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Opinion
Decline of Christianity
Tuesday, August 5, 2014
"How can you have church in a school?" was Ray's comment. Good question in today's more politically correct America but it wasn't always that way. Small rural communities throughout our western area came together to first build school buildings which were multi-purposed as church meeting places until a more religious structure could be built by the small congregations. I even remember attending a meeting of the Mormon community in the Red Willow County Courthouse as a young boy. Can't happen now!
Grannie Annie and I were in Omaha to attend a family reunion -- the annual Trail family reunion. Yes, we can get together from time to time and just enjoy each other's company. Generally politics and religion are kept off limits. Kids and grandkids are a major subject of discussion and I dare say bragging rights. Food and a lot of it is omnipresent and sadly many of our bodies display the results of lusty appetites.
Too far away to attend our home church, we elected to attend the charismatic group that attends Lincoln Murdoch's All Nations Church in West Omaha. They meet on Sunday mornings in the gymnasium of Millard South High School. Lincoln as some Southwestern Nebraska readers may remember was the featured speaker at Johnny Wacker's Project 31 banquet last December.
A charismatic group of Christians gathered there in the gym and they made us feel welcome. It is a venue with cinnamon rolls, yogurt and plenty of coffee to start the celebration. Then came a spirit filled band with several youth singing praise songs.
Lincoln Murdoch was nowhere to be found as he was off on vacation. Pastors take vacation? His stand-in was his dad, Elmer Murdoch, and he delivered a masterful sermon titled "This is a mess!" from the letter to 1st century Christians by James, the half-brother of Jesus. Gee, things haven't much changed over the past 2000 years as the James was describing similar problems that exist in our world today. James stressed that Christians were to be doers of the word, not only believers.
Yet today we see Catholic Relief Agency and other church groups being turned away by our government when they try to reach out to the multitude of children who have illegally come across our southern border. We see HHS refuse to inform our governor of the whereabouts of some 200+ children who have been transported to our state by our federal government to have been theoretically placed with "family members" already here.
We don't see much about it on the big media news but there seems to be a move afoot in the turbulent Mideast to eliminate all Christian communities. The Copts are having their churches burned in Egypt. In Iraq, the site of the earliest of Christian Churches, some of to which James was undoubtedly referring, Christians are being forced to leave, convert to the Muslim religion or pay huge fines just to stay in their homes.
Today it is hard to even find a Christian in Palestine, including Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus.
For a professing Christian the whole world seems to be a mess. Yet, there are rays of hope. Friends recently entertained a Christian Missionary in their home who told of large numbers of Muslims in Sierra Leone converting to the Christian faith. He was appealing for money to help with the work in his mission there.
Hopefully the efforts of faith there will help offset the evil Boko Haram terrorist sect that recently kidnapped some 230 young Christian girls in Nigeria to forcibly convert them to become Muslim.
In Russia today, a great number of churches have reopened and Christians are again celebrating their faith since the demise of Communism. Christians are resurging and openly celebrating their faith in China today. And let us not forget that the largest protestant church in the world today is located in South Korea.
This great country of the United States of America was founded on Christian principles and has become the most economically dynamic freest society that the world has ever seen. Yes secularism and its politically correct mantra seems to be running amuck in our country at the moment. Christians use five thousand years of human experience found in our Christian Bible to be their rule and guide to morality in human inter-relations but what is the blueprint for those who claim to be atheistic secularists? Obviously nothing!
Elections have consequences and I have faith that "we the people" will stand fast and choose leadership that will indeed return us to the Christian principles that have stood our country in good stead for the past 200 plus years. Vote wisely.
That is how I saw it.
Dick Trail