www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Is apathy towards religion growing?

Do you think that with each new year there is more apathy towards Christianity in general and organized religion in particular?

If you do think so, do you think that the media helped this by demonizing Christianity and religion as being intolerant towards social issues such as homosexual marriage and abortion?

Or do you think there is a deeper reason, like despair?

What are your thoughts?

Thanks,
Alice

Dear Alice,

I think there is a crisis of apathy towards Christianity, to be sure.

For the most part, Christians themselves are largely to blame for this.

When we stop praying, reading the Scriptures, receiving the Sacraments/Mysteries etc., then such a crisis looms large.

Today, during my family's New Year's Day dinner, an aunt bluntly stated (she is the niece of a priest, no less) that she doesn't believe in any afterlife, that Jesus was married and had children and that the Church is one big scam etc.

I reacted by challenging her sources and "data" for her conclusions. She asked me if I was trying to impose my religious beliefs on her - I said I wasn't. I was challenging the nonsensical History Channel programs she was basing her beliefs on.

To believe in God and Christ must go beyond a simply mental acknowledgement (which isn't true faith anyway).

The media will do what the media has always done. Why is it that there are "Christians" who appear ready to accept what the media says?

Does this not speak to a deeper crisis of prayer and spirituality?

Alex

I think the churches, east and west, have suffered from a crisis in both faith and leadership for a number of years. Many of our "leaders" spend their time addressing the wrong problems with the wrong solutions. It's like they are on a train going east while the people are going west. When the bishops correctly identify the problems, then perhaps they can offer better solutions.

Alice:

Christ is Born!!

I think that, in addition to the media, one could lay a great deal of the cause to the public schools. They have become increasingly secular and, at the same time, increasingly hostile to the history of what Christianity has done for Western civilization. It was telling to me when a recent poll of students at one of our ivy league schools thought that the United States was more of a danger to world peace than ISIS. The animus toward this country is part and parcel of the general animus of the left toward anything that has arisen from our history--shaped by Christianity.

Bob

Dear Bob,

Yes, you are right...our education system from kindergarden through university is hostile to religion. Our whole culture seems to ignore and even discredit the importance of religion and spirituality in the healthy human existence.

Although I don't think that the U.S. is more of a danger than ISIS to world peace, I do not agree with our meddling in other countries, and the self interests that determine our (often contradictory) actions.

I used to support this country 100%, but am not happy with the direction our foreign policy decisions are taking.

Just my humble opinion...

Alice

So given the posts here so far - what are we really talking about?

Alex

Maybe the name of the thread could be modified to include antipathy?

Bob

Alice is right on the money as usual.

I think the prevalent apathy toward religion is rooted in a lack of familiarity with real prayer. Prayer places us in communion with God; liturgical prayer is prayer par excellence--but how many folks of these latter generations have the attention span for any kind of prayer?

Dear LatinTrad,

You are on the money!

We need training in prayer and especially liturgical prayer as a first priority.

Our environment shouldn't have an impact on our Christian faith - our Christian faith should be having an impact on our environment!

And we can't do that unless we know how to pray and unless we do pray, receive the Sacraments, read the Gospel, fast etc.

it's time for Christians to develop a backbone and push back!

Alex

Yes, you are right--please feel free to amend. There is not only apathy (in believers) but antipathy from the culture.

Have a blessed day,
Alice

But the point which the Fathers of the Church have always made is that Christians have an important role to play in even the most pagan society.

St Basil the Great, for example, affirmed a canon whereby Christians living in a country that goes to war should be excommunicated - had they lived true Christian lives, he believed, there would have been no war.

If all Christians in North America lived lives true to their calling - I wonder whether we would even be speaking about apathy or antipathy at all?

Alex

Yes. It is a hostile environment in the U.S. towards Christians. This is fueled by the media, the education system, and many of the politicians. My wife and I worry about our little one. We stay close to the monasteries....we have no cable television.....and we are home schoolers (we have Orthodox-ized the curriculum). We do not keep our child in a bubble....but we try to teach how to live in the world as faithful Orthodox Christians.....not of the world.

If I may remove my Eastern cap for a moment...Of course, I agree the problem is loss of faith, but may I suggest the issue may involve epistemelogical problems?
For over a decade, John Henry Newman preached a yearly sermon as part of the years' comnencement activities. It was quite common among educated men in his day to lose their faith upon starting university. Was the university teeming with miscreant dons and professors? Hardly. At least not openly. Secular knowledge, to young men educated in the humanities considerably more than in the hard sciences, had outpaced religious knowledge: Newman remarked on secular subjects being able to produce cogent proofs to back up their claims in a way that, to these young men, Christianity, had been unable. Newman goes on to illustrate that similar criteria are applied differently to argue the proofs of religion since it is not the same kind of body of knowledge as a secular subject...something most somewhat educated believers know now.
A similar phenomenon was happening in Russia at the same time. It has been said that among the upper class, the men were becoming agnostic while the women were becoming Roman Catholic.
Bringing ourselves to the present...like Victorian England, secular knowledge may have outpaced the knowledge capacity of the average believer, I think the nature of technical and scientific knowledge too abstruse now to bear any comparable resemblance to religious knowledge. And between ourselves and the Victorians the interveving decades had been dominated among the more commonly educated by Marxism and Freudianism. These reductionist schools have done great damage to the ability of thinkers to examine and analyse anything not involving numerals. The Japanese say that to a hammer, everything looks like a nail. To modern reductionist thinkers, Christianity is...reductionist.
Having said that, it is a good reminder that in Catholic thought, "the secular" is a religious concept, i.e. there is the secular clergy, for one. And remember, secular comes from the word for World, which is the theatre of redemption (John 3:16).

Dear Mark,

Actually, "secular" is not a religious concept in Catholic thought - it is just a term that was brought into usage without too much thought being given to it.

However, we are called to be "in the world" and not "of the world" - in that sense "secular."

I agree that it is not a good term at all. I know former "Secular Franciscans" who have dropped it altogether.

Alex

This is what I had in mind towards the end of my gibberish:

http://www.catholiceducation.org/en/culture/catholic-contributions/secular-confusions.html

But I think I like this better:

http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=2736