I would actually bust a gut if American protestantism actually lead to a re-decentralized interpretation of all the dumb shit catholics have spent the past 2 millenia fighting to centralize.
LETS GO CATHARISM! LETS GO MANICHAEISM! LETS GO OPHITES SECTARIANISM!
A surprising 73 percent agreed with the statement that “Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God.”
This is a form of Arianism, a popular heresy that arose in the early fourth century...
Out of the Council of Nicea came the Nicene Creed, which states in part that Jesus was “not made” but “eternally begotten” and “one in being with the Father,” as found in passages including John 3:16 and John 14:9
Guaranteed those dumbass prots just didn't know the difference and saw "JESUS IS GREAT" and just said yes
Interestingly, 57 percent also agreed to the statement that “Everyone sins a little, but most people are good by nature.” In other words, humans might be capable of committing individual sins, but we do not have sinful natures.
This response indicates that many American evangelicals believe humans are born essentially good, which leans toward a heresy known as Pelagianism. This denies the doctrine of “original sin”
Don't worry, these prots aren't heretics, they're just fucking narcissists who think they can do no wrong.
Luckily all Protestants are going to hell for failing to recognize the holiness of God's prophet Mohammed so all these tiny differences are pointless anyway :inshallah-script:
i swear most yankee prods have never even read the damned bible
The last paragraph of the article says that belief that abortion or "non-traditional" marriages are sinful is at 90+% for evangelicals, which is the highest ever recorded by this survey. That part is so telling. They don't know their own scripture, but they do know all about which groups the nice men on TV tell them to hate.
American Christianity has become completely removed from normal religion and is now nothing but an insane reactionary political project.
Are we going to get an even more racist American Martin Luther nailing a list of the doors of Joel Osteen's megachurch?
motherfucker everyone outside your specific baptist convention is a heretic this is the whole point of evangelicalism :picard-annoyed:
orthodoxy is stupid.
The report references Ligonier founder R. C. Sproul’s teaching that everyone’s a theologian. “However, Dr. Sproul would be quick to add that not everyone is a good theologian,” it read.
no shit. you know who really sucks at theology? people with an institutional affiliation. aka professional theologians.
pelagianism "no one is born evil and we have free will" comes across as far more reasonable to regular people than st. augustine aka "sex in the garden of eden was animalistic and obviously not pleasurable. not even husbands and wives should enjoy sex during procreation."
Overall, adults in the US are moving away from orthodox understandings of God and his Word year after year. More than half of the country (53%) now believes Scripture “is not literally true,” up from 41 percent when the biannual survey began in 2014.
oh no?
One thing that toasts my almonds... survey after survey after survey shows people in the US are leaving Christianity (especially young people). A consistent, long-term trend since at least the 90s. But every "analysis" of the data - secular or religious - ends with "people are leaving Christianity an masse and we just don't know why".
I dunno, maybe try and talk to people who left? If they did they'd probably find their answer because I actually think it's fairly consistent: Christianity (the forms dominant in the US that are broadly conservative - Evangelicalism and Catholicism) doesn't actually make a lot of sense. It's mythology that was a mishmash of various beliefs and traditions that have accumulated over many centuries. And now that most people have this little tool in their pocket that let's them learn pretty much anything about everything... it seems perfectly rational to me that people might question things. And there are so many resources out there (like anything written by Bart Ehrman) that demystify Christianity and explain how we got to where we are.
i think the story behind "people are doing [x] and we don't know why!" is that the people (aka the money/institutions) behind the study don't want to know the answer. i've seen other versions of it around other bangers like "what can we even do about the opioid crisis?" they are looking for a clinical or technical solution to a material problem. they are still dropping hundreds of millions at research institutions to study the opioid epidemic, even though we know how to prevent drug addiction (improve people's material conditions, address it as a disease of despair), because they want a different answer that can make the powerful even more powerful.
with the mass exodus of USians from churches, it's the same type of deal. sex abuse scandals and their cover ups, wealth concentration among church elders, corruption. not to mention, all the things you say about being able to ask questions on the internet, because frankly the pat answers of the suit at the church are mostly unsatisfying. it's not like US evangelicals place much emphasis on pastoral care anymore. it's all culture war bullshit, MLM recruiting, and passing the hat for a mission trip to some place where people are executing LGBTQ+, or increasingly, to cover the legal fees and civil court damages of whatever institution covered up for a sex predator. for as many as are willing to ride that psycho train, it's probably >3x that are looking for or finding the exit.
the church leaders don't want to hear that. they don't want to hear that the solution is to melt down their thrones and sell their G4 to help people in crisis, to push their chips in and comfort the afflicted. it's the pharisees all over again. they want to hear that the solution is a new way to say "Abracadabra!" or that 5G blocks prayers or some other garbage that will let them continue to feather their nests.
I would say you are right to an extent, that access to information and the increasingly secular society is more and more out of step with conservative Christian ideology.
But, it’s also true that the progressive Episcopalian and Congregationalists are doing terrible, and are basically moribund. It’s also I think true that Gen Z is actually more spiritual or whatever then millennials, but a lot of it is going into less traditional forms of religion. There are more people practicing witchcraft than there are Episcopalians in the US. So I think this actually has more to do with capitalist forces that promote social alienation, and which are naturally at odds with the structured community organized religion has.
good news, R. C. Sproul is a reactionary Calvinist megachud leader who helped the religious right crush liberal christianity in the US and died in 2017. His son, R.C. Sproul. Jr, got in a defrocked for being in the Ashley Madison leak a while back lmao
You do see unironic Arians come around from time to time (Newton was one), but Pelagianism is a weird flex.
Usually it's something a 15-year-old catholic school student reinvents and naively thinks is a bright idea to say to their Jesuit Religious Teacher.
before the jesuit suplexes them with 50 treatises 1000 years old on why thats Not Good
Percentage of US evangelicals who agree "God accepts the worship of all religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam."
??? These are literally the same religious tradition. They just listed Yahweh worshippers 3 times and everyone else 0 times wtf. "different religions" lol ok.
Idk, tell a hardcore Christian they worship the same God as a Muslim and they'll flip their shit, so I still think this is a fair question to ask/a good data point.
Edit:nvm the hardcore, I think a lot of Christians don't know that
Yeah, I get that. It's just silly and wrong. The only reason the Christo-fascists hate Islamic fundamentalism is because :us-foreign-policy: , not because there's much meaningful difference between them. I bet that number would crater if they asked something along the lines of if they were accepting of pagan beliefs.
When a decent chunk of American Evangelicals hear "pagan" they think of catholics. There are some absolutely amazing stories of catholics growing up in the bible belt and being basically cast out from mainstream society. It almost made me feel bad for them, before they started talking about how we need to restart af holy war.
I love the mix of fundamental concepts and obscure theological hangups here. "Yeah, people think that the Bible is all made up, Jesus was just some dude, other religions are just as valid as Christianity... and not only that, they also think that Jesus was 'made' instead of 'eternally begotten'!"
I would actually bust a gut if American protestantism actually lead to a re-decentralized interpretation of all the dumb shit catholics have spent the past 2 millenia fighting to centralize.
Actually, it's capitalist individualism that did that. Most American Christians regardless of denomination don't do the reading and don't listen very closely when they go to church and simply intuit the specific things they believe.
I want to see them intuit the garden of eden was actually Lucifer's trap for humanity and the snake that persuaded Eve to eat from the fruit of knowledge is an angel of God sent to liberate Adam and Eve through the act of the self-actualization that comes from becoming conscious of good and evil and in turn learning the truth of their existence in utopia is actually a dystopia and the story of them being "cast out" is demonic revisionism meant to trick mankind into seeking the blissful embrace of stagnation in the arms of the Great Satan.
All hail the Snake of God.
Seriously though, in many of the predominant cultures of ancient times, the snake was a symbol of knowledge and transformation. The inclusion of this specific animal in scripture means something. Its not a salamander or a rat or a bird. Its an animal whose ancient symbolic meaning is transforming yourself through the acquisition of knowledge.
It's always helpful to remember that evangelicalism is a political ideology that derives its theological convictions from its reactionary, contradictory beliefs stemming from a rejection of modernity until now
So like, yeah its doctrines make no sense if you look at it from a purely theological perspective, but that's because it's never been a movement based on theological convictions. It's a movement that defines its theological doctrines vis-à-vis American culture wars.
