Drink Wine, Eat Pancakes (Soul Food)

Is this recent Pew study really a surprise? Growing up in a very God-oriented evangelical family, attending church my entire life until university, attending a Christian university, and recently watching documentaries like “The Worst Family in America” (YouTube it) have left me incredulous at “Christians” and their blatant ignorance, unwarranted fundamentalism, and general closed-mindedness. Although originally it was motivated by the desire to sleep in and lack of convenient transportation, I think the real reason I stopped attending church when I was at Cedarville University is because several of my classes were so much religiously rigorous and challenging. Some of the classes for my required Bible minor were jokes, but even within my major’s core I had several strong Christian professors who relied not purely on “faith” to challenge us, although they admit that faith is ultimately a factor in all things. These teachers exposed intimately and drew on numbers of sources from all kinds of viewpoints. They forced us students to do a lot of work to draw our own conclusions, and played Devil’s Advocate no matter which side we chose in order to strengthen our arguments and reasoning.

Thus: I am speaking from an evangelical Protestant Christian (Baptist) background with a slight bit more than the average level of Biblical and religious knowledge. In this post I’m mainly decrying the Evangelical Christians who scored so poorly in the Pew study, and who badly need reform and renaissance. Take the quiz yourself and see how you compare.

I was recently listening to a podcast sermon from a pastor back home and although I love and respect this man, I was disappointed by the lack of real substantiation his lecture had. He was speaking on one of several overused, ambiguous evangelical themes: you are an important creation of God and you have purpose in life. Get out there and serve God.

I think the pulpit should indeed be a place to discuss philosophy, culture, and world religion. The pulpit should challenge its listeners and should seek to supplement the listeners’ own study, service, and interaction with culture. Sermons should not be politically oriented. But they should be informative and educational. One of the best sermons I’ve heard was by a guest speaker at Redeemer Church in New York City. He opened with a quotation by Kierkegaard, and proceeded to give an intellectually stimulating and theologically challenging message. Solid.

If the pulpit doesn’t want to do it, then Sunday schools and small groups most definitely have to. A church should foster Spiritual growth through the example of Jesus: challenging his listeners to learn, to tolerate and love others, to think for themselves (think disciples and parables) and not just adhere to the letter of ancient laws.

But even with more cultural engagement and education, ultimately religion does come down to faith. I found a good point on this Soul Pancake forum :

@jempiph "Please. This was obviously a pop history quiz, which has very little to do with actually understanding one's religion. In my experience, most atheists completely miss the point of religion because they over-intellectualise it as is if was supposed to be some sort of alternative scientific theory. Religion is about spirituality and faith, not facts, figures and theories."