Category Archives: Culture

Culture, Culture News, Current Events, Denominations, History, Statistics

Culture News: Churches blame empty pews on fewer babies

Church Pews Not Full

From the Tennessean.com:

That’s what almost every major Christian denomination in the United States has in common — from Southern Baptists to Missouri Synod Lutherans.

In fact, 21 of the 25 largest groups in the United States reported a decline or flat line in membership last year, according to the 2009 edition of the Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches. In most cases, the so-called birth dearth is the reason.

Carl Royster, a Church of Christ statistician, says that churches are seeing the aftereffects of the baby boom.

For example, in the mid-20th century, conservative groups like the Southern Baptists and Church of Christ saw their membership spike. “You had humongous growth in the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s,” Royster said. “Now, the baby boomers are beginning to die off.”

Those boomers had fewer kids than their parents, leaving fewer descendants to replace them in the pews.

Royster said that he’s not panicking about the church decline. But he’s worried about the future.

“The sky is not falling yet,” he said. “But in a few years, it might be.”

Paul Prill, professor of communication at Lipscomb University and the part-time preacher at Acklen Avenue Church of Christ, says the congregation once averaged about 120 but fell to 50 when kids in the church grew up and moved away and older members became too frail to attend.

In recent years, young married couples settling in the area have begun returning, at a trickle’s pace, bringing the congregation back to about 80 members.

But it’s a slow process, Prill said.

“It’s hard to reach people who are in their 20s and are not going to church,” he said.

[HT: Ed Stetzer]

Culture, False Religion, History, Islam

Have Muslims Already Won Europe?

Paul Belien’s article answers “yes.” Here is a quote from the article that James Grant pointed me to:

The native Dutch are moving out. Since 2004, more indigenous Dutchmen have emigrated each year than immigrants have moved in. People who have lost faith in God do not fight. They run. Since they do not believe in life after death, this life is the only thing they have to lose. One emigrant Dutchman, a homosexual author who lives in Brussels, writes: “I am not a warrior. I do not fight for freedom. I am only good at enjoying it.” This mentality has affected the whole of Western Europe. A young German woman recently said that it is “better to let yourself be raped than risk injuries while resisting, better to avoid fighting than risk death.” Europe has chosen the path of submission. Islamization is not the cause but the consequence of the collapse of Europe. The very word Islam means “submission.” Many Europeans have submitted already. In that sense, they have already become Muslims.

Culture, Culture News, Current Events, History, Politics

How to Stimulate the Economy: Let the Elderly Die

Well, in typical Western Socialist footsteps, the new “economic” stimulus bill being passed through the Senate and back to the House has added a “wonderful” step toward universal health care (i.e. – selective population control). Here is an article by Betsy McCaughey on Bloomberg.com explaining what has been added to the stimulus bill over the weekend:

Tragically, no one from either party is objecting to the health provisions slipped in without discussion. These provisions reflect the handiwork of Tom Daschle, until recently the nominee to head the Health and Human Services Department.

Senators should read these provisions and vote against them because they are dangerous to your health. (Page numbers refer to H.R. 1 EH, pdf version).

The bill’s health rules will affect “every individual in the United States” (445, 454, 479). Your medical treatments will be tracked electronically by a federal system. Having electronic medical records at your fingertips, easily transferred to a hospital, is beneficial. It will help avoid duplicate tests and errors.

But the bill goes further. One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions (442, 446). These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book, “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis.” According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and “learn to operate less like solo practitioners.”

Keeping doctors informed of the newest medical findings is important, but enforcing uniformity goes too far.

….

Elderly Hardest Hit

Daschle says health-care reform “will not be pain free.” Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them. That means the elderly will bear the brunt.

Medicare now pays for treatments deemed safe and effective. The stimulus bill would change that and apply a cost- effectiveness standard set by the Federal Council (464).

The Federal Council is modeled after a U.K. board discussed in Daschle’s book. This board approves or rejects treatments using a formula that divides the cost of the treatment by the number of years the patient is likely to benefit. Treatments for younger patients are more often approved than treatments for diseases that affect the elderly, such as osteoporosis.

In 2006, a U.K. health board decreed that elderly patients with macular degeneration had to wait until they went blind in one eye before they could get a costly new drug to save the other eye. It took almost three years of public protests before the board reversed its decision.

[Continue Reading…]

Culture, Politics, Videos

Inconvenient Debt or Destroying Our Children’s Future?

I urge you to pass along this video to all your friends and family. Glen Beck is right about this… it is immoral for our government to do this and worst of all, it’s going to affect, not just us, but our children and our children’s children for many years to come. Remember this video from the 2008 election races? Watch it again and then watch the Glen Beck video below. This is a sad time for America.

Apologetics, Culture, Current Events, Law and Faith, Politics, Theology

Piper responds to President Obama

John Piper:

As everyone knows, our new President, over whom we have rejoiced, does not share this reverence for the beginning of human life. He is trapped and blinded by a culture of deceit. On the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, he said, “We are reminded that this decision not only protects women’s health and reproductive freedom, but stands for a broader principle: that government should not intrude on our most private family matters.”

To which I say . . .

  • No, Mr. President, you are not protecting women’s health; you are authorizing the destruction of half a million tiny women every year.
  • No, Mr. President, you are not protecting reproductive freedom; you are authorizing the destruction of freedom for a million helpless people every year.
  • No, Mr. President, killing our children does not cease to be killing our children no matter how many times you call it a private family matter. Call it what you will, they are dead, and we have killed them. And you, Mr. President, would keep the killing legal.

Some of us wept with joy over the inauguration of the first African-American President. We will pray for you. And may God grant that there arises in your heart an amazed and happy reverence for the beginning of every human life.

[HT: James Grant]

Apologetics, Culture, Current Events, Law and Faith, Politics, Reforming, Sermons, Theology

Living Under a Pro-Choice President

John Piper discusses what it is like to be a pro-life Christian under a Pro-Choice President. He writes:

That is the title of a sermon I preached January 17, 1993, three days before Bill Clinton was inaugurated president. It is just as relevant—or more—today.

The text was 1 Peter 2:17, “Honor the king.” I closed with eight ways to honor a pro-choice president. The seventh was this:

We will honor you by expecting from you straightforward answers to straightforward questions. We would not expect this from a con-man, but we do expect it from an honorable man.

For example,

  1. Are you willing to explain why a baby’s right not to be killed is less important than a woman’s right not to be pregnant?
  2. Or are you willing to explain why most cities have laws forbidding cruelty to animals, but you oppose laws forbidding cruelty to human fetuses? Are they not at least living animals?
  3. Or are you willing to explain why government is unwilling to take away the so-called right to abortion on demand even though it harms the unborn child; yet government is increasingly willing to take away the right to smoke, precisely because it harms innocent non-smokers, killing 3,000 non-smokers a year from cancer and as many as 40,000 non-smokers a year from other diseases?
  4. And if you say that everything hangs on whether the fetus is a human child, are you willing to go before national television in the oval office and defend your support for the “Freedom of Choice Act” by holding in your hand a 21 week old fetus and explaining why this little one does not have the fundamental, moral, and constitutional right to life? Are you willing to say to parents in this church who lost a child at that age and held him in their hands, this being in your hands is not and was not a child with any rights of its own under God or under law?

Perhaps you have good answers to each of these questions. We will honor you by expecting you to defend your position forthrightly in the public eye.

You have immense power as President of the United States. To wield it against the protection of the unborn without giving a public accounting in view of moral and scientific reality would be dishonorable. We will honor you by expecting better.

[HT: James Grant]

Culture, Current Events, Law and Faith, Politics

Homeschoolers win in Germany

This is an update from previous posts I’ve done on the same topic. I wanted to pass along this good news for the Christian parents that were facing the possibility of jail time for the homeschooling of their children. Read below and be thankful to God for providing them with this amazing deliverance!

===========================================

POLICE STATE, GERMANY
Homeschoolers win when government charges dropped
Mom, dad no longer threatened by penalties including jail

Posted: December 11, 2008
12:00 am Eastern
By Bob Unruh

Authorities are dropping criminal child-neglect charges pending against a German mother and father who could have faced up to two years in jail and loss of custody for homeschooling five of their children, according to a report from the International Human Rights Group.

Spokesman Joel Thornton said his group, which has been working on the case involving the Brause family from Zittau, Germany, heard from local counsel about the government’s decision.

“We received word from our German counsel in this case, Johannes Hildebrandt, that the court and the prosecutor are dropping the charges against Mr. and Mrs. Brause. This means they no longer face up to two years in prison and the potential loss of their children. The decision of German officials is a huge victory for this family and for homeschool families in Germany,” Thornton told WND.

[Continue Reading…]

Church Planting, Culture, Evangelism, Missions, New Testament Theology, Protology, Reforming, Theology

Desert Like a Rose by Peter Leithart

First Things has published a thoughtful article by Peter Leithart regarding missions and culture. I encourage everyone interested in understanding how missions should be done in light of various cultures to read this article. It addresses the issue of compromise and the gospel and much more. Enjoy!

A Rose in the Wind

Excerpt:

Time was when Christian missions occurred “over there.” Every now and then, the missionary would show up at church dressed like a time traveler, to show slides of exotic places and to enchant the stay-at-homes with tales about the strange diet and customs of the natives. Foreign missions still happen, but that model seems like ancient history. With the new immigration and the increased ease of travel and communication, the mission field has moved into the neighborhood, and every church that has its eyes open is asking every day how to do “foreign missions.”

That poses a problem. Missions has always been the place where the bookish question of “Christ and culture” turns practical. Now, at the same time that missions has become a challenge “right here,” multiculturalists question the very legitimacy of missions. Since the gospel always comes clothed in culture, how, on the premises of multiculturalism, can missionary work be anything but a veiled form of cultural imperialism? From Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart to Barbara Kingsolver’s Poisonwood Bible, missionaries are depicted as tools of Western hegemony. But, if we’re all missionaries now, are we all cooperating in genocide?

Under the regime of multiculturalism, mission efforts face a cruel dilemma. Either missionaries can preach an uncompromising gospel that will cause everything to fall apart, or they can soft pedal the gospel of God’s judgment and grace in order to permit non-Christian cultures to survive. But is the situation as dire as this? Does the Bible perhaps offer a model for re-conceiving the question in a way that avoids the unhappy choice between compromise and cultural cataclysm?

The answer, I think, is yes. [Continue…]

Culture, Culture News, Politics, Polls, Theology

Culture News: Americans and the Supernatural

Gene Veith points out this recent poll:

A new Harris Poll gives some fascinating details about what Americans believe and don’t believe .

The numbers clearly favor the proverbial Big Man Upstairs: 80 percent say they believe in God; among those who attend church weekly, the number is 98 percent. Three-quarters believe in miracles, 73 percent believe in heaven, 71 percent say Jesus is the Son of God and 71 percent believe in angels, the survey found. Seven out of 10 say Jesus Christ rose from the dead and that the Bible is, all or in part, the “Word of God.”

More than two-thirds – 68 percent – believe in the “survival of the soul after death” and would describe themselves as religious. About 62 percent think that hell exists, 61 percent believe in the Virgin Birth and 59 percent say the devil exists.

In contrast, fewer than half – 47 percent – said they believe in Darwin’s theory of evolution; a third said they did not believe in it while 22 percent were not sure what they thought. A full 40 percent said they believe in creationism, though the question did not elaborate on exactly what that term meant.

Supernatural phenomena of other kinds attract Americans’ attention.

Overall, 44 percent of the respondents said they believe in ghosts, 36 percent say UFOs are real while 31 percent believe in both witches and astrology. About a quarter believe in reincarnation, or “that you were once another person,” the survey found.