{"id":588,"date":"2008-02-09T19:07:59","date_gmt":"2008-02-10T03:07:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/2008\/02\/09\/christians-the-cause-of-religious-decline\/"},"modified":"2008-02-09T19:07:59","modified_gmt":"2008-02-10T03:07:59","slug":"christians-the-cause-of-religious-decline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/2008\/02\/09\/christians-the-cause-of-religious-decline\/","title":{"rendered":"Christians the cause of religious decline"},"content":{"rendered":"

In an article today in the National Post<\/em>, a university professor lays the blame for religious decline squarely at the feet of Christians:<\/p>\n

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He said most people assume religious ignorance came about from the secularization of U.S. schools, particularly after the U.S. Supreme Court banned devotional Bible readings and prayer in the 1960s. <\/p>\n

But he believes the problem can be traced back 100 years ago to changes in Christianity itself. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

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“It’s because the centre of religion has moved from the head to the heart,” he said. <\/p>\n

“Religion used to be in America a combination of thinking and feeling. And since the rise of evangelicalism in the 19th century it’s gradually … become more about feeling. And so what’s important is loving Jesus rather than knowing what he had to say.” <\/p>\n

“You can see this in the way Jesus is depicted,” added Prof. Prothero, whose earlier book is entitled American Jesus<\/em>. <\/p>\n

“He used to be depicted in a Bible story: on the cross, walking on the water or raising Lazarus from the dead,” he said. <\/p>\n

“Now he’s depicted like a high-school photo — a head and shoulders shot that’s looking at you and kind of calling you into a relationship with him.”[1]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/font>You can find the full article, ‘Knowledge of religion shallow, commitment deep’ in U.S.<\/a>, at today’s National Post<\/em> site. It will only be available there for a couple of weeks. <\/p>\n

This observation is connected to my ‘outrage’ series. As religion tends towards shallowness, the serious-minded react. The trendy reaction these days is to embrace Calvinism. One danger in joining the trend is a failure to notice that some of the serious are syncretists, embracing the shallow emotional forms<\/em> of worldliness while holding to the mental seriousness<\/em> of Reformed dogma. <\/p>\n

\"don_sig\" <\/p>\n

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[1]<\/a> Charles Lewis, \u201c‘Knowledge of religion shallow, commitment deep’ in U.S.: Religious Nation<\/em>; Americans know little about Bible, author finds<\/a>\u201d National Post <\/i>Published: Saturday, February 09, 2008<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In an article today in the National Post, a university professor lays the blame for religious decline squarely at the feet of Christians: He said most people assume religious ignorance came about from the secularization of U.S. schools, particularly after the U.S. Supreme Court banned devotional Bible readings and prayer in the 1960s. But he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[64,43],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2fYWj-9u","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}