Mars Hill, the former church that conformed misogynist, plagiarist, fraudster, and bully Mark Driscoll started before it’s collapse just released the research that was intended for his now dead book, ‘The Problem with Christianity’.
I wanted to put this in rants and raves until I realized that nothing I had to say about Mr. Driscoll is in doubt or otherwise anything but confirmed fact. I feel like this is witnessing as it really does report, in a fair fashion, the issues that have caused people such as I to move to the non-religous camp.
They sure did hit it spot on as to most of the common complaints of the non/ex-christians that seem to post here, as an example here is a block that should be stickied for every new religious forum member.
I am impressed that the remnants of the church which is winding down operations released this data. As a person who live but 3 blocks from their original mega-church I must say this is the first time I have ever “respected” the church’s actions.
I think this data should be read by both religious and the non-religious as it will foster the humanization of the “Un-churched and De-churched”.
Thank you Mars Hill and Mark Driscoll (If you had any part in it) for sharing the “truth” about the beliefs of one segment of our society in such a fair and mostly un-judgmental format.
He seems to have spent a great deal of time and energy finding out that non-Christians don’t believe in the Bible. I guess I never doubted that. So I have not felt much urge to de-humanize the unchurched or non-churched.
I am not clear on what this is in aid of - is or was it intended that the Church would resurge if we downplay the Bible?
If I understand correctly this was research that was paid for for a book he was going to release. The books intent was to improve the conversion rate of evangelical missionaries by explaining why people had left the church…or it was just to make money selling the book to evangelicals which is where he made most of his money before his fall from grace.
This may not be as surprising if you didn’t understand that the man once complained that most Christian men were:
And that women who used college loans are actually guilty of stealing from their future husbands.
I gather that the point was for the data to serve as a teaching aid to help would-be evangelists understand the reasons non-Christians are non-Christians and what their objections to the Bible and Christianity are, so to better help them tailor their approach to talking to such people. I don’t know if any church has undertaken an effort like this on such a scale before, and I don’t have time to look through their data right now, but it certainly sounds interesting.
As mentioned, none of these attitudes seem particularly novel to me coming from non-believers, and even back in my fundamentalist days when we talked about how to witness they mentioned things like this. Like C.S. Lewis makes some similar observations.
Although I intend to hijack the term “evangellyfish” with all deliberate speed.