{"id":973,"date":"2005-06-15T12:20:55","date_gmt":"2005-06-15T16:20:55","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=973"},"modified":"2005-06-15T12:20:55","modified_gmt":"2005-06-15T16:20:55","slug":"a-new-exodus-americans-are-exiting-liberal-churches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/2005\/06\/a-new-exodus-americans-are-exiting-liberal-churches\/","title":{"rendered":"A New Exodus? Americans are Exiting Liberal Churches"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pfm.org\/AM\/Template.cfm?Section=BreakPoint1&#038;Template=\/CM\/ContentDisplay.cfm&#038;ContentID=16161\">BreakPoint<\/a>  Albert Mohler June 14, 2005<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have figured out your problem. You&#8217;re the only one here who believes in God.&#8221; That statement, addressed to a young seminarian, introduces Dave Shiflett&#8217;s new book, Exodus: Why Americans are Fleeing Liberal Churches for Conservative Christianity. The book is an important contribution, and Shiflett offers compelling evidence that liberal Christianity is fast imploding upon itself.<\/p>\n<p>Shiflett&#8217;s instincts as a reporter led him to see a big story behind the membership decline in liberal denominations. At the same time, Shiflett detected the bigger picture&#8211;the decline of liberal churches as compared to growth among the conservatives. Like any good reporter, he knew he was onto a big story.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Americans are vacating progressive pews and flocking to churches that offer more traditional versions of Christianity,&#8221; Shiflett asserts. This author is not subtle, and he gets right to the point: &#8220;Most people go to church to get something they cannot get elsewhere. This consuming public&#8211;people who already believe, or who are attempting to believe, who want their children to believe&#8211;go to church to learn about the mysterious Truth on which the Christian religion is built. They want the Good News, not the minister&#8217;s political views or intellectual coaching. The latter creates sprawling vacancies in the pews. Indeed, those empty pews can be considered the earthly reward for abandoning heaven, traditionally understood.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BreakPoint Albert Mohler June 14, 2005 &#8220;We have figured out your problem. You&#8217;re the only one here who believes in God.&#8221; That statement, addressed to a young seminarian, introduces Dave Shiflett&#8217;s new book, Exodus: Why Americans are Fleeing Liberal Churches for Conservative Christianity. The book is an important contribution, and Shiflett offers compelling evidence that &#8230; <a title=\"A New Exodus? Americans are Exiting Liberal Churches\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/2005\/06\/a-new-exodus-americans-are-exiting-liberal-churches\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about A New Exodus? Americans are Exiting Liberal Churches\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1319,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-orthodox-christianity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1319"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}