Jesus the White Oppressor Losing Ground

Yesterday I wrote about the decline in Christianity in America, and I said that if it continued at the current pace, Christianity would disappear entirely in “a few years.” That was not correct. Sometimes when I cite things I’ve read, I make a mental note to go back and check them, and then I forget before I publish them.

Here’s what’s happening: between 2007 and 2014, the percentage of Americans identifying themselves as Christians dropped about 1% per year, from roughly 78% to more like 70%. If this were to continue at the same pace (in terms of percentage, not absolute numbers), the faith would be gone in decades, not “a few years.”

When you make projections like that, you need to emphasize the “if.” I’ve seen days when the temperature rose 25 degrees. If that had continued for a week, nearly all life in my area would have been extinguished. You have to be careful not to assume current trends are permanent.

In the case of American Christianity, I believe the current trend is not permanent. I don’t think we’ll continue to lose 1% per year. I think losses will accelerate dramatically, and we’ll lose ground much faster as time passes. America was a mess in 1980, and it was much, much worse in 2000. Today, it’s much, much worse than it was in 2000 or even 2010. There is only so far we can descend into depravity before we become an openly anti-Christian nation where it’s okay to say you believe in God and still hate him and want to kill his children. Then the end will come.

The forces that drive the decline are new. I don’t mean the supernatural forces. I mean the forces we can see and hear. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that smartphones and social media became major parts of our lives during the period in which 8% of American Christians quit. Electronic unity has made us more cruel, more cynical (same thing?), and much more insecure; we crave approval like never before. It has also been used to spread poisonous principles that are incompatible with the kingdom of heaven. It has been used to “expose” Christianity as evil. Our new groupthink loops are going to become tighter and more corrupt as the mildew of technology overgrows America. I expect things to get worse as the echo chamber’s walls thicken and harden.

The churches that are losing power fastest are Catholicism and mainline Protestant denominations. In other words, not churches that believe in the power of the Holy Spirit. Weak, ignorant churches are falling fastest. No surprise there. Many don’t baptize; they merely sprinkle uninformed babies. They are hostile to the baptism with the Holy Spirit. They are hostile toward miracles and other expressions of the Holy Spirit. They are horrified by the notion of casting out demons. They imitate the secular world in order to curry favor and fill seats. They do not teach people to become intimate with God, and that makes sense, because the clergymen doing the teaching don’t know God.

Last month, I attended a Protestant gathering at which people were baptized with water and the Holy Spirit. It was sponsored by a group called The Last Reformation (TLR). I went because I was sure my water baptisms were worthless. My mother once threw some water on my forehead in a church; that was ineffectual and a waste of time. I was baptized by charismatics in 1988, but they didn’t prepare me properly, and I didn’t have the right mindset, so that didn’t work. I went to the gathering so I could be immersed in the name of Jesus Christ (Biblical, unlike sprinkling in the name of the Trinity), and I wanted to repent and commit myself to God, the way I should have in 1988.

A young lady named Maria also showed up. The gathering was held near Clearwater. After she was baptized, I saw her in a video on Youtube, going into the tank. She was wearing a name tag, and it said “Minnesota” on it. She traveled over a thousand miles to get help. Who would drive a thousand miles to go to a Catholic or Presbyterian church? Maria made the trip because she knew TLR had something weak churches did not.

We are losing people because we offer them so little, and we think the answer is to embrace homosexuality and offer the kids “cool” ministers who dress like rappers and stain themselves with vulgar tattoos. Didn’t the Catholics start pushing guitar masses over 50 years ago? Appeasing and following don’t work. We should know that by now. The lost want leaders, not lickspittles.

I get healings all the time. God tells me things. He gives me useful tools. He gives me victory over poisonous people. He changes my character, sometimes instantaneously. He drives spirits out of me. I could never get those things at a mainline church! Never in a million years. They have no idea what they’re doing. It amazes me that anyone can stand powerless, boring churches. I can’t. I haven’t been inside one since I went to an Episcopal funeral a few years ago. I was bored to death and disgusted as feminine old men in gowns shuffled around muttering and performing rites at the altar.

I could not wait to leave. The familiar sensations of my youth returned; I recalled what it was to hate church! My hat is off to anyone who can make himself stick around in a denomination like that. I could never do it. Why do we expect people to show up for a God who appears to miss services, himself?

A few years before that, I went to a Catholic church for a wedding. Before the ceremony, I had joked with the bride about the pedophilia problems, and it had made her angry. She praised her priest to the skies. I checked him out at the wedding; he was a grinning, effeminate presence. Just the sort of priest a feminist woman would like; they see masculinity as a mental disorder. Soon afterward, he was exposed as the perpetrator of perversions involving a boy band.

I would hate to have a wedding album featuring photos of myself and my new spouse in the embrace of a pederast.

Charismatic churches are generally better, but most are obsessed with money, and my last pastor is in prison for raping a child over and over. While I was attending his church, I got permanent healings during services, and I made a lot of progress, but most people didn’t have much success. The pastor’s wife’s best friend, the head deacon, died from cancer after several years of casting out, group fasts, and laying on of hands. She, herself, died from cancer a few weeks ago.

We try to get the wrong things from God, and we try to get them in the wrong ways. We should be astonished that Christianity didn’t disappear decades ago.

The polls I referred to showed an 8-point drop in our numbers, but what if the figure is really much larger? The people the polls called “Christian” self-identified. How many people who call themselves Christians in modern America really qualify? How many believe in heaven and hell? How many believe Jesus is God? How many are in non-Christian cults like Mormonism? How many are in homosexual churches?

It may be that there are even fewer Christians here than polls suggest. America’s Christian structure may be like a hardwood floor that has been eaten away by termites. Termites will eat the interior of a piece of wood and leave the outside intact. They will eat a floorboard and leave a hollow veneer of wood and varnish that looks fine until you try to rest your weight on it. Maybe that’s the church in America.

In the Bible, there is a principle. People who rebel sometimes experience defeat in extremely sudden ways, because God has allowed them to be undermined without their knowledge. Think of Nebuchadnezzar’s son, who hosted a drunken banquet while his enemies were digging under Babylon’s walls so they could overthrow him that very night. Think of Samson, who woke up and didn’t know he was bald. Maybe that’s what our end will be like.

Belshazzar, the deposed Babylonian, was informed of his imminent destruction as he and his friends used vessels from Solomon’s temple for the purpose of getting drunk. In the Bible, vessels of gold would symbolize God’s people, and wine symbolizes blood. It sounds like a picture of persecution, which is becoming very strong in America.

Many Christians don’t believe in God. Because of the sprinkling heresy and lack of preparation, the vast majority are not baptized. Very few realize they have to give their lives to Jesus; merely asking for forgiveness isn’t enough. We have created a rotten framework that should be easy to collapse.

I don’t know why I’m complaining. The situation is normal, and there is nothing that can be done about it. Nothing people like me say will turn it around. Heresy and apostasy are 100% normal; churches that teach sound doctrine are momentary aberrations. Even if churches started doing everything right, it wouldn’t change the minds of most Americans. We treasure sin, and we think God isn’t cool. We might increase the size of the remnant, though. We might be able to help more people instead of discouraging them with rules, lies, and hypocrisy.

Incidentally, today I learned that Christianity is now considered a “white” religion (which began with 12 swarthy Middle Easterners), and it appears that leftists are celebrating its demise in America on the basis of its whiteness. If you get a minute, Google it. You may be surprised to find out how busy the termites have been.