Just When You Think You're Never Going To Hear Good News Again...
A story like this comes along:
"When you count the people in the pews on Sunday rather than having a pollster ask whether or not they attend church, fewer than 18% attend church regularly. From 1980 to 2005 in the Southern Baptist Church, baptisms of people between eighteen and thirty four – in other words, their next generation of leaders – fell 40 percent, from 100,000 in 1980 to 60,000 in 2005...In 2006, the Southern Baptists – who claim almost six times more members than any other white evangelical church – made a concerted effort to baptize one million people. Not only did they fall over two-thirds short, they actually baptized even fewer than they had the year before.
You might think that some faith group must have grown during the last thirty years, and you’d be right: atheists and nonbelievers more than doubled in the eleven years between 1990 and 2001, from 14 million to 29 million: from 8% of the country to 14%. There are more than twice as many atheists and nonbelievers as there are evangelical Christians.
...to add insult to injury, when a sampling of non-Christians were asked to rate eleven groups in terms of respect, they rated evangelicals tenth. Only prostitutes ranked lower."
Two points that I would like to make about this- and they are both points that I have made before: First, there are a lot less people on their side of the fence than they (or our "mainstream" press) would like you to believe, and second, that their numbers are diminishing every year. In the long run, victory belongs to us, if they leave anything behind to win.
"When you count the people in the pews on Sunday rather than having a pollster ask whether or not they attend church, fewer than 18% attend church regularly. From 1980 to 2005 in the Southern Baptist Church, baptisms of people between eighteen and thirty four – in other words, their next generation of leaders – fell 40 percent, from 100,000 in 1980 to 60,000 in 2005...In 2006, the Southern Baptists – who claim almost six times more members than any other white evangelical church – made a concerted effort to baptize one million people. Not only did they fall over two-thirds short, they actually baptized even fewer than they had the year before.
You might think that some faith group must have grown during the last thirty years, and you’d be right: atheists and nonbelievers more than doubled in the eleven years between 1990 and 2001, from 14 million to 29 million: from 8% of the country to 14%. There are more than twice as many atheists and nonbelievers as there are evangelical Christians.
...to add insult to injury, when a sampling of non-Christians were asked to rate eleven groups in terms of respect, they rated evangelicals tenth. Only prostitutes ranked lower."
Two points that I would like to make about this- and they are both points that I have made before: First, there are a lot less people on their side of the fence than they (or our "mainstream" press) would like you to believe, and second, that their numbers are diminishing every year. In the long run, victory belongs to us, if they leave anything behind to win.
Comments
"If." Well, they're doing their best to see that if they can't have it all, nobody is going to have any of it.
I would have rated them higher myself. At least they aren't sham artists who BS you into their buildings, you know tight up front what you're giong to get there.
Of course, I've never been to one, but I'm just saying.
See, they do have a lot in common with Evangelical Christians.