Comments on: “‘Nones’ On the Rise”

By: Orthodoxdj

Orthodoxdj — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 18:27:11 +0000

I can imagine that there is a lose-lose situation. Suppose Christians retreated from politics and from espousing rules of living and focused on “love.” A generation later a Pew Forum report would show that

“People are turned off by Christianity because it seems to be only concerned with getting to Heaven and not having a political voice.

People also are frustrated with Christians lacking directions because they lack directives. People want to know how to worship God and what to believe.”

Remember John the Baptist being a puritan and Jesus being a drunk?

The challenge for Christians is not being relevant, but rather in being faithful.

By: Nikolai Volk

Nikolai Volk — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 17:25:36 +0000

Gary,

“…fall of literacy; fall of analytical/critical thinking.”

Where’s the warrant/evidence for this? I don’t understand the logic here.

By: Gary Simmons

Gary Simmons — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 06:32:51 +0000

Correlations: rise of ignorance concerning Christianity; fall of literacy; fall of analytical/critical thinking.

By: thomas /dunbar

thomas /dunbar — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 23:21:08 +0000

“Overwhelmingly, they think that religious organizations are too concerned with money and power, too focused on rules and too involved in politics.”

That may be be prevailing opinion; however, anyone has but to attend daily Mass for a couple of weeks to discover none of that is true.

By: Nikolai Volk

Nikolai Volk — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 19:53:46 +0000

Causality here is important. I think, to abridge a quote from Brennan Manning, that a lot of the cause of people moving away from the faith is the Church itself. In a survey recently done of Americans ages 18-25, one of the biggest blanket statements people used to describe Christianity was “anti-gay.” I think that speaks volumes to how mixed up priorities of the church have turned people away from is a philosophically rich and loving community.

By: Jason Taylor

Jason Taylor — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 16:04:47 +0000

People don’t get steamed up about insisting that Minerva did or did not spring from Jove. So Jefferson still has to wait.

By: J. Lou

J. Lou — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 21:12:11 +0000

“And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away [with] all this artificial scaffolding.”

— Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 11 April 1823, Adams-Jefferson Letters, Lestor J. Cappon, ed., II, 594