I ran across a new blog the other day: Cream Crackers. It’s the blog of a 19 year old university student in the UK called Claire.
I found it because Claire’s first blog entry mentions Off The Map. It begins
I’ve been feeling pretty, well, un-faith-filled of late. My life’s gone pretty pear-shaped, and I’ve ended up completely stopping attending CU at uni, basically stopping attending church meetings, and my relationship with God just doesn’t seem to be there any more. To put it bluntly, I don’t want to be a Christian.
It’s not that I have particular trouble believing in God (although sometimes I’m skeptical and as I’ve said I don’t feel it right now), or that Jesus lived, was amazing, and even rose from the dead two millenia ago, but I hate the culture of mainstream evangelical Christianity, it makes me feel sick to my stomach and I don’t want to be associated with it. I know they’re doing their best, but all I ever seem to see is the damage and hostility their good intentions cause. If that’s really what the Christian faith is all about then my faith is dead, as I want no part of it.
Fresh hope has come for me tonight in the form of the concept of ‘Otherlyness’, put forward by Jim Henderson et al (see: www.offthemap.com).
01-02-2008 |
15 Comments »The Barna Group has a new article up called A New Generation Expresses its Skepticism and Frustration with Christianity. It begins
As the nation’s culture changes in diverse ways, one of the most significant shifts is the declining reputation of Christianity, especially among young Americans. A new study by The Barna Group conducted among 16- to 29-year-olds shows that a new generation is more skeptical of and resistant to Christianity than were people of the same age just a decade ago.
I thought it was very interesting - thanks Jim and Ben for e-mailing it to me!
09-27-2007 |
16 Comments »The other day I asked Steve S: “How can you be so sure you’re right and they’re wrong about Christianity?” Here is Steve’s response
Here is a great place to start!
I would say that we have to approach the Church as a whole. If we define Christianity by the extremely small minority of Christians who make up contemporary Western societies we are certain to understand Jesus in a very narrow way.
Jesus’ followers have had communities present on the continents of Asia and Africa for well over a thousand years before they reached the America’s. Yet we Americans think of Christianity as a peculiarity to our country. We should listen to the Christian voices in the slums of the Phillipines, the deserts of the Sahara, the steppes of Mongolia, the Desert Fathers, the Orthodox of ancient Constantinople; then we can begin to say “Christianity is…”
08-15-2007 |
77 Comments »