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Tag: Lutheranism

Christians Say the Darnedest Things: Catholics T.J. Lang and Michael Voris Say Protestantism Leads to Atheism

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In a post titled, Does Protestantism Ultimately Lead to Atheism? T.J. Lang asserts that Protestantism leads to immoral, Satanic atheism:

The Lutheran Church he founded remained the state Church of Sweden until 2000 and was the only church allowed in the country until the middle of the 19th century. Even today, it is funded by and considered a “department” of the Swedish secular government. In fact, Catholicism was illegal in Sweden for more than a quarter of a century. At times, the death penalty was invoked for the “crime” of being or becoming Catholic. It was only dropped in 1873.

Roughly 2 percent of the population of Sweden are Catholics and Orthodox, and they are almost entirely immigrants. Given that Sweden has been influenced by only the Lutheran faith for almost 500 years, the state of Christianity in Sweden should be an indication of whether Protestantism, or more specifically, the first version of Protestantism – Lutheranism — has had a positive impact on Christianity.

Statistics regarding the state of the Christian church in Sweden are, to say the least, shocking. Today, 61 percent of Swedes officially belong to the Lutheran Church, down from 95 percent in 1972. Both statistics are misleadingly high, in part because anyone born before the year 2000 was automatically enrolled in the state church regardless of religious belief or practice. For the vast majority, membership is merely a formality and doesn’t mean much in their lives. In the 1990s, 15 percent of Swedes claimed a belief in a personal God and only 19 percent believed in an afterlife.

According to various studies, between 46–85 percent of Swedes now consider themselves “irreligious,” meaning that in their lives there is an “absence of religion, indifference to religion or hostility to religion.” According to a Zuckerman poll, the same figures for a few “Catholic countries” are as follows: Portugal: 4–9 percent, Greece (Eastern Orthodox): 16 percent, Italy: 6–15 percent. These statistics are contrasted with that of Germany, the home of Luther’s Reformation, at 41–49 percent, and the United States at 3–9 percent.

The Living Church, an independent Anglican organization, reports that only about 400,000 of the 6.6 million Swedes attend church on a monthly basis (6 percent), and only 15 percent of the members of the church say they believe in Jesus Christ. It is not insignificant that an equal number of Swedes are stated atheists: “Of the 3,384 churches in Sweden only 500 or so are used, at most, once a month.”

Fifty-five percent of children born in Sweden today are born out of wedlock as compared to 9 percent in Greece, an Eastern Orthodox country, which was never really infected with Protestantism or influenced by “salvation by faith alone.” Of course, this has a tremendous impact on the percentage of children reared in single-parent families. Twenty-two percent of children in Sweden are in single-parent situations, whereas in Italy, it’s only 10 percent.

According to an article in the Weekly Standard, “A majority of children in Sweden and Norway are born out of wedlock. … Not coincidentally, these countries have had something close to full gay marriage for a decade or more. Same-sex marriage has locked in and reinforced an existing Scandinavian trend toward the separation of marriage and parenthood.”

Of course, Sweden isn’t the only country that has been influenced by Protestantism or more specifically, the original Protestantism — Lutheranism. As such, it would be instructive to determine how Christianity in general and Christian moral values are faring in those countries.

Obviously, these statistics show that the greater the influence of Protestantism, the weaker the belief in God and the less the importance of religion in general. Other country by country statistics on issues such as abortion rates, marriage rates, cohabitation rates and divorce rates are all pretty shocking in the countries the are strongly Protestant. Obviously, Satan is having his greatest successes in the predominantly Protestant countries, and in fact, specifically in the Lutheran countries.

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In a video transcript titled, Donald Trump and Atheists, Michael Voris had this to say:

The entire American electorate is in massive flux and about to undergo the most significant change in the country’s history.

If current trends hold or even accelerate by just a little, this may very well be the last election where a majority of voters will be white Christians — if not this election, certainly 2020. This is due to two large factors: the decline of the Protestant majority and the rise of the religiously unaffiliated, also known as “nones.”

The nones, at least many of them, while claiming to be “spiritual” are functionally and in practice atheists. They are a-theist not so much in their cores but in their lives, where it really matters after all. We have said at various times that Protestantism leads to atheism, and here are reports back from the political front lines proving the truth of that statement.

Up until about the past 10 years, the bulk of the decline among white Protestants was largely among more liberal mainline Protestants, like Methodists, Episcopalians or Presbyterians. Since the re-election of Ronald Reagan in 1988, their numbers have been cut nearly in half to just 14 percent of the overall population.

But more surprising, in the last 10 years, there has also been a notable decline among the more conservative branch of white Protestantism —Evangelicals. Since the end of Ronald Reagan’s last term in 1988, they have dropped from 22 percent to just 17 percent. Add both those Protestant camps together and you get just 31 percent of the electorate.

What’s driving the decline over the past generation? The rise of the younger generation, 34 percent of which identify as unbelievers — not affiliated with any religious body at all.

It doesn’t take a genius to look at the numbers here. A larger percentage of millennials — 34 percent — are unaffiliated with any religion than the the overall percentage of white Protestants — 31 percent — relative to the population. All this volatile mixture needs is a little more time, perhaps one more election cycle, before white Protestant voters lose their majority status. And then, by the time, today’s millennials are in their forties, they will be the majority — and you need to stop and think about that for a moment.

What is looming just over the horizon, politically and culturally speaking, is a nation where Christians are the minority, and cultural atheists are the majority. And this is owing precisely to the Protestant ethos of the rule of the exaltation of the individual. All of Protestantism is built on this principle — the principle of individual interpretation of Scripture, of individual personal relationship with Jesus, unmediated by the Church.

Protestantism eventually gives way to atheism, because philosophically, it is atheism. What, after all, is atheism? It is a-theism, no God. What does Protestantism, with its me-centered theology, produce? That you become your own God. You determine your morality. You determine the meaning of Scripture. You determine your own theology. There is no longer room for God, because the individual assumes the throne — kind of the working definition of atheism.

….

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Both of these excerpts are from the Church Militant website

A Fundamentalist Lutheran by the Name of Jim Pierce Sets Me Straight

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Having a bit of extra time on my hands as I impatiently wait for Thanksgiving Day (family, food, and football) to arrive, I decided to comment on a recent blog post written by my friend Gary. You can read his post and my comments here. Into the discussion came a Fundamentalist Lutheran by the name of Jim Pierce. Pierce is a member of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS). He swears he and his sect are most definitely NOT Fundamentalist.  If you have some time, please read his comments on Gary’s blog. I’ll leave it to you to decide if Pierce is a Fundamentalist. For the purpose of this post, I want to share several of Jim’s comments that were directed my way. His comments are a fresh reminder that even if Evangelical Christianity’s narrative is true, I still wouldn’t become a Christian if it meant I had to go to church and heaven with the Jim Pierces of the world. No thanks. Give me hell every time. In fact, heaven for me would be the absence of such people. Dear Lord Jesus, PLEASE rapture your chosen ones ASAP.

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How Do You Tell Evangelical Relatives You No Longer Believe in God?

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Guest post by Gary. You can read Gary’s blog here.

Yesterday, I and my family spent the afternoon with some of my evangelical Christian relatives from a distant city whom we had not seen for quite some time. The last we had spoken I was a “gung-ho” evangelist for conservative Lutheranism, attempting to convert them to the “correct” version of Christianity. So if the subject of religion/faith came up, how was I going to tell them that I was no longer a conservative Lutheran; a conservative Christian; a Christian…period?

It would be awkward.

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you might be surprised to learn that I had no interest in bringing up my deconversion from Christianity with these relatives. I usually love a good debate (argument) over religion or politics, but not with these people. Not on this subject. I knew it would hurt them. I knew that they genuinely care about me and the knowledge that I have “rejected Jesus” would be shocking and painful for them to hear.

Our visit remained off the topic of religion for several hours, but after a pause in the conversation, my cousin asked, “So how are things with your (Lutheran) church?”

There was silence. I could feel the tension in the air as both my father and my wife cringed and both thought to themselves, “Oh boy, here it comes!”

My father tried to play defense for me and said, “Gary isn’t going to church right now.”

There was an uncomfortable silence.

“It’s probably best we don’t talk about it,” I said.

But that answer left too much hanging in the air. They needed an explanation.

So I said, “I’m now an agnostic.”

There was an uncomfortable pause.

“On what basis have you made that decision?”, they politely asked with obvious disappointment in their eyes.

And from there I tried to explain why after over forty years of being a Christian I had “abandoned” Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior. I explained why I had found their evangelicalism, the religion of my childhood, so frustrating and disappointing. “It is based so much on what one feels,” I said. “In evangelical churches I was repeatedly told that if I was a true believer I would feel Jesus “move” me, “lead” me, “guide” me. I would hear an inner voice speak to me. But I never had the emotional highs that everyone else around me seemed to always be having. I never heard a voice. I became tired of the emotional roller-coaster of attempting to feel the presence of Jesus to confirm my eternal security, my salvation, and left evangelicalism.”

“That is why I loved conservative Lutheranism!” I explained. “My assurance of salvation was no longer dependent on how I felt but upon the objective act of God: his seal of salvation at my Baptism. Like Luther, I could look to my baptism as absolute proof of my salvation, not look to how I felt about my faith at the moment!

I was very happy and content as a confessional (conservative) Lutheran.

But then one day in early 2014, while surfing the internet, I came across the blog of an ex-fundamentalist Baptist pastor who had become an atheist [Bruce Gerencser]. I decided that all this man needed was to be pointed to the “correct” version of Christianity (conservative Lutheranism) and then he would abandon atheism and come back to Jesus Christ. I decided I would bring this “lost sheep” back to Jesus.

Four months later…I was an agnostic.”

“But why?” they said. “What did this man say that changed your mind?”

I then explained that this atheist ex-preacher had pointed me to the books of NT scholar Bart Ehrman. “You’ve heard of Bart Ehrman, haven’t you?” I asked.

No. They had never heard of him. (Evidence to me that they had never seriously questioned or examined the veracity of their belief system.)

“Well, Bart Ehrman is a former evangelical turned agnostic NT scholar who has written several books on the New Testament. For instance, in reading his books, I found out that the existing manuscripts of the Bible contain many scribal alterations and additions. We as evangelicals have been taught that God preserved his Word. How is it then possible that God allowed his Word, the Bible which we have on our night stands, to contain passages that the original authors never wrote?”

“That is not true! You need to read _________ and __________ (evangelical) NT scholars and they will give you the correct information!” they said. “You shouldn’t just accept the word of a few skeptical scholars.”

“But I have read the books of Christian scholars. I read the entire 800 plus page book of NT Wright on the Resurrection. I have read both sides and bottom line the evidence for the pivotal claims of evangelical and conservative Christianity, the inerrancy of the Bible and the historicity of the Resurrection, are based on false assumptions and little if any real evidence.”

“I think the problem is that Lutheranism didn’t teach you correctly about salvation…” interrupted my cousin.

“But I became a Christian when I was still a Baptist/evangelical. I believed in Jesus as my Lord and Savior and asked him to be the Lord of my life prior to being baptized. I was born again. But, now I no longer believe.”

“Then you never truly believed,” responded another cousin. “It is impossible to be saved and then not believe. You were either never saved to begin with or one day before you die, you will return to the Faith.”

“But I really did, sincerely and with all my heart, believe in Jesus as my Lord and Savior, repented of all my sins, and called on Him to be the Lord of my life!” I protested.

“No. You obviously didn’t really believe,” they agreed.

How do you prove to someone else that you really believed something? It’s impossible. (I was back to my original issue with evangelicalism: The act of salvation is internal and subjective.)

And how could I present to them all the evidence against the veracity of the supernatural claims of Christianity that I had learned over the last two years in one brief conversation? I couldn’t. So we agreed to not talk about it further. We agreed to go back to “pleasantries”. But the mood had changed. They told me that they loved me and that they would be praying for me. I told them that I loved them and that I very much appreciated their concerns.

Shortly thereafter, we said our goodbyes and parted ways.

Originally posted on Escaping Christian Fundamentalism

Bruce Gerencser