Articles
The Decline of Christianity in America
The New Testament issues various, explicit warnings of doctrinal corruption. The apostles were under no illusions that future generations of believers would remain faithful to the gospel. Consider just these three:
“Also from among yourselves men will rise up, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after themselves” (Ac 20:30).
“Some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy …” (1 Tim 4:1-2).
“There will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them … and many will follow their destructive ways, because of whom the way of truth will be blasphemed” (2 Pet 2:1-2).
A constant danger to doctrinal purity is the believer’s abandonment of it due to outside pressure. When those who profess to be Christians dispense with doctrinal integrity in order to foster unity with other denominations and sects (“It doesn’t matter what we believe; just love Jesus!”), they do not realize they are jackhammering the foundation of their own faith. Forces of evil will take advantage of vagueness and weakness of conviction to drive Christians further and further from their doctrinal roots.
Referencing the second volume of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (1840), Robert Bork observed regarding modern religious decline: “(Tocqueville) saw the struggle of religion with that spirit of individual independence which is her most dangerous opponent … ‘One of the most ordinary weaknesses of the human intellect is to seek to reconcile contrary principles and to purchase peace at the expense of logic. There … will ever be men who, after having submitted some portion of their religious belief to the principle of authority, will seek to exempt several other parts of their faith from it and to keep their minds floating at random between liberty and obedience’” (Slouching Toward Gomorrah 273).
Almost two centuries ago Tocqueville described what we see today: “Christian” organizations which have traded doctrinal distinctiveness for all-inclusive ecumenism; who have ditched reverent, dignified worship for a nightclub atmosphere; who have in large measure adopted a liberal, secular agenda that links them with entertainment media, campus socialism and liberal politics. Practicing homosexuals are given leadership posts in some quarters; American Catholics practice their “faith” in open rebellion to the dictates of the Vatican. So-called Christians scarcely know Scripture, don’t worship regularly, and sext, fornicate and drink while wearing a cross around their neck. This is more than hypocrisy; this is self-worship masquerading as religion. While many Americans may still self-identify as “conservative” or “Bible believing,” the declaration is hollow.
Bork remarks: “The United States is a very secular nation that, for the most part, does not take its religion seriously … It is increasingly clear that very few people who claim a religion could truthfully say that it informs their attitudes and significantly affects their behavior … Religion is declining because those identified with it do not actually believe in it … It is difficult to say that a religion even exists if it keeps giving up its tenets to appease its members and critics. If belief … can be said to be present, it is a weak and watery belief that is no match for parishioners’ personal, secular concerns” (ibid 279-281). It is disturbing, but not shocking, that Christianity is declining in our country. But more troubling is the fact that the forces of secularization have found an unwitting ally in believers themselves.
