I don't understand. Big mega churches should be standing up and pointing out that Trump is expressing the characterisic of the American perception of the antichrist.
A heartless, cruel, cheating liar that garners loyalty from those seeking wealth and power.
He openly plans to destroy the characteristics of our country.
If not the biblical antichrist, still the worst president this country could ever have.
Sadly true, Teresa. They have been so indoctrinated into it that they no longer see the mission drift they've experienced from Jesus' teachings. It's incredibly sad.
“People are leaving you because you are silent right now in ways that matter to them. You aren’t saying saying what they need you to say & what you should be saying — & it’s makes them sick.” THIS, IMO is the crux of the matter. Plus way too many pastors are spewing rhetoric that supports the filth that one orange faced politician keeps spewing despite the evidence that it’s all lies he has made up. Too many churches are spewing lies that long debunked by science regarding climate change & vaccination research. When we lived in Springfield, MO, the local mega church actually held several Christmas services which included children & the elderly but no masks at the height of the Covid pandemic. This same church did not open their doors to the homeless during the coldest part of the winter. They purchased a large plot of land on I-44 for a future additional campus but were not planning to build tiny homes to help ease the homeless problem. To my knowledge that church had no outreach to the homeless in the area at all for shelter or food. Yet they still had remarkable traffic flow every Sunday. It was appalling. And that’s just one church in a small city in a backwater state. Yet something similar is happening coast to coast every Sunday. John Pavlovitz seems to be the only one calling it out. We the People must demand better from ourselves AND our elected officials. Start by electing a Congress that Biden can work with. Don’t neglect your state, county & city officials
If the churches don’t speak, and do it NOW, the only church available to anyone will be the Church sanctioned by the State. There will be no religious freedom for anyone, even for those who “follow the rules”.
I left the Catholic Church years ago when my then 10-year-old child asked me why they lied about so many things. We discussed his feelings and concerns, and I found that he was correct. He, and my husband and I left and have never been back.
John, well diagnosed and well said! So many "preachers" - especially the famous rich ones - are more afraid of losing their influence and revenue sources in the near term, oblivious to the fact that the christianity they purport to claim and espouse has nothing to do with wealth ("prosperity gospel"), secular political power ("christian" nationalism, integralism, seven mountain dominionism), judgmental exclusive "morality" and soteriology (LGBTQ hysteria, discrimination and condemnation), or demonization of the poor and "foreign" (white supremacy, slave-justifying heirarchy). Somehow, they have nevertheless come to accept and even espouse strongly each of these abominations. When pressed on what to do to be saved, Jesus of Nazareth is believed to have said, "pick up your cross and follow me." Like they have with so many other teachings attributed to him, many self-proclaimed christians appear to have rejected that command, in essence as well as substance. They have not only put down their cross (or refused to pick it up in the first place), but they have forgotten where they left it.
What worries me is that there are all of these right-wing churches out there who are NOT staying silent and speaking up about the slaughter of innocent babies (who cares about the health and welfare of the Mom), the invasion of criminal illegal aliens (you know, the family that fled to the US as a last desperate act for survival), the plague of weird gay, trans people who are out there trying to convert our children into God-hating perverts, demanding horrid things like equal rights and protection from bullying (as if there were kids really being assaulted by drag queens [versus priests]), etc., etc. So, I think some churches are indeed speaking out, and giving their congregation exactly the support they need to go out there and spread the word - whether the word has anything to do with Jesus is beside the point.
Hooboy! Your words hit home! I sat in a recent Board meeting as they discussed all their ideas of how to get people to come to church...and not one of them named these as the real issue. Partly, that's because the only ones left are the stalwarts who have worked and served for decades...and they are in their 60s, 70s and 80s. We continue to provide food to more than 150 families each week, we just hosted a dinner for those families traveling to see their incarcerated family members for Mother's Day, are partnering with the Community Action Partnership to establish a Head Start program after we had to close our preschool during the pandemic, and we have a team that makes and distributes sack lunches to the homeless. We are an open and affirming liberal church in a deep red city...and are shrinking away anyway. Frustrating...
Yeah! I have been waiting to hear this. I’m a firm believer that the people closet to the problem must accept and take a stand to make things better. One good Christian is worth more than 100 fake ones.
You may have to send an open letter to every family who slowly or abruptly walked away, so do it. You can transform yourself, your churches personality and your message. Turn your congregation towards service for others. And establish a connection through Jesus and his teachings.
The evangelical community is looking for power but they won’t find it by spreading hate and aligning themselves with who those who are using religion for self-serving vain desires. The Bible should not be a weapon.
Invoking God’s name to anoint an unbeliever with a string of sins longer han both arm is no an order directly from God. The way Christianity’s been high-jacked is not spreading the word but used as a whip on people. The world needs kind, compassionate, loving people more than ver before
It’s not too late to ask for forgiveness and invite your friends and neighbors back next Sunday
As always John, your courage in saying the quiet part out loud is so needed. Unfortunately it’s true what you say. There’s this need to go along to get along attitude in large churches that a solid stance for Jesus is ironically politically incorrect. Loving God, loving others unfortunately becomes complicated.
My grandfather was a pastor, played the violin and was a chef, Oysters Rockefeller was his jam back in the day. He was cool and did his thing, nobody in the family was ever subjected to fire and brimstone proselytizing, thank god. His son, my father was fired for his choir singing a jazzy gospel in a church, blasphemy! He had his congregation, but never crossed the line between church and state. So yes, one who has the audacity to claim to know the truth from a fictitious entity, and then judge supposed sinners for being human is absurd on every level. Who in hell ordained this authority, man! Spirituality and faith can be a beautiful thing, it’s innate to have hope. For millennia, this ideological indoctrination is a farce, a tax free indoctrination thrust upon societies to rid us our demons, or witches and warlocks among us, it’s a business. It’s based in fear, along with fantasy to mold one’s soul into a compliant robot, unworthy of a fictional deity. Bullshit! Turns out, it’s possible to live a happy guilt free life without being judged by pious fanaticism. Your right, there is an exodus for all the reasons you’ve stated. Moreover, I think some people have finally figured out that freedom requires breaking the chains of religious slavery.
I'm beginning to believe that Christianity, as it is taught and practiced in the United States, may have outlived its usefulness as a spiritual path. I know many devout Christians who actually live the Gospel, but as an institution, with many branches and iterations, Christianity in this century in America is defiled and lost. I have often looked upon Jesus not as a savior in the theological sense, but as a great teacher, not unlike other great spiritual teachers, who gave us a formula for overcoming our worst instincts and tendencies, those selfish and tribal behaviors that served to keep us alive through our evolutionary history. Everything Jesus taught was in opposition to those tendencies. We were not to seek riches or vengeance. We were told to share, to forgive, to love our enemies, and to be willing to die for our friends. This was and is revolutionary and it may have been practiced by most followers of Jesus for the first 300 years after his death. But its alliance with empire in the 4th century, its fracture into thousands of feuding denominations in the sixteenth century, and its current alliance with the Republican Party in America is scandalous and anti-Christian. It goes against everything Jesus was trying to accomplish, to show how to overcome the worst instincts of human beings by simply following his revolutionary teachings. If Christian institutions are not not only ignoring the teachings of Jesus, but actually teaching the opposite, what is the point of their existence apart from seeking earthly power? No wonder people are leaving. They are no longer being fed. They see the hypocrisy. They are disillusioned, demoralized and disgusted.
Amen, John! Much of this is why I left in 1969 and the more recent decline is for some of the same reasons with new ones added on year by year. When a product or a service becomes obsolete or irrelevant, there are usually good reasons why. Red Lobster did not close 70 some restaurants because of all the shrimp you could eat, it had to do with ownership, management and loss of value in the market. Cha-Ching!
I don't understand. Big mega churches should be standing up and pointing out that Trump is expressing the characterisic of the American perception of the antichrist.
A heartless, cruel, cheating liar that garners loyalty from those seeking wealth and power.
He openly plans to destroy the characteristics of our country.
If not the biblical antichrist, still the worst president this country could ever have.
Christian hearts are supposed to see this!
You are 100% right! Unfortunately the churches that are very vocal are the ones that want Christian Nationalism.
Sadly true, Teresa. They have been so indoctrinated into it that they no longer see the mission drift they've experienced from Jesus' teachings. It's incredibly sad.
“People are leaving you because you are silent right now in ways that matter to them. You aren’t saying saying what they need you to say & what you should be saying — & it’s makes them sick.” THIS, IMO is the crux of the matter. Plus way too many pastors are spewing rhetoric that supports the filth that one orange faced politician keeps spewing despite the evidence that it’s all lies he has made up. Too many churches are spewing lies that long debunked by science regarding climate change & vaccination research. When we lived in Springfield, MO, the local mega church actually held several Christmas services which included children & the elderly but no masks at the height of the Covid pandemic. This same church did not open their doors to the homeless during the coldest part of the winter. They purchased a large plot of land on I-44 for a future additional campus but were not planning to build tiny homes to help ease the homeless problem. To my knowledge that church had no outreach to the homeless in the area at all for shelter or food. Yet they still had remarkable traffic flow every Sunday. It was appalling. And that’s just one church in a small city in a backwater state. Yet something similar is happening coast to coast every Sunday. John Pavlovitz seems to be the only one calling it out. We the People must demand better from ourselves AND our elected officials. Start by electing a Congress that Biden can work with. Don’t neglect your state, county & city officials
If the churches don’t speak, and do it NOW, the only church available to anyone will be the Church sanctioned by the State. There will be no religious freedom for anyone, even for those who “follow the rules”.
I left the Catholic Church years ago when my then 10-year-old child asked me why they lied about so many things. We discussed his feelings and concerns, and I found that he was correct. He, and my husband and I left and have never been back.
John, well diagnosed and well said! So many "preachers" - especially the famous rich ones - are more afraid of losing their influence and revenue sources in the near term, oblivious to the fact that the christianity they purport to claim and espouse has nothing to do with wealth ("prosperity gospel"), secular political power ("christian" nationalism, integralism, seven mountain dominionism), judgmental exclusive "morality" and soteriology (LGBTQ hysteria, discrimination and condemnation), or demonization of the poor and "foreign" (white supremacy, slave-justifying heirarchy). Somehow, they have nevertheless come to accept and even espouse strongly each of these abominations. When pressed on what to do to be saved, Jesus of Nazareth is believed to have said, "pick up your cross and follow me." Like they have with so many other teachings attributed to him, many self-proclaimed christians appear to have rejected that command, in essence as well as substance. They have not only put down their cross (or refused to pick it up in the first place), but they have forgotten where they left it.
What worries me is that there are all of these right-wing churches out there who are NOT staying silent and speaking up about the slaughter of innocent babies (who cares about the health and welfare of the Mom), the invasion of criminal illegal aliens (you know, the family that fled to the US as a last desperate act for survival), the plague of weird gay, trans people who are out there trying to convert our children into God-hating perverts, demanding horrid things like equal rights and protection from bullying (as if there were kids really being assaulted by drag queens [versus priests]), etc., etc. So, I think some churches are indeed speaking out, and giving their congregation exactly the support they need to go out there and spread the word - whether the word has anything to do with Jesus is beside the point.
Hooboy! Your words hit home! I sat in a recent Board meeting as they discussed all their ideas of how to get people to come to church...and not one of them named these as the real issue. Partly, that's because the only ones left are the stalwarts who have worked and served for decades...and they are in their 60s, 70s and 80s. We continue to provide food to more than 150 families each week, we just hosted a dinner for those families traveling to see their incarcerated family members for Mother's Day, are partnering with the Community Action Partnership to establish a Head Start program after we had to close our preschool during the pandemic, and we have a team that makes and distributes sack lunches to the homeless. We are an open and affirming liberal church in a deep red city...and are shrinking away anyway. Frustrating...
Yeah! I have been waiting to hear this. I’m a firm believer that the people closet to the problem must accept and take a stand to make things better. One good Christian is worth more than 100 fake ones.
You may have to send an open letter to every family who slowly or abruptly walked away, so do it. You can transform yourself, your churches personality and your message. Turn your congregation towards service for others. And establish a connection through Jesus and his teachings.
The evangelical community is looking for power but they won’t find it by spreading hate and aligning themselves with who those who are using religion for self-serving vain desires. The Bible should not be a weapon.
Invoking God’s name to anoint an unbeliever with a string of sins longer han both arm is no an order directly from God. The way Christianity’s been high-jacked is not spreading the word but used as a whip on people. The world needs kind, compassionate, loving people more than ver before
It’s not too late to ask for forgiveness and invite your friends and neighbors back next Sunday
yes, Yes, YES!
Well said. Thank you.
As always John, your courage in saying the quiet part out loud is so needed. Unfortunately it’s true what you say. There’s this need to go along to get along attitude in large churches that a solid stance for Jesus is ironically politically incorrect. Loving God, loving others unfortunately becomes complicated.
Amen!! We have been quiet too long!!
My grandfather was a pastor, played the violin and was a chef, Oysters Rockefeller was his jam back in the day. He was cool and did his thing, nobody in the family was ever subjected to fire and brimstone proselytizing, thank god. His son, my father was fired for his choir singing a jazzy gospel in a church, blasphemy! He had his congregation, but never crossed the line between church and state. So yes, one who has the audacity to claim to know the truth from a fictitious entity, and then judge supposed sinners for being human is absurd on every level. Who in hell ordained this authority, man! Spirituality and faith can be a beautiful thing, it’s innate to have hope. For millennia, this ideological indoctrination is a farce, a tax free indoctrination thrust upon societies to rid us our demons, or witches and warlocks among us, it’s a business. It’s based in fear, along with fantasy to mold one’s soul into a compliant robot, unworthy of a fictional deity. Bullshit! Turns out, it’s possible to live a happy guilt free life without being judged by pious fanaticism. Your right, there is an exodus for all the reasons you’ve stated. Moreover, I think some people have finally figured out that freedom requires breaking the chains of religious slavery.
I'm beginning to believe that Christianity, as it is taught and practiced in the United States, may have outlived its usefulness as a spiritual path. I know many devout Christians who actually live the Gospel, but as an institution, with many branches and iterations, Christianity in this century in America is defiled and lost. I have often looked upon Jesus not as a savior in the theological sense, but as a great teacher, not unlike other great spiritual teachers, who gave us a formula for overcoming our worst instincts and tendencies, those selfish and tribal behaviors that served to keep us alive through our evolutionary history. Everything Jesus taught was in opposition to those tendencies. We were not to seek riches or vengeance. We were told to share, to forgive, to love our enemies, and to be willing to die for our friends. This was and is revolutionary and it may have been practiced by most followers of Jesus for the first 300 years after his death. But its alliance with empire in the 4th century, its fracture into thousands of feuding denominations in the sixteenth century, and its current alliance with the Republican Party in America is scandalous and anti-Christian. It goes against everything Jesus was trying to accomplish, to show how to overcome the worst instincts of human beings by simply following his revolutionary teachings. If Christian institutions are not not only ignoring the teachings of Jesus, but actually teaching the opposite, what is the point of their existence apart from seeking earthly power? No wonder people are leaving. They are no longer being fed. They see the hypocrisy. They are disillusioned, demoralized and disgusted.
Amen, John! Much of this is why I left in 1969 and the more recent decline is for some of the same reasons with new ones added on year by year. When a product or a service becomes obsolete or irrelevant, there are usually good reasons why. Red Lobster did not close 70 some restaurants because of all the shrimp you could eat, it had to do with ownership, management and loss of value in the market. Cha-Ching!