The New Pope and Christianity’s Challenge

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 15 March 2013.]

Cardinal of Argentina and Jesuit, Jorge Bergoglio, was elected Pope last Wednesday, the first from the Western Hemisphere to hold the Holy Office of Catholicism.  He chose to be known as Pope Francis (the First), a name that fits his reputation and humble demeanor.  His major tasks will be to straighten out the Vatican bureaucracy, also known as the Roman Curia, the standing of the Catholic priesthood, and halt the decline of Christianity in Europe and North America.

While the proportion of the world’s Christians has remained fairly constant over the last century, its center of gravity has overwhelmingly shifted from the north to south.  The Pew Research Forum on Religion and Public Life reports –

“This apparent stability, however, masks a momentous shift. Although Europe and the Americas still are home to a majority of the world’s Christians (63%), that share is much lower than it was in 1910 (93%). And the proportion of Europeans and Americans who are Christian has dropped from 95% in 1910 to 76% in 2010 in Europe as a whole, and from 96% to 86% in the Americas as a whole.”

And even these statistics mask the actual declines in people who regularly attend church or even confess to believing in God.  Protestant Northern Europe has become a Christian wasteland, and in North America secular humanism is making great strides in attracting both young and old away from the faith of their fathers.

Today in America the state is actively and selectively proscribing Christianity and purging its presence from public life.  The ruling progressive mentality is dominant and has prescribed that we be sensitive to all religions in our midst save Christianity.  When the perceived sensibilities of people of other faiths are somehow disrespected, there is an uproar in the media with America’s secular humanists lending their weight to restore those aggrieved.  The only exception is the sound of crickets when a Christian or Christianity is disparaged or mocked.

Today Christians in America are a mobile bunch with over 50% having changed their religious affiliation at least once.  And the churn continues as the overall numbers decline.  To me that reflects an attitude that shopping religions is rapidly becoming the norm because people more and more are dissatisfied with what they learn or don’t learn during their encounter with this or that denomination.

As a Protestant Christian, I have seen that branch of the faith change markedly over my lifetime.  Churches no longer feel that their theology, with its message of salvation and how to live, is sufficient to contain the faithful.  Something different is required today if the pews are to be filled on Sunday.  The overwhelming solution has been to adopt a new ‘contemporary’ style of service that concentrates on entertainment and expunges the wonders of Christian cosmology and theology from its sermons.  ‘Sunday school light’ is the new liturgy in which a progressive ‘liberation theology’ focuses on current social issues during many Protestant and Catholic worship services.

The consequence is that altars have become rock band stages, the sacraments have been silenced, and an all-inclusive Christianity is the order of the day.  The parishioner soon asks himself ‘is that all that there is?’, if so, then let’s go find a place that has a better band, cooler songs, and more skits to entertain us.  If the church seeks first to be a social services club washed of irrelevant theology, then finding the best club is the order of the day.  The Pew Forum describes it as “a very competitive religious marketplace.”  And today that marketplace is more and more filled with Comfort Christians who cannot conceive of contending for what used to be their faith.

On an even bigger scale, respected scientists tell us (here) that the world is rapidly becoming an arena of clashing civilizations, each of which hew to one of the world’s great religious traditions.  It is into that arena that the humble and evangelical Pope Francis now takes the Throne of St Peter as the de facto leader of Christians of all hues.

My name is Rebane, and I expand on this and related themes on georgerebane.com where the linked transcript of this commentary is posted, and where such issues are debated extensively.  However these views are not necessarily shared by KVMR.  Thank you for listening.

Comments

[Joe Koyote]

Like twinkies and viagra, organized religion is just another product to be packaged and sold in a consumer economy. Big time religion seems to attract hucksters and con men eager to turn people’s personal weaknesses and fear of death into huge personal empires ala Jimmy Swaggart, or Jim Bakker, only to be caught in deceit and fraud. How many of these “men of God” have used their positions of trust to lure young girls and boys into their webs of sin? I wouldn’t be so quick to designate the Pope as the defacto leader of the Christian world given the Catholic church’s penchant for sweeping pedophiles and their actions under the rug. As with most things in today’s world, the promise of big money and/or power seems to attract predators of all forms and organized religion is no exception. It seems that the larger and more glitzy (the glass cathedral) the edifice the greater the fraud. When it comes to religious beliefs, I wonder if people just don’t toss personal responsibility aside and let those who “claim” to know about God do their thinking for them without question.

[George Rebane]

For whatever reason (select for survival?), Man is built to create a structured environment that has causality as a prime linking attribute in that structure. This seems to have served him well. Moreover, Man also has benefited from being a ‘teleological critter’ in the sense of going beyond the what and the how to the why. Adopting the ‘it’s turtles all the way down’ paradigm, science doesn’t do well with the why part of the universe. Nevertheless, there is a growing cohort of the world’s scientists who now can see ahead enough to worry about running out of turtles. One of the three or four greatest 20th century physicists (also of black hole fame), John Wheeler (1911-2008) of Princeton’s Institute of Advanced Study assigned himself the penultimate question, “Why existence?” (The Institute was the academic home of Einstein, Neumann, Morgenstern, Gödel, …, and continues to host the world’s remaining who’s who of scientists since its founding in 1930.)

[Michael Anderson]

"Why existence?"

Why, to play baseball in the springtime of course. I'm surprised anyone has to ask.

[themiketymcd]

Joe, I think you and I have bonded, finally. Great comment.

Posted by: Joe Koyote | 16 March 2013 at 09:59 AM

I am the exception to the rule (per usual) because I came about my faith in Jesus via logic/reason. I suggest focusing on Jesus and not 'organized' (as in crime) religion.

[Fuzz]

Gandhi once said, "I like your Christ but I don't like your Christians.....they're so unlike your Christ."  

I agree with JoeK. Christianity has a very sad history and no Christian should run from that. In the middle ages, the political/religious power complex in the Roman church even reached the point of dual titles, such as the Prince Archbishops in Salzburg.  Throw in the selling of indulgences and other profit making schemes, as well as the Inquisition, and you're far away from Christ.  Martin Luther was "protesting" this situation with his 95 theses, hence, we now have "Protestants".    Bring this up to modern times, with fornicating mega-preachers, child molestation in the Catholic Church, the "politicization" of organized religion, and a generalized perception of hypocrisy in the church by young people, and you have a big problem.  Many years ago, without any suspicion on my part, I was taught, at close range, by a Catholic pedophile.  (Father Gary Timmons, Newman Club, Humboldt State University..... he molested a dozen boys, spent 12 years in prison, and the church has paid out over 1.3 million, perhaps way more.)  Despite incidents such as these, it should always be understood:   you never judge a philosophy or a religion by abuse of it's true precepts!  Do the actions or teachings of this person or organization reflect the teachings of Christ?  After my wife and I started seeing a cliquish political bent forming in our church, we decided to move to another church and were very surprised to see that other parishioners had independently come to the same conclusion.  When my parents moved to Nevada county, they visited a new prospective church, and the sermon included a diatribe against Hillary Clinton!  Even worse, the congregation was eating it up.  "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's."  Leave secular political choice to the individual and their conscience.  There are Christians in this nation but this is not a "Christian nation."  The Founding Fathers, in the Dec of Ind,  used the word "Creator", not "God of the Hebrews".  It was a generalized reference to include all citizens.  Yes, many of them were Christians, but rights and freedoms were to be granted to all citizens, regardless of faith or lack thereof.  
  To sum up, my wife and I ended up leaving our church in search of a more pure example of Christian teaching that engaged our intellect as well.  We ended up becoming students of Ravi Zacharias, who I think is one of the brightest lights in Christian apologetics today.  His forte is witnessing to the educated skeptic.  He speaks on many college campuses and has had audiences ranging from top Russian generals to the leader of Hamas.  Here is an example of him answering a college student in a way you might not hear in your average church.  It also shows why engaging the intellect is more important than ever for our youth:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fpmu42g6mDs&feature=youtube_gdata_player

(Atheism, Feminism, and the Bible)

[Bill Tozer]

I believe that we are born with a belief in a Supreme Being. It is innate in our nature as humans. Like being born with a conscious. Oh, many go to great lengths to deny it, to lock it away deep in their depths to never see the light of day. But now and then it surfaces when one looks a a sunset or spring flower or the vast stars on a still clear night.

Why else did folks build Tiki statues in far away places or carve wood statues or build monuments throughout the entire history of mankind. It is a common thread covering all races, nations, empires, and tribes and eras and ages. Its part of us.

Sure, some have had misfortune and blame "God" and say a Supreme Being is all hogwash, yet they remain angry at "God" who they say does not exist. Some take up other gods like Steven Hawkins who worships science as the end all of all things. Others worship knowledge, some "the work ethic", or nature. We are all worshipers in a sense. Most of us get distracted in life and conveniently avoid this innate belief in "God".

Many find organized religion wanting and are turned off by the actions of Christians. Some use that as a excuse for wholesale condemnation of religion or "Creator" to neatly avoid the topic. Engage in a open conversation with one of those types and they will immediately bring up the Crusades, lol.

Their is much more than a grain of thruth in the old expression "All drowning men pray to God." Why would they do that??

[Ben Emery]

Hopefully the shift is taking place with Pope Francis. His humility and dedication to the poor is inspiring.

Pope Francis continued his gleeful abandonment of tradition by washing the feet of a young Muslim woman prisoner in an unprecedented twist on the Holy Thursday tradition.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/the-pope/9960168/Pope-washes-feet-of-young-Muslim-woman-prisoner-in-unprecedented-twist-on-Maundy-Thursday.html

[George Rebane]

BenE 919am - Now if we could only find a mullah who would deign to tell a Christian woman the time of day.