Protestants

[Pure]

Evangelicals

What you might look up, or provide numbers for, dr. m, is the segment of Protestant Christians that are 'evangelical' (or, if you will, 'born again' or 'in personal relationship with Jesus'). I believe their number are growing by leaps and bounds, as shown by the Sunday attendance figures in the thousands (at a single location, the 'home' church).
I believe a main figure, in Texas, in named Osteen, see below. Though his evangelism is rather 'feel good' and materialistic.

Not all are 'fundamentalist', or course, and not all are 'right-wing nutballs.' A small segment may even be progressive in politics. The rest would identify as 'conservative', 'family values' etc.

Another trend may be the increase in Catholics, since most Hispanics are Catholics.

So I think your Christian attrition is in 1) mainstream protestants, like episcopalians, and 2) Anglo-Irish-French-Italian (non Hispanic) Roman Catholics.

----
www.christnotes.org

{This is rather adorational, but the numbers are apparently correct}

Joel Osteen is currently the pastor of America’s largest church, Lakewood Church, located in Houston, Texas. Joel was born to John Osteen, who with his wife Dodie founded Lakewood Church on Mother's Day 1959. Although the church began with a small number of people, it was never small in its vision to reach the world with the gospel.

Today, pastor Joel Osteen continues to pursue the large vision the church has always had through pastoring the nearly 30,000 regular attendees at Lakewood, preaching to hundreds of millions throughout the world through television, supporting hundreds of missionaries throughout the world, feeding the poor, clothing the naked, and holding widely attended meetings through Joel Osteen Ministries.

Joel Osteen is the youngest of four children. He has an older brother, Paul, and two older sisters, Lisa and April. After graduating from high school, Joel Osteen attended Oral Roberts University. However, after his first semester he moved back to Houston. In Houston, he soon discovered what would occupy his time for the next 17 years, working side by side with his father on Lakewood’s television ministry. Through the help of Joel Osteen, the television ministry grew dramatically and reached millions. However, in 1999 John Osteen died, leaving Lakewood without its founding pastor.

With the founding pastor gone, many wondered how Lakewood church and its successful television ministry would continue. On October 3, 1999, Joel Osteen became the pastor of Lakewood. Under pastor Joel Osteen’s direction, the whole concept of church has changed. Through the slogan “Discovering the Champion in You” and an emphasis on a loving God with a positive message of hope, restoration, and healing, Joel Osteen has seen dramatic spiritual and numeric growth in Lakewood. The church has had to add three services and is still quickly outgrowing its 7,800 seat sanctuary.

To accommodate the incredible growth in attendance, in late 2003, Joel Osteen and Lakewood leased the Compaq Center (former home of the Houston Rockets basketball team) for over 10 million dollars. The building, which is located on one of the busiest intersections in America and will seat over 16,000 people, underwent 70+ million dollars of renovations to become the Lakewood International Center.

On the other side, a review of the above book, in Publishers Weekly (generally not given to excesses)

From Publishers Weekly

Houston megachurch pastor and inspirational TV host Osteen offers an overblown and redundant self-help debut. Many Christian readers will undoubtedly be put off by the book’s shallow name-it-and-claim-it theology; although the first chapter claims that "we serve the God that created the universe," the book as a rule suggests the reverse: it’s a treatise on how to get God to serve the demands of self-centered individuals. Osteen tells readers that God wants them to prosper, offering examples of obtaining an elegant mansion or a larger salary ("don’t ever get satisfied with where you are," he cautions).

In seven parts, he details how readers should enlarge their vision, develop self-esteem, discover the power of thought, let go of the past, find strength through adversity, give back to others and choose to be happy. The section on giving comes as too little, too late—Osteen’s message to remember others and "get your mind off yourself" flies in the face of the previous 200 pages.

There are some good pockets of advice, such as letting go of past hurts and avoiding bitterness. Editorially, the book would have packed more of a punch if a third of its repetitive slogans and stories had been pruned. Theologically, its materialism and superficial portrayal of God as the granter of earthly wishes will alienate many Christian readers who can imagine a much bigger God.

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

 

[Halo_n_horns]

Can anyone give me a kind of quick socio-philosophical rundown on the major Protestant denominations? Like what are Methodists like vs. Lutherans vs. Church of Christ vs. Episcopalian vs. Baptists etc?

Here's my preliminary understanding. Correct me if I'm wrong:

Baptist: Biblical literalist, evangelical, conservative, blue collar

Epicopalian: Upper middle class, snooty, conservative, WASP

Methodist: Liberal white collar

Lutheran: more conservative than Methodist. Northern European, Calvinist

Church of Christ: No idea

Unitarians: Very liberal, humanitarian, intellectual

I'm leaving out the Mormons as being a little too extreme to be considered just Protestant. Also Seventh Day Adventist and Jehovah's Witnesses as being too small.

Who else am I missing?

They're all the same. They don't believe in freedom of speech, choice, expression, thought or religion. If it weren't for the introduction of mass media the Bible would still be getting edited and added to in order to keep the weak minded masses under the thumb of the religious rulers, and governments would be ruled from the seats of the religious hierarchy.

Ok, so that last one is happening now in the US, but you see my point.

In all actuality I've done some reading from the religions that really differ from one another, and most of them are really interesting in their thoughts and practices. I don't believe that any one religion is truely right or wrong, unless they're killing people in the name of their deity. I've found that the Hindhu and Buddhist religions seem to have the most balance in their current practices and teachings, though I'm not going to go and change my name any time soon.

My grandmother-in-law use to say that all the religions you named above (and a few more) weren't really any different from one another. They all preached about the same Genesis, the same Armageddon and the same God in between those two points, just with different emphasis on different points along the way. She was a Bible-thumper in the southern US since she was a wee lass, so I figured she knew what she was talking about.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Thanks to Pure for the info about why the Zoroastrians exposed their corpses.It makes sense because they consider fire and earth to be, well Pure.

Those figures from Dr M about the numbers in each denomination are interesting but perhaps more interesting is the number of practitioners. I read somewhere that 40% of Americans went to some church or another on Sundays which seems incredibly high. In Australia it would be less than 3 or 4 %. However, we are beginning to be infected by an increase in the number of Bible thumping Protestant fundamentalists . They are not yet, however, running the government.

You have no idea.

I was an adult before I spent any time in the bible belt of the USA, and anyhow I was raised secular Jew. It just amazed me to walk down the streets of, say, Nashville, Tennessee or Tulsa Oklahoma and see all these enormous neon crosses and billboards of Christ and scripture all over the place. The tallest buildings in town have neon crosses on top, and the religious communities usually hold most of the political power.

Outside of a few cildhood dust-ups with Christian kids who were still sore over that whole Jesus thing, I've never been visibly discriminated against or intentionally intimidated because of my religion, but I've got to say, walking down the streets of Nashville was seriously creepy for me. Everyone I met was as nice as they could possibly be, but still, it was spooky.

I'm sure that Israel must be the same kind of thing for non-Jews (I wouldn't know. I'm kind of anti-Zionist), but it's really an experience that everyone who practices a religion should have: go some place where someone else is the visible majority and see what it feels like. It changed my opinions on separation of Church and state.

Heard some guys omn the radio talking about why the USA has such a high proportion of fundamentalist, evangelical Christians, and they didn't come up with much by way of answers. Maybe the idea of America as a religious haven has something to do with it (but then, so is Canada). They also said that the American ideal of the Town Meeting came from English Protestent groups like the Pilgrims, but that doesn't explain it either.

Maybe it's because Europeans had to go through a series of bloody religious wars that made them sick of the whole thing, while the USA didn't?

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Hey, by the way: I stand totally corrected on the Methodists vs. Lutherans. Really, I was just guessing as to their socio-economic breakdown, based on a few people I've known who were one or the other.

As for Zoroastrians, yeah, they were important. First religion to have the idea of duality.

I'm sure the Jews stole a lot of ideas from them. Jews stole a lot of ideas from the Mesopotamians too, notably the story of the both the creation and the flood and the very idea of Commandments and the Covenant, which were Babylonian ideas. The best guess is that the old testament was assembled while the Jews were in captivity in Babylon around 600 BC.

Gore Vidal points out in his Book "Creation" that something remarkable happened in religion from around 600-400 BC. Buddhism was founded, as was Zoroastrianism, the bible (OT) was written down, and Platonism adopted ideas that Alexander brought back from India concerning reincarnation. I believe that's when Confucious and Lao-Tse were operating too.

 

[rgraham666]

Maybe it's because Europeans had to go through a series of bloody religious wars that made them sick of the whole thing, while the USA didn't?

I suspect that is the case, along with a series of nationalistic wars starting with Napoleon and ending in WWII.

I believe, for the most part, Europeans have realised the ultimate futility of war. It's been so long since we North Americans have had a big war on our soil, we've forgotten how horrible war is.

Maybe the next American Civil War will disabuse us of that notion.

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

This is just speculation about why the US has such a high precentage of people with some sort of religious affiliation. Unencumbered by either research or first-hand knowledge, I wonder if it could, at least in part, be because: there has never been a state religion, the country has had a diversity of denominations since colonial days, and this is a multi-cultural, multi-racial, multi-language country in which houses of worship often serve as sanctuaries of comforting familiarity in our melting pot of a country.

Here's one last item, and please don't laugh: houses of worship often serve as a meeting place for singles, and give couples who have just moved into an area a social center where they can begin to develope non-work related friendships. Affluent individuals can get a lot of these "secondary gains" through country clubs, athletic clubs, business organization and such. Poor and even middle class folks often have no place to turn except their local house of worship.

Just some random thoughts.

Rumple Foreskin

 

[Pure]

Right on, Rumple,

Here's a true story. My bro wanted to get married and after a brief survey decided the local Catholic church had the nicest women, so he went. He saw a *very attractive and interesting young lady, but didn't quite get a chance to introduce himself, etc. So he attended the next Sunday to meet her. Not there. Next Sunday. Not there. It took 6 mos., for her to turn up, since she wasn't a very actively practicing Catholic! And Bro hates churches.

To make a long story short they got together and eventually married; that was more than 10 years ago, but I doubt bro has been in a Catholic church since (except for my wedding, also to a Catholic; they are hot, ya know.).

 

[cantdog]

Hey, by the way: I stand totally corrected on the Methodists vs. Lutherans. Really, I was just guessing as to their socio-economic breakdown, based on a few people I've known who were one or the other.

As for Zoroastrians, yeah, they were important. First religion to have the idea of duality.

I'm sure the Jews stole a lot of ideas from them. Jews stole a lot of ideas from the Mesopotamians too, notably the story of the both the creation and the flood and the very idea of Commandments and the Covenant, which were Babylonian ideas. The best guess is that the old testament was assembled while the Jews were in captivity in Babylon around 600 BC.

Gore Vidal points out in his Book "Creation" that something remarkable happened in religion from around 600-400 BC. Buddhism was founded, as was Zoroastrianism, the bible (OT) was written down, and Platonism adopted ideas that Alexander brought back from India concerning reincarnation. I believe that's when Confucious and Lao-Tse were operating too.

The Axial Age, they call it. Roots religion. Very neat and cool that they were so contemporary.

 

[Pure]

mab, if you're uncomfortable now....

mennonite brethen herald June 23, 2000

http://old.mbherald.com/39-13/news-1.html


Global Evangelical Growth

[excerpt]

Evangelicals are currently the world’s most rapidly growing religious movement, according to Mission Frontiers magazine, published by the US Center for World Mission. The USCWM presented the following figures, based on their research and statistics from David Barrett and Patrick Johnstone:



Annual Growth Rates


Pentecostal & Charismatic Churches
7.3%

Evangelical churches
5.6%

Protestant Mainline churches
2.9%

Roman Catholic Church
1.2%

Christianity
2.6%

Islam
2.7%

Global population
1.6%


Evangelical Christianity is growing 3.5 times as fast as the world population (Pentecostal and charismatic churches 4.5 times as fast). That makes evangelical Christianity (including Pentecostal and charismatic churches), with 645 million members or 11% of world population, the fastest-growing major religious group, and the only movement growing significantly through conversion. (Islam exceeds the Christian growth rate, but this is due to larger average family size, not to conversions.) It must also be noted that persecution of evangelicals has accompanied significant growth in many regions of the world. [end]