Part of the reason churches are dying is that churches did a shit job of justifying their existence and role in society.
I was raised in a fairly conservative church and attended that church's schools, which had prohibitions against dancing and women in leadership positions. However they were unable to provide any sort of justification for these positions and usually would just answer questions as to why these things weren't allowed as "well our older congregants are more conservative and control the purse strings, so..."
It wasn't until I read C.S. Lewis and much later started listening to Jordan Peterson that I heard anything resembling a cogent defense of Christianity's role in Western society and its traditions. But by then the damage had been done.
When the people who are supposed to be passing your values onto the next generation are unable to cogently defend those values (and even go so far as to lightly counter-signal that those values aren't worth defending), is it any surprise that people leave?
Like it or not, Woke Christianity is defending its values, it's just that they're bad values. They give people a reason to attend, and they win by default because the other side doesn't even show up.
could also be because no one remembers why there was prohibitions in the first place and when it was first in place it was common knowledge but over generations people forget why they did it in the first place.
I'm sure that's the case, but that just means that the problem has existed for much longer and that the generation tasked with teaching mine was similarly failed by the generation responsible for teaching them.
It's a church, so all of their positions should be Biblically based. Between the Bible itself and the various creeds, catechisms, confessions, and canons that arose to clarify things, I'd think they should be able to defend their position if they looked into it.
It wasn't until I read C.S. Lewis and much later started listening to Jordan Peterson that I heard anything resembling a cogent defense of Christianity's role in Western society and its traditions. But by then the damage had been done.
C.S. Lewis -- Mere Christianity or something else? I've had that on my to-read list for like a decade and haven't read it yet...
Part of the reason churches are dying is that churches did a shit job of justifying their existence and role in society.
I was raised in a fairly conservative church and attended that church's schools, which had prohibitions against dancing and women in leadership positions. However they were unable to provide any sort of justification for these positions and usually would just answer questions as to why these things weren't allowed as "well our older congregants are more conservative and control the purse strings, so..."
It wasn't until I read C.S. Lewis and much later started listening to Jordan Peterson that I heard anything resembling a cogent defense of Christianity's role in Western society and its traditions. But by then the damage had been done.
When the people who are supposed to be passing your values onto the next generation are unable to cogently defend those values (and even go so far as to lightly counter-signal that those values aren't worth defending), is it any surprise that people leave?
Like it or not, Woke Christianity is defending its values, it's just that they're bad values. They give people a reason to attend, and they win by default because the other side doesn't even show up.
could also be because no one remembers why there was prohibitions in the first place and when it was first in place it was common knowledge but over generations people forget why they did it in the first place.
I'm sure that's the case, but that just means that the problem has existed for much longer and that the generation tasked with teaching mine was similarly failed by the generation responsible for teaching them.
It's a church, so all of their positions should be Biblically based. Between the Bible itself and the various creeds, catechisms, confessions, and canons that arose to clarify things, I'd think they should be able to defend their position if they looked into it.
C.S. Lewis -- Mere Christianity or something else? I've had that on my to-read list for like a decade and haven't read it yet...
Mere Christianity and I think God In the Dock. I remember liking them, but that was probably 15 years ago when I read them.