Chapter # 3 Honest Criticism of Christianity

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Billy Rojas

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May 30, 2019, 1:33:05 PM5/30/19
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Chapter  # 3

Honest Criticism of Christianity



What happens when people stop believing?


In the past year approximately 8,000 churches in the United States closed their doors.
Although some of these churches were conservative most were not. And this has
been the pattern for 'liberal Christianity' for more than 30 years. Now the same
phenomenon is emerging on the Religious Right.

Some of what will be said here applies to both religious conservatives as well
as religious liberals. But the hemorrhaging is worse on the Left, indeed,
"liberal Christianity" is dying.

There isn't any question about it even if the carnage is worse in some locations
and "not too bad" in others.

One thing to say about Rev. Bryant is that he has found a way to remain relevant
in the world and even to appeal to people who ordinarily would not be expected
to pay much attention to his church or to liberal Christian religion. He has done this,
in large part, through his interfaith outreach program which brings together not only
members of his Disciples of Christ congregation, but local Buddhists, Hindus, Jews,
Baha'is, Muslims, Sikhs, Wiccans, Goddess devotees, and whomever else
is moved by the spirit to participate in monthly ecumenical services.
Indeed, it is rather remarkable to see such diverse people meet together
to share their faith with others.

Still, there is a problem. Besides generating a lot of warm fuzzies it is a mystery what,
exactly, does this monthly scaled-down version of the World Parliament of Religions
accomplish?  And the mix is unstable. If the Muslims in attendance are Sufis there
may not be much to worry about but what happens when there is a Saudi imam
in the crowd? As there sometimes is.

The local Saudi has a strategy for dealing with non-Muslims in America:  Its called
taqqiya, he lies through his teeth about orthodox Islam and is more then willing to
present it as if it was a branch of  Presbyterianism, peaceful and based on love
and understanding. That kind of Islam cannot exist outside of the USA or maybe
places like Canada or Australia, but that is all that is necessary. The kind-hearted
souls at First Christian Church don't know any better, Rev Bryant pretends not to
know any better, most of the members of other faiths don't know any better,
and all is well.

But a significant percentage of the young do know better and those that do
aren't fooled by Rev. Bryant's monthly kumbaya gatherings.

As maybe you can tell, I'm not exactly much of a fan of religious illiteracy.

Harvey Cox has made the point that there are structural problems in any interfaith
get-together: Who decides what the consensus of the group really is for any given
issue?  And we have seen this ever since 1893 at the World Parliament of Religion
in Chicago at the Columbian Exposition when  Christians, Jews, Buddhists,
Hindus, Taoists, and still others were trying to issue a common resolution about
the future of interfaith co-operation. The Christians were convinced that it was
all about the workings of the liberal Protestant version of the Holy Spirit, the
Buddhists were sure that it was all about the truths of Buddhism, and so forth,
for the Hindus, Jews, Taoists,  and everyone else.

How do you give interfaith co-operation purpose and how do you persuade people
to work together for common goals?

I am impressed that Rev Bryant has been able to take matters as far as he has;
somebody else in charge, and the whole project might have fallen apart, years ago.
But it is difficult in extremis to see where this can possibly go next. Which is also
a problem of "liberal Christianity" wherever it may still flourish in America.
Even when it is relatively successful at something like Dan Bryant's monthly
interfaith gatherings, what do you do with it? 

But there are far more serious problems than trying to find ways to use
an interfaith program for productive purposes.

The young have a distinctive critique of religion and it would make the best sense
to seek to understand the basis of their views rather than to play make-believe
as if there really are no problems and everything will work out for the best
if you only give things enough time.

That's not how the world works. You may be able to find a few exceptions to this rule
but that is all you could possibly find, a few exceptions.  Otherwise everything
is moving in the opposite direction.

Some Christians are taking a close look at the problem but to try and generalize about
the efforts of believers within normative Christian churches, it is literally impossible for
them to arrive at answers that really deal with core issues. They are wedded to some
version of Christian orthodoxy (lower case) and cannot think outside this box.
Instead they offer one band-aid after another to try and heal compound fractures
or virulent illnesses or traumatic head injuries.

Yes, its that bad.

Of course, some of the problems within the larger problem of mass exodus from the Church
can be more-or-less adequately dealt with using bandages and ointments. In a surprising
number of cases the young quit church mostly because of issues with a pastor. Perhaps
a priest or minister or preacher is too wishy-washy, or excessively intolerant, or
maybe he sounds uneducated.  These kinds of issues can be remedied by simply
replacing one pastor with someone else, at least if the new clergyman does not have
his own severe limitations. But there is only so far to take this approach;
the reasons why many pastors are inadequate are the real culprits in the drama,
and unless Christians address larger questions even a change of pastor
doesn't fix much of anything. Or only provides a stopgap, a 'time out,'
or, to put it crudely, "kicking the can down the road."

Why is a pastor timid with no backbone?  Is it because he  -could be "she" in some
denominations- was born a coward or is it because he finds himself in a classic dilemma,
understanding the depth of the problems that need to be confronted but hamstrung
by the fact that he must defend a theology that denies the realities that are causing the
problems in the first place.  In other words, there is a crying need to stand up against
secular evil but church doctrine says that you  must approach all issues prayerfully
Even if, so to speak, you simply can't solve the problem of violent homosexual attacks
against churches by kindness and gentle persuasion when the sanctuary is burning down.
About which, if this metaphor seems excessive,  I have written a still unpublished book,
The Homosexual War Against Christianity,  that documents the many homosexual
attacks against churches across America in the past two decades

But this is only one example of problems that cannot be solved simply by  replacing
one pastor with another. There are many more.

Anyway, there are two very different issues here because, while conservative Christians
may well accept the fact that there is a problem but are unable to address it adequately
because their theology is dysfunctional, which they can never admit,  "liberal" Christians
cannot solve many problems because they are in denial; for instance, they are pro-homosexual
and how can they  condemn those who they are trying to win over to their religious agenda?
So any real world problems along these lines are minimized or explained away or deflected
by criticizing conservatives with ad hominem attacks   -as if the real reason that churches
are being invaded and vandalized is because of those nasty Religious Rightists
who make homosexuals angry.  Poof, the problem is gone.

Except that it is just as real as it ever was. After all, conservative Christians have made
all sorts of people upset over the years. Evolutionary biologists. Educational reformers.
Catholics. Atheists. You name it. But there have been no physical attacks against churches
by biologists or Atheist humanists or anyone else that I can think of. Discounting miscellaneous
individual criminals who burn down churches, -usually in such cases there is a racial factor-
just about all the physical violence is perpetrated by homosexuals.

-----


We are awash in false hypotheses about what is happening.  An excellent article that
discusses this matter is a June 26, 2018 publication by Jana Riess at the Flunking Sainthood
website, entitled: "Why millennials are really leaving religion (it’s not just politics, folks)."
The article was also featured at Religion News Service.

Here is how Riess begins the essay:

"A couple of decades ago, when young adults began showing their dissatisfaction
with organized religion by voting with their feet, it was fashionable for pundits to say
this was happening because those religions weren’t conservative or demanding enough."


"Because the exodus was initially most pronounced among liberal, mainline Protestants

like Episcopalians and Presbyterians, it was easy to point at liberalism as the root

of the problem. If churches just held fast to their standards, the thinking went, they

would be fine, because strictness was what the masses secretly wanted. People craved

firm boundaries. Conservatives, you will not be surprised to hear, were the most ardent

supporters of this “strict churches” theory, which assured them they were already

doing the most important things right."


But now this model of religious change in America is falling apart. Conservative churches
are also losing members in increasing numbers.  The Southern Baptists have lost the most,
about a million in the last decade, but just about all other groups are also bleeding profusely.

This fact has led to the rise of a new theory that is favorable to the Religious Left.
It goes like this:  Evangelical Christianity has shot itself in the foot, or in both feet,
because of its " relentless pursuit of a conservative political agenda. “Political alienation”
theory says that churches that have waged war against LGBT rights or supported
Donald Trump are reaping the fallout: Millennials want nothing to do with them."

Not that this theory isn't partly true. Yes, the young are abandoning Evangelical churches,
and one factor definitely is antipathy toward rather thoughtless opposition to various
social cause of the Left that have become unarguable for most young people of most
religious persuasions, Right as well as Left.

I think  -and strongly believe- that the issue of homosexual rights can be turned around
dramatically and in a fairly short period of time, but setting that aside for now, 
about other issues the young have good reasons for their disaffection with the Religious Right.
More and more the young who grow up in Evangelical churches regard their elders as living
on a different planet. But where are they going when they quit church?

Nowhere. They are not converting to anything else. Overwhelmingly they are
identifying with the so-called "nones," with the spiritual (or more-or-less spiritual)
unaffiliated. And that is what is wrong:

" If the political alienation theory fully explained what’s going on in American religion,
millennials would be leaving conservative religions in favor of ones that are
liberal and LGBT-affirming."


"Instead, folks are just leaving religion, full stop. Especially if they’re young."


What does explain this phenomenon?

"The problem is that the real explanation for this should be called the
“it’s complicated” theory, and complications make for crappy headlines.
Everybody wants simple answers, and the answers just aren’t simple."

Which is a good theory; and it eliminates any thought of over-simplification.
It has been pointed out that people leave religions for different reasons,
one person to the next, that no single factor can predict whether a church
will grow or fail, and so forth down a long list of reasons to exit religion
or exit a religion, and it is about time that we acknowledge how complex the
process of disaffiliation really is.  However, as true as Riess' observations are,
and they are all true as far as I can tell,  her "solution" to the problem is
not really a good solution because it leaves out what is most important
and most interesting,

According to Riess what Christian churches are up against are three things:

Delayed marriage and more single adults.
As William Dinged noted in the August 28, 2018, edition of America,
the Jesuit publication:  "As the family goes, so goes the church."

Fertility
Married people these days are having fewer kids than in previous generations
and childless couples, common for the first years of many marriages,
are less likely to be religious than other people.

Growth of the Nones
This means that a tipping point has been reached, there is a critical mass of
unchurched people in society now and what in former times might have been
social stigmatism for being unaffiliated, is gone almost everywhere now.
It is "safe" to be religion-less and therefore more people than ever before
are shedding their faiths.

All true but also an incomplete accounting of what we need to worry about.

For a comprehensive look at the problem we might turn to a lengthy article
by J. Warner published at the Cold Case Christianity website early this year
under the title: "UPDATED: Are Young People Really Leaving Christianity?"

What this consists of are a series of  short reviews of various research projects,
including books, that are intended to help believers understand why so many
young people are deserting formal Christian faith. The article contains the reviews
as Warner presented them; these are only selected reviews which are shorter still,
or only feature titles .

Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton,  Soul Searching: The Religious and
Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, 2005. "Book Findings- The majority of teenagers
are incredibly inarticulate about their faith, religious beliefs and practices, and its place
in their lives." Their actual religion is pretty much a form of Deism that does not
include a personalized savior although it has a morality, but the purpose of life
is simply to be happy. They are very tolerant of other religions.

Kenda Creasy Dean, Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling
the American Church, 2010. Book Findings:  The young dislike spineless people
who are afraid to take stands on important issues.


Ligonier Ministries and Lifeway Research, The State of Theology, 2015.
Study Findings: " Young people who identify themselves as Christians are
far more likely to hold views that aren’t Christian."

The Institute for Jewish & Community Research Review – Staff,
Study Findings:
“Most Faculty Believe in God, but Atheism Is Significantly More Prevalent
among Faculty Than the General Public."
"Faculty Feel Warmly about Most Religious Groups, but Feel Coldly about
Evangelicals and Mormons."
"Faculty have positive feelings toward Jews, Buddhists, Catholics, and Atheists."
"Although Faculty Generally Oppose Religion in the Public Sphere, Many Endorse
the Idea That Muslims Should Express Their Religious Beliefs in American Politics."

Barry A. Kosmin, Egon Mayer, and Ariela Keysar,  American Religious Identification Survey.,
2001 / 2010.  Study Findings: In 1980 some 85% of Americans self-identified as Christians;
that number is now around 76%.

Gallop National Poll , Five Key Findings on Religion in the U.S., 2016. There still aren't many
white Americans who profess a non-Christian religion, around 5%.  However, this seems
somewhat low and might reflect Mr. Gallup's pro-Christian sentiments; still, a best guess
would not put the number much higher than 7% or 8% or thereabouts.


Pinkney, T.C., Remarks to the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee, Nashville,
Tennessee. Southern Baptist Convention Data. Study findings:  Between 70% and 88%
of Southern Baptist young people quit their religion within 2 years from
graduating high school.

Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton,Soul Searching: The Religious and
Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, 2005. Book Findings: "Students leave faith behind
primarily because of intellectual doubt and skepticism," Typical sentiments:  “It didn’t
make any sense anymore.” “Some stuff  is too far-fetched for me to believe.”

Josh McDowell,  David H. Bellis, The Last Christian Generation, 2006.
Book Findings:  "63% of teenaged Christians don’t believe that Jesus is the Son of
the one true God. 51% don’t believe that Jesus rose from the dead. 68% don’t believe
that the Holy Spirit is a real entity."

Dayton A. Kingsriter, Assemblies of God Study, 2007.  Study Findings: "Between 50%
and 66.7% of Assemblies of God young 
people who attend a non-Christian public
or private university will have left the faith 
four years after entering college."

LifeWay Research and Ministry Development,   LifeWay Research Study , 2007
Study Findings: "70% will leave the faith in college. Only 35% eventually return."

Steve Wright, InQuest Ministries, Inc.  Rethink: Is Student Ministry Working?  2007.
Book Findings: 63% don’t believe Jesus is the Son of the one true God. 58% believe
all faiths teach equally valid truths. 51% don’t believe Jesus rose from the dead.
65% don’t believe Satan is a real entity. 68% don’t believe the Holy Spirit is a real entity."

of Emerging Adults...2009. Book Findings: Among young adults only 15% say
their faith is vitally important to them in their lives; many have religious views
but 30% say that they prefer to "customize their faith."
David Kinnaman, You Lost Me: Why Young Christians are Leaving Church and
Rethinking Faith, 2011.  Book Findings: Nearly three out of every five
young Christians disconnect from their churches after the age of 15.

Pew Research Center, Choosing a New Church or House of Worship,  2015.
Study Findings: "Many ...respondents who mention ‘science’ as the reason
they do not believe in religious teachings."

Betsy Cooper, Ph.D., Daniel Cox, Ph.D., Rachel Lienesch, Robert P. Jones, Ph.D.,
Public Religious Research Institute,  Exodus: Why Americans are Leaving Religion
and Why they're Unlikely to Come Back. 2016.  
Study Findings: most Americans who leave their childhood religion do so before
reaching adulthood. 79% percent of young adults age 18 to 29 who become religiously
unaffiliated report making this decision during their adolescent and teen years

Larry Barnett, Next Generation Project, NextGen Research, 2016.
Study Findings: Young people "who are highly educated, knowledgeable, high-achieving,
technologically engaged individuals who may have religiously diverse friends
are the most likely to leave the faith."

Langer Research Associates, ABC News / Washington Post Religious Affiliation Poll,  2018.


Saint Mary’s Press Catholic Research Group and The Center for Applied Research
in the Apostolate at Georgetown University,Going, Going, Going Gone: The Dynamics
of Disaffiliation in Young Catholics, 2018.






This is less than half of the research studies examined by Warner but it should be enough
to make it clear that many religious groups are deeply concerned.  Still, we are left with
the question: How do we make sense of the information?


What ought to be noticed is that some  theories about church growth and decline have, in fact,
been true for a limited period of time, only to then become irrelevant. This was borne out
as long ago as 1993 in an article by Benton Johnson, Dean R. Hoge & Donald A. Luidens,
published at the  First Thing website,  "Mainline Churches: The Real Reason for Decline."
The writers outlined the most well known theories only to conclude that whatever may
have been true in the past  -decline due to church indifference to the suffering of black
people or other disadvantaged groups, or the appeal of "strong religion" based on
traditional beliefs which "Liberal churches" do not follow any  more, these days
(back in the 1990s), hence fundamentalists can poach away their members,  hardly anyone
who quits tells reporters that their reasons have anything to do with the premises of
the theories."  [Emphasis added]

That is, available evidence says that there is some truth to the theories, hence a pick-up
of about 6% for the most conservative churches at the expense of more liberal groups,
and occasional comments about social justice issues, yet these things basically reflect past
concerns that persist as survivals.

When all is said, the single most important factor for mainline decline was something
altogether different, "liberal Christians" no longer believe in the basic tenets
of Christian faith.  And the more they disbelieve the more likely they are to
crease participating in any church.

As the authors put it:
"When we asked our sample of confirmands why they had dropped out of church
we found virtually no support either for the theory that the church has become
"socially irrelevant" or for the theory that church decline represents a protest against
the radical agenda of denominational elites....The vast majority said nothing
about these matters."

Interestingly, education seems to have  little to do with dropping out, although
the authors may have misinterpreted their data.  That is, when you control for
educational attainment, viz, college grads vs. everyone else, liberals and conservatives
in America have about the same amount of schooling. What is different are the
kinds of courses people on the Left gravitate to vs the kinds of classes favored
by people who sympathize with the political Right. That is, even a few humanities
courses may shape someone's philosophy of life in ways that someone else
who takes classes in geography or photography for their electives do not experience.
Hume or George Bernard Shaw may move you to the Left, maps of Europe or pictures
of cowgirls in Montana have no political impact and allow people to retain
their conservative views unchallenged.

But since the study did not make this distinction it cannot be taken further here.

At any rate, what is obvious is that Christian orthodoxy is less and less credible.
As the study said:  "Active baby boom mainliners tend to be liberal on one issue
and conservative on another. Our findings lead us to suspect that today's culture war
within the mainline Protestant denominations is waged mainly by national elites
and only rarely engages the attention and the passions of ordinary church members."

"We found no evidence that a substantial portion of these people are deeply concerned
with religious questions or have explored a variety of religious options."  The Presbyterians
in the study  -pretty much representative of other "liberal" Christian groups- didn't go away
in "search of salvation or enlightenment; they left because religion itself had become low
on their list of personal priorities."

What is amazing is how alienated from Christianity itself most "liberal Christians"
actually are. As the report continued:

"Ninety-five percent of the drop-outs who describe themselves as religious

do not believe it. And amazingly enough, fully 68 percent of those who are

still active Presbyterians don't believe it either."


There has been a good deal of discussion about "cafeteria Catholicism" in recent years;
what is really at issue is cafeteria Lutheranism, cafeteria Methodism, cafeteria Anglicanism,
and cafeteria Presbyterianism as well.  Among regular church-goers a common theme on
the subject of what they actually believe can be summed up in the phrase "pick and choose"
to describe their faith. No less than 60% of regular church-goers, people who self-describe
themselves as genuine Christians, take the view that "all the different religions of the world
are equally good ways of helping a person find ultimate truth." For people who  seldom
attend, the figure is probably much higher.

What this means is that most "liberal Christians" reject the view "that
 Christianity is the only religion with a valid claim to truth."

What else is true of Christians who are part of the Religious Left  is that their opinions
do "not reflect any of the theological systems contained in the writings or seminary lectures
of today's post-orthodox Christian intellectuals. Our interviewees did not speak the language
of liberation theology, feminist theology, or the theology of Presbyterian General Assembly
pronouncements."  Instead "their faith is largely a homemade product, a kind of modern-age
folk religion. Unlike contemporary evangelicalism or other versions of Christian orthodoxy,

lay liberalism is not a highly elaborated or richly developed system of thought."


Most liberal Christians say that they "prefer Christianity to other faiths, but they are unable

to ground their preference in strong truth claims." That is, about religion they are sloppy

thinkers who have little concern about consistency or coherence in their beliefs.


For them, as some respondents said,  Christianity is "true for me," and that's pretty much it.

Buddhism is true for Buddhists, Taoism is true for Taoists, and so forth.


Which is also to say that these people are basically uninformed about the content

of other faiths, that is, are as ignorant of those religions as they are of their own,


But there is one thing they do know, namely, that they need some kind of core of faith

because otherwise they end up as nihilists, believing in nothing. Thus they make

a lot out of a little, that "little" being ethics, or, to stretch a point, a modern form

of morality. Hence even unchurched Presbyterians by overwhelming majorities,

above 90%, want their children to have some kind of religious education.

They see the church as having one vital function, inculcating the right kind

of values in people. Even 70% of agnostics who long ago stopped considering

themselves as Christians also want their kids of have at least minimal

education in Christian religion. Which may not be as true today as it was

in the 1990s but which nonetheless is still a factor.


Regardless, by any normative historic standards, modern-day "liberal Christianity"

is a flagrant heresy. Such "believers" do not believe in the existence of Hell,

in the existence of the Devil, in inspired revelation, in the existence of sin

even as they go about sinning in their daily lives, in the authority of the Bible,

in the social values taught in the New Testament, and much else.


Few have a good idea of what their parents believe by way of religion,

not beyond some commonplaces, anyway, and most have few friends

who are members of the church they attend. Basically religion, for these people,

has devolved into something that a family can identify with, something

to experience during holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas, maybe Easter,

but not something to think about in any depth or to talk about as if it had

significant meaning.


What it all boils down to is that 'Christian liberalism'  is "not an empowering system

of belief but rather a set of conjectures..."  For these reasons it "does not inspire

the kind of conviction that creates strong religious communities." Nor does it inspire

much by way of evangelizing spirit, few such 'Christians' ever try to convert anyone

to their religion and as far as evangelization  goes, they usually object to the endeavors

of conservative Christians to witness for Christ and they regard the efforts of,

say, Mormon missionaries or Baptist evangelists, as an annoyance. 


"Many of them have reduced the Christian faith to belief in God and respect for Jesus

and the Golden Rule, and among this group a growing proportion have

little need for the church."


"In response to the currents of modernity, denominational leaders promoted ecumenism

and dialogue, but they did not devise or promote compelling new versions

of a distinctively Christian faith. "


And so, what is left is next-to-nothing. There's no there, there. That's the real problem.

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