American Christianity on the ropes

Christian soldiers, here's something to think about, particularly this week...

RedState: Today is Holy Thursday. If you are Catholic this is the first day of the Easter or Paschal Tiduum. In Christian theology, tonight is the memorial of the Last Supper. Catholic Churches and some Protestant denominations will do the symbolic “washing of feet,” which is how Christ reminds us that when you are a leader you are a servant not a master (this lesson is lost on most of our fellow citizens in politics and in public service). So I thought this would be an interesting time to review what Americans thought about Jesus. The Barna Group has a published a study, What Do Americans Believe About Jesus? 5 Popular Beliefs, which plumbs this subject and the findings demonstrate how rare Christian orthodoxy is in the United States and gives clues to source of our cultural rot.

We can see in a series of three charts why the percentage of Christians in the United States cannot be above 31%. Despite Church attendance and cultural affectation we are living in a neo-pagan nation.

When taken into consideration with the previous chart we can see that over half of self-proclaimed Christians haven’t a freakin' clue as to what they believe. Can you make a personal commitment to Jesus and engage in pre-marital sex? How about have an affair? Can you participate in same-sex marriage? Steal from your employer? Cheat on your taxes? Spend a few hours a day watching porn? Not give of your time/talents/treasure to those less fortunate? Obviously not. In fact, I will say that it is difficult even for those holding orthodox Christian beliefs on the nature of Christ and His word to be able to say with at straight face that we have made a commitment to Christ. For most of us, this is a daily non-relenting struggle.

What this snapshot shows is that orthodox Christianity, the religion that founded and shaped the nation, is on the ropes. That once your religious world view is shaped by a belief that a) even God sinned and b) that I’m going to Heaven no matter what, then a religious argument is bound to fail. It explains how we got to this state of affairs in all manner of social issues and why aggressive RFRA laws are needed if Christianity is going to survive as anything more than a cultural artifact.

Considering the many covenants, broken and reestablished, until the one fulfilled 2000 years ago, the only way to turn this around is with Christ's help. America, Jesus is calling. It's past time to tag him in.