tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-73042886598650075.post2701569386518851649..comments2024-03-22T11:37:52.668-05:00Comments on Byzantine, Texas: St. Vlad's names a young Romanian deanByzantine, TXhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17845681957622343484noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-73042886598650075.post-50067796444713216292018-07-25T13:48:29.035-05:002018-07-25T13:48:29.035-05:00123,
Social scientists are scientists correct? T...123,<br /><br />Social scientists are scientists correct? Their methods and conclusions are science right? "Theology" is metaphysics. "Science" is anti-metaphysics. Social scientist can measure and count, but can not speak to theology - to do so means they are no longer scientists but "Christians" or "theologians" and the like.<br /><br />*Of course* evangelicals and other 'traditional' Protestant, Catholics, and Orthodox are subject to the same secularization that everyone is subject to in our culture/western civilization. We all share the same reality. The *meaning* of this - on a scientific level of counts and measurements as well as on other levels or "narratives" - is to a person dependent on the metanarrative to which one adheres, the narrative of reality and the Real.<br /><br />What is the metanarrative of your life?Jakehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16152024447008244670noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-73042886598650075.post-24126963372152402932018-07-25T07:38:48.002-05:002018-07-25T07:38:48.002-05:00The demographic collapse in mainline Protestant ch...The demographic collapse in mainline Protestant churches and in post-Vatican II Catholicism is often used by traditionalist/conservative Christians of all stripes to warn against liberalization, as if this was the cause of that demographic collapse. In fact, the mainline churches were simply at the front end of a collapse those conservatives are now experiencing themselves, too. That is, "becoming Episcopalian" as a byword for liberalization leading to loss of faithful is no longer tenable, even though it's still popular in some circles. You, however, seem to be making an argument against secularization, which is more to the point, though it is often still conflated with the prior line of argumentation against theological liberalism.<br /><br />From "Amid Evangelical decline, growing split between young Christians and church elders", Christian Science Monitor, October 10, 2017: https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2017/1010/Amid-Evangelical-decline-growing-split-between-young-Christians-and-church-elders<br /><br />"Over the past few decades, most scholars have recognized one indisputable trend within American Christianity: The country’s more liberal Protestant denominations were losing millions of members. Conservative and evangelical churches, by contrast, were holding steady if not flourishing.<br /><br />'For years, it was more or less conventional thinking, especially among Evangelicals, that “churches that stay with a clear-cut theological orientation will not go the way of the mainlines,” notes Bill Leonard, professor of Baptist studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., citing the influential 1972 study, “Why Conservative Churches are Growing” by the sociologist Dean Kelley. “Liberal mainline churches were then castigated for giving up the true faith and deserving what they got.”...<br /><br />'Today, however, there are signs that many of the same trends that decimated mainline Protestantism over the past few decades are now at work among evangelical denominations as well. According to a massive study by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) released in September, the number of white evangelical Protestants fell from about 23 percent of the US population in 2006 to 17 percent in 2016.<br /><br />'The finding, based on a survey of more than 100,000 Americans, “provides solid evidence of a new, second wave of white Christian decline that is occurring among white evangelical Protestants just over the last decade in the US,” said Robert Jones, head of the PRRI, after the study was released. “Prior to 2008, white evangelical Protestants seemed to be exempt from the waves of demographic change and disaffiliation that were eroding the membership bases of white mainline Protestants and white Catholics.”'123https://www.blogger.com/profile/14514075641944568806noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-73042886598650075.post-5903879186854715472018-07-23T17:25:40.310-05:002018-07-23T17:25:40.310-05:00If I am following you Robert from the above list &...If I am following you Robert from the above list & the one you posted on the Athenagoras thread, you diagnosis a problem in Orthodoxy as done in America which leads to the demographic "spiraling downward". Your diagnosis is essentially ethnocentrism.<br /><br />I agree with you that taken as itself, this is a problem. However I make I different diagnosis when it comes to the demographic "spiraling downward" problem. Secularization.<br /><br />In the other thread you talk of an "Americanized" Church, and in theory that would work if being "American" can be separated from being secularized. The preponderance of the evidence, in my view, is that it cannot.<br /><br />So the problem is not that Orthodoxy as practiced in America is not that it is american enough, it is that it is too american. So after 1 or 2 generations the children of Orthodox parents say to themselves "why would I go to Church?" - the faith is simply not being passed to them, and our way of doing Orthodoxy in America is not forming robust Christian's who can see the difference between Christianity and a vaguely moral secularism.<br /><br />If we "fix" the ethnocentric tendency we are still left with a Church for of people who are essentially eastern rite Episcopalians, and whose children rightly see there is no reason to practice the rituals of such a thing.Jakehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16152024447008244670noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-73042886598650075.post-24596789711726943922018-07-23T16:16:06.830-05:002018-07-23T16:16:06.830-05:00there we go building walls again -- our elitist g...there we go building walls again -- our elitist ghettos will be and is being our undoing and demise in america - that is why we are under 800,000 and spiraling downwardr j klanckohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18000371679565046691noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-73042886598650075.post-85799610399317509292018-07-23T11:44:29.340-05:002018-07-23T11:44:29.340-05:00I for one hope he does not and will not "rela...I for one hope he does not and will not "relate" to the "American academic community", or rather he only does in a corrective manner...Jakehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16152024447008244670noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-73042886598650075.post-84815414836449308652018-07-20T15:56:37.957-05:002018-07-20T15:56:37.957-05:00is he fluent in english? does he understand west...is he fluent in english? does he understand western society?<br /><br />how will he related to the needs of american clergy and laity?<br /><br />how will he relate to the amaerican academic community?<br /><br />will the students be able to understand him?<br /><br />does he know how to teach or does he lecture - there is a difference<br /><br />all of these questions remain unansweredr j klanckohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18000371679565046691noreply@blogger.com