Hal Lindsey's dispensational premillennialism really changed his life lol

 

 He got rich off the book, The Late, Great Planet Earth, 1970, and had four wives.

And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.  

-- Romans 12:2

Lindsey accrued a fortune with his book sales, media appearances, and multimedia products. In 1977, Publisher’s Weekly described him as “an Adventist-and-Apocalypse evangelist who sports a Porsche racing jacket and tools around Los Angeles in a Mercedes 450 SI.” In 1981, the Los Angeles Times reported that Lindsey was making “thousands of dollars a week” from combined sales of books, films, and cassette tapes. He also kept up a busy schedule of public speaking and consulting, meeting with low- and mid-level government officials around the globe to advise them on the future. ...

Lindsey’s second divorce—and subsequent third and fourth marriages—raised questions about his character for many evangelicals. But the biggest blow to his reputation was his failed predictions.

More.

Mark Tooley correctly views Hal Lindsey, a disciple of Robert Thieme, among the vanguard of those who led the way to post-denominational evangelicalism, not mentioning the role of others in this such as street preacher and itinerant evangelist David Wilkerson, whose 1962 book The Cross and the Switchblade was immortalized by a film version starring Pat Boone, also in 1970.

 

 

 

Ryan Burge puts nondenominational Protestant Christianity in America at about 13% of adult population using the General Social Survey

 Which would be about 33 million.

Using the 2020 Religion Census the number is only 21.1 million.

He discusses the data here. 

 

When you're so Biblically illiterate that you don't know that it's "now" as in "moreover"

 Spit-out-the-coffee funny, if you know:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He has 10.1 million followers on Twitter and has a net worth in the tens of millions of dollars. His Lakewood Church in Houston has an annual budget in the vicinity of $100 million on the strength of approximately 50,000 weekly attendees of its nondenominational services.

They should rename the place The First Church of What's Happenin' Now.

Non-denominational Protestant Christianity will be the big winner in the future in the United States and already is at 29 million strong

 Ryan Burge, here:

There is absolutely no way to gather data on that tradition, but it’s clear that it’s growing incredibly fast. ... Denominational Christianity used to be an incredibly important cultural force in American life. Leaders in these traditions use to hold sway over millions. Today, they are a shell of their former selves. ... The big winner? That new non-denominational church down the road that has no institutional baggage.     

And here:

What may be an even bigger threat to the SBC is the dramatic rise in nondenominational churches. When looking at the size of every major Protestant tradition over the last 14 years, the common thread is decline. Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, and Presbyterians are all a smaller share of the population now than they were in 2008. The only exception is nondenominational Christians. They were 7.1 percent of the total population in 2008, but that number has risen to 8.6 percent in 2022.

One advantage of nondenominational churches is that they don’t have institutional baggage like many denominations, including the SBC. While people are skeptical of putting money in the offering plate and having some of it go to a head office hundreds of miles away, in nondenominational churches those leadership decisions are handled by people sitting in the pews each weekend. In a time of declining trust in institutions, nondenominationals are well-positioned, and are reaping the benefits through rising attendance and giving.

Queer Jesus has gone "mainstream" because 13.7 million sane people have already left the formerly mainstream churches

Queer Jesus Goes Mainstream at Churches, Divinity Schools

John Murawski, RCI

 

United Church of Christ membership is down 64% to 0.8 million from 2.2 million. The queer-affirming church performs nuptials for polyamorists where multiple partners marry each other.

United Methodist Church membership is down 47% to 5.7 million from 10.7 million. The church aims to be the first to ordain a drag queen.

Presbyterian Church USA membership is down 74% to 1.1 million from 4.25 million. In Iowa they worship the god of trans being, the great they/them.

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America membership is down 42% to 3 million from 5.2 million. It elected a transgender bishop two years ago.

The Episcopal Church in the United States is down 53% to 1.7 million from 3.6 million. It has a priest who maintains that promiscuous people are simply being hospitable. The real sinner at Sodom was Lot, who refused the hospitality of the rapists trying to break down his door.

There's nothing mainstream about the 12 million still left in these churches.

Millions of Americans have fled into non-denominational Protestantism. And there are at least 30 million Baptists of one kind or another, while Roman Catholics number 70 million.

The USA has 210 million nominally Christian people. But Africa has 685 million. Latin America about 601 million. Europe 571 million.

America is fast on the road to becoming a Christian backwater. The main show is elsewhere.

Some results from the decadal Religion Census of the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies for 2010-2020

 As reported here in The Economist:

the ranks of all religious Americans rose by 10.6m (7%) ...

overall population grew by 7.5% ...

the number of Episcopalians and Methodists dropped by 19% each ...

the Lutherans plunged by 25% ...

Presbyterians lost nearly 1m (40%) ...

The Southern Baptist Convention shrank 11% ...

non-denominational Christian churches recruited 9m new members ...

Catholics claim they gained nearly 3m members (a 5% increase) despite closing over 1,100 churches. 

      

Color me skeptical.

Start with the big number.

Average population grew 7.1% or 22 million over the period, according to POPTHM, which is the data of the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, not 7.5% as stated in the story.

The data of the U.S. Census, as shown by POP, shows average population grew by even less over the period: 6.97% or 21.6 million, not 7.5% as stated in the story.

Obviously these are estimates, not counts, but the reported overall population growth claim in the story is up to a half-point larger than these big baseline numbers reported by the official organs of the U.S. government.

One half point of 310 million is 1.55 million people. One false move and you've just wiped out the entire denomination of the American Baptist Churches USA. When you study religion in America, you are discussing a bewildering number of splinter groups, many of which are simply microscopic in size.

It's extremely difficult to get data about groups like that right. Fully 40% are left out of even good surveys.

We are then confidently given to believe that hardly half the population growth went on to affiliate with a religion over the period: 10.6 million out of something north of 22 million, but by the end of the story you then have to believe also that 9 million new non-denoms plus 3 million new Catholics still equals 10.6 million.

Hello, is there an economist in the house?

Separately, there is the recent claim, supported by Pew, that Mormonism is the fastest reproducing American religious group, the implications of which go wholly unaddressed by the story.

On the other hand, reported Mormon membership in the U.S. grew by fewer than 700k 2011-2023, according to the latest Mormon data.

As pointed out previously, Christians themselves variously and significantly exaggerate how much money they give to their churches. Relying on their statements of membership in surveys even such as this one is . . . problematic.

They resemble in these respects nothing so much as the wider culture of exaggeration.

I'm doing great. Everything is fine. Awesome, in fact.

57% can't afford a $1,000 emergency. 85% say the country is headed in the wrong direction. The world is going to end in 2031 if we don't address climate change.

Carly Fiorina's non-denominational Christianity is of the Willow Creek variety, dating to about 2010 after battling cancer in 2009

Reported here in August 2012:

'Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, came to the stage as a guest at the end of the first day to share her story of coming to faith in the midst of battling cancer, losing her daughter to suicide, and serving for years as a high-powered business executive. According to Fiorina, Bill Hybels's persistence kept her pondering the complexities of faith, and after praying with him on stage at the summit a couple years ago, then praying to God on her own for a sign, she began seeing little miracles. At the end of her talk, Fiorina stated that now she lives "unburdened by fear," because she sees life as "not measured in time—it's measured in love and contribution and moments of grace."'

The Origin of the Religious Right is in the Great Revolt

As explained here:

Forty-five years ago, one in every six Americans belonged to the “seven sister” mainline Protestant denominations. Today, only one in 15 Americans still does. Although secular elites often portray a secularizing America, actual church attendance in America has remained remarkably constant across the last 75 years. But among non-Catholic Christians, attendance has shifted from mainline Protestant to more evangelical churches.