronounced among our young people.

One recent survey found that 25 percent of all Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 say that they have no religion.

Obviously the Christian faith is not winning the battle for the hearts and the minds of our young people.  The cold, hard truth is that in America today, the younger you are, the less likely you are to consider yourself to be a Christian.

Large numbers of young Americans that went to church while they were growing up are now leaving U.S. churches entirely.  A recent study by the Barna Group discovered that nearly 60 percent of all Christians between the ages of 15 and 29 are no long actively involved in any church.

But not only have they left the church, our young people have also abandoned just about all forms of Christian spirituality.

Just check out the results of one survey of young adults that was conductedby LifeWay Christian Resources….

•65% rarely or never pray with others, and 38% almost never pray by themselves either.

•65% rarely or never attend worship services of any kind.

•67% don’t read the Bible or any other religious texts on a regular basis.

If this does not get turned around, churches all over America will be closing their doors.  When the survey above first came out, the president of LifeWay Christian Resources stated that “the Millennial generation will see churches closing as quickly as GM dealerships.”

But it is not just church that our young people are rejecting.

The reality is that they are also rejecting the fundamental principles of the Christian faith.

One survey conducted by the Barna Group found that less than 1 percent of all Americans between the ages of 18 and 23 hold a Biblical worldview.

The Barna Group asked participants in the survey if they agreed with the following six statements….

1) Believing that absolute moral truth exists.
2) Believing that the Bible is completely accurate in all of the principles it teaches.
3) Believing that Satan is considered to be a real being or force, not merely symbolic.
4) Believing that a person cannot earn their way into Heaven by trying to be good or by doing good works.
5) Believing that Jesus Christ lived a sinless life on earth.
6) Believing that God is the all-knowing, all-powerful creator of the world who still rules the universe today.

Less than 1 percent of the participants agreed with all of those statements.

That is staggering.

But it is not just young adults that are rejecting the fundamentals of the Christian faith.

Even large numbers of “evangelical Christians” are rejecting the fundamental principles of the Christian faith.

For example, one survey found that 52 percent of all Americans Christians believe that “at least some non-Christian faiths can lead to eternal life”.

Another survey found that 29 percent of all American Christians claim to have been in contact with the dead, 23 percent believe in astrology and 22 percent believe in reincarnation.

Without a doubt, the religious landscape of America is changing.

Over the past several decades, church attendance has been steadily declining, the percentage of Americans that consider themselves to be Christians has been going down, and the number of people that hold traditional Christian beliefs has been dropping like a rock.

So what does all of this mean for the future of America?

Secret Government Panel Could Target Americans for Assassination

Last night a guy at work and I were having a conversation on the assassination of JFK.  And his response, like all the other inane responses I’ve heard was, “Well, if someone wanted us to know something, they would’ve told us.” 

“Corruption keeps to itself!” I replied.  Meaning, if someone is doing something corrupt, they’re not going to run down the street, waving a “red flag” for all the world to see.  They will keep it secret.  Just like the following.

Richardsilverstein.com
Wednseday, January18, 2012

Last October, Reuters published news about a secret U.S. government panel which “nominated” militants for murder or capture, including U.S. citizens like Anwar al-Awlaki.  The story peered into the opaque process by which a government bureaucracy decides to take a human life.  And it was disturbing:

…Targeting recommendations are drawn up by a committee of mid-level National Security Council and agency officials. Their recommendations are then sent to the panel of NSC “principals,” meaning Cabinet secretaries and intelligence unit chiefs, for approval. The panel of principals could have different memberships when considering different operational issues, they said.

The names suggested are then brought before the president, who may veto them.

What’s astonishing about all this is that the names of those on the panel are unknown, how they decide someone should die is unknown, and what evidence is used to determine on a death sentence is unknown.  Everything about this process is deliberately opaque.  And there is no written record of the panel’s deliberations in order to further insulate participants, especially the president himself.  This fact alone reminds me of some of the more nefarious plots in recent history including Pol Pot’s genocide, Hitler’s Final Solution and Ben Gurion’s plans for the Nakba.  All wisely left little or no written evidence of their plans that could be used later by authorities or history to judge them.  Not that targeted killings rise to the level of genocide in terms of crimes against humanity, but they are grievious breaches of international law nonetheless.

The hypocrisy of Hillary Clinton swearing on a stack of Bibles that the U.S. had nothing to do with the last Iranian scientist assassination is laughable considering that our own behavior isn’t that dissimilar.  In a conversation with a journalist a few days ago who’d had discussions with CIA officers who justified the U.S. killing of al-Awlaki, the agent asked the reporter whether it would be justified to kill someone during World War II who fought right at Hitler’s side.

He was attempting to liken the Yemeni-American cleric to such a figure, when the evidence offered so far doesn’t justify it.  Is the CIA saying that Osama bin Laden was Hitler and al-Awlaki was his commander-in-chief?  Since when, on both counts?  I have no doubt that both were enemies of the U.S. who deserved to be tried and punished for their crimes.  But as Mehdi Hassan argues so persuasively in this commentary on the subject, “targeted killing is just the death penalty without due process.”

Barack Obama doesn’t get to be judge, jury and executioner under the U.S. Constitution.  In fact, he’s violating the Fifth Amendment, which prohibits taking a citizen’s life without due process.  A secret National Council panel is NOT due process.  It’s just death by bureaucratic fiat.  It is no different from Israel’s targeted assassinations of Palestinian militants and Iranian scientists.