Showing posts with label Catholics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Catholics. Show all posts

Tuesday 7 November 2017

500 Years of Reformation Divisions Have Lost Much of Their Potency

After 500 Years, Reformation-Era Divisions Have Lost Much of Their Potency

Theological differences diminished to a degree that might have shocked Christians in past centuries.

As Protestants prepare to mark the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, new Pew Research Center surveys show that in both Western Europe and the United States, the theological differences that split Western Christianity in the 1500s have diminished to a degree that might have shocked Christians in past centuries.
When we look at the Lutheran, Calvinist, Presbytarian, Pentecostal and Baptist churches we do not notice a lot of free thinking and continued Biblical study in the church.

While the Reformation led to more than a century of devastating wars and persecution in Europe, both Protestants and Catholics across the continent now overwhelmingly express willingness to accept each other as neighbours and even as family members. this would not be bad when they all kept to study of the Bible and would aim to bring their flock closer to God.

The majority of present protestant churches are aiming to please their folks and are looking for ways to make their service as entertaining as possible; That way the Pentecostals are enjoying a growth whilst many other protestant churches are loosing members.

In Western Europe, the Pew Research Center conducted telephone surveys from April 11 to Aug. 2, 2017, among 24,599 people across 15 countries. In the U.S., the survey was conducted online from May 30 to Aug. 9, 2017, among 5,198 panelists on Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel (although all of the questions analysed in the survey were asked of only half the sample).

Of the U.S. Protestants 46% say the Bible provides all the religious guidance Christians need, a traditionally Protestant belief known as sola scriptura. But 52% say Christians should look for guidance from church teachings and traditions as well as from the Bible, the position held by the Catholic Church.

In the United States we can find mega churches where the preachers just shout with quotes from the bible but not really look into biblical texts to teach about the Word of God. How more entertaining a pastor can be how bigger his church can be.
Among self-identified white evangelicals, 44% express both convictions of sola fide and sola scriptura, and this figure rises to 59% among white evangelicals who say they attend church at least once a week. 19% say neither religious tradition espouses sola fide, and one-in-ten U.S. adults (11%) say only Catholicism traditionally teaches that salvation comes through faith alone.
Among Protestants who know that only Protestantism (trinitarian) traditionally teaches that salvation comes through faith alone, about three-quarters (77%) embrace the concept of sola fide. But among the much larger share of Protestants who are not aware that sola fide is solely a Protestant teaching, far fewer (35%) believe that faith is all that is needed to get into heaven. The survey does not take into account the non-trinitarian protestant churches which for the majority teach that people are not just saved by their baptism or by their reborn status. Most of non-trinitarian protestant churches teach one has to become like Christ and one has to follow the commandments of Christ and the commandments of God. According those churches one has to live according the faith and have to do good works. Without repenting for the wrong being done, they do not believe one can enter the Kingdom of God.



  • In nearly all of the European countries surveyed, majorities or pluralities of both Catholics and Protestants adhere to the traditionally Catholic view that both faith and good works are necessary to attain salvation. In fact, in every country except Norway (where 51% of Protestants say salvation comes through faith alone), belief in sola fide is a minority view even among Protestants.
  • Catholics and Protestants in Western Europe generally report low levels of religious observance: Medians of just 8% of Protestants and 14% of Catholics say they attend religious services weekly or more. But Europeans who say religion is important in their lives are especially likely to hold their respective church’s traditional position regarding the means of salvation. For example, 31% of Protestants in Sweden who say religion is “very” or “somewhat” important in their lives believe in sola fide, compared with 10% of other Swedish Protestants.
  • The impact of secularization is apparent, but so are pockets of religiosity. For instance, the Netherlands has a relatively high level of disaffiliation, with about half of Dutch adults (48%) describing themselves as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” religiously. Yet Dutch Protestants also stand out for some of Europe’s highest reported levels of church attendance, with 43% saying they go to church at least once a week.
  • In every European country surveyed, roughly nine-in-ten or more Protestants and Catholics say they are willing to accept members of the other tradition as neighbours. And large majorities of both groups say they would be willing to accept members of the other group into their families. For example, 98% of German Protestants say they would accept Catholics as members of their family, and a similar share of German Catholics (97%) say the same about Protestants.


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Find also to read
  1. Followers, protestors and reformers
  2. 500 years of a provision of the Word in the language of the peoples
  3. Religions and Mainliners
  4. Divisive pastors and Strange Fire conference
  5. The Catholic synod on the family and abortion
  6. The Anti-Reformation in Todays Evangelical Church 
  7. A New Reformation
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Friday 6 November 2015

Mega church country loosing religous people

English: This map shows the percentage of the ...
English: This map shows the percentage of the U.S. adult population that affiliates themselves as Mormon in a survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life in 2007.http://religions.pewforum.org/ (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
It is the general trend that more and more people are very secular. Certainly in the economically thriving capitalist countries we see that most people are not relating to religion or to a religious body.

For the United States it still looks bright, though the share of U.S. adults who say they believe in God, while still high compared with other advanced industrial countries, slipped to 89 percent in 2014 from 92 percent in 2007, according to the Pew Research Center's Religious Landscape Study. 

In that country where we can find lots of big churches and have places with mega churches more people have come to doubt the existence of a god or the God.
The proportion of Americans who say they are "absolutely certain" God exists fell even more, to 63 percent in 2014 from 71 percent in 2007.

On television we may still get the picture of regularly praying Americans but that seems to become part of history. Also the attendance of religious services regularly have gone down by small, but statistically significant measures, the survey found.
The trend is most pronounced among young adults, with only half of those born from 1990 to 1996 absolutely certain of their belief in God, compared to 71 percent of the "silent generation," or those born from 1928 to 1945.

On the other hand, 77 percent of Americans continue to identify with some religious faith, and those who do are just as committed now as they were in 2007, according to the survey. Two-thirds of religiously affiliated adults say they pray every day and that religion is very important to them, the survey found

The survey also found religious divides among the political parties, with those who are not religiously affiliated more likely to be Democrats, at 28 percent, compared to 14 percent of Republicans.
About 38 percent of Republicans identify as evangelical Protestants - the largest religious group in the party, the survey found. Catholics make up 21 percent of each major political party.

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Find also about the dwindling numbers in church:
  1. a little church
  2. Is your church small?
  3. The Big Conversation
  4. The Big Conversation follow up
  5. The Big conversation – Antagonists
  6. The Big conversation – Recognition and refocus
  7. Having a small church mentality
  8. Reasons why you may not miss the opportunity to go to a Small Church
  9. Follower of Jesus part of a cult or a Christian
  10. To remove the whitewash of the Jehovah Witnesses as being the only true Bible Students and Bible Researchers
  11. Vision blurred by cumulative burden of divisions
  12. Not words of any organisation should bind you, but the Word of God
  13. Why we do not have our worship-services in a church building
  14. Four Pressing Needs in Rural Communities, and How the Church Should Respond
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Saturday 28 March 2015

1.253 billion Catholics worldwide



For the Catholic church it does not look so bad in their community. The number of priests and permanent deacons rose slightly in 2013, while at the same time there was a decrease in the number of religious men and women. This is evident from the new "Statistical Yearbook of the Catholic Church" which was published this month. According to the yearbook, there were on December 31, 2013 1.253 billion Catholics worldwide. That are 25 million believers or 2% more than in the previous year. Thereby forming Catholics 17.7% of the world population. An estimated 4.8 million Catholics are not counted in the statistics because the exact number of Catholics in countries such as China and North Korea remains unclear.

Friday 25 April 2014

Christianity to be enshrined

In a letter to The Telegraph, eight leading thinkers including Prof Roger Scruton, the philosopher and writer, insist that the moderate brand of Christianity “enshrined” in the British constitution actively protects those of other faiths and none.
The letter was published as Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, who is himself an atheist, said it was “flamingly obvious” that Britain is founded on Christian values.

in the course of a 90 second talk had used the words "Britain's Christian traditions". It was enough to get him excluded by a particular member of the BBC's thought police. One wonders if the Prime Minister, David Cameron will be allowed to say his latest remarks on the British Broadcasting Corporation.

Many object to the British Prime Minister his characterisation of Britain as a “Christian country” and the negative consequences for politics and society that this engenders.

"In his call for more evangelism, Mr Cameron is exclusively tying himself to one faith group, inevitably to the exclusion of others," opined Elizabeth O'Casey, Policy and Research Office at the National Secular Society. She also warned the British people that we are moving away from the concept of all of us being "rights-bearing citizens first and foremost, with democratic autonomy and equality, regardless of which faith they happen to have, or not have".

At a social level, Britain has been shaped like many other European countries for the better by many pre-Christian, non-Christian, and post-Christian forces. They are a plural society with citizens with a range of perspectives. To call it religious is taking the religious element out of proportion. I do know many call Belgium also a Catholic country, but if you would question the citicens about their beliefs, wou would get a total different opinion. They mix Catholic and Christian as if it is the same, because they do not know the diffenrence and most of them do not know what Catholicisim enhales.

Most citicens donot want to recognise they have gone far away form religion and certainly far away for m the reall Christian and Jewish values.

The inhabitants of the West European countries should come to realize that they are a largely non-religious society.

I would agree with more than 55 signatories:
Constantly to claim otherwise fosters alienation and division in our society. Although it is right to recognise the contribution made by many Christians to social action, it is wrong to try to exceptionalise their contribution when it is equalled by British people of different beliefs. This needlessly fuels enervating sectarian debates that are by and large absent from the lives of most British people, who do not want religions or religious identities to be actively prioritised by their elected government.
Gavin Littaur reacts also:
David Cameron should be more careful when pontificating about Christianity, given that he does not speak for those (such as myself, a Jew), who are not necessarily of his faith and beliefs.
The Prime Minister’s urging of Britons to be “more evangelical about a faith that compels us to get out there” is particularly unfortunate. It is at best tactless and at worst an exemplification of the zealous proselytising of extremists.
The commentator finds the letter against David Cameron just the latest expression of an infantile multi-culturalism that has done terrible damage to social cohesion precisely because it is too weak to create any substantial bonds of identity.
The Church of England is the established church and the Queen is the head of it for reasons which are deeply bound up with the country's political, religious and cultural inheritance.
Neither does the fact that most people don't nowadays go to church on a Sunday mean that Christian values and symbols do not play a vital role in national life. Whenever there's a national tragedy -- the death of Diana for example -- watch how quickly Christianity moves back into centre stage.
says The commentator.

As in Belgium the Catholic church may be the main church, the Church of England is the established church in England, but that does not mean that most British citizens would adhere to that church or believe in the God of that church.
It is not because when we go from place to place, where we may find everywhere in any town or village across the country a local church, that we may find religious people coming to that church aor that it is functional or not. It tells more about the past than about the present. In most countries those village churches are most of the time empty buildings.

More than anything else the church buildings may define the local landscape and the visual community of which we are all a part, but that does not tell us that they and we are from the same religious community, nor believing in the same things.


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Sunday 20 April 2014

Who Celebrates Easter as Religious Holiday

The 2010 study by the Barna Group which explored Americans’ definition of the Easter holiday. (See: Eostre, Easter, White god, chocolate eggs, Easter bunnies and metaphorical resurrection)

They asked a nationwide, representative sample of American adults how they would describe what Easter means to them, personally.
English: Icon of the Resurrection
Icon of the Resurrection (Photo credit: Wikipedia)


Interestingly, those who articulate a resurrection-related concept of Easter are no more likely than other religiously oriented Americans to indicate that they will invite friends to worship with them on Easter.

The types of Americans who were most likely to express some type of theistic religious connection with Easter were evangelicals (93%), attenders of large churches (86% among those whose congregation has 500-plus adult attenders), born again Christians (81%), and weekly churchgoers (77%).
Republicans (77%) and Democrats (71%) were more likely than were independents (59%) and non-registered citizens (51%) to say Easter has religious meaning for them.

In terms of age, members of the Boomer generation (73%, ages 45 to 63) were among the most likely to describe Easter as a religious holiday for them, compared with two-thirds of Elders (66% of those ages 64-plus) and Busters (66%, ages 26 to 44). The youngest adult generation, the Mosaics (ages 18 to 25), were the least likely age segment to say Easter is a religious holiday (58%), reflecting the increasingly secular mindset of young adults.

Other population segments describing Easter with a non-religious bent were faith groups other than Christianity (just 31% said Easter’s meaning is religious), atheists and agnostics (36%), and unchurched adults (46%).

Those who identify Easter explicitly as a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus were most likely to be evangelicals (73%), large church attenders (60%), born again Christians (55%), active churchgoers (54%), upscale adults (54%), and Protestants (51%).

Showing a perceptual gap between political conservatives and liberals, those on the political “right” were nearly twice as likely as those on the political “left” to say that Easter is a celebration of the resurrection (53% versus 29%, respectively).

In terms of the audience that most Christian churches attempt to attract on Easter weekend – non-churchgoing adults – the research shows that while 46% of unchurched adults view the meaning of Easter to be religious, while just 25% connect the holiday to Jesus’ return to life.

As for denominational affiliation, most Catholics said they celebrate Easter as a religious holiday (65%).Still, just one-third of Catholics listed the resurrection as the meaning of the holiday (37%). In comparison, Protestants were more likely than Catholics both to view Easter as a religious holiday and to connect the occasion to Jesus’ awakening from death (78% and 51%, respectively).



Most Americans Consider Easter a Religious Holiday, But Fewer Correctly Identify its Meaning


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Please, also find to read:

Welcome to Easter 2014
Easter: Origins in a pagan Christ
Eostre, Easter, White god, chocolate eggs, Easter bunnies and metaphorical resurrection
High Holidays not only for Israel 
14-15 Nisan and Easter 
Ishtar the fertility goddess or Altered to fit a Trinity 
Peter Cottontail and a Bunny laying Eastereggs

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