General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums'Empty the Pews' chronicles the 'nurtured insanity' of a fundamentalist upbringing
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/02/empty-the-pews-chronicles-the-nurtured-insanity-of-a-fundamentalist-upbringing/Christianity is improbable. When its cultural presence fades, be that through the Roman Catholic sex-abuse meltdown or because of the Trumping of white evangelicalism, all thats left is disillusionment. Presuppositional theologythe sort of apologetics my late father Francis Schaeffer dealt inonly works if you accept the possibility that some of this (i.e., the entire claim of historical Christianity) might be true. Fewer and fewer people do these days, outside of the initiated and indoctrinated. The grim witness of how Christians have behaved and voted is too heavy a blow for faith in magical thinking to survive.
The Empty the Pews anthology marks a historic moment as a group of younger writers and scholars have come together to record what is happening (and has happened) to their inner lives of faith. What ties these essays together is one idea: history needs record keepers. Bluntly: as the aging, Fox News-loving alternative facts crowd dies out, whats left? Contributors to Empty the Pews and the millions they represent are one answer.
There are some big differences between these contributors and me. They represent a generational shift. Most, though not all, are Gen Xers and Millennials to whom Im the old guy. And none of them had anything like my kind of nepotistic celebrity within evangelicaldom. That said, I find solidarity herein, the solidarity of survivors.
Many people who grew up in evangelical homes will understand me when I say that remembering my own evangelical upbringing seems like an odd and bad dream. Throughout my early childhood, we Schaeffers were busy littering train seats, café tables, and assorted telephone booths all over Europe with luridly illustrated little pamphlets in the local language, in case someone is led to read it, as Dad said. They had titles such as What Must I Do to Be Saved? and Is There a Heaven and Hell? and Where Will I Spend Eternity? Sometimes, as our train roared through Italian or Swiss towns, Dad would fling handfuls of tracts from the window at astonished passersby. The lesson I learned from all this was that there was us (the saved) and them (the lost). This set in motion the us-and-them way of thinking that, transposed decades later to politics, cast Democrats as the lost, deserving of hell, and us Republicans as saved and favored by Godno matter how far our actions strayed from anything remotely Christlike.
alwaysinasnit
(5,075 posts)bobbieinok
(12,858 posts)alwaysinasnit
(5,075 posts)Midnight Writer
(21,802 posts)When waving a Cross is more important than actually serving Christ, when flying an American Flag is more important than actually serving our Nation, when a slogan like MAGA is more important than actually improving our society.
It is little wonder our institutions, of religion, of government, of commerce, all seem hollow.
Interestingly enough, Jung said that society would undergo convulsive change in about 50 years. He wrote that in 1961.
sdfernando
(4,941 posts)He has some really awesome videos on Youtube....Look him up and watch if you're inclined. He also has a good following on Facebook from what I understand. I don't do facebook so I can't say for sure.
hunter
(38,328 posts)There are many other stories about leaving fundamentalism to highlight.
Try Jessica Wilbanks:
https://lithub.com/what-its-like-to-be-rejected-by-your-religious-family/
I personally think the deplorables and their apologists need to be stuffed back into the closets they crawled out of.
I understand them just fine, thank you.
And raw story sucks.
Karadeniz
(22,573 posts)Uunderstood the parables which contain provable truths. They wouldn't have to go over the same things and the religion would be much more interesting...and truer.
Blue_true
(31,261 posts)What about all the "provable" facts that the earth is billions of years old?
Don't get me wrong, I am not one that believes that we are here by random chance. Almost daily I seek to understand the world around me and my place in it, but I do that from the perspective of a Warm Deist. I accept that the earth is billions of years old, but that doesn't mean that there was not an over-arcing "plan" for it's creation. If you think about it, the galaxy that we reside in works similar to the star system that we reside in, only on a grander scale, why is that?
Although I love life, I almost can't wait to die. Why? Because I believe some of the wonderings that I have will be answered then. But unlike you maybe, I don't see my end being in a heaven or hell, and I believe that we create our own evil via the conditions of our hearts, there are no such things as a Satan or demons, those arise within our hearts, hence we have control over them and can choose good over evil.
Ilsa
(61,698 posts)determination, but one devined by evangelicals without concern for science. All of the Christians I know accept the billions figure.