current | archives | profile | notes | contact | rings | host




What Christian revivalism?

August 05, 2005 ~ 3:14 p.m.

There's a surfeit of talk in the media about how sturdily religious a nation America is. Every week, there seems to be an expos� in some newspaper or magazine detailing the rise of evangelic Christianity in the States, especially in the wake of 9/11.

If this is really true, then it represents a huge sea-change of will: An ARIS study found that Christianity in the U.S. declined from 86 percent in 1990 to 77 percent in 2001. To get back to at least 86 percent again, 9 percent had to have said "Oh my God" on that dark day�and meant it.

George Barna of The Barna Group has reported that, "There does not seem to be revival taking place in America. Whether that is measured by church attendance, born-again status, or theological purity, the statistics simply do not reflect a surge of any noticeable proportions," and also that "evangelicals remain just 7 percent of the adult population. That number has not changed since the Barna Group began measuring the size of the evangelical public in 1994 ... less than one out of five born again adults (18 percent) meet the evangelical criteria."

Contemporary figures are still bearing this trend out. The National Opinion Research Center's General Social Survey of 2004 stated that "the number of Protestants soon will slip below 50 percent of the nation's population." A 2002 USA Today/Gallup poll revealed that 50 percent considered themselves religious, while 33 percent said they were "spiritual but not religious." Which is pretty much where this trend toward Christian revivalism seems to be coming from. While our born-again Protestant President nominates a devout Catholic for the Supreme Court, America reflects on its spirituality.

Wiccan is the fastest growing religion in America today�every 30 months, the numbers of adherents to neo-paganism doubles. That could be said to be spiritual, certainly. Meanwhile, however, the numbers that adhere to a Christian religion dropped by 9.7 percentage points over the course of 11 years. If that trend continues�and there's no evidence that it won't despite the media's hyperbole�non-Christians will outnumber the Christian population.

Some revival.

Although the great majority of American adults�75 percent�will identify themselves as Christian, they are talking primarily about family heritage or what they were baptised as. That tells us nothing about their religious practices, assuming they even have any. And how exactly does one define a Christian?

What specifically got me thinking about this subject was The Texas Freedom Network's attack on school Bible study. The Bible is taught in hundreds of public schools throughout Texas, a form of fundamentalism that the religious watchdogs cannot tolerate. In particular, they assert that the Bible classes indoctrinate students to believe that the Bible should usurp the Constitution as the law of the land.

But far from hard-line dogmatism about to throw the Lone Star State into a cauldron of theocracy, the Bible classes make it clear that our Constitution was drafted by Christian men, who believed that the Bible was their authority in establishing a land free from persecution and as a place where republican democracy could thrive, that the freedom and prosperity in America was sanctioned by God. The locally approved study of the Bible in public schools is an example of freedom of religious expression that makes America so unique.

But, as with Canada and Europe, multiculturalism is the state-sanctioned religion. To be a Christian is to be derided and despised. The only fundamentalism in America is that of the politically correct establishment cognoscenti. And, for all the hoopla over this so-called Christian revivalism in the land of the free, America is headed in that direction too. At a time when we are being attacked by Islamic fundamentalists, Christians should be unashamed and more forth righteous than ever.

The problem is, there's not enough of them left.

� M.E.M.

[Sign My Guestbook] [View My Guestbook]
Powered by E-Guestbooks Server.

Copyright � 2001-2007 by M.E. Manning. All material is written by me, unless explicitly stated otherwise by use of footnotes or bylines. Do not copy or redistribute without my permission.

Old Cinders | Fresh Fire

AMERICA FOR TRUE AMERICANS!

-