What percentage of religious leaders are for the most part the work of confidence men, who hide behind the pulpit, telling the flock what they would like to hear while believing something entirely different, or would you say the majority sincerely believe what they preach?
A study was done on the more liberal mainline Protestant churches many years ago in CA, and according to the book “The Mind of the Bible-Believer”(page 38) it reported that half of the clergy had serious doubts about the existence of God. Only one-third firmly believed in the divinity of Jesus. Not sure how they obtained this information, but there would certainly be a lot at stake for them to reveal their true feelings to their flock on a Sunday morning. And where else would they go for employment if they let the cat out of the bag, so to speak?
I’m inclined to believe that fewer than 10 percent could be considered con men. Generally speaking if they were good enough to pull off what they do, they could be making better money in another line of work.
And most con men don’t like working for rubes and that’s what most would consider church supervisory boards.
As far as preachers telling their congregations what they wanna hear, yet believing something different, I think it’s rare. I really do think most of them believe what they preach.
There is an increasing number of touchy-feely preachers out there, though, that are pretty much ignoring what the Bible says and preaching what the world wants to hear. Sad part is that they believe it, too.
If you wanna preach touchy feely crap, that’s fine. Just don’t call yourself a Christian preacher, is all.
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*Originally posted by WV_Woman * I don’t believe that statistic, for one thing.
I believe it is credible. I think it’s important to note though that the study was with more liberal mainline Protestant denominations such as the United Church of Christ, United Methodist, Episcopal, and United Presbyterian. I’m sure the fundamentalists wouldn’t come close to sharing this liberal point of a view.
As far as preachers telling their congregations what they wanna hear, yet believing something different, I think it’s rare. I really do think most of them believe what they preach.
Perhaps. But I’ve also read and talked to quite a few preachers who shared more liberal views than what they preached on Sunday.
Oh, if they were interviewing that particular subset, then yeah, I could see only 1/3 believing that Jesus was/is divine. Then you’ve got pretty large groups in all of those denominations that don’t even consider the Bible infalliable … plus a bunch of other stuff that makes me SERIOUSLY wonder if they’re even Christians to begin with.
No, I am not saying there is no such thing as a Methodist/Presbyeterian/etc Christian. But there are groups in all those denominations that are straying very far away from what the Bible teaches.
A split is a-comin in the Church (the body of Christ as a whole).
I still have yet to hear a good explanation of a fundamentalist vs. an evangelical. Anybody wanna take a crack at it?
Not attempting to hijack but how can anybody go, “Yeah, I’m a Christian, but I don’t think God was smart enough to get His book right on the first try, we gotta read between the lines.”
I might say - " I’m a Christian, but I don’t think Moses, David, Isaiah, Luke, James, et al were smart enough to get His words right on the first try, we gotta read between the lines."
Grim, fair enough, but I find that most people who do that tend to use that explanation so they can ignore the parts of the Bible they don’t like (like, oh, “don’t have sex before you’re married” etc.).
The Merriam-Webster online dictionary already did:
Main Entry: evan·gel·i·cal
Pronunciation: "E-"van-'je-li-k&l, "e-v&n-
Variant(s): alsoevan·gel·ic /-ik/
Function: adjective
Date: 1531 1 : of, relating to, or being in agreement with the Christian gospel especially as it is presented in the four Gospels 2 : PROTESTANT 3 : emphasizing salvation by faith in the atoning death of Jesus Christ through personal conversion, the authority of Scripture, and the importance of preaching as contrasted with ritual 4acapitalized : of or relating to the Evangelical Church in Germany boften capitalized : of, adhering to, or marked by fundamentalism : FUNDAMENTALIST coften capitalized : LOW CHURCH 5 : marked by militant or crusading zeal : EVANGELISTIC <the evangelical ardor of the movement’s leaders – Amos Vogel>
So, while “evangelical” can be used to mean “fundamentalist” (sense 4b), it can also mean other things. Sense 1, for example, only requires adherence to the Gospels, while the term “fundamentalist” usually implies adherence to the whole bible, Old and New testaments alike.
“Inerrantist” = someone who believes that the Bible, at least in the original autograph manuscripts, contains no error.
“Fundamentalist” = someone who believes in what they define as the fundamentals of the Christian faith. Of course, I know UU “fundamentalists” – since it depends on what you define as the fundamentals.
“Evangelical” = someone who believes in the importance of evangelism as a major task of the Church. Often limited to people who believe that the fear-of-Hell approach and adherence to the fundamentals (as they teach them) are important parts of evangelism.
I recently read a book (whose title and author I don’t recall at present and do not have at hand) that went into some detail in describing the 1970s-1980s alliance between evangelicals like the early Jerry Falwell and fundamentalists like Francis Shaeffer to produce the modern Religious Right.
WV Woman, many of us see true Christianity in taking Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord and doing what He commanded, rather than allegiance to a social/moral code founded loosely on the Bible and people’s personal views of what’s right and proper. For example, your comment about disobeying the Bible’s command, “don’t have sex before you’re married,” – the problem is that the Bible nowhere commands that. It does condemn fornication – gratifying one’s lust by sex with no intent to marry – adultery, and a few other sexual sins. But nowhere, AFAIK, does it require marriage before sex. That’s a social interpretation placed on Paul’s teachings on the proper place of sex, i.e., within marriage. If a couple intending to marry decides to “have the honeymoon before the wedding,” they are violating the social mores of conservative America, and its understanding of proper Christian ethics, but not the explicit command of Scripture.
Or is it they don’t agree with your interpretation and the interpretation that your preacher gives you of the bible? Funny thing about the bible, it’s not nearly as cut and dry that the new breed of Christians think it is. And if you disagree, then you are either judged to be to wishy-washy to be a “real” Christian. And please give me a biblical cite that says sex before marriage is a sin.
Which is another arguement about against Jesus being the messiah. Peace on earth, everyone following the word of God, all those true messianic verses. You’d think if Jesus was God and the Messiah, he’d be smart enough to get it right on the first or second time! But nope, the people have to wait for the third coming.
Back to the OP, I don’t know about preachers being con men, but they have to have the attributes of them to be successful. They have to be great salesmen, have to have their pitch down, have to have people who are willing to believe in that they are selling and have to know people enough to give them what they want to hear.
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You are truly an amazing man Polycarp, I am in awe everytime you post something. I wish there were more Christians like you, I truly do.
Isn’t the term fornication a warning against having sex with prostitutes and over the years changed meaning to mean have sex outside of marriage?
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But is there really a scripture that says that? You might find ST. Paul mentioning if you absolutely have to get married to do so to keep from burning in hell. But many of God’s favorites in the Bible had many lovers. David had his share and he’s one of the central figures in the OT. Solomon had 700 wives and 300 mistresses. Lot sleeps with both of his daughters and gets them both pregnant. I’ve asked preachers about this and they have admitted to me that no where is Lot scorned by God for his actions. In fact, the NT refers to him as righteous Lot. Virtually every central OT leader was a polygamist. In the NT, Jesus preferred a celibate lifestyle altogether as did Paul. But if you take the Bible as a whole, you’ll find multiple lovers was no big deal to God, aka, Jehovah/Yawveh/ Lord.
Well, the etymology is from the Latin fornix, an archway, fornication being something you did in archways or, more generally, in dark corners of the public street. This might be a reference to sex with a streetwalker, or more broadly to illicit and unapproved-of sex with a partner in circumstances where you could not go either to your home or to your partner’s, because the relationship was not publicly acceptable. It seems from this that the term would not cover sex with an acknowledged mistress or a concubine.
Of course, that’s a Latin etymology. But neither the OT nor the NT were written in Latin. I don’t know what term is used in the original language that is translated as “fornication”, or whether it implied sex with prostitutes or more generally sex outside marriage, or something in between.
