Does US Christianity Have a Commitment to Peace?

September 27, 2016 in News by RBN Staff

 

Source: WHTT | By  

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Many Americans who respect Jesus’ words and acts, have been opting out of our churches for years. This is an obvious, but unspoken conclusion one can draw from the latest Pew Poll.  Let us first look at the numbers, then at our view of the cause of the decline in American church going, and the very encouraging exceptions.

Christianity in America is on the skids.  It claims to stand on the spiritual truths found in its Bible, but except for a few churches that we will be writing about in this series, most no longer stands for tough issues that Jesus Christ, Paul of Tarsus proclaimed.  The most obvious vacuum is their leaders failure to even mention ‘peacemakers” as a value. Talk about peace is all but absent in most churches today.  Few leaders we have met and observed why teaching about and praying for peace is all but forbidden in most.

The venerable and respected Pew Foundations tells us: Christians Decline Sharply as Share of Population; Unaffiliated and Other Faiths Continue to GrowThe Christian share of the U.S. population is declining, while the number of U.S. adults who do not identify with any organized religion is growing, according to an extensive new survey by the Pew Research Center, which tells us:

“The share of Americans who do not identify with a religious group is surely growing: While nationwide surveys in the 1970s and ’80s found that fewer than one-in-ten U.S. adults said they had no religious affiliation, fully 23% now describe themselves as atheists, agnostics or ‘nothing in particular.’”

Pew pollsters suggest that “none of the above” has simply become “more socially acceptable” than it use to be.  Your author thinks quite the opposite is true.  This suggests that people are sheep, herded to church on Sunday morning because the neighbors go. We observe that “the neighbors” are staying home in mass because the church if failing to provide them with a any explanation of the reality they live in. Rather it provides a temporary escape from the realty they face on Monday morning after the NFL goes odd the air.

 

Your editor does not think this decline comes from Christianity being to tough to live, but the very reverse.  It has become too easy to be a Christ Follower.  From the Zionist Christian right that dream and prepares for Jesus triumphant return, hopefully in their lifetime, to the protestant mainline and Catholics, who have learned to give entertainment and ask very little but money.  Most of all, Christ followers are excused from responsibility for the acts of our government. Be these act of omission where government forgets about a group disadvantaged group, or be it wars that pulverize a week opponent into the stone age of starvation and depravity while its resources are privatized into friendly hands, we are not required to know, look, hear or care.  We are told to focus on our afterlife.  If there is a disquieting flock of homeless person on our doorstep that is where responsibility ends.

Never mind the million war refugees who were so lucky as to have landed in Europe where they are visible, to say nothing of the many millions more who can not even start to get out of Syria, Libya, Palestine, Afghanistan and Sudan.

One problem is Tax exempt status which no on wants to risk.  Pastors who own or control churches know they must not risk it be being too “political.”  and they are trained to know that if race is involved to stand-off.  It isn’t worth the worry to get involved in Syria, or even mention it exists, say nothing of the imprisoned Philistines and their overlords, Israel.  whatever you do, do not mention Israel and those ugly Arabs. “Anti-Semite is a label waiting for any churchman who sides with an Arab, even a Christian one.

Neo-Christianity, called Christian Zionism Proclaims Radical Chrstianity

America’s Changing Religious Landscape

Increasing Racial and Ethnic Diversity Within Christianity