A sociology professor at the University of Oklahoma captures the problem of evangelicalism in a tweet. It slices to the core and reveals the dysfunction and brokenness of evangelicalism. This is a brief post but I wanted to add this tweet to this blog.
“If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.”
Virginia Woolf
“What is truth?” retorted Pilate. With this he went out again to the Jews gathered there and said, “I find no basis for a charge against him.
John 18:38 NIV
When I was in Campus Crusade I remember hearing about a day that would come when people rejected truth because they wanted to sin. And that when they rejected truth that is how we would enter the post-truth era. Christians would resist because they stood for truth. I heard this in retreats and a couple of Christmas conferences at Campus Crusade for Christ. Little did I know that one day it would be the white evangelicals who reject truth plunge many forward into the post truth era by embracing conspiracy theories at a whole new level. Or that many would become anti-vaxxers. And that they would do this while proclaiming to believe in absolute truth. I never foresaw the day that it would be white evangelicals who were the leaders of slander by being in the post truth era. Its with that in mind that I saw the following tweet below by Samuel Perry. Perry is on staff at the University of Oklahoma and researches religion. He tweeted out what I would consider to be the tweet of the decade.
Again if this doesn’t capture the sickness that is white evangelicalism then I would be hard pressed to think of something that does. In the last decade evangelicals revealed what many of them are and what they believe. They have lost their way and the right to preach the Gospel. Many have no idea what it is. And many atheists and people outside evangelicalism have more Christian values and fruits of the spirit than evangelicals. Its been an eye popping experience. But I wanted to push this and add it quickly to my blog.
Great blog. Many agnostics or atheists with spiritual fruit would be more open to Christianity if it wasn’t fir the hypocrisy. I asked a good friend who is an atheist, if there was no religious right, no hypocrisy, would she believe.
She told me she didn’t know but she would not hate Christianity. These people should read Matthew 23
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Has anybody actually done a study (George Barna perhaps?) to determine what percentage of evangelicals actually believe these conspiracies?
I think we may be surprised it’s not as high as suggested.
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https://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2021/january/half-of-us-protestant-pastors-hear-conspiracy-theories-in-t.html
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Thank you. That was a fascinating article.
Unfortunately, it does not directly answer the question as to how many evangelicals hold to conspiracy theories. A pastor would have said yes if there were only 3 people in the church spouting nonsense out of 99 congregants.
I have 1 person in my church of 55 that holds to a conspiracy theory and the rest ignore him as they believe his belief is extreme and unimportant to their view of reality.
Thanks again for the link, though. It does lead to the formation of an answer.
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https://religionnews.com/2021/02/11/survey-more-than-a-quarter-of-white-evangelicals-believe-core-qanon-conspiracy-theory/
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Yup I wrote about this issue last night. I saw this RNS article and was stunned. How could over a quarter of white evangelicals believe that Democrats practice cannibalism on babies? It blows my mind. Where is the common sense?
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That’s the crux, there is no common sense. This is an escalation of what’s been going on in fundamentalism/evangelicalism for decades, first the rapture and all the prophecy’s about end times,then the moon landing was a hoax, and let’s not forget y2k, and Obama’s etc etc
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Ever noticed that in the campaign ads for Marjorie Taylor Greene and the Huckabee Heiress, the thing that leads off is “CHRISTIAN(TM)”?
This morning I came to the conclusion that if the primary (if not only) thing going for you in your run for office (and POWER) is “CHRISTIAN(TM)”, that should be an automatic DISqualification.
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I heard the same, though in the Seventies it was ALWAYS in the context of The Antichrist and the Mark of the Beast:
“For GOD Shall Send Them Strong Delusion, That They Shall Believe a Lie. Tsk. Tsk.”
And now these same Tsk Tskers fight to be first in line to bend the knee and take The Mark of The Trump. On forehead AND right hand. “He Is LOOOOOOORD! Even if he slay me, Yea I Shall Praise Him! MAGA!”
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