Christianity will indeed have a sharp decline. So much so that remaining Christians will be persecuted and killed for their beliefs. The very book, the Bible, that many people mock and despise today foretold this.
I never ceased to be amazed at the persecution fantasies that some Christians have. The rest of the world might think they’re wrong, misguided, or ignorant but I find it hard to fathom them being seen as so threatening they’ll be hunted down and killed.
The bible foretold how long it would be until Jesus returned. How’s that workin’ out for you?
Not that many. The problem ain’t the manual, it’s the users.
Take a look at N. Korea, China, and the Middle East. It is a crime to merely possess a Bible in some places.
No, the Bible does NOT foretell that, and it is working out fine for me.
It might not be a literal theocracy, but it can follow the Putin model of using conservative religious beliefs and institutions to serve a criminal regime. You empower extremist religious groups to impose their beliefs on society as a whole and in exchange get their cooperation to help you maintain control.
The people at the top might not have any adherence to traditional Christian beliefs but they can give social and legal power to religious extremists as part of their basket of tools to maintain control over the country. This happens in a lot of dictatorships.
North Korea is a tiny country and such an outlier that it can be disregarded. There’s no way on earth everyone else is going to start emulating the Hermit Kingdom.
It is not illegal to posses a Bible in China. That’s BS. What is illegal is to proselytize, promote, or publicly worship outside the officially recognized Christian groups. They aren’t hunting down and executing Christians.
Nor is it illegal to possess a Bible in the Middle East, where Jews, Muslims, and Christians all regard it as a holy book. What gets Christians butt-hurt is not everyone tolerates their relentless drive to covert others to their belief system. Other countries are not as tolerant as the US in regards to unwanted intrusions and harassment of others. But, again, the folks who are hunting down and killing Christians in that part of the world are not doing so based on those people being Christians, they’re doing it to everyone who isn’t just like them. Given that it’s them against the rest of the world I anticipate that they aren’t going to win and impose their system on everyone else.
Martyrdom sounds so much more stimulating and noble than does the vague continuing attrition actually happening.
The predictions in the New Testament about persecution were about persecutions that were already happening at the time of writing, and they continued, until Christianity triumphed and Christians could go about persecuting each other instead.
I hear you about the mocking and despising though. Wish people would quit that.
Matthew 24:30-34
In fact Jesus said that some of the people who were present at one of his speeches would still be alive when he returned. So either it wasn’t true, or he’s been back and no one noticed.
I’m not sure how you reached this conclusion. He spent as much time building his religious conservative bona fides as he did talking about walls. The two most common soundbites from his campaign speeches (other than “lock her up”) were “we’re going to make Mexico pay for it,” and “we’re going to be saying Merry Christmas again.”
I see no signs that a theocracy is even possible, much less on the way, although politicians like to dog whistle about “American values.” I have heard the claims that the newer generation is become more secular but I’ll believe it the first time we elect an open atheist president. Trump is probably the closest we’ve come but he pays the requisite lip service to religion. I’ve always lamented that we officially have a secular government but a large portion of the population demands that its elected officials must be Christian or at least *some *religion.
Do you think there are a lot of people in the US who really would vote for a Buddhist or a Muslim or a Hindu because at least they were religious? I get the impression that even for Mitt Romney being a not-quite-Christian was a disadvantage.
It would be a disadvantage in the primaries but once it gets to the general election it’s all about the Rs and Ds. Republicans would overwhelmingly vote for a non-Christian Republican over a Christian Democrat, and the Democrats even more so for a non-Christian Democrat over a Christian Republican.
I didn’t say president, I said elected officials. There are members of Congress who are Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist. So far there has been only one declared atheist in Congress.
The progressiveness of requirements by voters for president seem to lag behind progress for other elected positions. I remember when it was an issue that Kennedy was a Catholic, though I never really understood why.
AIUI, part of the concern was the idea that Catholics take orders from the Pope or are required to be subservient to what the Pope wants them to do.
I expect that that was cover for “he’s not one of us” rather than a serious/legitimate objection.
And yet there have been hundreds of atheists in Congress - all but one decided it was better not to mention it.
I came across this article online and came over here to start a new thread on it but saw it would fit nicely in this thread. It’s an interesting question- might there be room for European-style Christian democracy in America?
I think some movement along these lines could enrich the American political scene by giving an outlet for religious conservatives other than today’s Religious Right and could even draw in some moderate Democrats. One thing to make clear- most Christian democratic parties are “inspired by Christian values” than a true confessional party. Also, many of these parties have made their peace with same-sex marriage and don’t want to outright ban abortion, which would be a clear break with the Religious Right.