Very few members of a Christian or Catholic church take the teachings fully. Personal belief focuses on the pleasant components. Anything that seems challenging is ignored.
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Christian or pseudo-Christian
Being a member of a Christian church and being a Christian are often two different things. Belonging to a church is often just a purely formal matter, perhaps because of family tradition. Be it the music, the togetherness or the ceremonies. What applies to Christian churches applies especially to Catholicism. It is in the nature of things that errors or lack of content in a religion must regularly be compensated for with a good portion of rituals and extra rules.
In this respect the Roman Catholic Church is truly a world champion. In the USA, the Roman Catholic Church has been on the rise for years, but the doctrine of this institution does not seem to be that convincing. At least there are a lot of Catholics in this church who don’t really take the teaching about the “sanctity of life” seriously.
Cherry picking the Catholics
Ryan Burge, an associate professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, wanted to know more about what makes the average Catholic in the United States tick in relation to the Church’s teachings. Here Burge focused on the areas of capital punishment, abortion and euthanasia (Source). The result is sobering.
Less than 1 percent of American Catholics agree with all three teachings of the Catholic Church. The motivation for this study was a statement by Cardinal Wilton Gregory of the Archdiocese of Washington. He described US President Joe Biden as a “cafeteria Catholic.” This is someone who simply chooses what seems attractive and rejects what is challenging. Such a “Cafeteria Catholic” chooses for himself which parts of the faith he wants to adhere to. However, this does not only apply to Biden, but, according to Burge, to almost all Catholics.
Using the General Social Survey dataset as a baseline, the researcher found that in 2022, abortion, the death penalty and euthanasia are all opposed by only 0.9% of Catholics. Individually, 50 percent of Catholics support abortion. 61 percent of the members of this church support the death penalty and 70 percent are in favor of euthanasia.
Evangelicals only “quarter-hearted”
While Burge’s survey of Catholics focused on consistency with the Church’s teachings, the researcher placed an emphasis on the written word among Evangelicals. This is obvious since the Church of Rome postulates that catechism and tradition are superior to the Bible (Info). The answers look anything but rosy. Around a quarter (26%) of the evangelicals surveyed do not believe the Bible is literally true. More than half (56%) believe that God accepts the worship of all religions. This particularly applies to the “Abrahamic faith”, i.e. Christianity, Judaism and Islam. A large proportion of 43 percent of evangelicals believe that although Jesus was a great teacher, he is by no means God.
Modular world view
When added together, Christians and Catholics in the United States have a biblical worldview of just 6 percent, according to the Cultural Research Center of the American Worldview Inventory 2024. It also states that the average American adult does not ” worldview purist” but rather a “worldview plagiarist”. He picks his favorites from an average of nine recognized worldviews and uses them to create his personal worldview.
Further shrinkage expected
Only 6 percent of all Christians and Catholics in the USA use the Bible as the standard for their worldview. It is not difficult to imagine that this percentage will shrink even further as social pressures continue to increase due to “transformational processes.” Because it is to be expected that newly defined world views will conflict with the Bible and clinging to the written word will lead to extreme disadvantages. Anyone who believes the Bible also knows that, according to Revelation 13, the USA has long been following the will of the “beast from the sea”. (Info).
And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed.
Revelation 13:12
Bible verses from King James Version
