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The Great Evangelical Decline »

Posted by: Neophile 2 months, 2 weeks ago

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What Baptist leaders have known for years is finally public: The Southern Baptist Convention is a denomination in decline. Half of the SBC's 43,000 churches will have shut their doors by 2030 if current trends continue.

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chuck-the-canuck2 months, 2 weeks ago

I'm hoping that in less than one-hundred years people will have quit buying into the whole idea of religion, at least the ones that have IQ's higher than their body temperature.
I'm hoping that they will look back on all this idiocy the same way we do about the flat-earthers, quaint simpletons.

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  Dionys2 months, 2 weeks ago
  
  "I'm hoping that in less than one-hundred years people will have quit buying into the whole idea of religion, at least the ones that have IQ's higher than their body temperature. "
  Many of the worlds greatest thinkers, most well educated people and those of higher than average intelligence have a religious or spiritual tradition that they follow or hold deep in their hearts.
  My hope is that in less than one-hundred years people like you will stop trying to foment division, hatred and quit embracing the idea of "the other" which does nothing but create disorder, break down community and seperate people from one-another when what is needed is for people to be drawn together.
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    chuck-the-canuck2 months, 2 weeks ago
    
    Hatred, pardon me.
    I'm not a member of a group than blows up abortion clinics or thinks of homosexuals as less than human.
    There is more tangible evidence of the existence of the tooth fairy than there is of a god. At least the tooth fairy hands out money. Your god seems to revel in death and destruction.
    I'll take the tooth fairy any day and when I die I'm going to sugar plum land to live with the fairies.
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      Dionys2 months, 2 weeks ago
      
      "Your god seems to revel in death and destruction. "
      This is your sense of God. Not mine, nor I would suspect a majority of religious.
      "I'm not a member of a group than blows up abortion clinics or thinks of homosexuals as less than human. "
      You find just as many extremists willing to kill/maim/et cetera to carry forth their political point, or atheist point (Chairman Mao, for example). So bzzzt. False logic.
      Those kind of people represent a small minority of religious people. You don't want to be judged as an atheist by Chairman Mao's example, do you? All you atheists do is eat babies and starve millions of farmers to death during your political revolutions.
      As I said -- spreading division, hatred and forwarding the idea of "the other" is all you seem to be good at.
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        chuck-the-canuck2 months, 2 weeks ago
        
        Religion is the last refuge of the weak minded. That Mao was an atheist was just incidental. You don't have to look any farther than the historic Catholic church to find blood thirsty maniacs. Maniacs I might add, that killed because of their faith.
        So there you go. You wouldn't recognize logic if it came up and punched you in head.
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jdhatl2 months, 2 weeks ago

The Christian Right leadership is Stupid, they are losing strength because they are only appealing to Stupid people, most Fundamentalist Christians aren't as stupid as their leaders think they are, they are not against Evolution since it in no way denies the existence of God, they are sick of hating on Gays because a few of their own kids have turned out gay and are not Evil, and mostly, they are sick of the Stupid wars that the Right keeps thrusting upon us all.
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  Dionys2 months, 2 weeks ago
  
  "The Christian Right leadership is Stupid, they are losing strength because they are only appealing to Stupid people, most Fundamentalist Christians aren't as stupid as their leaders think they are, they are not against Evolution since it in no way denies the existence of God, they are sick of hating on Gays because a few of their own kids have turned out gay and are not Evil, and mostly, they are sick of the Stupid wars that the Right keeps thrusting upon us all."
  I think you're right. I think the Christian 'Right' and 'evangelicals' have shot themselves in their own foots by asking their flock to actually read their sacred scriptures. And their flock is noticing that most of the time it doesn't say what their leaders say it says. They're discovering that hatred, division, racism, sexism and hateful prejudice isn't to be found in the example of Christ.
  Let's hope they take the next step.
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ZiegfeldGirl2 months, 2 weeks ago

The Baptist churches where I live are not having a problem. The police actually have to direct taffic when the Baptist services let out, there are so many cars turning left out of the parking lot. And they do this for several of them. One of them has such a problem, the city put in a light.
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  Dionys2 months, 2 weeks ago
  
  Think of it like global warming. Here and there you may have pockets of cooling or snow but overall across the board there is a trend.
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    ZiegfeldGirl2 months, 2 weeks ago
    
    I was just adding my observations. I did not mean to imply it was indicative of the whole.
    And like global warming, you need to look at more factors to determine what exactly is going on. Are they converting to other faiths? Have they decided to worship at home, rather than at church? Are they becoming agnostic? Atheist? Have they really "lost their faith", or have they just lost their faith in the churches? Has regular Sunday attendance just become a chore? Are gas prices influencing their decision not to attend services? Are they over scheduled? Overworked? Putting in overtime? Are their kids in sports that play on Sundays?
    Until you can see the whole picture, you can't assume you know what's going on. You'd have to talk to everyone who stopped attending in order to find that out.
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Charlson2 months, 2 weeks ago

One of the worst things evangelical leaders could have done was to embrace excess wealth and opulence while so many of their followers lived from paycheck to paycheck as the economy started to slide. Another was to seek political power to gather more wealth and opulence. And one more problem was their inability to keep their feet out of their mouths.
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ScrimshawComment removed: User banned.