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August 10 - August 23, 2021
Sociologists of religion foretold that global modernization would drive secularization. As the world became more educated, more advanced, more scientific, religious belief would retreat. It had happened in Western Europe, so the rest of the world would follow. There was only one problem with the so-called secularization hypothesis. It failed.
at a global level, not only has religion failed to decline, but sociologists are now predicting an increasingly religious world.
And by 2060, the proportion of humanity identifying as atheists, agnostics, or “none” will have declined from 16 percent to 13 percent.
A recent study found that nearly 40 percent of Americans raised nonreligious become religious (typically Christian) as adults, while only 20 percent of those raised Protestant switch.
nearly 40 percent of Americans raised nonreligious become religious (typically Christian) as adults, while only 20 percent of those raised Protestant switch.
my secular friends are twice as likely to raise children who become Christians as I am to raise children who become nonreligious.
Christianity is spreading so fast that experts believe China could have more Christians than the US by 2030, and that it could be a majority-Christian country by 2050.
experts believe China could have more Christians than the US by 2030, and that it could be a majority-Christian country by 2050.
I submit to you that if a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.”
J. K. Rowling, another author referenced on the side of good-old British paganism, chose not to disclose her fragile Christian faith until the last Harry Potter book was published, precisely because of its Christian influence: she feared it would give the story away.
Christians invented the university and founded most of the world’s top schools to glorify God. And yet studying is seen as a threat to faith. Christians invented science, yet science is seen as antithetical to Christianity.
Christians invented science, yet science is seen as antithetical to Christianity.
atheism in America is overrepresented by white men, while women and students of color are more likely to be religious.
Research suggests that those who regularly attend services are more optimistic, have lower rates of depression, are less likely to commit suicide, have a greater purpose in life, are less likely to divorce, and are more self-controlled
an increase of nearly 10 percent in the last decade and has overtaken “raising a family” as a top priority.
“Three bricklayers are asked, ‘What are you doing?’ The first says, ‘I am laying bricks.’ The second says, ‘I am building a church.’ The third says, ‘I am building the house of God.’ The first bricklayer has a job. The second has a career. The third has a calling.”
Forgiveness—particularly forgiveness not dependent on the actions of the offender—has been linked to multiple positive mental and physical health outcomes.
While simply identifying as a Christian does not reduce your likelihood of divorce, regular church attendance seems to have a significant protective effect on marriage.
Christianity provides the best framework for understanding different aspects of reality.41 He suggests that “any educated person should, at some point, have critically examined the claims for Christianity and should be able to explain why he or she does, or does not, believe them.”
The idea that Christianity is a diversity-resistant, white Western religion of privilege is utterly irreconcilable with the New Testament.
over 60 percent of the population of sub-Saharan Africa identifies as Christian.
the Iranian church is the fastest-growing Christian movement in the world.
“It seems certain that there were well-established communities of Christians in South India no later than the third and fourth centuries, and perhaps much earlier.”
Gandhi is supposed to have said: “I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
conservative estimates in 2010 put China’s Christian population at over sixty-eight million, and the number of Chinese Protestants has grown by an average of 10 percent annually since
But if China does swing from Communist to Christian in the next thirty years, the consequences for global politics could be immense.
South Korea exports the second largest number of missionaries of any country in the world.
“Sister! I am so happy there are Christians even in England!”
think it is one of the tragedies of our nation—one of the shameful tragedies—that 11 o’clock on Sunday morning is one of the most segregated hours.”
on closer inspection, the elephant paradigm creates more problems than it solves.
“It’s often said that you should respect other people’s beliefs. But that’s wrong: what’s vital is that you respect other people.”
our society seems to be losing the art of debate within friendships, and we instead surround ourselves with people who think like us.
“We [liberals] champion tolerance, except for conservatives and evangelical Christians. We want to be inclusive of people who don’t look like us—so long as they think like us.”
But for all the risks associated with taking people’s beliefs seriously enough to disagree, there is a greater risk in not doing so. We start believing that our friends are not even wrong, we fail to test our own beliefs, and—where beliefs carry life-and-death consequences—we fail to love our friends.
But I would not dream of telling them that Christianity and atheism are two paths to the same truth.
Jesus claims rule over all of heaven and earth. He presents himself not as one possible path to God, but as God himself. We may choose to disbelieve him. But he cannot be one truth among many. He has not left us that option.
“The ground of human rights is crumbling beneath us,” and he predicts that as American global influence wanes and China emerges as the most powerful country in the world, concern for human rights will decline.
But if human rights came to us from our Christian heritage, perhaps we can be more optimistic about a world in which China plays a larger role just at the time when Christianity is gaining influence there.
God wants broken people, not self-righteous ones.
Offit now calls Christianity “the single greatest breakthrough against child abuse” in history, observing, among other things, that the first Christian emperor of Rome outlawed infanticide in 315 and provided a nascent form of welfare in 321 so poor families would not have to sell their kids.
Then they led the women and girls, five at a time, toward a hut. “I was trying to hide my baby under my scarf, but they saw her leg,” Hasina recalled. “They grabbed my baby by the leg and threw her onto the fire.”10 After beating and raping the women, the soldiers shut the door and set fire to the hut. Doctors Without Borders estimated that nine thousand Rohingya, including a thousand children, died after attacks like this.
Hitler was devilishly aware of religion’s power. Claiming to guard Germany from atheistic Communism, he invoked God in his earliest speeches and declared in Mein Kampf, “I believe to-day that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator.”
Nazi-era Bibles removed the Old Testament and edited the Gospels to purge references to Jesus’s Jewishness, his missional prioritization of the Israelites, and his fulfillment of Hebrew Scripture.
Nazis edited New Testament texts in other ways to align with their ideology. For instance, Jesus’s world-changing Sermon on the Mount was purged of deep compassion for the weak and made militaristic.20 Finally, and most stunningly of all, the Nazis replaced Jesus with Hitler himself. Joseph Goebbels, minister for public enlightenment and propaganda, said of Hitler: “We are witnessing the greatest miracle in history. A genius is building a new world!”21 The Nazi version of the Ten Commandments proclaimed, “Honor your Führer and Master.” Hitler Youth were taught prayers resembling the Lord’s
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Hans and Sophie Scholl, were also among many other Christians who died opposing Hitler. They started a resistance movement called the White Rose and published pamphlets denouncing the mass deportation and execution of Jews as “the most frightful crime against human dignity, a crime that is unparalleled in the whole of history”; and boldly proclaimed, “Every word that comes from Hitler’s mouth is a lie.”27 “We fight with our words,” said Sophie. The siblings paid for their defiance. On February 18, 1943, Sophie stood at the top of the stairs overlooking a university atrium and flung leaflets
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As Bonhoeffer observed to a friend when led to execution, “This is the end, but for me it is the beginning of life.”28
He argued in Mein Kampf: If Nature does not wish that weaker individuals should mate with the stronger, she wishes even less that a superior race should intermingle with an inferior one; because in such a case all her efforts, throughout hundreds of thousands of years, to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being, may thus be rendered futile.29
evolution had been claimed as a scientific foundation for frameworks as divergent as Communism, capitalism, and Calvinism.
“When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one’s feet.
Science is not designed to give us morals.
