Summary : Author denounces most American Christian teenagers as fake Christians because they’re not as passionate about religion as she thinks they should be.
Tempting to take this to the Pit or Great Debates, but defective, judgmental thinking is, sadly, pretty mundane, I find.
I dunno. I’m of two minds on this: 1) the author is holding her faith as a standard which few can attain and 2) it’s the result of an anti-intellectual, spoon-fed Christianity that strongly discourages insight and emphasizes growth.
In the article, the author doesn’t exactly come off as a Christian Standard, but I have to wonder about whether she and the Church (all denominations) are adequately addressing the average teen’s experience (multi-tasking, world-at-their-fingertips blase attitude, information torrents). The other problem that I have experienced first hand is that most teens/pre-teens don’t drive, meaning that the parents have to buy into what the church is offering and not schedule their children for 28 hours of activity a day (not counting school). If the parents don’t prioritize and commit, the teens don’t show up and participate. If a church doesn’t understand its members’ priorities and life experiences, how can it get their attention?
On the other hand is a pervasive anti-intellectual movement where teens asking reasonable questions about themselves and the world can be seen as challenging parental or ecclesiastical authority. There has also been a big emphasis on building a corporate church that requires hundreds of members to function. I saw this here with our local Six Flags Over Jesus, a huge mega church that pulled way back on the reins when the founding pastor retired. The new pastor realized that there had been so much emphasis on growth that few at that church had any idea what is was to be a Christian; they heard plenty of fire in the sermons, but had none of Christian formation and education that led to an understanding of basic Christian theology and history. They had learned to be members of a mega-church rather than followers of Jesus.
I don’t agree with the author that there are fake Christians. What I would agree with is that there are people who have been raised in the Christian Church, but for whom the Church has failed as far as educating them on how to be and live as members of the faith.
Well so let’s see, a “real” Christian:
Outside of maybe one or two homeless people, I don’t think you’re likely to find any real Christians in this nation.
Did anybody bother to read the article? Because that isn’t what I saw at all. But I’d be tickled pink if you (any of you) could show what you’re basing these characterizations on.
I wasn’t shocked or offended by it at all. It’s nothing new, the idea that many teenagers are sticking with their faith somewhat in words only while leading another life in their minds and hearts.
I’m also of complete agreement with this. I recently posted a comment on a friend’s blog about this (under the name “David”), basically summarizing that “Christianity isn’t a default setting. A lot of people say they’re Christian because they know they aren’t Jewish, or Muslim, or Hindu, or Buddhist, and have gone to a church at least once.”
I took note of the OP’s article saying that (not an exact quote) “Evangelicals and Mormons are the only ones who show a real zeal for Christianity.” I would also agree heavily with that, and am sad because Evangelicals and Mormons are also those who are the least likely to actually listen to others and most likely to stubbornly hold to their beliefs.
The sad fact of the matter is that modern Christianity is based primarily on what is in the epistles of the new testament, and the overwhelming influence there is from Paul of Tarsus (aka St. Paul). As a Pharisee, he had a legalistic bias that I think is obvious. Given the fact that Jesus’ teachings consisted mainly of cryptic parables, his death created both a spiritual and dogmatic vacuum that was eagerly filled by any number of early preachers.
Personally, I don’t believe that the Christianity of Paul and the other writers deemed fit for publication by the Council of Nicea, bears any relationship to what Jesus taught. While that may seem an absurd claim, it is no more absurd than the early Christian orthodoxy claiming that the Gnostics were heretics and their beliefs, baseless. As we found with the discovery of the Nag Hammadi library in 1945, they had a rich literary tradition and some of their texts, like the Gospel of Thomas, may even be older than the New Testament gospels.
The point is that a lot of shit went down between 4AD and the Council of Nicea in 325AD when the Christian orthodoxy crystallized. Now add to that the fact that JC almost never spelled out how his new religion was supposed to operate. In fact, he rarely spelled out much of anything. That’s not how he rolled. As a result, it’s not too difficult to make Christianity into pretty much anything you want it to be. It’s only by virtue of heretic pogroms by the early church fathers that it ever attained the status of a well-defined, monolithic institution. So to talk about “true Christianity” is simply absurd. No one at any time in the last 2000 years could possibly have any idea of what that would be.
Replace the word “teenagers” with “people” and it’d still be true.
And the same applies to Jews and Muslims, all who have believer who think certain subpopulations are true Muslims or true Jews.
And this has been said for what like thousands of years now?
This is virtually a clone of all the articles in the 60s with the changing attitude towards youth to religion.
Remember the Jesus Rock movment of the late 60s/early 70s, which was called a watered down version of true Christian values.
I will give you with scientific developments it becomes harder and harder to reconcile your beliefs in any religion with those in science. This isn’t to say you can’t have both, but at some point, it’s all going to boil down to “faith”
The Christians of yesteryear were more visable simply because there were fewer governmental saftey nets to fall back on. Think of how worse this recession would be without food stamps, extended unemployment, government refinance of banks, etc etc
Who would step in, most likely the churches. So in the past it was much easier to see that aid as visable.