I read your article “The Coming Evangelical Collapse,” and I found it wanting. I am always perplexed in how “educated” white males see the world in such a narrow focus. While many of the things that you wrote I consider a banality, you clearly are missing the boat on one-third of the American population which is not white. Your analysis was very general. Actually, the Mainline churches are collapsing as you know. The fastest growing entities are among Latinos and African Americans, but like the eurocentric divinity school that I attended these persons obsessed with only Anglo-Saxon churches ignored huge non-white churches like the AMEC, COGIC, PNBC, and so forth. COGIC has perhaps 6 million people and this up from 200,000 in 1960. The AMEC has no fewer than 4 million people.

My point is you are looking at America as if the aging and declining white church experience is the proper interpretive lens for American churches in their totality. It is not only wrong, but it is arrogant. The same way the U.S. census has never taken an accurate count of the non-white population in this nation is analogous to how you wish to discuss faith for people you either do not know or possibly do not care to understand.

You completely have left out of your calculus the present Depression and how this might greatly revitalize the importance of church in the lives of millions. This happened in the 1930s, and there is reason to think that it can happen in this century.

The same way I think Post-Modernism is a white male ego-trip that postulated history is not important if WE are not totally able to mistreat yellow, brown, red, and black people. The collapse is reflective not the coming of an anti-Christian age but an age that is intolerant of a racist-inspired heresy that justifies all manner of evil done against poor, non-European, and marginal people based on fraudulent false notions of European supremacy. All the theological talk and pretense never covers for the reality of hatred and mean-spirited offal that has presented itself as Evangelical Christianity.

I do think that you are 100% correct about Pentecostalism and related sects. By the way, it was not until the early 1990s that major divinity schools even acknowledge the importance of these groups. Your neo-Death-of-God theological point of view was common in the 1960s, and look at the rise of the religious right that occurred. There will not be a decline of Christianity in the West. Europe’s population will be one-third African, Arab, and Asian within the coming 30 years. The major difference between the non-European and the European is that the latter has never had a god-complex. Therefore, there is a need for God and reverence for the same. It is rarity to meet people in the poorer or suffering communities that have no sense of God. True, there is a secularism among the young, but how much of this is driven by alien hegemony of Madison Avenue?

Also, I think you ignored the elephant in the room. Why is there such an anti-Christian tact in the American media? Why has the Holocaust replaced Christ’s death of the cross as the singular event in history? Why are school choirs afraid to sing Christian songs? Who makes the films and has a considerable influence in the mass media of this nation? Is this really an anti-Christian bias in America? Or, are we victims of mass manipulation by parties that have an antagonistic appreciation for Christianity? Who makes the movies and opinions? Why are our armies at war? Who are our white Evangelicals allied with? Answering these questions can get one into trouble no matter how carefully considered and measured. We are living in an age of a quiet Inquisition, but the culprits are of secularists united with believers.
If you have read Edward Bernays, you about his book Propaganda.

How much of what you and I think about the Church today is based on the negative images the come from the media? I worked in media for 4 years, and I observed the relish people took in attacking anything or anyone associated with organized religion–especially Christianity. However, nobody can notice this or the heritage of the producers or newspersons making constant negative scoops on the church. I am amazed that persons whose controversial views of war and human rights are never reported in the news. I am awestruck by the underreporting of the media to report paedophilia rings and scandals of an unstated faith. After all, to mention anything is a complete and gross crime against humanity.

I agree the decline of Evangelicalism for white folks is coming due to demographic changes. I think that the Christian faith will grow stronger after this age of repression and abuse by the super rich results either in a major civil war or a non-violent reformation in America. I place my bets on the civil war, because the Anglo-Saxon elite are so greedy and besotted by 500 years of corruption and rapine theft of resources that only thing understood is extreme force.

The United States might break into separate states. The massive influx of immigrants makes this breakup possible. The Catholic church will be a big player in such a conflict.

Yours,

R.

The Gospel of Judas expounds the same message as other gnostic tracts: salvation = secret knowledge available to only a few privileged mystics.

Yeah, Crossan is brilliant. Brilliantly wrong, and Brilliantly paddling his own boat, but brilliant. Wright hauls Crossan in on a couple of points in JVG, but every clock is right twice a day.

The fact is that no matter what pitches these guys occasionally hit, their scholarly METHOD is dumbfounding cavalier. What Crossan does to the study of historical sources ought to be illegal. He believes the insights of a sociologist on brigands in first century Judaism tell us far more about Jesus than the New Testament. Huh?

All these people, at the end of the day, have two axes to grind: Jesus is really a _________________________ (insert their latest politically correct interest) and evangelicals are the devil incarnate: Jew haters, etc.

Giving them some credit is appropriate. Looking past their blatant agendas and bias is not possible, however.

Hmm. This is a common evangelical stereotype, but I’m not convinced it’s really true. I’m no fan of the Jesus Seminar generally, but it’s not true that the individual scholars involved are regarded by other scholars as mavericks. Even Wright treats their work seriously and extensively.

It’s just a little too easy to write them off as loonies on the fringes of “real” scholarship, but many of them are not. That’s not to deny the Jesus Seminar was a piece of slick marketing, but these scholars and their work go beyond just the Seminar.

The sad thing is that “discoveries” like this and The DaVinci Code often get Christians confused and caught up in it. It is really sad that we do not search out truth better than we do. Too many people take CNN’s word for stuff and move on…

It brings to mind the Bereans… We need to search out the truth and help others do the same. Thanks again for iMonk and the thought provoking articles you bring us!

It is quite a hilarious read. It seems to randomly jump to various bits of “secret knowledge” that Jesus was sharing only with Judas. Surprise surprise the Gnostics are behind all this.

My favorite part was the fact that apparently Jesus would appear as a child to his disciples randomly. I wonder if there is some link here between modern Hollywood’s fascination with children as a source of great wisdom and the ancient Gnostics.

I’ve only seen one actual news article on the Gospel of Judas (and I avoid Faux News, so I don’t know how badly they reported this), and it didn’t present it as anything that would turn Christianity on its head. It was discussed for what it is: a Gnostic document that sheds light on some of the beliefs that were part of the milleau of the first couple centuries of the early church. It presents a different take on who Judas was and how he’s understood. And that take is not in itself heretical (Judas as a trusted friend doing what was necessary is an idea that’s been around long before the discovery of this parchment). In fact, one scholar was quoted as saying that there is very little in this parchment that presents any real conflict with the accepted Gospels (only with ideas about Judas that developed later in Christian history).

So, basically, it isn’t going to change or even challenge anyone’s understanding of basic Christian theology. For scholars it’s an exciting discovery, but for the average guy in th pews it has little meaning.