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Post by M. Hawbaker on May 6, 2020 23:47:46 GMT
The share of Americans who claim any religious affiliation has declined in recent decades, but the United States nevertheless remains one of the most religious countries in the world, according to a new report. The study by Lyman Stone, an adjunct fellow for the American Enterprise Institute and a research fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, examined the history of religion in the U.S. and the causes behind its recent decline.
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Post by barb43 on May 7, 2020 13:51:42 GMT
I don't know if this is supposed to make us feel good ("yay! we're still better than most!"), or what. We have a long way to go in the business of sharing Jesus Christ with our family, friends, and neighbors.
Around this town, church members used to call people living around their churches and invite them to church. They passed out flyers for Vacation Bible School. They doorknocked in the evenings and on weekends. Around here, it was as likely to be a Southern Baptist at your door as a Jehovah's Winess. We don't see much of that any more. Cell phone use, the Do Not Call list, and a tougher city ordinance about doorknocking has probably been a lot of what's stopped these outreach activities - at least here.
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Post by M. Hawbaker on May 7, 2020 14:44:43 GMT
I don't know if this is supposed to make us feel good ("yay! we're still better than most!"), or what. We have a long way to go in the business of sharing Jesus Christ with our family, friends, and neighbors. The article could have been worded better, but I think that their point was that as bad as the current state of the church is in the US, it is not yet as bad as many of the doom and gloom reports that have come out in recent years would have us believe. Around this town, church members used to call people living around their churches and invite them to church. They passed out flyers for Vacation Bible School. They doorknocked in the evenings and on weekends. Around here, it was as likely to be a Southern Baptist at your door as a Jehovah's Winess. We don't see much of that any more. That sort of thing is still pretty common here, but you have to watch out because so many of the churches here fall really far to one extreme or the other of either super legalistic or super liberal.
We also seem to have more than our fair share of the most extreme forms of "Word of Faith" and "Hyper Charismatic" churches here.
The few good churches and other Christian ministries that we have left here though are really good.
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