The Future of Christianity

Is Christianity in the U.S. Doomed? This is the question headlining the front cover the World Magazine. The inveterate optimist and editor-in-chief, Marvin Olasky, answers this question in the article titled “The Sixth Wind?” The content of his positive response to recent gloom and doom of hopeful secularists, atheists, and Muslims comes from interviews with several different authors.

One of his sources were the co-authors of the best seller God is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith is Changing the World, John Micklethwait and Adrain Woolridge of The Economist. As their title suggests, they fail to see Christianity as a dying religion. On the contrary, it is becoming more relevant as is other faiths.

Jon A. Shileds, who wrote The Democratic Virtues of the Christian Right, also see a different picture of the politically involved religious right than the fearsome fascist described by the Left. Here again, his book title suggests what he discovered while hanging around the Right. He witnessed their leaders seeking to train there rank-and-file activist to practice respectful deliberation. He failed to infiltrate their terrorist plots against the left’s political agenda.

Olasky apparently drew on the works of other authors like Terry Eagleton’s Reason, Faith, and Revolution. His book answers the question why people are suddenly talking about God: Because “nothing else–not science, not reason, not liberalism, not economics–works.” Atheism has nothing to offer humans, only God offers hope. Even A.N. Wilson is said to have dropped his atheism.

Olasky finally directly addresses the question whether the trends represent a sixth wind of Christian revival in America. He says, “I don’t know. He says that past experience informs him that there is no reason to be depressed about our current problems. “Truth trumps everything, including liberal cleverclogs.

Olasky’s began his article with poll data that reported a 10 percent drop of Americans who identified themselves as Christian. Previously, 86 percent of Americans claimed to be Christians. Does this mean 24 percent are now atheists or agnostics? No. it just meant 8 percent more (16%) disassociated with any religion or denomination. Most still believe in God and regard religion as important to their lives.

Christianity is alive and mostly well in America.

The problem is the disassociation of the original Christian values from institutional and political affairs. The values of secular fundamentalism–atheistic humanism–pervade our key public institutions like education, big business, and government. If you do the research, you will find Darwinian evolution is underlying dogma justifying both secular fundamentalism and values of atheistic humanism. Our social problems are directly linked to the prevalence of those values in our public institutions. In education, this is called the hidden curriculum that is taught to every child and adult most of the lives most of the time. We all believe what we value and act according ly.

Source: World, June 20, 2009