Why Southern Baptists are losing milennials

[Red_Geranium]

The youth pastor they hired when I was a young teen WAS a hellfire and brimstone guy whose mission was to scare kids out of hell.

And that never works.
That was the anti-drug program my kids were in when they attended local schools.
The youngest is now at college, watching people experiment with drugs, and the absolute disasters everyone in Middle School promised him, are not happening. People can maintain passing grades with regular ingestion of cheap trendy mind-expanding hallucinogenic pharmaceuticals. Makes him wonder what else the counselors lied to him about.
Since they taught fear, first, the training only works as long as he stays afraid.
He's got too many anecdotes to be afraid. even if everything else they told him was gospel, it's all built up on a base that he now rejects.

Definitely true.

I have a conjecture that fundamentalists might be more likely to go atheist/agnostic than liberal Christians for a similar reason. When a church teaches that the Bible describes real, literal people, places and events, they're making empirical claims about history and science....which can be investigated. It's easy to see that there's no evidence for a global flood, young earth, or events like the Exodus and loads of evidence against. If the Bible was wrong about those things, it's definitely not the perfect word of god. *foundation crumbles*. I think things are a little different for people brought up with more liberal Christianity... Would be interesting to see if there's any real evidence one way or the other.

 

[General Mung Beans]

I'm curious what denominations will now be growing as evangelical denominations join their mainline bretheren in terminal decline.

 

[jonJ]

I'm curious what denominations will now be growing as evangelical denominations join their mainline bretheren in terminal decline.

When a similar decline occurred in Britain after the First World War, it wasn't reflected so much in people changing their religions or denominations; they just stopped attending church and stopped paying attention to church leaders. My father put his religion down as 'Church of England' all his life -- and he died at 91 -- but he hadn't been inside a church other than for weddings, funerals or christenings for at least forty years. Last time I checked only about one in ten of Britons describing themselves as 'Church of England' actually went to church.

That's one of the things we find so amusing about you Yankees; you think that having a religion actually obliges you to do something.

 

[Underseer]

And that never works.
That was the anti-drug program my kids were in when they attended local schools.
The youngest is now at college, watching people experiment with drugs, and the absolute disasters everyone in Middle School promised him, are not happening. People can maintain passing grades with regular ingestion of cheap trendy mind-expanding hallucinogenic pharmaceuticals. Makes him wonder what else the counselors lied to him about.
Since they taught fear, first, the training only works as long as he stays afraid.
He's got too many anecdotes to be afraid. even if everything else they told him was gospel, it's all built up on a base that he now rejects.

Definitely true.

I have a conjecture that fundamentalists might be more likely to go atheist/agnostic than liberal Christians for a similar reason. When a church teaches that the Bible describes real, literal people, places and events, they're making empirical claims about history and science....which can be investigated. It's easy to see that there's no evidence for a global flood, young earth, or events like the Exodus and loads of evidence against. If the Bible was wrong about those things, it's definitely not the perfect word of god. *foundation crumbles*. I think things are a little different for people brought up with more liberal Christianity... Would be interesting to see if there's any real evidence one way or the other.

After reading many "atheist testimonials," it seems to me that the main problem is falsifiable claims backed up by some kind of infallibility claim.

For instance, many evangelical preachers will say "Everything I say is true, or nothing I say is true!" Combine this with falsifiable claims about the origin of the Bible, the origin of life, the origin of the universe, etc., it is inevitable that some of their followers will find out that they are wrong about something at which point the "Everything I say is true or nothing I say is true!" line rings in their ears and they start to question everything.

Another variation is "You have to believe in X or you can't be a Christian!" where X includes the same falsifiable claims mentioned above. Again, the follower discovers that X is wrong, and then remembers the preacher's own words that they can no longer be Christian.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

I'm curious what denominations will now be growing as evangelical denominations join their mainline bretheren in terminal decline.

Apparently, Penacostalism is growing in popularity.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

After reading many "atheist testimonials," it seems to me that the main problem is falsifiable claims backed up by some kind of infallibility claim.

For instance, many evangelical preachers will say "Everything I say is true, or nothing I say is true!" Combine this with falsifiable claims about the origin of the Bible, the origin of life, the origin of the universe, etc., it is inevitable that some of their followers will find out that they are wrong about something at which point the "Everything I say is true or nothing I say is true!" line rings in their ears and they start to question everything.

Another variation is "You have to believe in X or you can't be a Christian!" where X includes the same falsifiable claims mentioned above. Again, the follower discovers that X is wrong, and then remembers the preacher's own words that they can no longer be Christian.

That does make a lot of sense. If a preacher is making falsifiable statements which don't add up to what's observed in reality, it can become noticable to someone who's questioning the faith. If the preacher is making a lot of generic woo statements instead, there's not as much opportunity for dissonance to raise a red flag in the believers' minds.

 

[Underseer]

After reading many "atheist testimonials," it seems to me that the main problem is falsifiable claims backed up by some kind of infallibility claim.

For instance, many evangelical preachers will say "Everything I say is true, or nothing I say is true!" Combine this with falsifiable claims about the origin of the Bible, the origin of life, the origin of the universe, etc., it is inevitable that some of their followers will find out that they are wrong about something at which point the "Everything I say is true or nothing I say is true!" line rings in their ears and they start to question everything.

Another variation is "You have to believe in X or you can't be a Christian!" where X includes the same falsifiable claims mentioned above. Again, the follower discovers that X is wrong, and then remembers the preacher's own words that they can no longer be Christian.

That does make a lot of sense. If a preacher is making falsifiable statements which don't add up to what's observed in reality, it can become noticable to someone who's questioning the faith. If the preacher is making a lot of generic woo statements instead, there's not as much opportunity for dissonance to raise a red flag in the believers' minds.

The falsifiable claims (liberal/moderate Christians avoid falsifiable claims like the plague) would be bad enough, but it's the things they do to try and shore up the falsifiable claims that seem to cause faith to implode.