Young people are leaving the Church not because the far Right is being the far Right, but simply because young people are largely disinterested in clear morality and ethics, worship and service.
You see I have a very simple understanding of people’s motivations. To wit, I don’t think anyone who really loves God can be ‘driven’ from the Church. Not by Pastors, not by politics, not by anything. Not even by the Gates of Hell. People may leave one church and go to another if the Pastor is an idiot or a jerk or people in the congregation are self absorbed prats, but they don’t leave the Church and they don’t abandon their faith.
Young people leave the Church, I believe, because they lack the spiritual wherewithal to be committed to much of anything at all. Or to put it simply, many young people aren’t committed to anything but themselves. And they’ve been taught to act that way by Churches that think pizza parties and outings are more important than Bible Study, worship, and ministry. So instead of helping the elderly by mowing their lawns in the Summer, young people are taken on trips to water parks.
Mind you, there’s nothing wrong with fun and fellowship- in their proper place. But to exalt them to priority, as many churches have done in an attempt to ‘bribe them in’ has resulted in an entire generation of self absorbed self obsessed self serving selfish young adults. They leave the church because they’ve outgrown the pizza parties and they’ve never been taught to worship God and love him more than themselves.
If the Church wants to retain young adults, it has to abandon the world’s methodology of offering a prize for every appearance at the place where God is worshiped and instead teach children and young people that loving and serving God and others is their calling. And that’s the highest calling and purpose of all.
Don’t blame politics the next time young adults leave the Church- blame them. They’re the ones who left, because ‘they have no depth of soil, and springing up quickly, lacking root, they wither in the sunlight’. After all, ‘If they had really been of us, they would have remained with us. But to demonstrate that they really were not of us, they departed from us’.
Zwinglius Redivivus 
Everyone has the right to be wrong. I don’t disagree with your post at all, except for the fact that for a portion of people, politics is driving away people. You are correct when you right,
Couldn’t agree more, but by preaching Politics, and inviting in such people as Jerry Falwell, David Vitter and Tony Perkins, it destroys the message of that highest calling.
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its obvious to me that those people arent preachers or pastors but politicians in sheeps clothing. they dont preach the bible, they preach politics. they dont deserve a spot in any pulpit.
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I agree. Look at Vitter, and yet there is a Baptist Church in Baton Rouge which regularly showcases him in all of his hypocrisy.
Perhaps I would say that preaching politics is part of the over all problem – that people are turning away from the Gospel and finding other things, such as politics.
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And some of us just lose faith along the way.
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oh i long ago rejected any notion of your supposed lost faith. besides, i’ve written the dedication to the commentary on job and guess who it’s dedicated to? that’s right, you! i’ll be sure you get a copy when it comes out.
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I can attest to what our host is saying. God is still God, but some of the leadership and people in the pew can be jerks. Can’t blame God for the jerks. I am not a scholar, but I think God doesn’t create jerks.
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