Is American Christianity Turning Charismatic?

Two new surveys from The Barna Group indicate that things are changing dramatically in the religious landscape, indicating that the number of churches and adherents to Pentecostal perspectives and practices has grown significantly in the past two decades.

A decade ago, three out of ten adults — compared with 36 percent today (80 million adults) — claimed to be charismatic or Pentecostal Christians. (For the survey, this included people who said they were a charismatic or Pentecostal Christian, that they had been “filled with the Holy Spirit” and who said they believe that “the charismatic gifts, such as tongues and healing, are still valid and active today.”) Although just eight percent of the population is evangelical, half of evangelical adults (49%) fit the charismatic definition. A slight majority of all born-again Christians (51%) is charismatic. Nearly half of all adults who attend a Protestant church (46%) are charismatic.

The survey revealed that four out of every 10 non-denominational churches are charismatic, in addition to the most well-known charismatic denominations, which include the Assemblies of God, Foursquare and Churches of God in Christ. The profile of the typical charismatic congregation is nearly identical to that of evangelical, fundamentalist and mainline Protestant churches with four out of five (80%) having a full-time, paid pastor (average age:52-years-old) in charge of the ministry. Weekly attendance is equivalent to that of other Protestant bodies (82 adults at Pentecostal gatherings compared to 85 adults among all Protestant churches).

The Barna study found that several widespread assumptions about charismatic churches are inaccurate:

• Although many people believe that charismatic Christianity is almost exclusively a Protestant phenomenon, 36 percent of all U.S. Catholics are charismatic.
• Thought to belong to a strictly defined group of denominations, the growth of Pentecostalism has recently crossed denominational boundaries with seven percent of Southern Baptist churches and six percent of mainline churches being charismatic, according to their senior pastors.
• One widespread view is that charismatic Christianity is found mostly in small, relatively unsophisticated congregations. But, charismatic congregations are about the same size as non-charismatic Protestant churches and are more likely than other Protestant churches to use five of the seven technological applications evaluated, such as the use of large-screen projection systems, etc.
• Many female pastors were thought to be welcomed into the Pentecostal community, but nine percent of both charismatic and non-charismatic Protestant churches are currently led by a female senior pastor.
• It is assumed faith trends in America are dictated by white churches, which represent about 77 percent of the nation’s Protestant congregations. However, only 16 percent of the country’s white Protestant congregations are Pentecostal, compared to 65 percent of the Protestant churches dominated by African-Americans.

The compensation of each group’s senior pastors differs some with non-charismatic church pastors receiving an average total compensation package ($47,000) annually greater than charismatic pastors ($42,000).

With regard to education, a large majority of the senior pastors of non-charismatic churches (70%) have graduated from a seminary, while not quite half of the charismatic pastors (49%) have a seminary degree.

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Parents, Oh how much ought you to be continually devising for the good of your children! Often devise how to make them “wise children”; how to give them a desirable education, an education that may render them desirable; how to render them lovely and polite, and serviceable in their generation. Often devise how to enrich their minds with valuable knowledge; how to instill generous, gracious, and heavenly principles into their minds; how to restrain and rescue them from the paths of the destroyer, and fortify them against their peculiar temptations. There is a world of good that you have to do for them. You are without the natural feelings of humanity if you are not in a continual agony to do for them all the good that ever you can. It was no mistake of an ancient writer to say, “Nature teaches us to love our children as ourselves.”

Resolved —

At the birth of my children, I will resolve to do all I can that they may be the Lord’s. I will now actually give them up by faith to God; entreating that each child may be a child of God the Father, a subject of God the Son, a temple of God the Spirit-and be rescued from the condition of a child of wrath, and be possessed and employed by the Lord as an everlasting instrument of His glory. (See Newsletter Link)

REAGAN WIT AND WISDOM

Now that we’re in the thick of the political campaign season, it might be a timely moment to recall some of the insights of our 40th president, Ronald Reagan:

“The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

“I have wondered at times about what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress.”

“The taxpayer: That’s someone who works for the federal government but doesn’t have to take the civil service examination.”

“Government is like a baby: An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.”

“The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program.”

“I’ve laid down the law, though, to everyone from now on about anything that happens: no matter what time it is, wake me, even if it’s in the middle of a Cabinet meeting.”

“It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.”

“Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving subsidize it.”

“Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed, there are many rewards; if you disgrace yourself, you can always write a book.”

“No arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is as formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women.”

“If we ever forget that we’re one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under.”

Tags: politico election cartoon

The Heresy that Wouldn’t Die - Christian History

The Heresy that Wouldn’t Die
Though Gnostic sects faded in the early church, Gnostic ideas have had a long shelf life.
by Philip Jenkins
from Issue 96: The Gnostics Hunger for Secret Knowledge

This world is not my home. As it stands, that statement reflects the views of a great many orthodox Christians, but a Gnostic would take it much further. From a Gnostic perspective, the material world is not just fallen but an utterly flawed creation, beyond redemption. God—or at least, the good, true God—certainly does not work in history. Escape is only available to the small minority who know, who recognize the need for liberation, which lies within. Wisdom, Sophia, is for the spiritual, the elite, and distinguishes them from the gullible herd of humans mired in the material, the victims of cosmic deception. They will remain asleep, while the true Gnostic is awakened.

Gnosticism has never gone away, however much some modern scholars lament the suppression of its hidden gospels in the late Roman Empire. The main themes survived, for instance, in the Jewish tradition of Kabbalah, which explains how the world was created through the fracturing of the vessels into which the divine goodness was poured. In addition to seeking their own mystic ascent to God, believers also pledge themselves to achieving tikkun olam, the restoration of the broken world.

Within Christendom too, the fact that Christian states officially suppressed heresy just drove these ideas beyond the frontiers, into regions like Mesopotamia and Armenia. Gnostic and dualist ideas thrived across large parts of Asia in movements like the Paulicians and the Manichaeans, who taught the children of light how to liberate themselves from the evil god of this world.

Occasionally, these ideas were reimported into Europe, most famously in the Cathar or Albigensian movement, which was suppressed by a near-genocidal crusade in 13th-century France. The Cathars followed the old Gnostic ideas faithfully, offering full salvation to the “perfect” who absolutely renounced the world. These old-new movements relied chiefly on the Christian gospels, interpreting the parables in their own distinctive way. Like the early Gnostics, though, they also wrote their own scriptures, such as the Book of John the Evangelist. (”Then did the Contriver of Evil devise in his mind to make Paradise, and he brought the man and woman into it.”)

Living in a Christian-ruled society, later Gnostics defined themselves against the church and its doctrines, which provided a foil for the truly spiritual. The Cathars rejected the Roman Catholic Church as, literally, the synagogue of Satan. Catholics followed the deluded God who had created the abomination of the world in which we live and whose bloody misdeeds are chronicled in the Old Testament. Ordinary Catholic believers were the sheep, in the sense of being docile, ignorant, and uncomprehending.

The Daily Download: Windows Starter Kit | Tips, news, and opinions from Download.com editors

Windows Starter Kit

Posted by Seth Rosenblatt

So whichever gift-giving deity you believe in has smiled on you this season and you’re the recipient of a brand-new machine. Or maybe the computer gods have decided that December was the time for your PC to join that great server farm in the sky.

Either way, you’re in need of some new programs. Free programs. You’re in luck: CNET Download.com has compiled a brand-new Windows Starter Kit, complete with all that your freeware-coveting heart could ever desire. This year we bring you a Web Browser, an E-mail Client, Office and Productivity tools, Image Editors, Music and Video Jukeboxes, File Compression, a PDF Reader, Chatware, a Torrent Client, and seven must-have Utilities. And you don’t even have to stress about whether that shiny wrapping paper is recyclable.

Where’s the antivirus apps? If you’re looking for programs to make your PC more secure, check out our overhauled-for-2008 Security Starter Kit.

Very sobering look at a reality of our times.

Baptist Press - Evangelists reflect on culture, integrity - News with a Christian Perspective

Evangelists reflect on culture, integrity

Posted on Jan 11, 2008 | by Michael Chute

JACKSON, Tenn. (BP)–Cultural issues facing the church, as well as lack of integrity by some evangelists, are undermining the effectiveness of Southern Baptist evangelists, participants in a Jan. 7-8 evangelism summit in Jackson, Tenn., said.

Jerry Drace of Humboldt, Tenn., called together 15 prominent Southern Baptist evangelists, representing more than 450 years of ministry, to take stock of the challenges they face and address possible solutions to diminishing opportunities among the Southern Baptist Convention’s 44,000-plus churches.

An opening question for the summit considered whether the days of mass evangelism are over in Southern Baptist life.

“The public proclamation of the Gospel always works,” said Hal Poe, Charles Colson Professor of Faith and Culture at Union University in Jackson. “For 2,000 years, in every time, place and culture, the public proclamation of the Gospel works. From Peter in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost, to Francis of Assisi gathering a crowd in the plazas of Italy as he preached to the birds, to the Puritans ‘lecturing’ in the town halls, to [John] Wesley and [George] Whitefield preaching in the fields and coal yards, to the Methodist circuit riders at camp meetings, to D.L. Moody preaching in great urban settings, to Billy Graham preaching in stadiums, the public proclamation of the Gospel always works, because ‘the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation to those that believe.’”

I am uncertain about some of this article, but a lot of is is just gold.

Contemplating Cool - 9Marks

Contemplating Cool
By Mike McKinley

Show me a grown man with a goatee and I’ll show you a major league baseball player. Show me a grown man with a goatee wearing sandals and I’ll show you a youth pastor.

When I was a kid, I remember that the youth pastor at our church was totally different than any other pastor I’d ever seen. He quoted rock bands and wore blue jeans to church. He was cool in a way that the other adults in my life were not. I was proud to invite my friends to church and see their negative stereotypes of Christians get blown up. The youth group thrived and “unchurched” kids were reached. The one thing that distinguished our group from others was that our pastor was cool.

As the youth pastors and youth of the 1990s become the head pastors and congregants of the 2000s, it seems like the phenomenon has only grown. It is now an unexamined assumption in many quarters: the best way to reach people is to be like them. In order to reach our culture, we must embody what the culture defines as acceptable and valuable. We must be as “cool” as we can possibly be while still retaining the gospel. That way, people will see us and not be turned off by us. Maybe they’ll even want to be us.

This shows up in both the private lives of pastors (you missional guys, I’m talking about you and your emo eyeglasses) and in the church’s corporate worship, where we seek to remove everything that might seem foreign to the unchurched visitor.

In some ways, I think being connected to the culture around us is helpful. But there are ways in which a commitment to being cool can ultimately conflict with the call of a pastor. As the resident cool guy on the 9Marks docket (which is roughly like being the ladies’ man at a Star Trek convention—damning with faint praise), here are a few thoughts:

Who are the influential leaders in American Christianity?

http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/2007/004/7.42.html — The Zoloft Dispensation

http://www.boundless.org/2005/articles/a0001629.cfm -  How Should We Then Work?

Resisting Unhealthy Adoration from Those We Lead

http://preachingtoday.com/16666 – The Danger of Practical Preaching: Why people need more than the bottom line.

 Confessions of a Megachurch Pastor: Extended 

What Evangelism Isn’t

LESSONS FROM THE RICHEST MAN WHO EVER LIVED

Tags: america pastor christianity revival

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