(By Ruth Gledhill, Christian Today). A top academic has defended a five-year study that found conservative churches grow faster than liberal ones.
The paper, published in December’s Review of Religious Research, found that churches that relied on a more literal reading of the Bible and a certain belief in hell were more likely to grow than others.
Now lead researcher David Haskell, writing in the Washington Post, has issued a riposte to the countering argument used in defence of liberals – that it is the strength of belief, not the specific content of faith, that causes growth.
In this scenario, liberal pastors are just as likely as conservative pastors to experience church growth, provided they are firm and clear in their religious convictions.
Haskell says his study shows this is not actually the case. “Different beliefs, though equally strong, produce different outcomes,” he says.
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[…] Related article: Must Christianity Change Or Die? Yes – If That Change Is In A Conservative Direction […]
I would agree with the content of the article if one held to the presupposition that historic liberal mainline protestants sects were still in the Christian communion or in correspondence to historic or orthodox, Biblical Christianity. The groups so mentioned, PCUSA, ECUSA, UCC, ELCA to a degree, Unitarians, and I tend to think of them as one in the same, have more or less devolved into another separate religion. Distinct from any resemblance to their foundation confessions or documents.
This religion is an amalgamation of many secular forces,: Extreme environmentalism, pre-Christian nature worship, absolute pacifism, anti-West or anti-Market economic dogmas. With the sociological constructs or multiculturalism, diversity, moral and ethical relativism, sexual liberation and empowerments, its confessions, dogmas and orthodoxies. By any objective measure this is a different religion, different faith, different deity or God than than that of the Old and New Testaments or 2,000 years of church history.
Its primary pathology, or disease, is a form of antisemitism they share with academia and the cultural elites of the Coasts.
Its Clergy have been reduced to more or less Social Workers with a thin veneer of religion and liturgy, its churches no more many than empty shells of their former selves, or operating as just another United Way agency or local NGO. Its theological seminaries voids of political correctness, safe zones, chaos of tribal and identity theologies. Again in essence, another religion. The future of these sects is not so much extinction to zero, though some will comes close. The future of liberal Protestantism in the West will look much like the Quakers today, once a very important force in public life, now no more than about 250K nationally, known more for its insularity and odd practices, more than anything else. If the subject is PCUSA specific, the current version shares far more in common with secularists, agnostics, and to some degree Quakers and the Amish more than anything else.
Has any of these researchers bothered to interview the denominational leaders and pastors who hold these “liberal / progressive” views and asked them this question: “how do you account for the massive losses of members and influence that your theology and policies have produced over the past 50 years?”
Here’s another bit of information that needs to be factored in regarding the future of the Church and Country! It is estimated that in 20 years there will be enough Muslims here to elect a President! They don’t like infidels!! How is the Church going to respond to this threat??