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Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time

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Re: Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time

#521

Post by throwaway0b1 »

xivzgrev wrote: post #273
throwaway0b1 wrote: post #230

This may be a very bad idea. But as (in the words of the at-present top comment) a fundamentalist adhering to scriptural literalism (aka a conservative Lutheran) [addendum: who does not hate everyone], I feel compelled to offer to answer questions anyone might have for me, so AMA. I don't really want to individually respond to everything throughout the rest of the comments, but I will begin by saying that most church…

Here’s some to kickstart things. Genuinely curious 1) did you grow up in the church you currently belong to or did you join later? If the former, did you ever explore other ones? Why/why not? 2) there can be doubt about what the Bible literally says given the number of authors, editors, and time involved. For example, someone chose x word when translating to English, that also could have meant y. Or, x book was inclu…

1. Grew up there.

2a. "Verbal inspiration" - while the words were written by people and they certainly did recount their experiences in their own styles (perhaps involving consulting others who had been there), but God (through the Holy Spirit) breathed into them the words they were to write (cf. 2 Timothy 3:16). Basically God's not going to be like "eh oh well whatever if the Bible just goes away."

2b. Translation is, inherently, inexact. This is why it's good for pastors to learn Greek and Hebrew; but there are two main points I'd like to make here. The first is that while not all of the meaning may be conveyed perfectly, there is a lot of effort that has been put into ensuring that the essence will remain there. The second is that, when the meaning may be initially unclear, let Scripture interpret Scripture.

2c. As for which books are included and which are not, I haven't researched this enough to give a thorough answer.

3. Laws are divided into three categories: civil, ceremonial, and moral. Civil is laws to govern the nation of Israel, which don't apply today. Ceremonial laws related to the worship life of Israel. Jesus is, in essence, the fulfillment of these laws (cf. Romans 10:4, Acts 15); as such, we are no longer required to follow them. This leaves the moral law, God's will for believers. Most of the 10 commandments fall into this category (as summarized further by Jesus saying "love God and love your neighbor"). Anyway (as pointed out below), Jesus kept the entire law because we, with our sinful nature, cannot.

4. I'm lucky enough to have a church that believes what I believe near me; regular bible studies and a few online devotions that I follow also help.

This was a but rushed to finish; sorry. Feel free to follow up.

Re: Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time

#522

Post by tdozi »

coliveira wrote: post #349
m0llusk wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My own experience being raised mainline Protestant was a bit different which might be illustrative: My parents were not at all devout, but still took wisdom and moral lessons from the Bible, especially from the teachings of Jesus. At the same time the preachers in town leaned right in their beliefs and focused on reading and interpreting more obscure passages. This resulted in a modest ongoing tension about what exac…

This demonstrates the big flaw of Christianity. Even thought there are millions of sincere, loving and friendly Christians around the world, the whole thing is based around a book that espouses views that are exactly what you call fundamentalism. Sooner or later someone will be confronted with the fundamentalist ideas about women, non-christians, and sexual diversity (for example), and start spreading the hate ideas…

I would posit that the most fundamental idea in the Bible is that humanity has fundamentally continued to be selfish and prideful while God has continually chosen to extend grace and keep his promises to people (mainly covered in the Old Testament). He dis this to the ultimate extent by living with us and dying on the cross so that all of the promises could be fulfilled once and for all (new testament).

It is exactly the selfish and prideful that decide to leverage select words/passages/ideas out of context for their own power over others rather than their inward correction of self.

Lastly, I’d add that many of the passages/letters written were to the audience of CHRISTIANS. I bible doesn’t really demand that non-Christians apply any of this to their lives until the first foundational stone is set. Paul even writes to this effect in 1st Corinthians.

Re: Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time

#523

Post by captainredbeard »

hacknat wrote: post #493

Correction: Since the 1940s "For the first time" is probably not true. This is since Gallup tracked this number. Post WWII church attendance really sky rocketed for reasons that are still not fully understood, but a lot of people think the emergence of the Evangelical movement bears a lot of the responsibility. It's much harder to track pre-WWII numbers, but according to the "Mapping America's Past" authors[1] church…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Awakening

Re: Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time

#524

Post by tstrimple »

dcolkitt wrote: post #466
gonehome wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up mainline Protestant too before throwing it away (I was young ~12 which makes it easier). My objection is to the broken nature of the reasoning and how that tends to corrupt evidence based reasoning elsewhere most of them time (though weirdly not always - people are inconsistent). If the fundamentalists are a problem, maybe there’s a problem with the fundamentals? Obviously religious people remain the vast m…

> Obviously religious people remain the vast majority and being a good person or not is largely disconnected from religiousness. Religiosity is highly inversely correlated with criminality amount Americans.[1] Religious people also donate significantly more money to charity. To a large extent religious participation does seem to make people behave more pro-socially. It's certainly not the only way to promote ethical…

> Religious people also donate significantly more money to charity.

Religious people donate significantly more to their churches. Whether that's charity which actually goes on to help people is highly variable. You can say we haven't really figured out how to replace them, but to me it seems pretty clear. Replace a patchwork of "charities" with an actual support network which works for everyone and not just parishioners. Fund it through taxes. You know, the was every single other developed nation in the world handles things. The whole "charity is just as good as sound policy" thing has never panned out and is why we have so many medical bankruptcies as just one example.

Re: Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time

#525

Post by [deleted] »

jaywalk wrote: post #398
EliRivers wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

where is the pull for good old family values? That's a term that everyone interprets their own way, without even realising that they have different values to the person standing next to them; different people's "family values" can conflict in significant and very incompatible ways. So what are "good old family values"? If your young, unmarried daughter falls pregnant, should you cast her out or should you double-down…

Good old family values would discourage young, unmarried women from getting pregnant in the first place. That is absolutely not how society works today, so let's start there instead of your absurd example.

[deleted]

Re: Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time

#526

Post by phd514 »

throwaway0b1 wrote: post #230

This may be a very bad idea. But as (in the words of the at-present top comment) a fundamentalist adhering to scriptural literalism (aka a conservative Lutheran) [addendum: who does not hate everyone], I feel compelled to offer to answer questions anyone might have for me, so AMA. I don't really want to individually respond to everything throughout the rest of the comments, but I will begin by saying that most church…

I think it's helpful to point out that the Bible contains a variety of types of literature including historical narrative, poetry, etc., some of which uses figurative language that is not intended to be taken literally.

We all understand this when we use modern language such as "sunrise" which is not literally true (the sun does not actually "rise" in the sky though it appears that way to the casual observer) even though we're educated enough to understand basic astronomical phenomena such as the rotation of the earth giving rise to daytime and nighttime.

A Biblical literalist who takes figurative language in the Bible literally would end up making the same mistake that someone taking "sunrise" literally would. This is not at all an attempt to classify as figurative language all controversial or supernatural claims of the Bible (its claim that Jesus was crucified, buried, and raised from the dead is clearly supernatural and impossible to classify as figurative), but so many of the lists of contradictory claims in the Bible rely on wooden interpretations of what is pretty clearly figurative language.

Re: Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time

#527

Post by AnimalMuppet »

cableshaft wrote: post #208
whiddershins wrote: post #89

In my opinion the main problem for religion right now is the failure to explain their arguments at the highest intellectual level, publicly, consistently. Once I was exposed to better theology and philosophy of Christianity I was blown away. Edward Feser’s ‘The Last Superstition’ helped open this up. I have no idea why the level of discourse is on average so primitive, I think church leaders have been systematically…

I grew up Protestant but have considered myself Agnostic for a while. However, lately I've been having the urge to dig into spirituality more, as I'm starting to suspect there can be something there, it's just that, except for a single sermon I sat in about people destroying natural rock formations that have been around for millions of years on a whim (yeah the pastor actually said millions of years), I haven't found…

Francis Schaeffer, He Is There And He Is Not Silent.

Re: Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time

#528

Post by ramraj07 »

brundolf wrote: post #348
ramraj07 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Stance on abortion among your brothers in church? As if brothers should even have one that matters? 2. Do you follow the edict that if you’re not baptist then by definition you go to hell? How do you reconcile this with having friends or anyone at all you care about who are then going to hell? Point is, I’m not sure there is any middle ground that’s acceptable. I don’t come here as an atheist, just as someone who’…

> Point is, I’m not sure there is any middle ground that’s acceptable. I grew up fundamentalist, then swung hard atheist, then ended up, as one friend who went to seminary described it, "the most christian atheist he's ever met". I've known Christians ignorant and intellectual, hateful and openly loving, urban and rural, liberal and conservative, and everything in-between. Here's my take: A healthy faith is not about…

You say that most Protestants are loving people but that doesn’t seem to be the case at least in the US. Evangelicals are not the only group to vote republican/trump, but they are the vast majority. Very few Christians seem to see the problems (fundamental ones) with that regime but just want to vote for a madman because their goals are met at the expense of literal death and suffering (see Birx’s statements from yesterday).

Again to iterate, it’s not just Christians who voted and continue to vote for him, it’s also a bunch of other people, but the common denominator seems to be an undertone of selfishness and heartlessness, people who are afraid of everyone else and want their life to not change the world be dammed, so yeah can’t really see anyone supporting this ideology to be a good person.

Re: Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time

#529

Post by [deleted] »

anonAndOn wrote: post #514

The comedian Emo Philips has a well-known joke about religion that may explain some of the decline in membership... "Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?" He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me…

[deleted]

Re: Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time

#530

Post by ScaredOfDying »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #145

Late 30s here who was dragged to church by parents and grandparents but who isn't exposing our kids to religion. It’s pretty straightforward for us: you don’t need fairy tales to be a good person and to come to terms with death (which comes for everyone). “Be happy, be kind.” If others choose to observe, that’s their choice.

Do you have any advice/resources for coming to terms with death as a non-believer?

I've had existential dread for as long as I remember, but it's gotten far worse as I've slowly lost what faith I had over the years.

There's a certain irony in being so scared of death that it ruins your life.

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