A couple of weeks ago, a guy filling in our pulpit preached about Christianity and culture. He referenced a study (or article) which basically said that the more religious a society the worse off it is. (I don't have the link, but I'll try to find it and post it) I had a number of questions about this study. FIrst of all, how do one quantify something like this? It's supposedly a study, but can you actually show me numbers which say something about this?
But the bigger question to me is how should Christians respond to this news. Cynically, I think most Christians probably thought the way our preacher thought about it: this is just another proof of the blantant opposition of society to God and faith and religion.
Let me propose another way. Perhaps the reason society is so opposed to God is that they can't see God for all the crap the church throws out there. Maybe they are reacting against rich Christian who care more about their own comfort than the poor? How about the fact that the evangelical church was almost universally behind in the Civil Rights Movement? Those who use the Bible to justify the death penalty? Pro-life people who believe it's ok to murder abortionists? Those who think that the Republican Party is God's party?
The local church can't affect the society wide perception of Christianity, but they can change the way individual people by taking care of the poor, the disaffected, the needy in our area.
I hope to get a Cowboys preview up here in the next couple of days. As a die hard Cowboys fan, you can guess that I expect the Super Bowl.
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Add these to your list: A joke of a minimum wage, lack of universal health cover, corporate underhandedness, racism, gross disparities between social classes, and materialism. Lump that with our piety and we are perceived as intolerant, lacking compassion, and obnoxious. As an American living overseas, those are the reasons people give me for disliking America - that, and they say Americans are fat.
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