What’s happening to Christianity in America? I’ve been trying to figure this out for years. My first clue that something was wrong was hearing the leader of my Bible study claim that Barack Obama was an antichrist because he is a liberal. As she and other members of the group fretted about impending socialism, I concluded that they were being discipled by right-wing media. I dropped out of the group.
The next group was no different. At times, listening to my sisters in Christ was like listening to Fox News. I tried my best to keep my mouth shut when one of them brought up hot-button issues like immigration and homosexuality. When one member said, “They say he [Trump] is a Christian,” I had to speak up. Trump’s words and conduct prove otherwise.
Pew Research Center reports that “[t]he percentage of American adults who identify as Christian has been declining each year.” Evangelical Christians see the increasingly secular culture as a reason to use government to force religion on the “nones” (people with no religious affililiation). In contrast, I believe that Christianity has become unattractive to non-believers because so many Christians have abandoned Christ’s teaching in exchange for political power.
God has not changed. The Bible has not changed. Unfortunately, the meanings of the words “Christian” and “evangelical” have been damaged, which in turn damages Christian witness. I am still Christ’s disciple. I still believe in evangelism, but today, Evangelical Christians are not evangelizing, i.e., spreading the Good News.
The best antidote to bad religion is good religion.
Tim Alberta quoting Miroslav Volf, the head of Yale University’s Center for Faith and Culture)
These are troubling times for faithful followers of Christ. We see a man of lawlessness who clearly has no interest in the word of God, hawking ‘God Bless the USA’ Bibles for $59.99. Too many Evangelicals see nothing wrong with this.
The best cure for bad religion is good religion, religion that is based on the morality of Christ.
It’s Christians, not Christianity, that are the issue & they haven’t really changed all that much. I know from one of your previous posts that you’ve read Isabel Wilkerson’s “Caste”; you may recall the chapter on America’s historical attempts to keep the country “pure”, defining anyone not Anglo as unclean including Irish, Poles, Italians, etc. Wilkerson quotes several Christian leaders of the time, including Reverend M. Lighter of PA as recently as 1910: “Our grand Anglo-Saxon character must be preserved, and the pure unmixed blood from our Aryan progenitors must not be mixed with the Iberia race (southern Italians). Christian communities have long been tainted with hate; the recipients of that hate have changed with time and expanded beyond race to other religions, countries of origin and life choices. No, Christians in America haven’t really changed, but the light shines on them more clearly these days. The tenents of Christianity remain the same, but few people are capable of adhering to them.
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