This document was recently produced by a collection of prominent evangelical Christians. It is a fien summary of the evangelical Christian witness, with a refreshing mea culpa for the politicizing of Christian beliefs in America over the last few decades. It is nicely inclusive, while avoiding a watering down of the strong witness of the evangelical tradition. Check it out if you are interested…
According to a new survey of U.S. adults who don’t go to church, even on holidays, 72% say “God, a higher or supreme being, actually exists.” But just as many (72%) also say the church is “full of hypocrites.” Furthermore, a full 44% agree with the statement “Christians get on my nerves.”
I have spend years hearing these sorts of comments from people and I have to say that I find them sadly disingenuous. I would like to be more affectionate and compassionate, but God simply has not given me this strength.
Let me be the first to burst the bubble here. The Church is in fact full of hypocrites. Many of them. Even I am a hypocrite. In fact, I may be one of the best of them. My hypocrisies are backed with seminary education and the authority of collar wearing and a good enough mind to concoct many reasons why my hypocrisies are in fact consistencies.
Let me burst a second bubble. Quite often, Christians get on my nerves as well. In fact, I know loads of annoying Christians. Furthermore, I have been an annoying Christians to many people. (Just ask my wife.)
But maybe this will be the most surprising truth of all: Jesus – by his own admission - came into the world for those who are sick, not those who are well. (Matthew 9:12) Who is more ill than a hypocrite? We need Jesus and that is why we all go to church. To offer our hypocrisies upon the altar of God and receive the healing grace of God. Many of us are still waiting for that healing, but I am sure it will come.
If one is waiting for the community where no one gets on your nerves, then it seems we are destined to live alone in our own little holes. And even then, well, I sometimes get on my own nerves. So, to avoid such company is futile and probably a little juvenile. But if you think you can manage that, well, more power to you then. Please send an invite when you get there.
As for those who stay away from church because of all us hypocrites, I do not understand why you would leave us all behind to wallow in our blindness. If you have figured it out - and clearly you must have if you have moved out of glass houses and into something more sturdy – then why not share with the rest of us. To do anything less, would be . . . well, hypocritical.
Many people in my churches tell me that they have a great deal of difficulty speaking about their faith with other people. In a way, I find this confusing. The most likely reason is that - as clergy - I am a professional speaker-on-faith. Also, it is socially acceptable for me to speak about my faith. Others expect it and are not hurt, resentful, or taken back when I do. So, I understand that there are far fewer social opportunities for people to speak about their faith.
But here is the thing I think needs to be kept in mind by all those who are in a love affair with God:
When I am in company, I love to tell people about my wife and daughter. I love to share stories about them, ways they make me feel, my pride in them, and so much more. I love to tell people about good books I have read, and what I thought was great about them. And I love to tell people about an exceptional movie I viewed, and the ways in which the characters, story, and cinematography moved me.
So, what is the difference between this and religious faith?
If I would tell others about the people I love, why not about God? If I would tell people about great books I read, why not scripture? If I would tell people about a great movie-going experience, then why not about a moving moment at worship?
It is a great sign of caring to share what is important in your life with other people. We should share what we care about.
This was posted on Reuters about the growing evangelical churches in Brazil. I would disagree with the assesment that pentecostals are “protestant”. I think this position would be shared by most evaneglical Christians, but also by most pentecostals themselves.
Either way, this is an interesting story about the growth and transformation of the Christian church in South America. When the Spirit of God moves, it really does move where it wills. After so many years of the Gospel being borne among the Roman Catholic Church, it now seems to have moved out beyond - at least for a time.
Pope Benedict’s attempts to preserve the Roman Catholic church within Brazil are, I think, a little bit of bad faith. So long as the Church is strong, it ought not to matter that the Roman Catholic church is weakening. Personally, I do not lament that the United Methodist Church in America is fewer in numbers each year, only that the over-all attendence and participation in churches is dropping in the US. Pope Benedict, who has always secretly espoused the doctrine of extra ecclesia nulla salva est (”outside of the church, no salvation”), does not see this. He shall be in my prayers, as will all these people in the story who have found joy, meaning, hope, and new life in the Lord.
Rising Protestant tide sweeps Catholic Brazil
CARAPICUIBA, Brazil (Reuters) - For years, Ronaldo da Silva’s daily routine consisted of drinking himself into a stupor until he passed out on a sidewalk.
Now he spends his days praying and singing with hundreds of fellow Christians at the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God in Carapicuiba, a sprawling shantytown on the outskirts of Sao Paulo where Pentecostal congregations are found on just about every block.
“I’d probably be dead or in jail if it weren’t for this church,” said da Silva, a 38-year-old former Catholic who claims God cured him of epilepsy and helped him straighten out his life when he converted to Pentecostalism a decade ago.
Conversions like da Silva’s are increasingly common all over Brazil, where a boom in evangelical Protestantism is steadily chipping away at the supremacy of the Roman Catholic Church.
The trend, which is playing out all across Latin America, poses a major challenge for Pope Benedict, who arrives in Brazil on May 9 for a five-day visit largely aimed at blunting the decline of Catholicism in this continent-sized nation.
Although Brazil still has more Catholics than any other country in the world, with about 125 million, the percentage of believers that practice the Vatican’s brand of Christianity has been dropping rapidly in the last three decades.
When the late Pope John Paul II visited Brazil in 1980, 89 percent of Brazilians identified themselves as Catholic. By 2000, when the last census was taken, the share of Catholics in the population had fallen to 74 percent.
The number of evangelical Protestants nearly tripled in the same period to 26 million, or about 15 percent of the population. That growth, which is expected to continue, is dramatically altering the religious landscape of a country where the national identity has been intertwined with Catholicism since the Portuguese landed 500 years ago.
“The face of Christianity in Brazil, and all over the developing world, is increasingly Pentecostal,” said Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, a research group in Washington.
REACHING THE MASSES
Pentecostals are not Brazil’s only “evangelicos,” as Protestants are called here. Mainstream churches such as Presbyterian and Lutheran are also present, but Pentecostalism is by far the fastest growing kind of Protestantism.
More than other Christians, Pentecostals believe that God, acting through the Holy Spirit, plays an active role in everyday life. They belong to denominations such as the Assemblies of God and the Universal Church, which was started in a Rio de Janeiro funeral home in 1977 and now has more than 2 million members.
Pentecostalism is especially strong in poor urban areas, where the precariousness of daily life — blackouts, violent crime, high unemployment — can make people seek divine intervention. Many converts are also attracted to the pop-style music and dynamic liturgies, which resonate with contemporary tastes more than the traditional Catholic Mass.
At the Universal Church in Carapicuiba, the weekly Saturday night service at times looks more like a dance hall than a religious temple, with worshippers flailing their arms in the air and singing in unison. Some, like the former alcoholic da Silva, frequently break into tears as they look to the sky and thank God for their good fortune.
“The language of evangelicals is simple, direct, with minimal theology, making it easily understood by the masses,” said Silvia Fernandes, a sociologist at the Center of Religious Statistics and Social Research in Rio de Janeiro.
Evangelical Protestants are also a political force in Brazil. About 10 percent of members of Congress are evangelicals, acting as an influential legislative caucus. Three of the last four state governors in Rio were Protestants, and President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva aggressively courted the evangelical vote in his re-election campaign last year.
The Catholic Church, which is also losing followers to secularism, has responded to the Pentecostal boom by borrowing some evangelical thunder. In a movement that has come to be known as the Charismatic Renewal, some Catholic churches in Brazil have adopted animated worship styles and Pentecostal practices like speaking in tongues and divine healing.
The best-known proponent of renewalist Catholicism is Padre Marcelo Rossi, a former aerobics instructor turned pop-star preacher from Sao Paulo who sells millions of CD’s and even starred in a movie in which he played the Archangel Gabriel.
So far, however, the shift to renewalism has done little to reverse the evangelical tide — a trend that Catholic leaders acknowledge is worrisome.
“I’m not going to say that it pleases us when believers leave the church,” Odilo Scherer, Sao Paulo’s new archbishop, said in a recent interview with the newspaper O Estado de Sao Paulo. “Maybe our methods are inadequate.”
By RACHEL ZOLL, AP Religion Writer
The United Methodist Church is the latest Protestant group caught in the shifting currents of world Christianity. While the American denomination is shrinking at home, its congregations in the developing world are growing explosively.
Over the last decade, the number of United Methodists outside the U.S. more than tripled. The denomination’s largest district is now in the West African nation of Ivory Coast. At the next national church assembly, the 2008 General Conference in Texas, overseas delegates will have more say than ever in the church’s future — as many as 30 percent could come from abroad.
“Trends suggest that Christianity is going to continue to grow as a global phenomenon, and denominations that have thought of themselves as being predominantly North American in character are going to have to get over that,” said William Lawrence, dean of the Perkins School of Theology, a Methodist seminary in Dallas.
Nearly 8 million United Methodists are now in the U.S., with another 3.5 million church members overseas. The denomination is the third-largest in the nation behind Roman Catholics and Southern Baptists, and middle-class worshippers mostly fill the pews of its American churches.
But if current patterns continue, within decades the typical United Methodist will be from Africa. While international congregations expand, the denomination’s U.S. ranks have decreased by 19 percent since the 1970s.
In a sign of the times, the United Methodist high court, called the Judicial Council, will hold a session in the Philippines on Wednesday. It will be the first gathering outside the U.S.
Many in the mission-minded church see the new overseas ties as a gift. Yet as the experience of other Protestant groups indicates, there also is conflict ahead. Christians overseas have been deeply influenced by the zeal of the missionaries who brought them the faith. In the developing world, traditional Bible teachings aren’t questioned — they’re accepted.
As United Methodists debate how they should interpret Scripture on issues from salvation to sexual orientation, delegates from overseas will be a steadfast conservative voice in the fight.
“You definitely see among the African delegations a much more conservative perspective on issues of homosexuality,” said retired United Methodist Bishop C. Dale White, a liberal who oversaw publication of the book “United Methodism at Risk: A Wake-Up Call,” which contends that conservative groups are trying to take control of the denomination.
“In the past two General Conferences, we’ve seen a readiness of conservative American delegates to make common cause with the African delegates who very sincerely believe that in their context, if the United Methodist Church is open to ordaining gay and lesbian people, that it will hurt their outreach there,” White said.
A similar dynamic is eroding the 77 million-member world Anglican Communion, the loose association of churches that traces its roots to the Church of England.
The fellowship was once dominated by its liberal-leaning European and North American provinces, including the U.S. Episcopal Church. But these days, the communion’s biggest and fastest-growing churches — by far — are conservative and African. The 2003 consecration of the first openly gay Episcopal bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, caused an uproar that threatens to break up the Anglican family.
Tensions over sexuality are far less acute in United Methodism. Still, advocates for full inclusion of gays and lesbians have been challenging the church’s ban on ordaining “self-avowed, practicing homosexuals” at national policy meetings for the last three decades.
“I do think that the world Anglican Communion and what’s happening with the Episcopal Church in America — that whole dynamic can teach United Methodism,” said Maxie Dunnam, chancellor of Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Ky., who has worked extensively with Methodists overseas. “The issue is how we’re going to understand ourselves as a world church.
“How rigid are we going to be with defining who we are?”
Through a spokesman, United Methodist Bishop Benjamin Boni, head of the Ivory Coast Annual Conference, declined to be interviewed because of this week’s Judicial Council session.
The panel is taking up a technical issue that will determine the size of the Ivory Coast delegation to the next national church assembly, and Boni was concerned that commenting could be seen as trying to influence the ruling, his spokesman said.
But the impact of the Ivory Coast district on the United Methodists is clear. With about 700,000 members, it became the biggest United Methodist conference as soon as it joined the church in 2004, after years as an independent fellowship. Ivory Coast church leaders are so passionate about their faith that they send missionaries out to other African nations.
Last month, 14,000 Ivory Coast congregants filled a sports stadium in Abidjan for a service commemorating a partnership with United Methodists in Texas. An overflow crowd of about 3,000 listened from outside for the four hours of singing and prayer, according to Texas Bishop Janice Riggle Huie, who preached at the service.
“People were so hungry to hear the word of God,” Huie said. “Growth in the developing countries, particularly in the Southern Hemisphere, will certainly outpace growth in the United States for a long time to come.”
Posted by North West Arkansas Online’s Morning News. Click here.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A lawyer for the United Methodist Church is cautioning clergy against getting caught up in the presidential race as the 2008 election heats up.
The Internal Revenue Service has been warning churches and nonprofits that they risk losing their tax-exempt status by backing a candidate or engaging in partisan activism.
“Churches should take stands on appropriate issues, but it cannot be a substantial part of their ministry,” said Jim Allen, general counsel of the Methodist Council on Finance and Administration.
To protect themselves, Allen said congregations should not invite candidates to speak from the pulpit and avoid statements at any church function that could be interpreted as endorsing or opposing a candidate. Churches, however, are allowed to distribute voters education guides and encourage people to vote.
There is that old saying: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
With that in mind, I offer a hearty congratulations to Wiccans and Neo-Pagans who today won the right to have their pentagram placed on U.S. military gravestone markers. After nearly a month of legal bickering, the Department of Veteran’s Affairs finally allowed the pentagram to be used on the grave markers of soldiers who confessed to be neo-pagans or wiccans.
Religious faith has been increasingly marginalized and repressed in the public square of American discourse. Please do not give in to certain columnists and commentators who like to suggest otherwise. Under the banner of “offensive”, free speech (religious and otherwise) is becoming a rarer and more precious commodity. Sometimes, in my more disillusioned moments, I suspect that I might live to see a push to prevent churches from celebrating Easter on the premise that the raising of Jesus from the dead is offensive to supporters of capital punishment, Italians, pagans, Jews, governors, and members of the Israeli Sanhedrin (all of whose decision was over turned that day).
This victory by Wiccans is a victory for all people of faith, allowing us to keep our religious integrity, to worship the divine as we each see fit, and to express that faith openly to anyone who might come across our tombstone.
A good day for all of us…
See AP Story here.
