Why is the West losing Christians?

  • Thread starter Thread starter RealisticCatholic
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Would you be talking about the ex gay people who then turned around and said that their sexuality didn’t change and ended up leaving the ex gay movement? Or do they not count? Ex gay therapies have been found to be incredibly dangerous to the mental health of those seeking it and it’s junk mental healthcare and it’s been discredited by almost every mental health professional out there.

Ex gay therapy is torture and there is no way you can actually change your orientation. There is a massive world of difference between ex gay therapy and exercising control by choosing to not have sex with other people of the same sex as a gay person.
 
OnAJourney said:
Would you be talking about the ex gay people who then turned around and said that their sexuality didn’t change and ended up leaving the ex gay movement? Or do they not count? Ex gay therapies have been found to be incredibly dangerous to the mental health of those seeking it and it’s junk mental healthcare and it’s been discredited by almost every mental health professional out there.

Ex gay therapy is torture and there is no way you can actually change your orientation. There is a massive world of difference between ex gay therapy and exercising control by choosing to not have sex with other people of the same sex as a gay person.
Click to expand...
I’m sure there are plenty who went back, but I also know of plenty who discarded their inclination and are now happily married. I agree that some types of conversion therapy are damaging, and I’m not advocating for those.
 
Well I am not one of those people who buys into ex gay. And I think conversion therapy full stop is dangerous and a disgrace to the mental health profession, and any doctor practicing conversion therapy should lose their license to practice
 
Well, then I would respond that you are being close-minded because it doesn’t fit with your preconceived notions about your inclination.

There are a myriad of success stories, long term successes, where people have completely discarded their “ingrained” homosexual tendencies. The fact that you just discount these is no different from an atheist who discounts a blatant miracle because it doesn’t fit with their world view.

I don’t really have anything more to add to the discussion. I wish you well. God bless!
 
Last edited:
No, I’m going off of what actual psychiatrists have to say on the matter. And the consensus within the psychiatric care sphere is that ex gay therapies don’t work and that it is dangerous for the health of the patient receiving the therapy. My orientation can’t change and neither can the orientation of others. You suppress it, but that isn’t the same as claiming an actual change where you just magically start liking people of the opposite sex.
 
OnAJourney said:
You suppress it, but that isn’t the same as claiming an actual change where you just magically start liking people of the opposite sex.
Click to expand...
Or just choose to live a lie. I know several people who did this when they were younger. As they aged and matured, it didn’t turn out well for them or their families (wives and children)
 
To the OP’s original question…
I have no idea how accurate my observations are…I think there are multiple reasons why all religions are declining but from having been born in 1952 and coming of age in the late 60’s early 70’s, there was a definite shift in respect for authorities.

The generation before mine seemed to have an innocent trust in government and society. Almost everyone went to church and strived to fit into the American dream. The first large break in this trust was the Vietnam war. We discovered we were being lied to. Nixon and his scandal surfaced.

The trust in what we were being told fled out the window. Once you no longer accept authority figures as people to emulate and trust then the flood gates open on who to trust and the answer seemed to be no one. All religions rely on authoritarianism so the shift was more than political, it was spiritual as well.

From my point of view, once confidence is lost in any of our leaders, political or religious then the flood gates open on questioning everything you’ve been told. Not knowing who to trust just leaves yourself as the determining factor and my generation started to question everything we’d been told and to seek our own answers…whether they were right or wrong answers!

Until leaders can be completely honest and transparent they will not be considered an authority to be trusted and believed and it doesn’t matter which religion or party. The trust needs to be earned to be given.
 
Every community desires and needs an over arching narrative of shared history and values.

The idea that secularism is some sort of desired equality that we all should embrace has meant that any shared narratives and values on a national level must be Godless by definition.

Most people usually embrace the default culture. Secularism has been promoted as the shared culture as the default and as such it has meant many embrace this culture and dropped the previous default which was the Christian religion.
 
Last edited:
Very well said. The heavily promoted default is secularism. It is not a better alternative to Christianity. Hopefully, people will realize how bad the mainstream media is, including movies and TV. This attempt to convert people via a 24/7 narrative is not working. I urge my fellow Catholics to reconsider.

Is abortion on demand good?
Is contraception good?
Is no-fault divorce good?
Where is your family and friends?
Is the secular way better on a practical and spiritual level?

I urge you, and myself, to avoid the suggestions coming in. Think about where you are in life and where you would like to be.
 
abucs said:
Every community desires and needs an over arching narrative of shared history and values.

The idea that secularism is some sort of desired equality that we all should embrace has meant that any shared narratives and values on a national level must be Godless by definition.

Most people usually embrace the default culture. Secularism has been promoted as the shared culture as the default and as such it has meant many embrace this culture and dropped the previous default which was the Christian religion.
Click to expand...
But it wasn’t really. There hadn’t been one “Christian religion” since the Reformation. Brutal wars were fought, and even after they were finished, if you were the wrong kind of Christian for whatever country you lived in, you were subjected to one kind of harassment or another. The Founding Fathers expressly made the US a secular nation, in lines with Locke’s view of an a-religious state; not anti-religious, but keeping itself out of spiritual affairs entirely.

But this goes to demonstrate what I think many of you are railing against. It’s not the threat of “losing Christians”, it’s the threat that conservative Christians no longer wield the significant temporal influence they once did.
 
I’ve read the last sentence before. It has only a temporary force. I encourage people to reject what the media is telling them to think, or what to be concerned about. Live your life, as a Christian, and avoid immoral and offensive behaviors portrayed in movies and TV.
 
Last edited:
Because we have it too good and don’t think we need God. Many believe they are their own god.
 
HerCrazierHalf said:
40.png
Marie76:
Many believe they are their own god
Click to expand...
What does this even mean?
Click to expand...
I have had people tell me that. They seem to imagine that being an atheist means being some sort of nihilistic self-deifier.
 
Today at the Practical Catholic, we’ll be looking with Pope Benedict at the erosion happening in societies across the world and what Christians can do in response. So here we have a few Pope Benedict XVI quotes from various sources to help us along the way.

The Holy Father says:
Code: 
If we cannot have common values, common truths, sufficient communication on the essentials of human life–how to live how to respond to the great challenges of human life–then true society becomes impossible.
Commentary by the Practical Catholic:

"How true this is. Where there is no communication, no culture, no shared experience, there is no society; because there is no people. There remains only a vast and foreboding, unforgiving sea of individuals ready to crash upon each other and the world with the slightest wind. Without a common basis, we have not the vaulted pluralism we’re taught to embrace, but Babel, in all the confusion and madness of a society with no binding forces. Already we are seeing the tensions of this fragmentation breaking out across cultures.

“Without common values and truths, such as in the socieites we find ourselves in, we find the fabric of society torn like Joseph’s cloak, by a great many tribes which would like to lay claim to the title of favored. Leftists, conservatives, anarchists, nihilists, secularists, objectivists, the shallow, the entertainers, the entertained, all vying for control against each other. Tribalism can indeed spawn differentiation, but without some common ground, and in the face of increasing jargon not only in the academies but in the cultures; we shall be left with madness. In the end this tribalism can only result in the decline of all their claims, and the alienation of one from the other. Babel is the happenstance when society tries to become God.”
 
niceatheist said:
But it wasn’t really. There hadn’t been one “Christian religion” since the Reformation. Brutal wars were fought, and even after they were finished, if you were the wrong kind of Christian for whatever country you lived in, you were subjected to one kind of harassment or another. The Founding Fathers expressly made the US a secular nation, in lines with Locke’s view of an a-religious state; not anti-religious, but keeping itself out of spiritual affairs entirely.
Click to expand...
There is such a thing as Christian values. Talking about various institutional organisations emanating from the Protestant rebellion doesn’t change that.
niceatheist said:
But this goes to demonstrate what I think many of you are railing against. It’s not the threat of “losing Christians”, it’s the threat that conservative Christians no longer wield the significant temporal influence they once did.
Click to expand...
umm no. But if you want to believe that for whatever personal treasons that is completely up to you.
 
Let’s talk about all the complaints that the DSM no longer considers homosexuality a mental disorder. How is that not social conservatives up in arms because the pyschological and psychiatric communities no longer view being gay as a mental illness? It gets lumped in as part of the “secular conspiracy” all the time.
 
Give examples of social conservatives being ‘up in arms’ because the DSM no longer considers homosexuality a disorder and give examples of Christian causation that the DSM previously did consider it as a disorder.

Please also discuss the scientific reasoning that would be used to change the categorisation and the official Christian response to that scientific debate.

Remember, this is your issue that you raised and a very small part of the above discussion. Your comments discussed previous ‘conservative Christian’ influence and their rallying and being ‘up in arms’ over a loss of influence.

Let’s discuss such influence properly in the one issue you have raised.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top