The Empty Church: The Suicide of Liberal

Christianity

A book by Thomas C. Reeves

New York: The Free Press, 1996

Advice from one devil to another on how to destroy a Christian’s faith:

“Talk to him about ‘moderation in all things.’ If you can get him to the

point of thinking that ‘religion is all very well up to a point,’ you can feel happy about his soul. A moderated

religion is as good for us as no religion at all—and more amusing.”C. S. Lewis The Screwtape Letters

Mainline or Liberal Protestant Churches

• American Baptist Churches

• Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

• Episcopal Church

• Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

• Presbyterian Church (USA)

• United Church of Christ

• United Methodist Church

The Critical Issue

• Even friends and insiders have acknowledged mainline churches have lost their impact, their zeal, even their meaning.

• The critical issue – Is there truth, supernaturally revealed in Christianity, that lies beyond our present understanding of things, truth that is unchanging and absolutely vital to our present and future? – What, in short, are the essentials of the

religion without which it loses its authenticity and power? And what are the implications for personal conduct?

There Is Truth

• John 8:32 “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

• John 17:17 “Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth.”

• 1 Thessalonians 2:13 “For this reason we also thank God without ceasing, because when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which also effectively works in you who believe.”

Education

• “Deconstructionists have powerfully argued that no written text has any fixed meaning, that all interpretation lies in the beholder; and thus we see individual moral relativism being advocated at the highest intellectual levels. Values clarification for the kids; deconstruction for graduate students. Meanwhile, feminists, gay and lesbian advocates and other minority groups are arguing that all truth (especially morality) is ideological.” (Paul C. Vitz, Psychology as Religion: The Cult of Self-Worship 2d ed. Grand Rapids, 1994, p. 167.)

Ignorance of Scripture

• Dr. David Carlson, a one-time resistance leader in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, thinks that widespread ignorance of Scripture, theology, and history contributes greatly to liberal dominance. Appeals to anything beyond current events often get nowhere with church members, he says, for people no longer know what you are talking about. “We’ve lost the Scriptural and doctrinal underpinnings.”

Biblical Education

• 2 Timothy 2:15 “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.”

• 1 Peter 3:15 “But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear.”

Why Conservative Churches Are Growing

• In the above titled book, Dean M. Kelley, official of the National Council of Churches, argued that successful churches make strict demands, both of faith and practice, on their members. – “Careful analysis of membership trends

shows that the churches hardest hit were those highest in socioeconomic status, those stressing individualism and pluralism in belief, and those most affirming of American culture” (Wade Clark Roof and William McKinney, liberal professors of religion).

Why Conservative Churches Are Growing

• Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, sociologists, concluded in 1992, “to the degree that denominations rejected traditional doctrines and ceased to make serious demands on their followers, they ceased to prosper. The churning of America was accomplished by aggressive churches committed to vivid otherworldliness.”

Otherworldliness

• Philippians 3:12-14 “Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”

Otherworldliness

• Philippians 3:20-21 “For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, 21 who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself.”

Failure to Retain Children

• A major reason for the numerical decline of the mainline churches is their failure to retain their own children once they have reached the age of decision.

• Mainline churches all too often lack effective Sunday schools.– If schools and colleges shun religion, making

it seem odd and disreputable, churches can devise high-caliber youth programs, classes, and specially designed worship services to teach the faith and encourage sound morals.

Preparing Our Children

• The pioneering educator Horace Mann warned, “If we do not prepare children to become good citizens—if we do not develop their capacities, if we do not enrich their minds with knowledge, imbue their hearts with the love of truth and duty, and reverence for all things sacred and holy, then our republic must go down to destruction, as others have gone before it.”

Preparing Our Children• Deuteronomy 6:4-9 “Hear, O Israel: The LORD

our God, the LORD is one! You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. “And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Preparing Our Children

• 2 Timothy 3:15-17 “And that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

Lost Missionary Zeal• Gallup reports, “Invitation and evangelism

are virtually ignored by the mainline churches.”

• In 1985 a third of the nation’s Methodist churches had performed no baptisms; almost two-thirds offered no membership training or confirmation classes; and nearly one-half lacked a list of potential new members.

• The Episcopal Church in 1996 sponsored just 25 overseas missionaries worldwide (one was in England), down from 59 in 1989.

Our Mission

• Mark 16:15-17 “And He said to them, ‘Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.’”

Poor Preaching

• Elizabeth Achtemeier, who teaches Bible and homiletics at Union Seminary in Richmond, Virginia, says that poor preaching is contributing to biblical illiteracy and “the cultural captivity of the church.”

• Solid teaching is at a premium, and the basics about sin, repentance, judgment, and hell frequently go unexplored.

Seminaries

• Seminaries and schools of theological training are dominated by liberals.

• They are frequently the scenes of “pathbreaking” statements…designed to reveal the “latest breakthroughs” (as though, like scientists, they were constantly bombarded by new information).

• Graduates emerge with little faith in the integrity of Scripture, a minimal grasp of church history and orthodox theology, and armloads of politically correct positions on social and political issues.

Seminary Education• In 1994, the Yale University Divinity School

professor Christopher R. Seitz complained of his students: “Most don’t know the names of half of the books of the Bible, whether Calvin lived before or after Augustine, what it means to say that Christ descended to the dead or acted ‘in accordance with the Scriptures,’ what the wrath of God means or how to understand a final judgment of the quick and the dead.” Seminary students, he wrote, are prepared to think critically about their faith while lacking a “substantive base.”

Following the Current• Edmund A Opitz, a Congregational

minister, wisely observed:– Churchmen in every age are tempted to adopt

the protective coloration of their time; like all intellectuals, churchmen are verbalists and wordsmiths; they are powerfully swayed by the printed page, by catch-words, slick phrases, slogans….In consequence, they are pulled first this way then that by whatever currents of public opinion happen at the moment to exert the greatest power over their emotions and imagination.

Preach the Word• Romans 10:13-14 “For ‘whoever calls on

the name of the LORD shall be saved.’ How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?”

• Acts 24:25 “Now as he reasoned about righteousness, self-control, and the judgment to come, Felix was afraid and answered, ‘Go away for now; when I have a convenient time I will call for you.’”

Preach the Word

• 2 Timothy 4:1-5 “I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom: Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables. But you be watchful in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.”

Cal Thomas’ Comments

• “Perhaps that’s why so many of the mainline churches would be more properly labeled ‘sideline’ churches. They, and others for whom politics and government have become the way of salvation, have squandered their moral power on a lesser and weaker kingdom that eventually will pass away and is incapable of changing people’s hearts.”– Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, December 10,

1995

There Is Truth

• Ephesians 4:14-15 “That we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ—”