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Trump Can’t Save American Christianity – The New York Times
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The most pressing problem Christianity faces is not in politics. It’s in parishes. It’s with the pastors. Most of all, it’s among an increasingly faithless people.
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one in three millennials refuse to identify with a religious tradition
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America is on the same path of religious decline pioneered by Europe and Canada
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the faith American Christians profess is, from a moral and theological perspective, shockingly thin.
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“Moralistic Therapeutic Deism” has displaced authentic Christianity as the true religion of American Christians.
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Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is a pseudoreligion that jettisons the doctrines of historical biblical Christianity and replaces them with feel-good, vaguely spiritual nostrums. In M.T.D., the highest goal of the religious life is being happy and feeling good about oneself. It’s the perfect religion for a self-centered, consumerist culture.
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St. Benedict of Nursia is so relevant to Christians today.
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The monk founded the Benedictine religious order amid the chaos and decadence of imperial Rome. He was merely searching for a way to serve God faithfully in community during a prolonged civilizational collapse. After his death in 547, hundreds, and then thousands, of monasteries arose in Western Europe, all following his “Rule of St. Benedict.” They helped preserve the faith through the Dark Ages and laid the groundwork for the rebirth of civilization out of barbarism.
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Christians are going to have to step back to some meaningful degree from the world for the sake of building up orthodox belief, learning the practices of discipleship and strengthening our communities.
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If we are going to live to fight another day, we have to get on those little arks, sail toward safer harbor, then regroup, replenish and rebuild.
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In the early Middle Ages, the churches and the monasteries were those tiny arks carrying the faith and the faithful across a dark and stormy sea. They can be once again. And must.
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