Whatever its faults In Christ alone surely qualifies. I would also nominate a fair few Bernadette Farrell compositions. Longing for light and O God, you search me and you know me spring to mind. John Bell's work is hit and miss, but there is plenty of solid stuff there, including (in my view) She sits like a bird and We cannot measure how you heal.
The reality is that the surviving hymnody of (mostly) the last 4 centuries is that which stood above the rest; we don't see the lesser works of Watts or Wesley, even if we must still endure some of the lesser work of C F Alexander. We do, however, see quite a lot of John Bell's work, and it will take at least until he's been in the ground half a century and no longer chairing the committee writing the hymn book to have a proper prune and see what is really worth keeping.
Question: Your hymns. How would you classify them? Do they address current issues?
(I do wonder if I’m the only one who has written a hymn drawing on the Westminster catechism, or a choral piece drawing on the motto attributed to Calvin.)
Perhaps, but I grew up in a tradition that has this, from the Heidelberg Catechism, as a hymn
Whatever its faults In Christ alone surely qualifies. I would also nominate a fair few Bernadette Farrell compositions. Longing for light and O God, you search me and you know me spring to mind. John Bell's work is hit and miss, but there is plenty of solid stuff there, including (in my view) She sits like a bird and We cannot measure how you heal.
The reality is that the surviving hymnody of (mostly) the last 4 centuries is that which stood above the rest; we don't see the lesser works of Watts or Wesley, even if we must still endure some of the lesser work of C F Alexander. We do, however, see quite a lot of John Bell's work, and it will take at least until he's been in the ground half a century and no longer chairing the committee writing the hymn book to have a proper prune and see what is really worth keeping.
Sure, I'm not that familiar with Bell's work but know one or two. They strike me as so-so.
I'm with you on Townend. He stands out I think despite reservations that may be held against 'In Christ Alone.'
It's all a bit academic for us Orthodox of course as anything less than a thousand years old is suspect ... 😉
In reality, of course, a lot of the tones and tunes - such as they are - are nowhere near as ancient as people like to think.
I do, of course, believe there is scope for contemporary hymnody and choral arrangements that serve the needs of whatever Christian tradition we are talking about.
If Calvin's your man or the Westminster Confession features in your theology then 'lex credentials, lex orandi' or whatever the saying is. Why not reference it?
I'd rather that than 'ooh ooh ooh we're really gonna ...'
In fairness, I certainly don't object to all worship songs and choruses but perhaps it's my age, but I do think the quality has declined since they first emerged as a genre. There were some turkeys mind, back in the day.
I cringe at some of the stuff I used to sing back in the '80s, but it wasn't all bad of course, as indeed I'm sure not all the worship songs are bad now.
At the risk of starting yet another 'worship wars' thread, you've both got me wondering how contemporary hymnody can avoid a kind of preachy and pedantic 'political correctness' (for want ofva better term) on the one hand and the pietistic 'ooh ooh Jesus, ooh ooh Jesus, Jesus, ooh ooh Jesus, ooh ooh we love you Jesus, Jesus, Jesus ...' style excesses on the other.
Surely it is not beyond the wit of humankind to write something that is both singable and meaningful in a contemporary idiom. I am sure there must be examples out there.
@Arethosemyfeet beat me to mentioning Bernadette Farrell, @BroJames has mentioned Timothy Dudley Smith. I could also mention Shirley Erena Murray, Jaroslav Vajda or Mary Louise Bringle (though I don’t know if many of her hymns have crossed the Pond). And there are others.
Question: Your hymns. How would you classify them? Do they address current issues?
(I do wonder if I’m the only one who has written a hymn drawing on the Westminster catechism, or a choral piece drawing on the motto attributed to Calvin.)
Perhaps, but I grew up in a tradition that has this, from the Heidelberg Catechism, as a hymn
Other than Timothy Dudley Smith, who is British of course (I met him once), I don't know the hymn-writers on your list, @Nick Tamen.
I will look them up at some point.
I'm sure a lot of decent new material doesn't reach the pews, though.
Anyhow, we are straying from the topic of young people and church.
A statistic I read with alarm some years ago was that 60% of church attenders in the UK under the age of 25 lived in the Greater London area.
If that was the case it implies that most will be in ethnic minority churches - nothing wrong with that of course - and with the rest spread very thinly across the rest of the country, probably concentrated in major conurbations.
Younger people in churches are thin on the ground here.
I am by no means convinced that young people attend church less often than they might because of the music involved.
I suspect there are other factors, such as:
(a) If you attend church, the services are available on a fixed schedule without flexibility.
(b) The church will want your money, but we are all inundated by appeals from worthy non-profit organizations; how is the church more worthy than the others?
(c) Churches often have a reputation, whether justified or not, for being smug and self-righteous. ("We know the truth and we are not interested in debating it.")
(d) To understand the statements of various religions, one must master a huge amount of historical and cultural information which is otherwise utterly irrelevant to our lives. (To understand climate change, you will find the Bible doesn't help much; you need some background in earth sciences and life sciences.)
Could it be the church is trying to be too relevant? I am of the mind praise services are now a turn off for youth. Praise services came in during the Baby Boom generation. But today's youth are just not there. Seems like they want a more participatory service. They don't want a rock concert. They can get that elsewhere--that is if they are into rock.
They want to be engaged. They like to be challenged. No pat answers. They live in the grey. They do not like black and white answers, but they do appreciate guided exploration of the issues. They recognize there is no one sure fire answer, and they appreciate knowing the church can give them a certain amount of latitude in their solutions.
Yes, I think that's part of it, @Gramps49. There are a whole range of factors that come into play.
I can't speak for the USA but as far as my own adopted Orthodox tradition goes, I've heard that the Greek Orthodox here - who are mainly concentrated in London and other large metropolitan areas - are hemorrhaging youth like there's no tomorrow.
Archbishop Nikita, an American, appears to be galvanising the Diocese of Thyatira and Great Britain to some extent and ordaining more clergy but like all the 'historic churches' the Orthodox are struggling to retain their young people.
I've heard it said that what young people need isn't so much rock style worship but 'authenticity'.
My own daughters abandoned church in their early teens and found all efforts that the evangelical wing of the CofE was making to be 'relevant' or 'down wiv da yooth' to be cringe-worthy and off-putting.
I've shared this here before, I think, but there's a term 'disco vicar' which teens and young adults use to describe anything- religious or otherwise - that is aimed or 'targeted' at them in a self-conscious or patronising way.
For a whole range of reasons and societal changes I don't think many forms of church are engaging effectively with younger people and millennials irrespective of tradition, theology or worship style.
All this discussion of why young people don't go to church largely ignores the possibility that they find Christianity irrelevant and don't believe in its central myth.
All this discussion of why young people don't go to church largely ignores the possibility that they find Christianity irrelevant and don't believe in its central myth.
This is something people are, I think, in denial about.
At a conscious level they're aware of it, but subconsciously it's prevented from guiding their thinking. I wonder if reasons for this might include consequences of considering it like:
1. The conclusion that reversing the trend might require evangelism, which doesn't exactly have a good rep or feel about it outside certain sectors of the church.
2. The possibility that said young people are right and it is a load of wishful thinking.
Both of these are deeply troubling conclusions. Most of us are deeply uncomfortable with the idea of trying to convert people and frequently (and justifiably) embarrassed by the antics of those who try to. And also painfully aware of their general luck of success in any way other than annoying people. The second conclusion is not an area of our thinking we like to explore as it's unsettling.
Safer to tinker with what we have in the hope we may slightly slow the haemorrhage or attract the odd counter-zeitgeist youth.
I think the central problem in converting or convincing people is the problem of suffering/evil: God loves you, yes but Gaza, Covid, Saville - that’s people, nature and maybe the devil - yes but you just said he could do anything and he made, or caused to be made, all those things - don’t worry you’ll feel better when you’re dead.
I think the central problem in converting or convincing people is the problem of suffering/evil: God loves you, yes but Gaza, Covid, Saville - that’s people, nature and maybe the devil - yes but you just said he could do anything and he made, or caused to be made, all those things - don’t worry you’ll feel better when you’re dead.
Yeah, and I think that feeds our uneasy fear of conclusion 2 - that there is no God.
Exploring why people don't go to church - or indeed believe any of Christianity's truth claims - forces us to question why we do - and that can be extremely unsettling.
I agree that the problem of evil is a big issue, but also the basic issue of materialism and spirituality. Why isn't the world just lots of particles jostling around? Christianity also seems fuddy-duddy.
I think the central problem in converting or convincing people is the problem of suffering/evil: God loves you, yes but Gaza, Covid, Saville - that’s people, nature and maybe the devil - yes but you just said he could do anything and he made, or caused to be made, all those things - don’t worry you’ll feel better when you’re dead.
Yeah, and I think that feeds our uneasy fear of conclusion 2 - that there is no God.
Exploring why people don't go to church - or indeed believe any of Christianity's truth claims - forces us to question why we do - and that can be extremely unsettling.
Which is why I have settled into a kind of contented agnosticism. Not sure about any of it, but would like to be pleasantly surprised once the body has given up.
Whereas I find myself inexplicably certain. I can entertain doubts and have the problem of pain needle at me, but nothing seems to shake my belief. What makes it hard is that I can't find the cause or reproduce this certainty, so I can't give it to others. I can't lead others to a place I'm not sure how I got to in the first place.
I think the central problem in converting or convincing people is the problem of suffering/evil: God loves you, yes but Gaza, Covid, Saville - that’s people, nature and maybe the devil - yes but you just said he could do anything and he made, or caused to be made, all those things - don’t worry you’ll feel better when you’re dead.
I don't think that "evil" as such is a problem in the way you describe. In short, "evil" is not a scientific concept, so trying to understand it from a scientific viewpoint is unlikely to be fruitful. Similarly, "omnipotence" isn't really a scientific concept either. Trying to explain these things within the context of a scientific worldview is likely to be both unfruitful and unsettling.
True, but I was commenting on why Christianity has an uphill struggle with the young - which I don’t think is really connected to scientific understandings per se.
I think the central problem in converting or convincing people is the problem of suffering/evil: God loves you, yes but Gaza, Covid, Saville - that’s people, nature and maybe the devil - yes but you just said he could do anything and he made, or caused to be made, all those things - don’t worry you’ll feel better when you’re dead.
I don't think that "evil" as such is a problem in the way you describe. In short, "evil" is not a scientific concept, so trying to understand it from a scientific viewpoint is unlikely to be fruitful. Similarly, "omnipotence" isn't really a scientific concept either. Trying to explain these things within the context of a scientific worldview is likely to be both unfruitful and unsettling.
Who said anything about understanding it from a scientific viewpoint?
Yes, that's kind of where I am too, in a way, though I'm not looking for something as rigorous as scientific evidence.
It's not the problem of evil for me. It's the lack of evidence. It's not that God doesn't do anything about the truly awful things in the world, it's that God doesn't do anything. I spent decades associated in various ways with various churches and didn't find that God made a difference there. I think if God made a difference in people's lives, religious people and religious institutions collectively would be at least marginally better than other people and institutions. Not perfect - just enough better that you could point to the difference and say it had something to do with God.
Last time I looked at numbers and discussions about declining church-going, what struck me was the increasing number of young people who don't have a position on religion at all -- they aren't atheists or agnostics because the whole question is so irrelevant to them that they haven't bothered considering it.
Yes, I agree with much of what has been said upthread.
Not long after my conversion I was trying to 'share my faith' with one of my house-mates (I was a student at the time).
He told me that church was dull, fuddy-duddy and boring. It needed to be more 'contemporary.'
When I told him that some churches had guitars and more modern forms of music, he said, 'yes, but that frightens people.'
I later found out he'd attended a meeting at a nearby full-on charismatic evangelical church and it had scared him witless.
Back then I dismissed this as, 'I sang a dirge and you did not mourn, I played the pipe and you did not dance.'
And was rather proud of myself for coming up with a suitable biblical reference.
These days I think that whilst there can be an element of that, things are a lot more complicated.
I agree that we don't like to contemplate the prospect of it all being a delusion. But doubt is part of it. Yes, we can have convictions but that's different to absolute certainty.
I remember hearing how the late Metropolitan Kallistos Ware invited a group of clergy for a meal. Part way through he leaned forward and said in his inimitable but often imitated tones, 'Would I shock you if I said that I sometimes wonder whether we've made the whole thing up?'
Well, of course we all wonder that. Acknowledging it and working with it is the hard part.
The issue of indifference is a biggie though. I've spoken to veteran full time evangelists who tell me that's become far, far more apparent within the last few decades.
New Technologies have taken over some of the functions of a congregation. Once young people found their partners from within the community of faith. Now, there are dating apps.
They want to be engaged. They like to be challenged. No pat answers. They live in the grey. They do not like black and white answers, but they do appreciate guided exploration of the issues. They recognize there is no one sure fire answer, and they appreciate knowing the church can give them a certain amount of latitude in their solutions.
Particularly the idea of "living in the grey".
I think I'd start by looking at whether newer generations understand and experience community in ways that differ from older generations. (And possibly the different ways in which newer generations understand faith and belief, which might include how necessary it is to community.)
This is such a thoughtful thread and I agree with much of what previous posters have said. It’s not one issue it’s many issues and all need to be considered in the local context. The church we are associated with and which, we regularly attended for almost 30 years until covid, attracted us in a few ways.
Probably about 10 years ago the service changed to 8 and 9:45. Since covid, it’s only just returned to 1 service at 9am, we are currently not attending.
The heyday of the Youth Group was probably the late 1990s and early 2000s and after there was an “issue” and just about all the youth left, leaving the primary school kids no young mentors and the youth group in disarray. There was a paid youth worker, but Parish Council decided this was not financially viable a few years ago, the former youth worker remains a member of the congregation. At the time I thought it was a poor decision as it seemed to convey a general shrinking of young people as not being a priority. Husband thinks the Parish has a cheque-book view of life. Not engaging much with difficult things, but happy to provide financial support to parish members in need, or other worthy causes. Harsh, I know and I don't entirely agree with him.
Having been two of the younger adult members, I note that my age cohort consists of 8 couples, including us. Going into the future my age group alone won’t be enough to sustain the parish, but all outreach efforts have not led to any increase in church membership. There is Sunday School, but I’m not sure of the Youth status. I note that one highly committed family has just moved on to attend another church with their adult daughter and grandchildren recognising that there were not friends of their daughter’s age, or little ones for the grandkids at our own parish.
My own kids’ reasons for leaving include sexuality issues, disgust at the hypocrisy of the institutional church and failure to recognise the harms done (for one) and no one their own age to form friendships with (for the second). We withdrew one of our kids from the youth program because of a safety issue that was poorly handled. We were one of the few families with non-church friends and were happy to invite them to church activities. In the main it’s been a kind of holy huddle for the last 10 years, maybe longer.
I mentioned upthread that our family has not returned to church “post” covid. My husband had left a few years ago, he was at a loose end after returning home after our youngest child received drastic and urgent medical care 3 hours away from our home and we relocated there for 10 months. He had previously been the sound guy and general tech help. No one tried to engage him to help with anything on our return. Kindness perhaps, but I think a lack of understanding around being part of the community and enjoying serving. As to be expected when we returned new members were sitting in “our” seats and I’ve deliberately put that in inverted commas. I don’t believe anyone should have a special seat, but our entire world had been turned upside down and rightly or wrongly it felt like all our safety nets had vanished. I stopped attending the later service and moved to the early service to try to reclaim some of our weekend and have a quiet space to spend time in both solitude and community worship/gathering. With no young kids to take with me, attending church from 0-12 when morning tea finished, started to lose it’s appeal.
After unsuccessfully trying to fit back into parish life and reconnect with God I decided this year it was time to stop pretending. So, Sundays are now a day of garden, family time and actual outings, something we’ve never done in our entire marriage. Husband used to spend from 4-6 of a Saturday afternoon on preparing music/sound for the Sunday service. For me as a recently retired person, the biggest thing has been refusing to take on jobs that I think are not worthwhile. I should note, I probably wouldn’t have stayed in the church for as long as I did were it not for Rachel Held Evans and other thinkers like her. I didn’t feel a place for me in the still mainly evangelical/charismatic/middle class church.
I would note that the community was absolutely brilliant about supporting us through our young person’s lengthy serious illness. Meals, prayer, financial assistance, and in the very early days of illness, visitors. My daughter noted recently how left out she felt and that there was maybe two people there for her the whole time, I suspect it was 3 actually, but it does rate poorly given the amount of attention and gifts that the sibling received. There is also I think a tendency for people to have thought that once we returned home that things were hunky dory and we’d just pick up our old lives and keep going. We did that after the initial treatment and the first two recurrences of cancer, after the third we were totally broken and even now live with the fallout of the experience and the stresses which are ongoing. I have two friends who keep in touch intermittently, but as we are steadfast covid shielders, I think people think we are difficult. My view is having given 20 years of my life to the health project I’m not tossing it all away now.
I am pleased to say that the current minister maintains the Zoom service, and has said he will not ever cancel it. I have one friend with a child with disruptive behaviours who has said they have benefitted from being able to attend church online and I suspect others would too, it's not just for oldies/shut ins and I hope he is keeping records of feedback and how it's benefitting others who don't feel comfortable in a conventional setting.
I suppose this long rambly thread is both too long and covers too much personal stuff, if moderators think it too long I’m happy for it to be rejected.
I think the central problem in converting or convincing people is the problem of suffering/evil: God loves you, yes but Gaza, Covid, Saville - that’s people, nature and maybe the devil - yes but you just said he could do anything and he made, or caused to be made, all those things - don’t worry you’ll feel better when you’re dead.
I don't think that "evil" as such is a problem in the way you describe. In short, "evil" is not a scientific concept, so trying to understand it from a scientific viewpoint is unlikely to be fruitful. Similarly, "omnipotence" isn't really a scientific concept either. Trying to explain these things within the context of a scientific worldview is likely to be both unfruitful and unsettling.
Who said anything about understanding it from a scientific viewpoint?
In short, because "evil" is only the kind of problem that Doublethink was describing *if* you try to understand it and explain it from a scientific viewpoint. Which, in effect, Doublethink was.
True, but I was commenting on why Christianity has an uphill struggle with the young - which I don’t think is really connected to scientific understandings per se.
I think you're half-right. The position of the people you're talking about probably doesn't have much to do with "scientific understandings", but yours does.
In general, when people that we're trying to convince have questions, we try to come up with answers that make sense to us - we tend to assume that the people asking the questions are using the same worldview.
When people "ask", "Why is there so much evil in the world?", a lot of the time they're saying "People are deliberately hurting each other, please make it stop".
It's possible that Presbyterian polity mitigated somewhat the worst excesses of clericalism in the Kirk, but I don't know how bad it has been by comparison in Presbyterian churches elsewhere (I'm wondering particularly about Australia and Canada).
The Presbyterian Church in Australia is small, a quick Wiki search showing that just over 2% of Australians identify as Presbyterian. Most Presbyterians here joined the Uniting Church when that was founded 55 or so years ago.
Likewise, the Presbyterian Church in Canada is the remnant of those Presbyterians who didn’t participate in the formation of the United Church of Canada in 1925. Wikipedia says about 1.4% of Canadians are members of the PCC.
There was an independent allocation of property between congregations continuing as Presbyterian and those joining the new Uniting church. In the suburb next to us, that resulted in the new church gaining the very fine Sulman designed Presbyterian church with the Presbyterians being allocated the previous Methodist church, a very drab and sad building. My Presbyterian father was devasted.
I think the central problem in converting or convincing people is the problem of suffering/evil: God loves you, yes but Gaza, Covid, Saville - that’s people, nature and maybe the devil - yes but you just said he could do anything and he made, or caused to be made, all those things - don’t worry you’ll feel better when you’re dead.
I don't think that "evil" as such is a problem in the way you describe. In short, "evil" is not a scientific concept, so trying to understand it from a scientific viewpoint is unlikely to be fruitful. Similarly, "omnipotence" isn't really a scientific concept either. Trying to explain these things within the context of a scientific worldview is likely to be both unfruitful and unsettling.
Who said anything about understanding it from a scientific viewpoint?
In short, because "evil" is only the kind of problem that Doublethink was describing *if* you try to understand it and explain it from a scientific viewpoint. Which, in effect, Doublethink was.
I don't think that's at all true. You're going to have to defend that claim rather than merely asserting it.
Explain exactly how evil is only a problem from a scientific viewpoint, because on the face of it that's an utterly bizarre claim. I'd say it's precisely a non-scientific viewpoint - one that is concerned with human suffering, with values and ethics - in which evil is a problem. Science really doesn't care about that sort of thing.
@Cheery Gardener I think it's always good to hear and reflect on people's experiences whether good, bad or indifferent.
One of the things that struck me in your post was that you marked the '90s/early 2000s as the high-water mark for youth engagement and activity in your parish.
Perhaps it's just my age (early 60s) but I tend to see that decade as a time when the upbeat revivalism of '80s middle-class evangelical charismaticism began to hit the buffers. Things 'boiled over' with the whole 'Toronto Blessing' thing and various initiatives such as 'JiM' (remember that?) and 'From Minus to Plus' and other evangelistic initiatives that promised much but delivered little.
It was certainly a sunnier and more optimistic time but the churches - of all stripes - found themselves having to face reality. Over-optimism wasn't confined to charismatic evangelicalism either. Heck, there were converts to Orthodoxy who were convinced they were going to receive a huge influx of disillusioned Anglicans, for instance.
There was a lot of rhetoric and 'ra-ra-ra' around and when all was said and done, there was a lot more said than done.
When I look back, I find it interesting how The Gamalielettes, both born in the late '90s, were completely immune to youth rallies and youth evangelists and so on than I'd have been at their age.
They used to draw religious themes as young kids and come out with all the sorts of things that would make good, solid, upright evangelical parents proud. But when they became teens it was a different story. They have no problem with my having a faith and they respect that but they just don't see how it might apply to them.
My late wife and I were going through a transition from bog-standard charismatic evangelicalism to a more 'post evangelical' position at that time and I sometimes ruefully wonder whether this rubbed off on them, but I think it's more nuanced than that.
On the Covid thing ... I'm nothing round where I live how many older churchgoers have thrown in the towel too.
I also think that 'burn-out' is an issue too, something that affects all voluntary groups and not just faith-based ones.
I also think that 'burn-out' is an issue too, something that affects all voluntary groups and not just faith-based ones.
"Volunteer fatigue" is a massive issue in the Highlands and Islands. Every public service here either runs on volunteers or relies on the efforts of volunteers to shape it in ways that work for the people who live here. People describe going to meetings about e.g. HPMAs and they're the only ones from the communities affected and the only ones not being paid to be there. Mrs Feet is a director of our local community development trust and she's helping manage a fuel station and the construction of business units, while also having a committee role for the local museum.
I think the central problem in converting or convincing people is the problem of suffering/evil: God loves you, yes but Gaza, Covid, Saville - that’s people, nature and maybe the devil - yes but you just said he could do anything and he made, or caused to be made, all those things - don’t worry you’ll feel better when you’re dead.
I don't think that "evil" as such is a problem in the way you describe. In short, "evil" is not a scientific concept, so trying to understand it from a scientific viewpoint is unlikely to be fruitful. Similarly, "omnipotence" isn't really a scientific concept either. Trying to explain these things within the context of a scientific worldview is likely to be both unfruitful and unsettling.
Who said anything about understanding it from a scientific viewpoint?
In short, because "evil" is only the kind of problem that Doublethink was describing *if* you try to understand it and explain it from a scientific viewpoint. Which, in effect, Doublethink was.
I don't think that's at all true. You're going to have to defend that claim rather than merely asserting it.
Explain exactly how evil is only a problem from a scientific viewpoint, because on the face of it that's an utterly bizarre claim. I'd say it's precisely a non-scientific viewpoint - one that is concerned with human suffering, with values and ethics - in which evil is a problem. Science really doesn't care about that sort of thing.
In short, "evil" is not a scientific concept, so trying to understand it from a scientific viewpoint is unlikely to be fruitful.
My second quote above is like an if-then construction where the "if" clause comes after the "then" clause. Rephrasing my response to your previous question and adding an "else" clause:
Who said anything about understanding it from a scientific viewpoint?
If you try to understand it and explain it from a scientific viewpoint (which Doublethink was, in my view) then "evil" is the kind of problem that Doublethink was describing else it's a different kind of problem (to do with suffering, values and ethics etc).
I also think that 'burn-out' is an issue too, something that affects all voluntary groups and not just faith-based ones.
Conversely, I think that a lot of churches were put off involvement with youth work because the increasingly believed that one needed paid professionals to run things - and they couldn't afford them.
The emphasis on safeguarding, good and proper though it is, also put people off volunteering: not because they were bad people, but because those CRB/DBS forms, rules and disclosures were just too much of a faff for them.
and, as a soon to be ex safeguarding officer, I'm fed up the whole arsecovering culture. I'm totally unconvinced that all of the bureaucratic bullshit has prevented a single case of abuse, or allowed a single survivor of abuse that has happened to get the support they need.
True, but I was commenting on why Christianity has an uphill struggle with the young - which I don’t think is really connected to scientific understandings per se.
just sticking my (unwanted) head in to say that Christianity doesn't have an uphill struggle with the young--just with the young in particular cultures, times, locations. It's worth remembering that our own experiences are local and culture bound, and maybe something there is having an impact on the involvement of young people. Not even everyone on the Ship is experiencing this.
I think the central problem in converting or convincing people is the problem of suffering/evil: God loves you, yes but Gaza, Covid, Saville - that’s people, nature and maybe the devil - yes but you just said he could do anything and he made, or caused to be made, all those things - don’t worry you’ll feel better when you’re dead.
I don't think that "evil" as such is a problem in the way you describe. In short, "evil" is not a scientific concept, so trying to understand it from a scientific viewpoint is unlikely to be fruitful. Similarly, "omnipotence" isn't really a scientific concept either. Trying to explain these things within the context of a scientific worldview is likely to be both unfruitful and unsettling.
Doublethink's post is a caricature of proselytism. (The immediate context being your post that raised the issue, as something most Christians find embarrassing. And a caricature you subsequently agreed with.)
The caricature centres on a formulation of the problem of evil - in this case, that God is love, God is omnipotent and created (or caused the creation) of everything, including evil and suffering, but does nothing about it. It is the failure of the proselytiser to explain this apparent contradiction (fallacy or paradox) that appears to be the source of embarrassment and/or discomfort.
The idea that God has power over everything that exists, in a scientific understanding of "power" and "existence" - everything in the physical universe, which is within the realm of science and within the scope of the scientific method - is one of the concepts that underlies this problem, hence my comment about trying to explain (eg resolve) the contradiction within the context of a scientific worldview.
I do not consider that to arise from a "scientific worldview". It seems to be to be a simple restatement of orthodox Christian theology, that God is creator of all and is all-powerful.
I think you're stretching the phrase "scientific worldview" to a point it breaks and becomes meaningless. It also feels like you're trying to make out that people like @Doublethink and me aren't sufficiently sophisticated to have a proper understanding of things - a feeling that, frankly, I frequently get from your posts.
Please feel free to restate the concepts of God as all-powerful creator in a "non-scientific" way that addresses the problem of evil though. We might even not be so stupid and unsophisticated that we can understand you.
just sticking my (unwanted) head in to say that Christianity doesn't have an uphill struggle with the young--just with the young in particular cultures, times, locations.
I think this is completely true - my own UK perspective is that 'church' here is so bound up with establishment and old fashioned ways of doing things (and I include all denominations in that, not just the Established one), that people are sort of instinctively against getting involved, and also don't see how it has any relevance.
However, also in a UK setting, I think that there are two things working in church's favour, but they probably won't bear fruit yet. Firstly, the period where it is this monolithic thing to kick against must subside, simply as it becomes less and less visible in the national square. At which point, younger people being more tolerant of 'you do you' it might actually become easier for the non-enthusiasts (much earlier in the thread we talked about the convinced extremes continuing to prosper, relatively) to dip their toes into something more middle of the road. There's still a prejudice about church attendance - I felt it at university in the very late 90s/early 2000s - I only started going regularly again when I left university and the Royal Navy made me attend chapel every Sunday morning for a year.
On the other hand. something else which I would never have touched with a bargepole in the same time period, and neither would anyone else of my acquaintance (and I'm tempted to say generation) is Freemasonry.
Yet in multiple places in England especially, and metropolitan Scotland the story of masonic lodges shrinking and closing as the elderly membership drop off the perch is being bucked by an age profile with a cluster of men in their 70s and 80s, and then a gap before a glut of men in their 20s and 30s. Frankly this still feels to me utterly bizarre but there we go. It seems that the combination of the mysteries/allegories/rituals; and the big scandals of the 80s receding into the deep past has led to a situation where (some) young men want to explore it, and are open about it, and their friends don't remotely bat an eyelid.
I never in a million years would have seen that coming.
In 1999 when we discovered that our university landlord was on the square it was the cause of amusement, scorn, and to be honest some residual fear.
I can understand why people might not want to draw parallels between Freemasonry and the church, not least because of all the baggage around gender, syncretism, etc - but at the same time I look at it and it gives me hope for religion. Just only when it's been booted well into the shadows and out of the minds of the public at large, maybe.
I am unable to determine the meaning of "con-evo" and "chari-evo" using Google.
I have heard that Christianity is booming in some parts of the world (parts of Africa and South America). Is there a decline in participation by young people in those places? Is this phenomenon related to national and individual wealth?
I am unable to determine the meaning of "con-evo" and "chari-evo" using Google.
I have heard that Christianity is booming in some parts of the world (parts of Africa and South America). Is there a decline in participation by young people in those places? Is this phenomenon related to national and individual wealth?
It's related to birth rates. From what I understand Nigeria's much vaunted growth in Anglican membership is actually lower than the population growth rate.
It's related to birth rates. From what I understand Nigeria's much vaunted growth in Anglican membership is actually lower than the population growth rate.
Also allowing for the geography of Nigeria meaning that in some areas birth and population growth is going to mean more Muslims rather than more Christians. And the opposite, of course, in other parts of Nigeria.
I am unable to determine the meaning of "con-evo" and "chari-evo" using Google.
I have heard that Christianity is booming in some parts of the world (parts of Africa and South America). Is there a decline in participation by young people in those places? Is this phenomenon related to national and individual wealth?
These terms are pretty much Shipboard ones. I think it's been addressed upthread.
'Con-evo' - conservative evangelical.
'Chari-evo' - charismatic evangelical.
No idea whether participation by young people in Christian activity has declined in Africa or South America.
I've heard that religious participation by younger people declines by the second or third generation in migrant communities.
A Nigerian charismatic evangelical told me about 20 odd years ago now that whilst churches there were bursting at the seams much of it was pretty 'nominal' by their estimation, even in the more full-on charismatic churches.
Hmm. If I were going to approach the problem of evil from what I think you would understand as being an orthodox Christian point of view, I would start by noting that the conventional position on omnipotence isn't that God can do anything or that there's nothing God cannot do, it's that God can do anything that is possible according to His nature, and he cannot do anything contrary to His nature. For example, God cannot sin and God cannot lie.
It's common to also exclude logical paradoxes / absurdities, such as making 1+1=3, or creating a square circle, or creating a stone so large that He cannot lift it. (About which much has been written.)
You could consider these (and maybe other categories) as collectively being things that it doesn't make sense for God to be able to do.
I would also want to know what you understand by "the kingdom of God" (as, whatever else it means, it is where God rules and has power and dominion). And secondly, how you understand the kingdom of God to relate to the physical space-time universe in which we live and move.
With you on omnipotence not including logical impossibilities or actions contrary to God's nature. One might consider the latter a subset of the former, inasmuch as God's nature is expressed through God's actions.
Dividing All That Is (I was going to say the Cosmos but I don't want to use a term that might be considered to refer only to the material universe) into where God's will is unopposed and where it isn't strikes me as another way of stating the same problem - God allows evil because God could declare nowhere to be the latter.
I think the problem of evil is an acute point within a problem wider than God's apparent inaction in the face or terrible evil (or indeed natural disaster where the regular free will arguments seem rather harder to apply without victim blaming) - that is God's apparent total inaction - something to which I believe @Ruth has alluded to.
For me it's a problem of fundamental dishonesty about the nature of faith. Real faith is an exploration of mystery, not an accession to terms and conditions. Conservative evangelicals have created a monovocal self consistent bible in their own image and turned it into a deity based entirely on fear and shame. Some people are still attracted to this but it's a diminishing group and it has nothing else to give apart from the joy of knowing that everyone else is going to hell. Thankfully this doesn't attract a lot of people of many generations. The first generation in which there are significant numbers of people who are spiritual without being religious is now dying. To me, the question is whether young people have any interest in anything which is not materially evident. There is something very reductive about so much so called scientific discourse that can entirely extinguish interest in such ideas by making them so marginal that they fall off the edge into oblivion
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The reality is that the surviving hymnody of (mostly) the last 4 centuries is that which stood above the rest; we don't see the lesser works of Watts or Wesley, even if we must still endure some of the lesser work of C F Alexander. We do, however, see quite a lot of John Bell's work, and it will take at least until he's been in the ground half a century and no longer chairing the committee writing the hymn book to have a proper prune and see what is really worth keeping.
Perhaps, but I grew up in a tradition that has this, from the Heidelberg Catechism, as a hymn
Sure, I'm not that familiar with Bell's work but know one or two. They strike me as so-so.
I'm with you on Townend. He stands out I think despite reservations that may be held against 'In Christ Alone.'
It's all a bit academic for us Orthodox of course as anything less than a thousand years old is suspect ... 😉
In reality, of course, a lot of the tones and tunes - such as they are - are nowhere near as ancient as people like to think.
I do, of course, believe there is scope for contemporary hymnody and choral arrangements that serve the needs of whatever Christian tradition we are talking about.
If Calvin's your man or the Westminster Confession features in your theology then 'lex credentials, lex orandi' or whatever the saying is. Why not reference it?
I'd rather that than 'ooh ooh ooh we're really gonna ...'
In fairness, I certainly don't object to all worship songs and choruses but perhaps it's my age, but I do think the quality has declined since they first emerged as a genre. There were some turkeys mind, back in the day.
I cringe at some of the stuff I used to sing back in the '80s, but it wasn't all bad of course, as indeed I'm sure not all the worship songs are bad now.
I love it!
I will look them up at some point.
I'm sure a lot of decent new material doesn't reach the pews, though.
Anyhow, we are straying from the topic of young people and church.
A statistic I read with alarm some years ago was that 60% of church attenders in the UK under the age of 25 lived in the Greater London area.
If that was the case it implies that most will be in ethnic minority churches - nothing wrong with that of course - and with the rest spread very thinly across the rest of the country, probably concentrated in major conurbations.
Younger people in churches are thin on the ground here.
I suspect there are other factors, such as:
(a) If you attend church, the services are available on a fixed schedule without flexibility.
(b) The church will want your money, but we are all inundated by appeals from worthy non-profit organizations; how is the church more worthy than the others?
(c) Churches often have a reputation, whether justified or not, for being smug and self-righteous. ("We know the truth and we are not interested in debating it.")
(d) To understand the statements of various religions, one must master a huge amount of historical and cultural information which is otherwise utterly irrelevant to our lives. (To understand climate change, you will find the Bible doesn't help much; you need some background in earth sciences and life sciences.)
They want to be engaged. They like to be challenged. No pat answers. They live in the grey. They do not like black and white answers, but they do appreciate guided exploration of the issues. They recognize there is no one sure fire answer, and they appreciate knowing the church can give them a certain amount of latitude in their solutions.
I can't speak for the USA but as far as my own adopted Orthodox tradition goes, I've heard that the Greek Orthodox here - who are mainly concentrated in London and other large metropolitan areas - are hemorrhaging youth like there's no tomorrow.
Archbishop Nikita, an American, appears to be galvanising the Diocese of Thyatira and Great Britain to some extent and ordaining more clergy but like all the 'historic churches' the Orthodox are struggling to retain their young people.
I've heard it said that what young people need isn't so much rock style worship but 'authenticity'.
My own daughters abandoned church in their early teens and found all efforts that the evangelical wing of the CofE was making to be 'relevant' or 'down wiv da yooth' to be cringe-worthy and off-putting.
I've shared this here before, I think, but there's a term 'disco vicar' which teens and young adults use to describe anything- religious or otherwise - that is aimed or 'targeted' at them in a self-conscious or patronising way.
For a whole range of reasons and societal changes I don't think many forms of church are engaging effectively with younger people and millennials irrespective of tradition, theology or worship style.
This is something people are, I think, in denial about.
At a conscious level they're aware of it, but subconsciously it's prevented from guiding their thinking. I wonder if reasons for this might include consequences of considering it like:
1. The conclusion that reversing the trend might require evangelism, which doesn't exactly have a good rep or feel about it outside certain sectors of the church.
2. The possibility that said young people are right and it is a load of wishful thinking.
Both of these are deeply troubling conclusions. Most of us are deeply uncomfortable with the idea of trying to convert people and frequently (and justifiably) embarrassed by the antics of those who try to. And also painfully aware of their general luck of success in any way other than annoying people. The second conclusion is not an area of our thinking we like to explore as it's unsettling.
Safer to tinker with what we have in the hope we may slightly slow the haemorrhage or attract the odd counter-zeitgeist youth.
Yeah, and I think that feeds our uneasy fear of conclusion 2 - that there is no God.
Exploring why people don't go to church - or indeed believe any of Christianity's truth claims - forces us to question why we do - and that can be extremely unsettling.
Which is why I have settled into a kind of contented agnosticism. Not sure about any of it, but would like to be pleasantly surprised once the body has given up.
Who said anything about understanding it from a scientific viewpoint?
It's not the problem of evil for me. It's the lack of evidence. It's not that God doesn't do anything about the truly awful things in the world, it's that God doesn't do anything. I spent decades associated in various ways with various churches and didn't find that God made a difference there. I think if God made a difference in people's lives, religious people and religious institutions collectively would be at least marginally better than other people and institutions. Not perfect - just enough better that you could point to the difference and say it had something to do with God.
Last time I looked at numbers and discussions about declining church-going, what struck me was the increasing number of young people who don't have a position on religion at all -- they aren't atheists or agnostics because the whole question is so irrelevant to them that they haven't bothered considering it.
Some don’t believe at all.
Some find religion and faith irrelevant.
Some believe, but are suspicious of institutional religion, or find church people hypocritical.
Some believe, but view the church as responsible for or complicit in things like misogyny, sexism, racism and homophobia.
Some have been harmed by the church or by people in the church. They may not believe as a result, or they may still believe despite that harm.
Some believe, but don’t see going to church as connected to that belief, and may prefer to live out their belief in other ways.
Some simply find church boring.
Some may not come to church for other reasons.
For some, it may be a mix of reasons.
There’s no one reason, and there’s no one “solution.”
Not long after my conversion I was trying to 'share my faith' with one of my house-mates (I was a student at the time).
He told me that church was dull, fuddy-duddy and boring. It needed to be more 'contemporary.'
When I told him that some churches had guitars and more modern forms of music, he said, 'yes, but that frightens people.'
I later found out he'd attended a meeting at a nearby full-on charismatic evangelical church and it had scared him witless.
Back then I dismissed this as, 'I sang a dirge and you did not mourn, I played the pipe and you did not dance.'
And was rather proud of myself for coming up with a suitable biblical reference.
These days I think that whilst there can be an element of that, things are a lot more complicated.
I agree that we don't like to contemplate the prospect of it all being a delusion. But doubt is part of it. Yes, we can have convictions but that's different to absolute certainty.
I remember hearing how the late Metropolitan Kallistos Ware invited a group of clergy for a meal. Part way through he leaned forward and said in his inimitable but often imitated tones, 'Would I shock you if I said that I sometimes wonder whether we've made the whole thing up?'
Well, of course we all wonder that. Acknowledging it and working with it is the hard part.
The issue of indifference is a biggie though. I've spoken to veteran full time evangelists who tell me that's become far, far more apparent within the last few decades.
Particularly the idea of "living in the grey".
I think I'd start by looking at whether newer generations understand and experience community in ways that differ from older generations. (And possibly the different ways in which newer generations understand faith and belief, which might include how necessary it is to community.)
Probably about 10 years ago the service changed to 8 and 9:45. Since covid, it’s only just returned to 1 service at 9am, we are currently not attending.
The heyday of the Youth Group was probably the late 1990s and early 2000s and after there was an “issue” and just about all the youth left, leaving the primary school kids no young mentors and the youth group in disarray. There was a paid youth worker, but Parish Council decided this was not financially viable a few years ago, the former youth worker remains a member of the congregation. At the time I thought it was a poor decision as it seemed to convey a general shrinking of young people as not being a priority. Husband thinks the Parish has a cheque-book view of life. Not engaging much with difficult things, but happy to provide financial support to parish members in need, or other worthy causes. Harsh, I know and I don't entirely agree with him.
Having been two of the younger adult members, I note that my age cohort consists of 8 couples, including us. Going into the future my age group alone won’t be enough to sustain the parish, but all outreach efforts have not led to any increase in church membership. There is Sunday School, but I’m not sure of the Youth status. I note that one highly committed family has just moved on to attend another church with their adult daughter and grandchildren recognising that there were not friends of their daughter’s age, or little ones for the grandkids at our own parish.
My own kids’ reasons for leaving include sexuality issues, disgust at the hypocrisy of the institutional church and failure to recognise the harms done (for one) and no one their own age to form friendships with (for the second). We withdrew one of our kids from the youth program because of a safety issue that was poorly handled. We were one of the few families with non-church friends and were happy to invite them to church activities. In the main it’s been a kind of holy huddle for the last 10 years, maybe longer.
I mentioned upthread that our family has not returned to church “post” covid. My husband had left a few years ago, he was at a loose end after returning home after our youngest child received drastic and urgent medical care 3 hours away from our home and we relocated there for 10 months. He had previously been the sound guy and general tech help. No one tried to engage him to help with anything on our return. Kindness perhaps, but I think a lack of understanding around being part of the community and enjoying serving. As to be expected when we returned new members were sitting in “our” seats and I’ve deliberately put that in inverted commas. I don’t believe anyone should have a special seat, but our entire world had been turned upside down and rightly or wrongly it felt like all our safety nets had vanished. I stopped attending the later service and moved to the early service to try to reclaim some of our weekend and have a quiet space to spend time in both solitude and community worship/gathering. With no young kids to take with me, attending church from 0-12 when morning tea finished, started to lose it’s appeal.
After unsuccessfully trying to fit back into parish life and reconnect with God I decided this year it was time to stop pretending. So, Sundays are now a day of garden, family time and actual outings, something we’ve never done in our entire marriage. Husband used to spend from 4-6 of a Saturday afternoon on preparing music/sound for the Sunday service. For me as a recently retired person, the biggest thing has been refusing to take on jobs that I think are not worthwhile. I should note, I probably wouldn’t have stayed in the church for as long as I did were it not for Rachel Held Evans and other thinkers like her. I didn’t feel a place for me in the still mainly evangelical/charismatic/middle class church.
I would note that the community was absolutely brilliant about supporting us through our young person’s lengthy serious illness. Meals, prayer, financial assistance, and in the very early days of illness, visitors. My daughter noted recently how left out she felt and that there was maybe two people there for her the whole time, I suspect it was 3 actually, but it does rate poorly given the amount of attention and gifts that the sibling received. There is also I think a tendency for people to have thought that once we returned home that things were hunky dory and we’d just pick up our old lives and keep going. We did that after the initial treatment and the first two recurrences of cancer, after the third we were totally broken and even now live with the fallout of the experience and the stresses which are ongoing. I have two friends who keep in touch intermittently, but as we are steadfast covid shielders, I think people think we are difficult. My view is having given 20 years of my life to the health project I’m not tossing it all away now.
I am pleased to say that the current minister maintains the Zoom service, and has said he will not ever cancel it. I have one friend with a child with disruptive behaviours who has said they have benefitted from being able to attend church online and I suspect others would too, it's not just for oldies/shut ins and I hope he is keeping records of feedback and how it's benefitting others who don't feel comfortable in a conventional setting.
I suppose this long rambly thread is both too long and covers too much personal stuff, if moderators think it too long I’m happy for it to be rejected.
I think you're half-right. The position of the people you're talking about probably doesn't have much to do with "scientific understandings", but yours does.
In general, when people that we're trying to convince have questions, we try to come up with answers that make sense to us - we tend to assume that the people asking the questions are using the same worldview.
When people "ask", "Why is there so much evil in the world?", a lot of the time they're saying "People are deliberately hurting each other, please make it stop".
There was an independent allocation of property between congregations continuing as Presbyterian and those joining the new Uniting church. In the suburb next to us, that resulted in the new church gaining the very fine Sulman designed Presbyterian church with the Presbyterians being allocated the previous Methodist church, a very drab and sad building. My Presbyterian father was devasted.
I don't think that's at all true. You're going to have to defend that claim rather than merely asserting it.
Explain exactly how evil is only a problem from a scientific viewpoint, because on the face of it that's an utterly bizarre claim. I'd say it's precisely a non-scientific viewpoint - one that is concerned with human suffering, with values and ethics - in which evil is a problem. Science really doesn't care about that sort of thing.
One of the things that struck me in your post was that you marked the '90s/early 2000s as the high-water mark for youth engagement and activity in your parish.
Perhaps it's just my age (early 60s) but I tend to see that decade as a time when the upbeat revivalism of '80s middle-class evangelical charismaticism began to hit the buffers. Things 'boiled over' with the whole 'Toronto Blessing' thing and various initiatives such as 'JiM' (remember that?) and 'From Minus to Plus' and other evangelistic initiatives that promised much but delivered little.
It was certainly a sunnier and more optimistic time but the churches - of all stripes - found themselves having to face reality. Over-optimism wasn't confined to charismatic evangelicalism either. Heck, there were converts to Orthodoxy who were convinced they were going to receive a huge influx of disillusioned Anglicans, for instance.
There was a lot of rhetoric and 'ra-ra-ra' around and when all was said and done, there was a lot more said than done.
When I look back, I find it interesting how The Gamalielettes, both born in the late '90s, were completely immune to youth rallies and youth evangelists and so on than I'd have been at their age.
They used to draw religious themes as young kids and come out with all the sorts of things that would make good, solid, upright evangelical parents proud. But when they became teens it was a different story. They have no problem with my having a faith and they respect that but they just don't see how it might apply to them.
My late wife and I were going through a transition from bog-standard charismatic evangelicalism to a more 'post evangelical' position at that time and I sometimes ruefully wonder whether this rubbed off on them, but I think it's more nuanced than that.
On the Covid thing ... I'm nothing round where I live how many older churchgoers have thrown in the towel too.
I also think that 'burn-out' is an issue too, something that affects all voluntary groups and not just faith-based ones.
All that and more.
"Volunteer fatigue" is a massive issue in the Highlands and Islands. Every public service here either runs on volunteers or relies on the efforts of volunteers to shape it in ways that work for the people who live here. People describe going to meetings about e.g. HPMAs and they're the only ones from the communities affected and the only ones not being paid to be there. Mrs Feet is a director of our local community development trust and she's helping manage a fuel station and the construction of business units, while also having a committee role for the local museum.
then "evil" is the kind of problem that Doublethink was describing
else it's a different kind of problem (to do with suffering, values and ethics etc).
This is the bit I think you have merely asserted. I see no attempt to understand and explain evil "from a scientific viewpoint".
You need to explain what about @Doublethink 's post makes you think this.
The emphasis on safeguarding, good and proper though it is, also put people off volunteering: not because they were bad people, but because those CRB/DBS forms, rules and disclosures were just too much of a faff for them.
just sticking my (unwanted) head in to say that Christianity doesn't have an uphill struggle with the young--just with the young in particular cultures, times, locations. It's worth remembering that our own experiences are local and culture bound, and maybe something there is having an impact on the involvement of young people. Not even everyone on the Ship is experiencing this.
(taking myself away again)
The caricature centres on a formulation of the problem of evil - in this case, that God is love, God is omnipotent and created (or caused the creation) of everything, including evil and suffering, but does nothing about it. It is the failure of the proselytiser to explain this apparent contradiction (fallacy or paradox) that appears to be the source of embarrassment and/or discomfort.
The idea that God has power over everything that exists, in a scientific understanding of "power" and "existence" - everything in the physical universe, which is within the realm of science and within the scope of the scientific method - is one of the concepts that underlies this problem, hence my comment about trying to explain (eg resolve) the contradiction within the context of a scientific worldview.
I think you're stretching the phrase "scientific worldview" to a point it breaks and becomes meaningless. It also feels like you're trying to make out that people like @Doublethink and me aren't sufficiently sophisticated to have a proper understanding of things - a feeling that, frankly, I frequently get from your posts.
Please feel free to restate the concepts of God as all-powerful creator in a "non-scientific" way that addresses the problem of evil though. We might even not be so stupid and unsophisticated that we can understand you.
I think this is completely true - my own UK perspective is that 'church' here is so bound up with establishment and old fashioned ways of doing things (and I include all denominations in that, not just the Established one), that people are sort of instinctively against getting involved, and also don't see how it has any relevance.
However, also in a UK setting, I think that there are two things working in church's favour, but they probably won't bear fruit yet. Firstly, the period where it is this monolithic thing to kick against must subside, simply as it becomes less and less visible in the national square. At which point, younger people being more tolerant of 'you do you' it might actually become easier for the non-enthusiasts (much earlier in the thread we talked about the convinced extremes continuing to prosper, relatively) to dip their toes into something more middle of the road. There's still a prejudice about church attendance - I felt it at university in the very late 90s/early 2000s - I only started going regularly again when I left university and the Royal Navy made me attend chapel every Sunday morning for a year.
On the other hand. something else which I would never have touched with a bargepole in the same time period, and neither would anyone else of my acquaintance (and I'm tempted to say generation) is Freemasonry.
Yet in multiple places in England especially, and metropolitan Scotland the story of masonic lodges shrinking and closing as the elderly membership drop off the perch is being bucked by an age profile with a cluster of men in their 70s and 80s, and then a gap before a glut of men in their 20s and 30s. Frankly this still feels to me utterly bizarre but there we go. It seems that the combination of the mysteries/allegories/rituals; and the big scandals of the 80s receding into the deep past has led to a situation where (some) young men want to explore it, and are open about it, and their friends don't remotely bat an eyelid.
I never in a million years would have seen that coming.
In 1999 when we discovered that our university landlord was on the square it was the cause of amusement, scorn, and to be honest some residual fear.
I can understand why people might not want to draw parallels between Freemasonry and the church, not least because of all the baggage around gender, syncretism, etc - but at the same time I look at it and it gives me hope for religion. Just only when it's been booted well into the shadows and out of the minds of the public at large, maybe.
I have heard that Christianity is booming in some parts of the world (parts of Africa and South America). Is there a decline in participation by young people in those places? Is this phenomenon related to national and individual wealth?
It's related to birth rates. From what I understand Nigeria's much vaunted growth in Anglican membership is actually lower than the population growth rate.
Also allowing for the geography of Nigeria meaning that in some areas birth and population growth is going to mean more Muslims rather than more Christians. And the opposite, of course, in other parts of Nigeria.
These terms are pretty much Shipboard ones. I think it's been addressed upthread.
'Con-evo' - conservative evangelical.
'Chari-evo' - charismatic evangelical.
No idea whether participation by young people in Christian activity has declined in Africa or South America.
I've heard that religious participation by younger people declines by the second or third generation in migrant communities.
A Nigerian charismatic evangelical told me about 20 odd years ago now that whilst churches there were bursting at the seams much of it was pretty 'nominal' by their estimation, even in the more full-on charismatic churches.
It's common to also exclude logical paradoxes / absurdities, such as making 1+1=3, or creating a square circle, or creating a stone so large that He cannot lift it. (About which much has been written.)
You could consider these (and maybe other categories) as collectively being things that it doesn't make sense for God to be able to do.
I would also want to know what you understand by "the kingdom of God" (as, whatever else it means, it is where God rules and has power and dominion). And secondly, how you understand the kingdom of God to relate to the physical space-time universe in which we live and move.
Dividing All That Is (I was going to say the Cosmos but I don't want to use a term that might be considered to refer only to the material universe) into where God's will is unopposed and where it isn't strikes me as another way of stating the same problem - God allows evil because God could declare nowhere to be the latter.
I think the problem of evil is an acute point within a problem wider than God's apparent inaction in the face or terrible evil (or indeed natural disaster where the regular free will arguments seem rather harder to apply without victim blaming) - that is God's apparent total inaction - something to which I believe @Ruth has alluded to.