Why has Christianity failed in America?

Matt5 said:

Gentle reminder. Islam is a demonic religion.

Islam denies that Jesus is the son of God. It denies that he died on the cross.

In Islamic prophecy, there is the future arrival of the Mahdi and Jesus. This Jesus is Islamic. The (Islamic) Mahdi looks a lot like the Antichrist, and the (Islamic) Jesus looks a lot like the false prophet.

The Mahdi and the Antichrist - YouTube

The mark of the beast looks a lot like the name of Allah in Arabic with two crossed swords underneath:

The Path to 666 | Christian Forums

The Path to 666

A lot of people think Jesus will come back before 2050. I tend to think around 2040. That's just 17 years. Are we just going to sit around for 10 years, then suddenly for no apparent reason the Antichrist just takes over? Or is a lot of stuff...

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ViaCrucis said:

Perhaps, at least for the time being, I'll refer to this distinction as "Old Church" and "New Church"; though that may not be helpful either.

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Aaron112 said:

Really? Latest estimate I saw in print came from decades ago and was about 3 to 5 percent. Is there a more up-to-date estimate in the last ten years ?

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ViaCrucis said:

I don't have a robust or fully fleshed out way to talk about what I'm about to talk about, but I'm going to try and talk about this anyway.

Over the past, oh, decade or so-ish there's something I've observed. Traditionally, or classically, the way we talk about Christianity in broad terms tends to follow what I'll call the Trichotomist Model; we tend to organize Christianity under three broad headings: Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Protestantism. There are caveats to this, because "Orthodoxy" can be sub-divided into the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox; so we might instead speak of four, rather than three; and sometimes Anglicanism is split off from Protestantism. But that's mostly beside the point. Generally this is how we categorize, organize, and classify the big umbrellas of Christianity. Protestantism being the most complicated, convoluted, and mixed bag because we are talking about tens of dozens of denominations and/or traditions. Lutheranism isn't Methodism, for example; but both are Protestant.

In a lot of ways, this is helpful. But in a lot of ways, it isn't.

I've observed that, in many ways--and this has been put into the spotlight for me many times on places like Christian Forums where things get especially highlighted--that we can talk of a Dichotomist Model of Christianity.

In this Dichotomist Model I'd argue that we can talk about Historic Christianity; that Christianity that is concerned with the historic norms of the Christian religion; a strong belief in the Historic Creeds/Confessions, with historic theology and maintaining a continuance with the faith as it has been practiced down through the centuries. While Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Lutherans, Anglicans, et al will all have highly diverse views on lots of things; there is nevertheless a sense that all have about continuing within established Christian norms. There is no attempt to re-invent the wheel. The Nicene Creed says what it says, and we believe it. We consider the teachings of our fathers as important, therefore we insist (as an example) that the Virgin Mary is the mother of God because we understand that the theological controversies surrounding Nestorius are already settled, and that our Christology (even though Chalcedonians and Non-Chalcedonians use different words) is established and settled.

On the other side, and I'm not sure of what term to use here to describe it, is that form of Christianity that is what you describe above. A highly individualistic "me and the Bible" approach to religion. Tradition is regarded as a purely ugly and negative concept (even though there is tradition at work here too, even if it is a different kind of tradition). Religion is an individualistic activity of me forming my own doctrines by my private reading and interpretation of the Bible.

Now, the caveat I'm going to give here is that what I outlined above is a broad generalization that is often hyperbolic (but not always). As I would also argue that there is what could be described as a modern "Theological Canon"--a set of standards that is rooted in that kind of indivudalistic religiosity but which is more cohesive. Rooted in 18th and especially 19th and early 20th century religious movements and traditions; such as Revivalism and American Pietism (which could be considered highly distinct from Historic Pietism). But within this Theological Canon we can talk about the "fathers" of this form of Christianity. Charles Finney, Billy Sunday, Bill Bright, and even Billy Graham.

I do not wish to treat this as exclusive to Neo-Evangelicalism; I think it is broader than that and deeper than that. It's not even exclusively American. The Plymouth Brethren, for example, I'd argue are part of this--but they emerged in the British Isles. I do think that, though not distinctively American, it is something that seems peculiar to the Anglosphere. And it is not exclusively super-modern, I think a lot of the ideas I'm talking about are religious expressions and sentiments that have some of their origins in the Radical Reformation of the 16th century, and given the Anglo-specific nature of it (at least from my vantage point) can also go back to the Nonconformist movements of the 17th century in Great Britain.

Perhaps, at least for the time being, I'll refer to this distinction as "Old Church" and "New Church"; though that may not be helpful either.

As I said, I'm still trying to figure out my own thoughts--and I want to keep studying and doing more homework on this subject matter. But I do think this is a very real division that exists within the state of Christianity: There is that form of Christianity that is concerned with the past to shape its present; and there is that form of Christianity that, in general, sees the past as either unimportant or even seen as a hindrance. And in a lot of ways, that division/distinction is far more important and functionally relevant than the classical models of dividing/categorizing Christianity. As a Lutheran, for example, I feel like I have a lot more in common with Catholics and Orthodox than I do with Baptists or Pentecostals (as just an example); even though Lutherans, Baptists, and Pentecostals are all "Protestant".

-CryptoLutheran

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ViaCrucis said:

The Cathars, aka the Albingenses, were a heretical sect that at one point held a lot of popular support in southern France. Theirs was a form of medieval Gnosticism, and they were likely related to, or at least influenced by, the Balkan Bogomils; who in turn were probably influenced/related to the Paulicians of Armenia.

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dzheremi said:

Oh Lord, not this again...

I first dealt with this idea a decade ago or more on the now-defunct Catholic Answers Forums, when it was first posted there, and the long and short of it is that the Arabic script does not work that way. You cannot shift it around, change the direction in which it is read, add or delete any given letter (etc., etc.) until you get to something looks enough like "666" to you to get your weirdo pseudo-'Bible Code' type theory to sort of work. الله is "God" in Arabic. Whatever that video or blog makes out of it is not.

Also, this is a horrible offense to the millions of Christians found across the MENA region and in the diaspora of MENA people who worship Christ our God with His good Father and the Holy Spirit in the Arabic language. Since I'm one of them, at least whenever I have the opportunity to attend liturgy (since we do not completely eschew Arabic even in places where it is not traditionally spoken, because we're still a very young church in the west, and are still actively receiving immigrants from the Middle East for whom Arabic is their mother tongue), I feel the need to point out that Christians have been worshipping God in the Arabic language since long before anyone was doing so in anything that we would recognize as English, since even the oldest evidence we have of Old English does not predate the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain in the 5th century AD, whereas Arabs are specifically listed as among those present on the day of Pentecost who heard the message in their own language (Acts 2:11). The rise of Islam some seven centuries later does not retroactively change any of that. Islam is really a non-entity when it comes to Arabic-speaking or even wider MENA Christianity, in that while it presented a somewhat unique challenge during its expansion over the formerly Christian territories of the region (mostly because of its rapid speed, rather than any kind of religious genius like what is often attributed to Muhammad by useful idiots who do not know about all the sources he cribbed from), it did not somehow change what we would argue or how we would do so. Witness, for instance, that the earliest extant Arabic-language apology for Christianity (c. 750 AD, which predates even the translation of the scriptures into that language) is customarily given the translated titled "On the Triune Nature of God" for what is in the original written as في تثليت الله الواحد Fī tathlīth Allāh al-wāḥid.

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FireDragon76 said:

Some historians and scholars have said the Cathars supposed beliefs and practices were likely just a creation of the minds of inquisitors eager to impose the Gregorian reforms and patterns of religion on Christians in Southern France: attacking their tradition of devotion to local holy people and ascetics as heretics. It definitely coincided with the French crown wanting to assert uniformity and control over the country.

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ViaCrucis said:

I'd be open to more rigorous study on the Cathars, but I am largely opposed to the stupidity of Landmarkism/Trail of Blood nonsense. Which was the main thrust of my post.

-CryptoLutheran

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