Study finds most people who stop going to church do so for the banal reason that they love money and status more

 Enthusiast for the Christian communist Bruderhof Gang Jake Meador, here:

Davis and Graham also find that a much larger share of those who have left church have done so for more banal reasons. The book suggests that the defining problem driving out most people who leave is … just how American life works in the 21st century. Contemporary America simply isn’t set up to promote mutuality, care, or common life. Rather, it is designed to maximize individual accomplishment as defined by professional and financial success. Such a system leaves precious little time or energy for forms of community that don’t contribute to one’s own professional life or, as one ages, the professional prospects of one’s children. Workism reigns in America, and because of it, community in America, religious community included, is a math problem that doesn’t add up.     

Same as it ever was.

Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

-- Matthew 6:24; Luke 16:13

For the love of money is the root of all evil.

-- I Timothy 6:10

It never occurs, and probably little matters, to Pete Wehner that the empire transformed by the love and service of the followers of his gentle Jesus quickly FELL

Details, details.

 

The Jesus who won his heart is as much a  caricature as the one he criticizes, in the gooey mess here:

The Evangelical Church Is Breaking Apart

 

Ariel Sabar strikes again in a good, long read about a con allegedly perpetrated by an academic and other shady characters against the Green family of Hobby Lobby fame and their Museum of the Bible

A Biblical Mystery at Oxford:

'In June 2019, Michael Holmes, who replaced Pattengale as the director of the scholars initiative, flew to London to meet with leaders of the Egypt Exploration Society, who remained skeptical that Obbink, whatever his other shortcomings, might have sold Oxyrhynchus papyri.

'Over lunch at a private club, Holmes pulled out a purchase agreement between Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. and Dirk Obbink. Co-signed by the Oxford professor on February 4, 2013, it showed that Obbink had sold the company not just the Mark papyrus, but also fragments of the Gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John. In the contract, Obbink describes the manuscripts as his personal property, vows to “ship/hand carry” them from “Oxford Ancient,” and dates all four to a historically unprecedented “circa 100 AD,” making each a one-of-a-kind worth millions.

'When EES officials saw the contract, Holmes told me, “any uncertainties they had evaporated very quickly.” They banned Obbink from the collection.'

 

There are the sin forgivers, and then there are the sin retainers, like evangelical Pete Wehner

You've got to wonder if Pete Wehner ever seriously considered that evangelicals who give Trump a pass are instead practicing forgiveness.

What would forgiveness look like, Pete? Did Jesus ever once turn a blind eye to moral transgression?

But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. 

 

-- Matthew 6:15

Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. And they parted his raiment, and cast lots. 

 

-- Luke 23:34

Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more. 

 

-- John 8:11

Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained. 

 

-- John 20:23

Pete's clearly still a sin retainer, after all these years, just as many evangelicals have been in the past, for example in regard to Bill Clinton.

Kind of runs in the human family, but for a brief, shining moment.

The Deepening Crisis in Evangelical Christianity:

The enthusiastic, uncritical embrace of President Trump by white evangelicals is among the most mind-blowing developments of the Trump era. How can a group that for decades—and especially during the Bill Clinton presidency—insisted that character counts and that personal integrity is an essential component of presidential leadership not only turn a blind eye to the ethical and moral transgressions of Donald Trump, but also constantly defend him? Why are those who have been on the vanguard of “family values” so eager to give a man with a sordid personal and sexual history a mulligan? ...

[T]here is ... the undeniable hypocrisy of people who once made moral character, and especially sexual fidelity, central to their political calculus and who are now embracing a man of boundless corruptions. Don’t forget: Trump was essentially named an unindicted co-conspirator (“Individual 1”) in a scheme to make hush-money payments to a porn star who alleged she’d had an affair with him while he was married to his third wife, who had just given birth to their son.

Rank and file Methodists reject their elites in St. Louis, vote to reaffirm traditional morality

Conservative Christians Just Retook the United Methodist Church:

The mainline denomination voted on Tuesday to toughen its teachings against homosexuality, same-sex marriage, and LGBTQ clergy. It must now decide whether it will stay together.

The United Methodist Church has fractured over the role of LGBTQ people in the denomination. At a special conference in St. Louis this week, convened specifically to address divisions over LGBTQ issues, members voted to toughen prohibitions on same-sex marriage and LGBTQ clergy. ...

The bishops clearly did not have the support for which they had hoped. 

 

 

Introspection! Solitude! Reflection! Convictions! The lonely way! Henry Kissinger!

What?

Inundated via social media with the opinions of multitudes, users are diverted from introspection; in truth many technophiles use the internet to avoid the solitude they dread. All of these pressures weaken the fortitude required to develop and sustain convictions that can be implemented only by traveling a lonely road, which is the essence of creativity. ... The digital world’s emphasis on speed inhibits reflection; its incentive empowers the radical over the thoughtful; its values are shaped by subgroup consensus, not by introspection. ... The Enlightenment started with essentially philosophical insights spread by a new technology [the printing press]. Our period is moving in the opposite direction. It has generated a potentially dominating technology [artificial intelligence] in search of a guiding philosophy.

Read the whole thing here.

Pace Kurt Andersen in The Atlantic, Democrats believe in loopy 2:1 over Republicans, and "independents" aren't far behind

Kurt Andersen in "How America Lost its Mind" contends that only one third of Americans are solidly reality-based and come mostly from the Democrat left, not the "loopy" GOP:

By my reckoning, the solidly reality-based are a minority, maybe a third of us but almost certainly fewer than half. ... Only a third strongly disbelieve in telepathy and ghosts. Two-thirds of Americans believe that “angels and demons are active in the world.” ... A quarter of Americans believe in witches. Remarkably, the same fraction, or maybe less, believes that the Bible consists mainly of legends and fables—the same proportion that believes U.S. officials were complicit in the 9/11 attacks. ... In the late 1960s and ’70s, the reality-based left more or less won: retreat from Vietnam, civil-rights and environmental-protection laws, increasing legal and cultural equality for women, legal abortion, Keynesian economics triumphant. ... [W]e’re splitting into two different cultures, we in reality-based America—whether the blue part or the smaller red part . . ..


Kurt has it exactly backwards (I'm shocked, shocked I tell you). It's your average Democrat or independent who is more likely to believe in loopy, not Republicans.

Democrats believe in reincarnation, yoga, astrology, spiritual energy and the evil eye 176 to 87 for Republicans in a Pew Research study from 2009, a ratio of 2:1. So-called independents aren't far behind at 163 to 87, for a ratio of 1.87:1.

And when it comes to being in touch with the dead, ghosts and fortune tellers, the story is similar. Democrats outstrip Republicans 163 to 81, also a ratio of 2:1. Independents beat Republicans 143 to 81, for a ratio of 1.76:1.

Apart from the greater prevalence of wacky beliefs among Democrats and independents generally, the results indicate that the much-vaunted independents are much more like the Democrats than they care to admit.

If someone really wanted to understand what accounts for America's turn toward the insane, go there.

I compiled the data above from the Pew findings, found here.

Creeping liberalism in Southern Baptist Convention accompanied by declining membership

Back to back stories at Real Clear Religion today report on a membership decline in the SBC in 2016 coincidental with the introduction last fall of a new gender-inclusive translation of the Bible:

Southern Baptists Embrace Gender-Inclusive Language in the Bible:  America's largest Protestant denomination has produced a revised translation that incorporates many features it had long condemned

Hundreds of New Churches Not Enough to Satisfy Southern Baptists:  Baptisms are at a 70-year low, while Sunday worshipers are at a 20-year low

The second headline avoids telling the truth up front: Membership is down 1 million since the 2003 peak, and 78,000 in 2016, according to the story, with total giving down 1% in the last year.

The first story might in part explain why:

The CSB [Christian Standard Bible] translates the term adelphoi, a Greek word for “brother” in a gender-neutral form 106 times, often adding “sister.” “Brotherly love” is translated “love as brothers and sisters.” The gender-neutralizing pattern is also present in its translation of the Old Testament. ...

In the CSB, there are hundreds of verses that fall within the “gender-neutral” category condemned in Southern Baptists’ own resolutions. Together, they provide an illustrative survey of the kinds of quietly progressive changes that have been inserted into this conservative denomination’s Bible translation. 

That breeze you're catchin' is W. A. Criswell, spinning in his grave.

A big part of the attraction of Christianity in China is its answer to communism

From the story in The Atlantic, here:

“[Auntie Wei] was not someone who heard the word wansui [long live] too often. If she heard it, she would have thought it applied to China, or the Communist Party, or Chairman Mao. Wansui: that’s almost always reserved for them. This is wrong. Wansui, this word, if it belongs to anyone, it belongs to Auntie Wei.” A couple of people looked up startled.

“I tell you that she can hear wansui now because she is wansui; she is immortal because of Jesus. It’s not the government that can confer this word. It’s God, and it’s us by how we live our daily lives. It’s the choices we make despite the immoral society we live in. This is what real wansui is. It’s nothing that the Communist Party can provide. It’s something we can make ourselves.”

Suddenly people were smiling; this was why they came to Early Rain Reformed Church. It was different from the anodyne churches sponsored by the state. It was warm and direct, but most of all it was relevant. It was for people who didn’t want the status quo, who were searching for alternatives to the life around them.

Early Rain Reformed Church is located in Chengdu

Organs of the liberal media showcase anti-Christian progressive Christians preening and calling Trump anti-Christian

Tutt Tutt . . . looks like bullshit

The Rev. Ann Kansfield, smoking, cursing, lesbian preacher employed by the FDNY (church and state issue anybody?), sure knows how to get her name in the newspapers, here, where however you never learn from the Christian Science Monitor that she's a smoking, cursing, lesbian:

Rev. Ann Kansfield, the minister of proclamation at Greenpoint Reformed, isn’t sure how much the congregation’s recent surge can be attributed to a “Trump bump.” More people voted for Bernie Sanders in Greenpoint, after all, than any other area of New York City in the Democratic primary last year, and Reverend Kansfield noticed a simmering political energy going back to 2015.  

Up to then, the church had plateaued with about 35 adult members. On Sunday, there were more than 60, including children. “We were already established as the progressive church in the neighborhood,” she says, noting that LGBT inclusion and its soup kitchen and food pantry were its primary ministries. “But with this new energy, we’ve been doing some deciding over who we are and what we do, and what following Jesus should look like in our context.”

As it happens, this Christian Science Monitor story links to an Atlantic story here from last December which is in fact skeptical of the surge in attendance, but where, lo and behold, another guy pops up who also manages to work the organs of the liberal media by being outrageous, namely the devil-denying Timothy Tutt, except the Atlantic never tells you that Timothy Tutt denies the existence of the devil:

While a number of pastors spoke about their parishioners’ feelings of pain, they also spoke of a newfound sense of mission. “I am finding the coming Trump presidency … to be clarifying,” wrote Timothy Tutt, the senior minister at Westmoreland Congregational United Church of Christ in Bethesda, Maryland, in an email. “As a liberal Christian preacher it helps me find my voice. It helps me know who I am called to be. And helps our congregation know who we are—and who we aren’t.”

"Progressive" Christians such as these, the Atlantic informs us, imagine that Trump is "the antithesis of everything Christian".

Written without the slightest hint of irony.

Mr. Ariel Sabar uncovers the lies, damn lies and rotten scholarship involving The Gospel of Jesus' Wife

Here in "The Unbelievable Tale of Jesus’s Wife" for The Atlantic, where the old-fashioned work of a gumshoe reporter exposes the hard work too often lacking in much of contemporary scholarship:

[S]keptics had identified other problems. Among the most damning was an odd typographical error that appears in both the Jesus’s-wife fragment and an edition of the Gospel of Thomas that was posted online in 2002, suggesting an easily available source for a modern forger’s cut-and-paste job.

With [Karen L.] King [Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard] and her critics at loggerheads, each insisting on the primacy of their evidence, I wondered why no one had conducted a different sort of test: a thorough vetting of the papyrus’s chain of ownership. 

Prof. King has replied to the author, here:

For four years, Karen L. King, a Harvard historian of Christianity, has defended the so-called “Gospel of Jesus’s Wife” against scholars who argued it was a forgery. But Thursday, for the first time, King said the papyrus—which she introduced to the world in 2012—is a probable fake.

She reached this conclusion, she said, after reading The Atlantic’s investigation into the papyrus’s origins, which appears in the magazine’s July/August issue and was posted to its website Wednesday night.

“It tips the balance towards forgery,” she said. ...

Thursday afternoon, however, she called me to say the story was “fascinating” and “very helpful.” ...

“I had no idea about this guy, obviously,” she said. “He lied to me.”

I asked why she hadn’t undertaken an investigation of the papyrus’s origins and the owner’s background. “Your article has helped me see that provenance can be investigated,” she said. ...

[T]he preponderance of the evidence, she said, now “presses in the direction of forgery.”

Save Your Selves From The Libertarians: They Think You Are Worth Less Over Time

As Megan McArdle thinks, formerly of The Atlantic, here:

Human capital is like almost any other form of capital: it is a depreciating asset.  The longer you stay out of the workforce, the less valuable you are to potential employers.  You lose market intelligence and industry connections.  Your technical knowledge and skills atrophy.  And as my colleague Don Peck wrote in a devastating piece last year, the psychological effects of long-term unemployment change you permanently.  Many of the people who have now been unemployed for years may never work again, or not at anything like the income that they had been expecting. ... Now think about what is happening to millions of people out there ... whose savings and social networks are exhausted (or were never very big to begin with), who are in their fifties and not young enough to retire, but very hard to place with an employer who will pay them as much as they were worth to their old firm. Think of the people who can't support their children, or themselves.  Think of their despair. That is what these numbers mean: millions of people, staring into the abyss of an empty future.  We don't know how to re-employ them.  The last time this happened, in the Great Depression, World War II eventually came along and soaked up everyone in the labor force who could breathe and carry a toolbag.  I hope to God we're not going to do that again, so what are we going to do with all these people?

----------------------------------------------------------------

That's what objectivism does to people. It turns them from your brother into The Other. But in your heart you know it is not so. You'll only be an object if you let them make you one, but to G-d you'll always be a subject, in which He is deeply interested.

Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?

-- Matthew 6:26

Sin and Crime, 2009

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"[D]o you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God."

-- 1 Cor. 6:9f.

TOTAL US ARRESTS IN 2009 = 13,687,241

Sex-related arrests = 378,086

(rape 21,407; prostitution 71,355; sex offenses 77,326; offenses against family and children 114,564; runaways 93,434).

 

Sodomy has been decriminalized in America since 2003, affecting approximately 2% of the population, or 6.3 million gays and lesbians, not counting heterosexual sodomizers. Before 1962 sodomy was a felony in every state. Those born of fornication, that is live births to unmarried women, in 2010 numbered approximately 1,633,471, almost 41% of all births. As for adulterers, there were provisionally 840,000 divorces in 2009, the rate of divorce provisionally averaging 3.6% of the adult population annually over the last seven years, an unknown number of which divorced for cause. The number of marriages has averaged 2.1 million annually over the same period, the number of which committed adultery by doing so also being unknown. Approximately 15 billion condoms were produced worldwide in 2005, 0.9 billion in the USA, for an estimated 530 million total users that year, or 28 each.

Theft-related arrests = 2,544,771

(robbery 126,725; burglary 299,351; larceny-theft 1,334,933; car theft 81,797; forgery-counterfeiting 85,844; fraud 210,255; embezzlement 17,920; buying or receiving stolen property 105,303; arson 12,204; vandalism 270,439).

Alcohol-related arrests = 5,069,927

(DUI 1,440,409; liquor law violations 570,333; drunkenness 594,300; drug abuse 1,663,582; disorderly conduct 655,322; vagrancy 33,388; curfew/loitering 112,593).

Assault arrests = 1,740,673

Murder arrests = 12,418

Weapon violation arrests = 166,334

All other arrests = 3,777,007

Jesus, or Megan McArdle?

Jesus (Matthew 6:25):

"Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?"

Megan McArdle (here):

"Human capital is like almost any other form of capital: it is a depreciating asset."