Church Voices

A 1980 Gallup Poll on religion concluded that

…we are having a revival of feelings but not of the knowledge of God. The church today is guided more by feelings than by convictions. We value enthusiasm more than informed commitment.

One of my favorite questions to ask Christians is “if you could summarize the message of the entire Old Testament in a sentence or two, how would you do it?” You’d be surprised by how…ludicrous some of the answers I’ve heard people give are. It makes me worry that there are a vast many Christians who have never even read the Gospels, for in them Jesus answers essentially that very question. Similarly, go up to your average congregant and ask definitions and explanations for the theological terms and concepts with which they wax eloquent, such as grace, mercy, atonement, justification, Trinity, repentance, incarnation, and most of all, faith. The inarticulate gibberish you’ll likely hear makes it seem like the 400 years of thinking the Church Fathers put into them were all for naught.