Hee hee... Ken Ham Lists Top 5 Most Worrisome Trends in American Churches

[trotsky]

http://www.christianpost.com/news/ken-ham-gay-marriage-abortion-atheism-american-churches-pastors-top-five-trends-156675/

Answers in Genesis CEO and President Ken Ham has posted a list of the top five most worrisome trends he sees developing in American churches, identifying liberal pastors and youths rejecting Christianity as some of his biggest concerns.

For those who don't want to have to dig through that, here are the 5 trends:

1. Rejecting the morality of the bible in favor of modern secular morality.
2. Pressure on churches to accept people's right to love and marry whom they choose.
3. Pressure on churches to accept people's right to make their own reproductive choices.
4. Young people leaving the churches in droves.
5. Too much liberal theology (coming from liberal pastors).

LOL, they all sound like pretty good trends to me! Kind of all one big trend when you look at it though. It is funny that conservative and liberal believers, while they both correctly identify and are concerned about the "problem" of young people being less religious than ever, both blame EACH OTHER for that problem. Conservatives think the churches are becoming too liberal, liberals think younger people are rejecting conservative dogma. Fine by me - each will continue to fret as church membership carries on declining, and we as a society improve by becoming less controlled by religious dogma.

[temporary311]

1. Those are some pretty good trends.

The fourth one is probably the best, though.

[TlalocW]

2. I kinda don't buy the number 4 and 5 combination

As you said, conservatives and liberals blame each other for the downturn in church attendance, but here's the thing - I would think conservatives would be more likely to keep looking for another church. We've seen lots of articles about psychological profiles of conservatives that say they need authority figures and some sort of structure in their lives, and I'm sure a lot of them probably like a regular bit of homo-hate backed by the word of God in their lives. If they leave a liberal church, they're more likely to keep looking for a better match. They're not leaving the church.

Liberals on the other probably wouldn't leave liberal churches in droves. They would leave conservative churches - some with a heavy heart, others not so much, but liberals don't have that need of structure like conservatives so they might not be eager to jump in to another church right off. A lot probably come to the conclusion that they don't need the church to follow their religion, or they become agnostic/atheist.

TlalocW

[trotsky]

4. Interestingly, the stats say otherwise.

Last edited Thu Feb 4, 2016, 04:37 PM - Edit history (1)

Some of the more liberal denominations (mainline Protestantism) are the ones losing members faster.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/05/18/mainline-protestants-make-up-shrinking-number-of-u-s-adults/

Additionally, more Americans have been leaving mainline Protestantism than joining the tradition. Nearly one-in-five Americans (19%) were raised in the mainline tradition, but more than half of them (10.4% of all U.S. adults) have left the faith. Meanwhile, 6.1% of Americans have become mainline Protestants after being raised in another tradition. As a result, for every convert to mainline Protestantism, about 1.7 people have left the mainline tradition behind.

Mainline Protestants have one of the lowest retention rates of any major religious tradition, with only 45% of those raised in the faith continuing to identify with it as adults. Young adults are particularly unlikely to stay with mainline churches – just 37% of Millennials who were raised in the mainline tradition still identify with mainline Protestantism.

[Hoppy]

3. #2 is especially troublesome to me.

Who do these people think they are to decide for themselves who to love?



















Yes, Bertha, its sarcasm.

[Cartoonist]

5. I vote for number one

The Bible doesn't contain any real morality. Just a fear of God.