Seven follow-ups on 10 reasons for Christian decline
By David Gushee | September 12, 2016
Last week I offered 10 suggestions to try to explain the declining hold of Christianity in the United States. The numerous threads that followed were really quite illuminating. I also received some interesting emails.
I could go for this civilized discussion thing. Thanks everyone.
Here are seven things I learned, and a bit of where I would like to go next.
1.Bracing dismissals of the intellectual coherence of Christianity, and sometimes of religion in general, came out in abundance. Pew Religion reports that the “nones” have risen to over 20 percent of the U.S. population. They add one percent a year while Christians drop one percent a year. That’s a lot of defectors from Christianity. Clearly, many of them are people who tested Christian faith and found it did not make intellectual sense to their adult selves. Christian efforts to argue “them” out of their skepticism or atheism rarely get anywhere. It seems as if the burden of proof is shifting, from defending disbelief to defending belief. Christian faith can mainly be defended by the good fruit it produces, not by arguments.
http://religionnews.com/2016/09/12/seven-follow-ups-on-ten-reasons-for-christian-decline/