{"id":195,"date":"2009-04-28T17:06:22","date_gmt":"2009-04-29T00:06:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emergentbrethren.org\/?p=195"},"modified":"2009-04-29T10:03:24","modified_gmt":"2009-04-29T17:03:24","slug":"in-the-news-faith-and-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emergentbrethren.org\/?p=195","title":{"rendered":"In the News: Faith and Culture"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m always intrigued when there are reports in the newspapers about surveys or polls on religious or spiritual life in America. Yesterday, I was given a copy of USA Today<\/strong> and found a very interesting commentary on the back page of the front section. We’ve all heard speakers at conferences say that our nation is becoming post-Christian. You may have even seen statistics saying that less and less Americans are believing in God. So, imagine my curiosity when I see this headline: Post Christian? Not even close.<\/a><\/strong> Stephen Prothero, the author of the article, is the chair of the Department of Religion at Boston University. He cites several studies. I invite you to read it with interest.<\/p>\n

Today, imagine my curiosity when I see this headline: Loss of faith attributed to spiritual drift<\/a><\/strong>. This article originally appeared in the Washington Post<\/strong>. Here’s the opening lines of the article: “More Americans have given up their faith or changed religions because of a gradual spiritual drift than switched because of a disillusionment over their churches’ policies, according to a study released yesterday.<\/p>\n

The survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life is the first large-scale study of the reasons behind Americans switching their religious faith and found that more than half of people have done so at least once during their lifetime.<\/p>\n

It also illustrates how personal spiritual attitudes are taking precedence over denominational tradition<\/em>.”<\/p>\n

Later today, I saw that John Ortberg has written about the latter survey for Christianity Today<\/strong>. His article is called, Snapshots of Religious Life: What do the recent surveys tell us about the future of faith?. <\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

To add to the above this week, Leadership Journal<\/strong> has a poll going this week on the topic: “Evangelicals are talking a lot more about “social justice.” How do you see this development?” As of Wednesday morning, here’s how the vote is going:
\nWonderful, it’s long overdue. 62% <\/p>\n

Happy, it’s making our message more attractive. 12% <\/p>\n

Indifferent, it’s not relevant to my ministry. 2% <\/p>\n

Confusing, it’s not something I understand. 3% <\/p>\n

Disturbing, it’s a distraction from the Gospel. 21% <\/p>\n

If you would like to add your vote to the poll, you may do so at: take poll<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Any comments as to what the news is telling us about faith and culture in the U.S.? How does this impact your ministry? Is The End of Christian America<\/strong> here, or is coming, like Newsweek<\/strong> and Ryan writes about below?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m always intrigued when there are reports in the newspapers about surveys or polls on religious or spiritual life in America. Yesterday, I was given a copy of USA Today and found a very interesting commentary on the back page of the front section. We’ve all heard speakers at conferences say that our nation is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-understanding-context"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emergentbrethren.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emergentbrethren.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emergentbrethren.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emergentbrethren.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emergentbrethren.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/emergentbrethren.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emergentbrethren.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emergentbrethren.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emergentbrethren.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}