Decline of christianity in the united states

[temporal1]

P.5:

Christ has existed since before the foundations of the world.

i hope this isn’t overlooked. As well, He is foretold in the OT, beginning in Genesis.

[joshuabgood]

The post WW2 era from 1950 to 1965 were great. Great because the US emerged as a global superpower, the dollar was dominant. The strong economy and low unemployment, led to a large middle class with widespread educational opportunities. America was the factory of the world. Health care improvements. A lot of affordability for the middle class regarding health care, education, and housing compared to today. Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act reflected a growing shift in the way minorities were viewed.

I get what you are saying and agree to a point.

But I can't not think about the little girls who had their limbs blown off by angry white men for the crime of going to Sunday school. And how their parents felt. And that those white men were protected by white society until the 90s even though everyone knew who did it.

I can't not think of the thousands of boys messed up by Vietnam not to mention napalm girl or and the poor folks at My Lai.

The feelings of JFK Jr who was victimized by political division, not to mention a few years later RFK Jr.

And many many more such atrocities...

I can't not remember the angst the hippies felt with the empty materialistic culture that they rejected. Etc etc...

[Szdfan]

The post WW2 era from 1950 to 1965 were great. Great because the US emerged as a global superpower, the dollar was dominant. The strong economy and low unemployment, led to a large middle class with widespread educational opportunities. America was the factory of the world. Health care improvements. A lot of affordability for the middle class regarding health care, education, and housing compared to today. Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act reflected a growing shift in the way minorities were viewed.

I get what you are saying and agree to a point.

But I can't not think about the little girls who had their limbs blown off by angry white men for the crime of going to Sunday school. And how their parents felt. And that those white men were protected by white society until the 90s even though everyone knew who did it.

I can't not think of the thousands of boys messed up by Vietnam not to mention napalm girl or and the poor folks at My Lai.

The feelings of JFK Jr who was victimized by political division, not to mention a few years later RFK Jr.

And many many more such atrocities...

I can't not remember the angst the hippies felt with the empty materialistic culture that they rejected. Etc etc...

I was reading the other day about the “Birmingham Children’s Crusade” inn 1963 when police set dogs and fire hoses on protesting children. None of this change was easy or simple. People died and were brutalized for the Civil Rights Act to pass.

[temporal1]

The post WW2 era from 1950 to 1965 were great. Great because the US emerged as a global superpower, the dollar was dominant. The strong economy and low unemployment, led to a large middle class with widespread educational opportunities. America was the factory of the world. Health care improvements. A lot of affordability for the middle class regarding health care, education, and housing compared to today. Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act reflected a growing shift in the way minorities were viewed.

I get what you are saying and agree to a point.

But I can't not think about the little girls who had their limbs blown off by angry white men for the crime of going to Sunday school. And how their parents felt. And that those white men were protected by white society until the 90s even though everyone knew who did it.

I can't not think of the thousands of boys messed up by Vietnam not to mention napalm girl or and the poor folks at My Lai.

The feelings of JFK Jr who was victimized by political division, not to mention a few years later RFK Jr.

And many many more such atrocities...

I can't not remember the angst the hippies felt with the empty materialistic culture that they rejected. Etc etc...

i was young, but present, when these things were current events. Newspapers+TVs, i wasn’t political, wasn’t a news hound, but prominent news gets around. Even to young ears.

The Important Thing is - these things were widely rejected if not hated, not pardoned or normalized.
They were viewed as atrocities IRT. By real people.

i appreciate R7ehr’s post and analogies. He brings insightful balance to sad attempts at division.
Very good analogies. Easy to understand.

[Bootstrap]

The Important Thing is - these things were widely rejected if not hated, not pardoned or normalized.
They were viewed as atrocities IRT. By real people.

By some real people. Others thought the atrocity was that black people wanted the same rights as white people. Still others thought the problem was that black people weren't just patiently waiting to be given these rights and assume they would eventually receive them.

https://www.csuchico.edu/iege/_assets/d ... m-jail.pdf

My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups are more immoral than individuals.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have never yet engaged in a direct-action movement that was "well timed" according to the timetable of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "wait." It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This "wait" has almost always meant "never." It has been a tranquilizing thalidomide, relieving the emotional stress for a moment, only to give birth to an ill-formed infant of frustration. We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that "justice too long delayed is justice denied." We have waited for more than three hundred and forty years for our God-given and constitutional rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say "wait."

But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she cannot go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her little eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son asking in agonizing pathos, "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger" and your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and when your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodyness" -- then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.

[joshuabgood]

The Important Thing is - these things were widely rejected if not hated, not pardoned or normalized

.

Sort of yes and sort of no. It was normalized enough that.it went several decades before the white folks in that town would prosecute those that everyone knew were guilty.

On another note, to this day the Meaher family, in Alabama, won't make amends for the Timothy Meahers role.in the last Slave ship. I would recommend reading that book if I were you.

[Szdfan]

The post WW2 era from 1950 to 1965 were great. Great because the US emerged as a global superpower, the dollar was dominant. The strong economy and low unemployment, led to a large middle class with widespread educational opportunities. America was the factory of the world. Health care improvements. A lot of affordability for the middle class regarding health care, education, and housing compared to today. Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act reflected a growing shift in the way minorities were viewed.

I get what you are saying and agree to a point.

But I can't not think about the little girls who had their limbs blown off by angry white men for the crime of going to Sunday school. And how their parents felt. And that those white men were protected by white society until the 90s even though everyone knew who did it.

I can't not think of the thousands of boys messed up by Vietnam not to mention napalm girl or and the poor folks at My Lai.

The feelings of JFK Jr who was victimized by political division, not to mention a few years later RFK Jr.

And many many more such atrocities...

I can't not remember the angst the hippies felt with the empty materialistic culture that they rejected. Etc etc...

i was young, but present, when these things were current events. Newspapers+TVs, i wasn’t political, wasn’t a news hound, but prominent news gets around. Even to young ears.

The Important Thing is - these things were widely rejected if not hated, not pardoned or normalized.
They were viewed as atrocities IRT. By real people.

i appreciate R7ehr’s post and analogies. He brings insightful balance to sad attempts at division.
Very good analogies. Easy to understand.

Except this was normalized. Jim Crow existed in parts of the US for almost 100 years. It was upheld by the courts. It took the brutalization of peaceful protestors on the evening news to shock the country into changing things.

[Ken]

I get what you are saying and agree to a point.

But I can't not think about the little girls who had their limbs blown off by angry white men for the crime of going to Sunday school. And how their parents felt. And that those white men were protected by white society until the 90s even though everyone knew who did it.

I can't not think of the thousands of boys messed up by Vietnam not to mention napalm girl or and the poor folks at My Lai.

The feelings of JFK Jr who was victimized by political division, not to mention a few years later RFK Jr.

And many many more such atrocities...

I can't not remember the angst the hippies felt with the empty materialistic culture that they rejected. Etc etc...

i was young, but present, when these things were current events. Newspapers+TVs, i wasn’t political, wasn’t a news hound, but prominent news gets around. Even to young ears.

The Important Thing is - these things were widely rejected if not hated, not pardoned or normalized.
They were viewed as atrocities IRT. By real people.

i appreciate R7ehr’s post and analogies. He brings insightful balance to sad attempts at division.
Very good analogies. Easy to understand.

Except this was normalized. Jim Crow existed in parts of the US for almost 100 years. It was upheld by the courts. It took the brutalization of peaceful protestors on the evening news to shock the country into changing things.

The thing is, the world is always changing but people are still people. And people today have the same capacity for good and evil as they did in the 1950s or time of Christ or 1500 BC at the time of the Exodus.

So I tend not to lend great credence to those who point to some golden age in the past or who believe we are in some state of irretrievable decline. There are some things that were great during the 1950s. Especially if you were a White middle class suburban family living with the incredible largess and prosperity that the nation was providing. Perhaps the 1950s weren't so great if you were a Black or Hispanic girl who wanted to attend med school and become a doctor in the segregated south, or for that matter, the patriarchal North.

Objectively we have never been wealthier as a nation than we are today. Although that wealth is distributed less equally than it used to be. But obviously there is an emptiness to life for some that isn't getting filled. And if society is failing to fill that hole, I'd argue that churches are failing as well. And across society we should be doing more to focus on the things that unite us rather than divide us.

[temporal1]

The post WW2 era from 1950 to 1965 were great. Great because the US emerged as a global superpower, the dollar was dominant. The strong economy and low unemployment, led to a large middle class with widespread educational opportunities. America was the factory of the world. Health care improvements. A lot of affordability for the middle class regarding health care, education, and housing compared to today. Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act reflected a growing shift in the way minorities were viewed.

The 1990’s were pretty grand as well. Stable affordability. A decade of peace, and prosperity, kicked off by the fall of the Soviet Union, and the swift and lopsided Gulf War victory. The tech revolution was happening. Y2K turned out to be nothing more than conspiracy fodder. America stood alone on the world stage as the leader of freedom, economics, military, technology, and entertainment. Even the dot com bust in 2000 was mostly relegated to tech companies, tech workers, and part of the financial sector. Not much impact for the average American. No bank failures, no massive wave of foreclosures. Ended with 9/11 and got worse with the Great Recession.

The fact that we can point to something bad in these times, does not negate that these time still meet the somewhat pliable definition of greatness. Even if there is an issue where these times represent the worst of some aspect, doesn’t change that. Because all of that is understood. When a person talks about going on a great camping trip, they aren’t denying the presence of mosquitoes, or that traffic was terrible on the way there.

How America and its politicians defines “Greatness” and the examples above, are different than Jesus Biblical teachings of greatness in Matthew 18, 20 and Luke 22 and Mark 10.

^^R7ehr says it best. Take it or leave it.

i’d like to add one thing ..
in my view, i think it’s a mistake for Christians to fall for the popular trap that MLK Jr, the Civil Rights Act, etc., “HAD” to happen.
Not at all what scriptures say.

Scriptures promise, GOD WILL PROVIDE HIS WAY in all circumstances. We’ll never know what would have happened without those political moves. i’m of the mind, things were changing, when aren’t they?! - We see what’s unfolded. No way of knowing if another path was taken. God ALWAYS provides another path.

Certainly, since those things happened, those very laws have been stretched beyond recognition, certain political “actors” have become multi-millionaires, much societal devastation has followed, esp destruction of traditional families, no more so than in the black communities, by now, others close behind. So. come se come sa?

“What if?” .. Christians trusted God?

(Don’t worry. It appears unlikely.) On a broad scale. There will be the odd few.

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”
― G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World

[Szdfan]

The post WW2 era from 1950 to 1965 were great. Great because the US emerged as a global superpower, the dollar was dominant. The strong economy and low unemployment, led to a large middle class with widespread educational opportunities. America was the factory of the world. Health care improvements. A lot of affordability for the middle class regarding health care, education, and housing compared to today. Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act reflected a growing shift in the way minorities were viewed.

The 1990’s were pretty grand as well. Stable affordability. A decade of peace, and prosperity, kicked off by the fall of the Soviet Union, and the swift and lopsided Gulf War victory. The tech revolution was happening. Y2K turned out to be nothing more than conspiracy fodder. America stood alone on the world stage as the leader of freedom, economics, military, technology, and entertainment. Even the dot com bust in 2000 was mostly relegated to tech companies, tech workers, and part of the financial sector. Not much impact for the average American. No bank failures, no massive wave of foreclosures. Ended with 9/11 and got worse with the Great Recession.

The fact that we can point to something bad in these times, does not negate that these time still meet the somewhat pliable definition of greatness. Even if there is an issue where these times represent the worst of some aspect, doesn’t change that. Because all of that is understood. When a person talks about going on a great camping trip, they aren’t denying the presence of mosquitoes, or that traffic was terrible on the way there.

How America and its politicians defines “Greatness” and the examples above, are different than Jesus Biblical teachings of greatness in Matthew 18, 20 and Luke 22 and Mark 10.

^^R7ehr says it best. Take it or leave it.

i’d like to add one thing ..
in my view, i think it’s a mistake for Christians to fall for the popular trap that MLK Jr, the Civil Rights Act, etc., “HAD” to happen.
Not at all what scriptures say.

Scriptures promise, GOD WILL PROVIDE HIS WAY in all circumstances. We’ll never know what would have happened without those political moves. i’m of the mind, things were changing, when aren’t they?! - We see what’s unfolded. No way of knowing if another path was taken. God ALWAYS provides another path.

Certainly, since those things happened, those very laws have been stretched beyond recognition, certain political “actors” have become multi-millionaires, much societal devastation has followed, esp destruction of traditional families, no more so than in the black communities, by now, others close behind. So. come se come sa?

“What if?” .. Christians trusted God?

(Don’t worry. It appears unlikely.) On a broad scale. There will be the odd few.

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”
― G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World

The Black Church and their allies were following and trusting God during the Civil Rights movement.