When Christianity is Counter-Cultural - A church synopsis from Roe v. Wade on (1973-)
The twentieth century saw more persecution and Christian martyrs (45.8 million) than all the centuries before combined (23.6 million). We will see if the twenty-first century continues that trend.
Roe v. Wade in 1973 put most evangelicals on the opposite side of what the law allowed. From 1973 to 2024, about 65 million American babies were aborted. In Japan, for a number of years they were averaging 7 million abortions per year. In France and other countries, abortion is considered a “basic human right”. What about the right of a baby to not be torn limb from limb, or have very painful fatal solution injected in them?
A very small number of conservative evangelical Christians are pro-choice, but vast majority believe life should be protected from conception. A third view is that since women caught in adultery in Old Testament times were killed even if pregnant, life begins when the baby “quickens” or moves which is about when the baby feels pain.
Before society was post-modern, people might debate what was correct, and what was morally right. Post-modernism shifts the debate to “does truth even matter” and who cares what is right in your eyes, as long as I feel good about it.
The emergent church is the idea that a church should adapt to the culture, and some have said is a reaction to post-modernism. Like post-modernism, the emergent church emphasizes a fuzzy subjectivism and can be more about “what works for us” than what God wants us to do. Combining this with liberal and neo-orthodox Christianity the church becomes little more than a reflection of the world.
|
Year AD |
Timeline from Row v. Wade until now (1973 A.D. - ) |
|
1/1973 |
Roe v. Wade legalizes most U.S. abortion |
|
1974, later |
Lausanne Congress for World Evan-gelization. Headed by Graham & Stott |
|
1976- |
Randy Alcorn, over 12M books sold |
|
11/16/1978 |
Jim Jones and Jonestown. 925 died |
|
1979 |
Jesus Film by Cru (Campus Crusade), 279M viewers |
|
1981 |
Mary of Medjugorje. Touted a heretical book |
|
1995- |
Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins Left Behind Series 65M books sold |
|
2000- |
Bart Ehrman. 30 books |
|
2003,2006 |
Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code |
|
1947-2005 |
Billy Graham preached live to 210M. |
|
1985-2005 |
The Jesus Seminar |
|
1967-2010 |
James Dobson, Focus on the Family |
|
1966-2011 |
John R.W. Stott, believed annihilation |
|
36-6/ 2014 |
70 million Christians martyred |
|
1950-2015 |
Jim & Elizabeth Elliot go to the Auca Indians |
|
2005-2020 |
Persecutions in Nigeria, Myanmar, Indonesia, Muslim countries, eastern India |
|
3/2020- |
COVID-19 greatly changed church services |
|
1970-2021 |
Luis Palau preached to over 25M |
|
Now |
600 million Conservative Protestant |
|
Now |
1,290M Catholic, 200M Eastern Orthodox |
Breakdown of the family
LGBT+ and Sexuality
Drugs
False religions without
Censorship and AI
In Iran today, AI is used on emails and social media to predict which women are more likely to disobey the laws covering their body. In Mainland China certain privileges, like non-stop airline flights, are unavailable to citizens with a low social score, based on what they view and chat about on the internet. This could be applied to Christians too.
Some of this censorship could be evaded with anonymous sites like Bit Torrent, MegaUpload, and ZeroNet. However, much of the use of these sites was for pirated content, and so when governments shut down these “pirate dens” this made it harder for Christians to anonymously communicate and share with each other. Now, one way to share in restricted countries can be to use physical media instead of the internet.
But there are great opportunities too
But with these greater challenges come greater opportunities. Evangelists have done great did work with radio, TV, and later the internet. The Jesus film, and the internet give us so many more tools to rapidly share the gospel. There are times, like John 9:4 says “…The night is coming, when no one can work.” We should use these tools while we can.
There might come a day when the internet will not be so friendly to Christians. We should both cherish and use what we have while we can.
The mass media of TV, social media, and the internet are “power factors” that can multiply our work; but unfortunately, they can also magnify our mistakes. As an example, a couple of well-respected Christian books incorrectly say that from just quotes of Christians in the first three centuries we could reconstruct every verse of the New Testament except for eleven verses. This has been on the Internet, on atheist and Muslim sites, as a falsehood that Christians tell. The real number is not 11, but about 2,859, or 36%. We need to correct that and be careful that what we say is true. For anything that we say on social media or the internet, we need to remember that someone hostile to Christianity could copy and paste our words and preserve what we said. So make sure you speak out of love, in the right tone.
Verses we might be remembered by
2 Thessalonians 2:3 “Let no one deceive you in any way. For it will not be unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of destruction” (World English Bible)