Showing posts with label Evangelicalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Evangelicalism. Show all posts

Tuesday 24 July 2018

Evangelicalism in France on the rise

It looks like Evangelicalism in France is on the rise, a study by the National Council of Evangelicals in France (CNEF) has found.
The study reported by Evangelical Focus shows around 35 new evangelical churches were opened in France last year or three a month.

France is an overwhelmingly Catholic country, with an estimated 56 per cent of the population having been baptised. Some of the cities may still have very conservative priests and institutions who do not allow people in their churches with bare arms and legs. (Two years ago I was sometimes considered to naked to enter a church but not enough naked to walk on the beach.) In some cities you also can see nuns and priests still clothed in their long dresses and nuns with covered heads. But for the amount of citizens who go to the Catholic church it seems the youngsters are not so much interested in that Catholic faith. The Catholic Church suffers from an aging and over-stretched priesthood and a shortage of vocations, and weekly mass-going is estimated at only around six per cent, which is much more than in Belgium.

The protestant church seems to be more attractive to many youngsters because they offer services with lots of entertainment.
There are around 650,000 evangelical Christians in France, around a third of all Protestants, and according to CNEF study the numb has increased tenfold in the last 60 years.

Wednesday 23 April 2014

Problems attracting and maintaining worshippers

 The urgency to reach people with the Gospel can,
if the church is not faithful and watchful,
tempt us to subvert the Gospel by redefining its terms.

 We are not honest if we do not admit that the current cultural context
raises the cost of declaring the Gospel on its own terms.

 

Jim Hinch writes:


The exteriors of Crystal Cathedral. Garden Gro...
The exteriors of Crystal Cathedral. Garden Grove, CA, USA. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Just 10 years ago, evangelical Christianity appeared to be America’s dominant religious movement. Evangelicals, more theologically diverse and open to the secular world than their fundamentalist brethren, with whom they’re often confused, were on the march toward political power and cultural prominence. They had the largest churches, the most money, influential government lobbyists, and in the person of President George W. Bush, leadership of the free world itself. Indeed, even today most people continue to regard the United States as the great spiritual exception among developed nations: a country where advances in science and technology coexist with stubborn, and stubbornly conservative, religiosity. But the reality, largely unnoticed outside church circles, is that evangelicalism is not only in gradual decline but today stands poised at the edge of a demographic and cultural cliff.

The most recent Pew Research Center survey of the nation’s religious attitudes, taken in 2012, found that just 19 percent of Americans identified themselves as white evangelical Protestants—five years earlier, 21 percent of Americans did so. Slightly more (19.6 percent) self-identified as unaffiliated with any religion at all, the first time that group has surpassed evangelicals. (It should be noted that surveying Americans’ faith lives is notoriously difficult, since answers vary according to how questions are phrased, and respondents often exaggerate their level of religious commitment. Pew is a nonpartisan research organization with a track record of producing reliable, in-depth studies of religion. Other equally respected surveys—Gallup, the General Social Survey—have reached conclusions about Christianity’s status in present-day America that agree with Pew’s in some respects and diverge in others.)

Secularization alone is not to blame for this change in American religiosity. Even half of those Americans who claim no religious affiliation profess belief in God or claim some sort of spiritual orientation. Other faiths, like Islam, perhaps the country’s fastest-growing religion, have had no problem attracting and maintaining worshippers. No, evangelicalism’s dilemma stems more from a change in American Christianity itself, a sense of creeping exhaustion with the popularizing, simplifying impulse evangelical luminaries such as Schuller once rode to success.
California's Crystal Cathedral, now Christ Cathedral (Photo by Wikipedia user Nepenthes)


Continue reading: Where Are the People? -
Evangelical Christianity in America is losing its power—what happened to Orange County’s Crystal Cathedral shows why

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Is the Megachurch the New Liberalism?

Black Christian new writes:
The emergence of the megachurch as a model of metropolitan ministry is one of the defining marks of evangelical Christianity in the United States. Megachurches -- huge congregations that attract thousands of worshipers -- arrived on the scene in the 1970s and quickly became engines of ministry development and energy.

Over the last 40 years, the megachurch has made its presence known, often dominating the Christian landscape within the nation's metropolitan regions. The megachurch came into dominance at the same time that massive shopping malls became the landmarks of suburban consumer life. Sociologists can easily trace the rise of megachurches within the context of America's suburban explosion and the development of the technologies and transportation systems that made both the mall and the megachurch possible.
 
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Monday 23 March 2009

Calvinism is back

Calvinism is back, and not just musically. John Calvin's 16th century reply to medieval Catholicism's buy-your-way-out-of-purgatory excesses is Evangelicalism's latest success story, complete with an utterly sovereign and micromanaging deity, sinful and puny humanity, and the combination's logical consequence, predestination: the belief that before time's dawn, God decided whom he would save (or not), unaffected by any subsequent human action or decision.

...
The Calvinist-flavored ESV Study Bible sold out its first printing, and Reformed blogs like Between Two Worlds are among cyber-Christendom's hottest links.
...
Mohler says, "The moment someone begins to define God's [being or actions] biblically, that person is drawn to conclusions that are traditionally classified as Calvinist." Of course, that presumption of inevitability has drawn accusations of arrogance and divisiveness since Calvin's time. Indeed, some of today's enthusiasts imply that non-Calvinists may actually not be Christians. Skirmishes among the Southern Baptists (who have a competing non-Calvinist camp) and online "flame wars" bode badly.

Read full article > The New Calvinisme
...