The Long Slow Death of Religion - The Good Men Project

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Who did Jesus oppose and criticize during His incarnation? The religious leaders at the time. I believe the clear message of Jesus would resound well with today’s youth, the problem is that it has been muddled by human fallibility.

No hatred, only love and acceptance - there was the clear message of Jesus. Unfortunately, I have fallen short of the righteousness of God. The Bible clearly says that I deserve death for my sins. There is absolutely no difference in God’s eyes, based on what I read in the Bible, between me and anyone in the LBGT community. We all need the redemption of Jesus’ death and resurrection that paid the penalty for my sin so that we may have fellowship with Him in this life and the next.

I feel that many times church turns into a “good persons club” which could not be further from the message of the Gospels. It is like an alcoholics anonymous meeting where everyone stands up and says “Hello my name is Tom and I have no problem with alcohol whatsoever, but we should focus on Bob over here who is a complete drunk”.

Jesus ridiculed the religious leaders who practices extensive traditional rituals designed to honor themselves instead of God. We need to be careful we don’t perpetuate similar misconceptions.

Many people are turned away from faith due to a perceived conflict with science, so I appreciate forums such as this one which shown that faith and science are clearly not contradictory.

Hypocrisy is the toughest barrier to overcome. Paul said (Romans 7:15) “For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I.” Unfortunately, there will always be some level of hypocrisy in the Church, we can do our best to minimize it.

In conclusion, if we stuck with the teachings of Jesus, the Church would thrive. Humans, however, by our nature make the message we deliver more complicated.

We may need more of a “Bad Man Project” than a Good Man Project, however, that is a really horrible idea for a new web site.

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Once again a misleading statistic. How many times must this be debunked?

Could you once more? :slight_smile: Which statistic? There are quite a few in there.

Mainline Christians are going down, and Nones are going up.

Conservative/Evangelical Christians are stable.

Most Conservative/Evangelical Christians weren’t sure if they should count Mainline Christians as one of their own in the first place. They are the lease “religious” of all Christians to begin with any ways.

Because there are large and essentially stable subgroups of Christians that are not in decline, there is no reason to think that there is some inevitable death of Christianity, at least in the US.

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As Tim Keller says, Christianity isn’t a religion, it’s a Person.

I think that all Christian can agree that the number of non-Christian Christians continues to climb.:sunglasses:

I agree.

I’ll take your word for the first sentence, and the second seems accurate too.

Sure. The article didn’t quite say that however. These seem like the most relevant statements to your point:

Since 1990, the “nones” have exploded rapidly as a sociological phenomenon—from 10% of U.S. adults, to 15%, to 20%. Now they’ve climbed to 25%, according to a 2016 survey by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). That makes them the nation’s largest faith category, outstripping Roman Catholics (21%) and white evangelicals (16%). They seem on a trajectory to become an outright majority. America is following the secular path of Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan, New Zealand and other modern places. The “Secular Age” is snowballing

Well, an outright majority is 51%–I don’t know.

I think the next ten years will tell us a lot. Do the nones continue the rapid rise? Well, then the writer here may be closer to the truth. If your take is more accurate, I think we should see the nones start to level out.

Now Catholicism and evangelicalism are in the same death spiral. One-tenth of U.S. adults today are ex-Catholics. The Southern Baptist Convention lost 200,000 members in 2014 and 200,000 more in 2015.

I don’t see any support for that based on the numbers on Catholics and broader Evangelicals I see.

There have been a lot of articles pounding this theme lately, no doubt. I think the trends are real, but I’m not expecting “the death of Christianity” either.

https://www.conservapedia.com/Essay:_10_reasons_why_American_atheism_will_see_a_significant_decline

If conservapedia said it, then it must be false :stuck_out_tongue:

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Another look at this, with some breakdowns

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