My thoughts on the Minnesota Public Radio Board Concerning the Failing Influence of Christianity in America

I agree in a sense that the state is responsible for down turn in religous knowledge, but that is to narrow of an argument. i think that something like 96% of americans believe in God, but what has changed is the highly philosophically cogent views of God that where present in early america. Early America had ministers like Johnathan Edwards, and John and Charles Wesely who where not intellectual slouches. Now days the church produces Benny Hinn, Rod Parsely, and other notorius TV evangelist. Gone are the days when the church encouraged parents to train up their children in the ways of Scripture, today Christianity has reduced itself to a cultural shell of what is worst about America.


It does not take much historical genius to see that it is American democracy plus the growing seeds of the Sacred/Secular distinction erected by enlightenment philosophers like Thomas Hobbes, Francis Bacon and others that pushed religion to the private sphere, and then science took over the public sphere, which progressively pushed religion into a subjective Schleirmacherisque position. Christianity has been in a fight intellectually ever since to regain some sense of respectability, and defend its claims to objective truth.

Johnathan Edwards was the last monumental Christian thinker, up until the likes of Nicholas Wolsterstorff, and Alvin Plantinga and many others started to make theistic arguments in the Analytical philosophical discipline. Which has lead to some cultural grumblings of a more intellectually disciplined Christianity, as the growth at Christian private schools I think aptly shows, schools like Notre Dame, Baylor, Wheaton College, Calvin College, are growing at rates of 60% over the last ten years.

Will this turn around in the academy, and culture last? I do not think so. I think that the enlightenment ideaology will win out, and Christianity will lose its influence in the west, and as has been the case through out history, it will spread to other parts of the world, namely, Africa and China where the church is growing at an exponential rate ("Next Christendom" is a great book along with the last chapter of Alister Mcgrath's book "The Twilight of Atheism" though the rest of the book leaves some