10. The presence of the Holy Spirit in a church can now be measured by nose count and cash flow (or so many churches think).
9. Christians started going out to eat on Sunday, and now the Sunday dinner is only a subject for archeological study.
8. Now that men have stopped wearing suits to church, you can no longer tell the ministers apart from the golfers.
7. Christians started recreating, shopping, and movie-going on Sunday, and expected the church to reschedule to Thursday.
6. Sunday School perfect attendance awards have to be explained to our kids, just like black-and-white television and the Soviet Union.
5. Christians stopped showing up on time for Sunday School and church — then stopped showing up at all for Sunday School — then stopped showing up for either one — and then blamed the church.
4. Women abandoned hats and gloves and formal attire in favor of business dress, and then abandoned that as well — and now wear whatever is left over from the clean laundry.
3. Church and golf are now so aligned that the dress is the same for both.
2. Christians gave up Scriptural absolutes in exchange for cable news absolutes, Oprah absolutes and Dr. Phil absolutes, and now quote them to each other like Scripture.
1. Churches which once had pulpits and choir lofts now have stages for live variety shows and the big band era.
All posts by Rod Heggy
MOVIE REVIEW
Can a Christian Be Demon Possessed?
The Exorcism of Emily Rose
The Exorcism of Emily Rose was in theaters in September 2005 and now has been released on DVD. The movie was a successful conversation piece; it raised the spiritual consciousness of many and allowed more to ask questions about the spiritual aspect of life. I enjoyed it just as a movie, and I do not require movies to be theologically, historically or scientifically correct, unless the issuers claim such accuracy or truthfulness.
However, when a movie engenders discussion, some truth is probably called for, at least in the discussion. Especially does that seem true when discussing God’s limitations on the power of Satan.
Could a Christian girl be possessed by Satan or by a demon?
One of the leading commentaries on the Scriptures on this subject is by Merrill F. Unger, Demons in the World Today (Tyndale, 1972). Unger is known among Christians for his handbook, but this book is interesting, too. Some of Unger’s anecdotes are interesting but hard to judge as to value, simply because the subjective experience of someone else is hard to empathically assimilate. The Scriptures differ in that the Holy Spirit makes empathic assimilation possible. But Unger’s arguments from Scripture are intellectually satisfying. Unger died in 1980 and this book has been reissued under another title.
Unger’s argument is that a Christian, which by definition is someone indwelt by the Holy Spirit, cannot be possessed by Satan or by a demon, because the Holy Spirit will not share. Thus, if the movie Emily Rose was a Christian, which she seemed to be, then she could not be possessed by Satan or by a demon, because the Holy Spirit would not countenance an on-site competitor. Likewise, Christians can be reassured of their immunity to Satanic or demonic possession. Therefore, the premise of the movie was not Biblically sound, entertaining though it might have otherwise been, and would not be cause for fear on the part of Christians regarding unrestrained Satanic or demonic power to control the mind, body or soul of the Christian.
But, for non-Christians, the movie might very well be a warning. 2 Thessalonians 2: 9-12 (NIV): “…every sort of evil that deceives those who are perishing.†The word “every†is ad infinitum, bearing of no exception, and so, too, might be the potential evil.
Indiana Court Adopts Uni-prayer
The United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, on November 30, 2005, enjoined the Indiana Legislature from opening its sessions with sectarian prayer. Following the United States Supreme Court decision regarding the Nebraska legislature, the Marsh case, the Indiana federal court ordered the Indiana Legislature to conduct its opening prayer tradition like this:
“In this case, for the reasons set forth above, plaintiffs are entitled to a permanent injunction against the Speaker in his official capacity barring him from permitting sectarian prayer as part of the official proceedings of the Indiana House of Representatives. If the Speaker chooses to continue any form of legislative prayer, he shall advise persons offering such a prayer (a) that it must be nonsectarian and must not be used to proselytize or advance any one faith or belief or to disparage any other faith or belief, and (b) that they should refrain from using Christ’s name or title or any other denominational appeal.â€
Gene Veith, writing for World Magazine, brought this decision, to my attention at least, in the December 17th issue of World Magazine, in his review of the decision, when he noted that the decision eliminated religious diversity by banning sectarian prayer, but allowed non-sectarian prayer, i.e., uni-prayer [my word not his, but probably not a new term since the invention of the uni-sex concept]. Mr. Veith also noted that Christian prayer is incapable of encompassing meaningful uni-prayer.
The legislative session prayer cases are more worrisome to me than the public school prayer or public school curriculum cases. To avoid that problem, Christians simply have to learn how to tithe and start their own schools. Our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters have been doing so for generations and while not perfect, have set an example for nearly everyone else. But, legislatures cannot be privatized. The Indiana federal court has taken us one more step away from non-sectarian government toward a form of uni-religion and uni-prayer that will one day become the standard of the politically correct.
Dover Decision: Response to T
While I would certainly hope that the dicta from the opinion you have quoted keep the judicial doors open, dicta typically do not do that in the face of stern findings of fact, to wit, the court’s findings included:
In summary, Dr. Miller testified that Pandas misrepresents molecular biology and genetic principles, as well as the current state of scientific knowledge in those areas in order to teach readers that common descent and natural selection are not scientifically sound. (1:139-42 (Miller)).
Accordingly, the one textbook to which the Dover ID Policy directs students contains outdated concepts and badly flawed science, as recognized by even the defense experts in this case.
A final indicator of how ID has failed to demonstrate scientific warrant is the complete absence of peer-reviewed publications supporting the theory.
BOOK REVIEW
Barna’s Revolution
Christian pollster George Barna has been kidnapped and replaced by gremlins. That is the most logical explanation for the premise, content, and reasoning of the latest book attributed to Barna’s authorship, Revolution (Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 2005).
Barna published his first book in 1990 and during the fifteen years since, after several books, articles and interviews, Barna has established a following that includes the author of this review. Those who have followed Barna’s work have valued it to the extent that changes in worship styles, church practices and methods of discipleship and evangelism can be more or less directly linked to guidance derived from Barna’s polls and trend reports.
Thus, like probably many ministers and church leaders, I greeted Barna’s newest book, Revolution, with high expectations. Unfortunately, those expectations have been thwarted.
The first problem with this book is that it is not an update of his famous polling and more famous prognostication of trends in the church and among American Christians. Indeed, Barna’s book presents nothing in the way of new data. It does contain pronouncements from Barna regarding his accumulated data and his interpretation of that data, stripped of any explanation of the methodology by which he has reached his conclusions. This book has the look and feel of one rushed to press, thoughtlessly assembled and just plain badly written.
The oddities in the book commence with the claim by Barna that rather than being merely a pollster, he is now a practitioner of the “art of estimating the future.†It reminded me of Isaac Asimov’s fictional character, Hari Seldon, the mathematician who 12,000 years in the future would explain, “What I have done…is to show that, in studying human society, it is possible to choose a starting point and to make appropriate assumptions that will suppress the chaos. That will make it possible to predict the future, not in full detail, of course, but in broad sweeps; not with certainty, but with calculable probabilities.†Barna makes roughly the same claim, though a future movie seems less likely.
Barna, it seems, has discovered by polling what the rest of us knew and took for granted. He has discovered that each church has a core of members who do most of the giving, work, leading, and spiritual living, and that such a core usually comprises 5% to 10% of the membership. As a result, churches are less influential for Christ than any of us would prefer. But Barna goes much further, concluding that the local church concept is approaching obsolescence due to its accumulated errors and that an “under the radar but seminal renaissance†is in the making among Christians who have given up on the local church.
Barna never explains how, if these Christians are “under the radar,†that he has detected them. He admits that his book is not a product of his analytical work as much as it is an encouragement to these “outsiders,†who are “struggling with their place in the Kingdom of God, to consider this spiritual awakening as a viable alternative to what they have pursued and experienced thus far.†One has to wonder how these outsiders will learn of his book and buy it in sufficient quantities to satisfy Tyndale without contact with the local church.
Barna’s “discovery†of a large “breed†of Christian “revolutionaries†who do not have the time or feel the necessity for local church involvement, or even worship service attendance, seems poorly explained or documented. Rather than concluding that these Christians are marginal or backslidden, rather even than investigating their true nature through additional polling, Barna concluded that these Christians represent a “significant recalibration of the American Church body.†To be part of Barna’s army of revolutionaries, a Christian must be “repudiating tepid systems and practices in Christian faith and introducing a wholesale shift in how faith is understood.â€
Frankly, there have always been any number of Christians who for a variety of reasons have hovered about the local church like moths on a night light. To now describe them as “revolutionaries†is not only premature, but historically naïve, at least as much as can be determined from the brevity of Barna’s little book. Nevertheless, Barna predicts that the failure of the local church concept, combined with the growth of his revolutionaries, will result in a decline in local church membership from 70% of Christians to 35% by 2025. This startling claim is bereft of tables, charts, data, sample questionnaires, or anything that looks like a pollster wrote it.
Barna’s gloomy prediction for the local church is founded on his conclusion that America has a “stagnant spiritual landscape.†Barna does not, apparently, see that churches are on every corner and new construction is proliferating. The rise of the “megachurch†is swept aside by Barna without explanation as being, rather than the manifestation of the success of his revolutionaries, just another dead end created by out-of-date thinking.
Barna lists and repudiates the changes in the local church on the one hand, and then claims the local church concept will fade because of its unwillingness to change or accommodate change, leaving the disappointed reader to cry out, “Well, which is it?!†Hopefully, the search for George Barna will succeed before his next publishing deadline to prevent a further waste of reader’s time.
