Tag: American Christianity

Seven Follow-Ups on 10 Reasons for Christian Decline

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Seven lessons learned through dialogue about Christian decline in America.

CHR Comment: The article delivers something other than the first article suggested. It includes seven points of dialogue with persons who read the first article rather than clearly stating seven ways to address Christian decline in America. In the following list, I try to bring out the authors proposed solutions more clearly:

  1. Defend the faith by pointing to its good works rather than using apologetic arguments.
  2. Explain science and Christianity in ways where one does not cancel out the other.
  3. End Christian triumphalism (the suggestion that Christianity has done no wrong).
  4. Disassociate from the Christian Right in politics.
  5. Practice tolerant Christianity toward other religions.
  6. Rediscover the Christian message, which can no longer be a mission to save the world from “dark heathenism.”
  7. Do not promote authoritarian Christianity.

This is an interesting set of suggestions, which shows the author to be a member of the Christian Left in politics. I wonder how Christians on the right and the left might learn from the author’s observations and suggestions? What would your congregation do differently (or not)?

Source: Seven follow-ups on 10 reasons for Christian decline | Religion News Service

Conservative Icon Phyllis Schlafly Dies at 92

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Phyllis Schlafly helped defeat the Equal Rights Amendment.

CHR Comment: Schlafly was a devout Roman Catholic, influenced by her religious convictions to speak up about changes in American culture and law.

Source: Conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly, founder of Eagle Forum, dies at 92

Conscience and Abortion

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“I’m really troubled by the idea that the state can just say … ‘Your religious freedoms don’t matter to us,'” a California pastor says.

CHR Comment: The article describes the affects of current legislation on a church and a hospital employee as well as proposed legislation regarding conscience, another example of the religious liberty issue in American culture.

Source: This Nurse Objects to Being Forced to Help Abort Babies

Conscience and the Legal Fight over Religious Liberty

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The religious right of conscience was once a powerful legal idea. But when weighed against the right for equal treatment in recent gay rights cases, it has consistently lost ground. Part 3 of seven.

CHR Comment: This is an interesting reflection upon current inconsistencies in American law and its application with respect to religious liberty and the right not to violate one’s conscience. It illustrates why this issue continues to be discussed and must be sorted out.

Source: Behind legal fight over religious liberty, a question of conscience – CSMonitor.com

Newest Tourist Attraction to Tap into Christian Curiosity

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The growing Christian tourism industry presents history from a Christian point of view and often is based on a literal interpretation of the Bible.

CHR Comment: The article describes the upcoming opening of a Noah’s Ark exhibit built to biblical scale as well as six other Christian tourism sites that are open now or will open in the next few years. Some sites are like a theme park, others are like a museum.

Source: Newest tourist attraction to tap into Christian curiosity

U.S. Southern Baptists Formally Repudiate Confederate Flag

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The resolution calls for Southern Baptist churches to discontinue displaying the Confederate flag as a “sign of solidarity of the whole Body of Christ.”

CHR Comment: The quotation from the article seems confusing to me (see above). It implies that Southern Baptist churches were displaying the Confederate flag. Perhaps I have not spent enough time in the south but I have never seen a church of any denomination displaying the Confederate flag. No doubt members of Southern Baptist churches have flown the Confederate flag on their own property but that is not the same as raising such a flag over a church. If there is a reader of the blog who is from the south and has actually seen the Confederate flag displayed over a church, please add a comment about that experience.

The Baptists were not the only ones who divided over the issue of slavery. Similar denomination splits occurred among Presbyterians, Lutherans, and perhaps others.

Source: U.S. Southern Baptists Formally Repudiate Confederate Flag

Americans and Europeans on Adultery

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Whereas 84 percent of all Americans believe such behavior would be unacceptable, only 47 percent of all French and 60 percent of all Germans think so.

CHR Comment: The study reveals surprising differences in the views of Americans and Europeans on the topic of adultery. However, as the final story in the article reveals, a complicating factor is that Europeans increasingly do not marry but live together. Without the bond of marriage, opinions about what constitutes adultery may have changed. In America, churches still strongly oppose adultery while liberal churches are changing other moral standards regarding sex.

Source: Americans condemn adultery, but many Europeans don’t — and probably never will – The Washington Post