There are many in Christian circles in the USA who see that society has gone secular and therefore mad, and wonder how to cope. They are use to having a plurality who are of the faith, and as our judicial tyrants have chosen to elect a new people the old peoples of Christendom, now apostate, are facing a demographic decline.
Postmodernism is a phenomena of a post Christian age.
Some say that it is a time to enjoy the decline, become a minimalist, and not contribute to society. To starve the beast: this idea was best put together by Ayn Rand. Others suggest we should move to where we are the majority, and let the Christian tribe restart in the American Redoubt, as John Wesley Rawles promotes.
But I am not American. I live in the Antipodes, and the Christian believer is a minority: the society is publicly secular, with the usual post modern foul stench of political correctness and pandering to the Islamist.
The empire we belonged to, that of faith, truth, justice and education, is now called the colonial period and we are supposed to be ashamed of it. I am not, instead I consider we are exiles, in a world fallen, and we have guidance on how to act.
1These are the words of the lehe tter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the remaining elders among the exiles, and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people, whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. 2This was after King Jeconiah, and the queen mother, the court officials, the leaders of Judah and Jerusalem, the artisans, and the smiths had departed from Jerusalem. 3The letter was sent by the hand of Elasah son of Shaphan and Gemariah son of Hilkiah, whom King Zedekiah of Judah sent to Babylon to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. It said: 4Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. 6Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. 7But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. 8For thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let the prophets and the diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, 9for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, says the LORD.
10For thus says the LORD: Only when Babylon’s seventy years are completed will I visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. 11For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the LORD, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. 12Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. 13When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart, 14I will let you find me, says the LORD, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, says the LORD, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.
If we listen to the false prophets, who preach diversity and tolerance and that there are many ways to faith, we end up in a death spiral. We cannot even vote ourselves out of office. The people we want to train to replace us have other agendas. Here, as usual, we have many examples: the Unitarians have doubled down into irrelevance: two apostate churches united and are now aiming to be one with the shakers.
UUnitarian Universalism was formed in 1961 by the consolidation of two religions: Unitarianism and Universalism. The religion has no shared creed, but embraces seven guiding principles, including “the free and responsible search for truth and meaning.”
“We need not think alike to love alike,” the UUA website states. “We are people of many beliefs and backgrounds: people with a religious background, people with none, people who believe in a God, people who don’t, and people who let the mystery be.”
The UUA president serves as the religion’s chief executive and chief spokesman. The president is responsible to the board of trustees for the “administrative policies and programs” of the association, according to the UUA website.
Handouts about “white privilege” are posted to the UUA website. UUA members have long battled for diversity, multiculturalism and inclusion in society as well in their own ranks, but like many religions rooted in Europe, it has struggled to attract nonwhite members.
Despite efforts to change, members of several popular Protestant Christian denominations, including the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and the United Methodist Church, are more than 90 percent white, according to a 2015 report by the Pew Research Center.
The hiring decision that led to the recent UUA tumult touched a nerve among members who felt leaders were not practicing what they preached about diversity.
More than 120 ministers and other leaders signed a letter that said “the practice of hiring white people nearly to the exclusion of hiring people of color is alarming and not indicative of the communal practice to which our faith calls us.”
Morales sought to calm the storm with a letter of his own, sent to UUA staffers last week. But that appeared to make matters worse.
While agreeing that greater staff diversity was needed, he said “significant progress” had been made, noting that “people of color” among UUA staff had increased from 14 percent in 2008 to 20 percent today and that the proportion of managers had grown from 5 percent to 9 percent.
“I am afraid that the current controversy is distracting us from a larger long term issue,” he wrote. “That issue is that the membership of our congregations continues to be overwhelmingly white and of European origin.”
Then he appeared to attack his critics.
“I wish I were seeing more humility and less self-righteousness, more thoughtfulness and less hysteria,” he wrote of the controversy.”
Three days later, Morales resigned.
“Unfortunately, a note I sent to UUA staff a few days ago made matters worse,” he said in a letter to the UUA’s board of trustees. “I reacted when I should have listened. I am deeply sorry.”
The last president of the Unitarian Universalist Association to not finish a term was the Rev. Paul N. Carnes, who died from cancer less than two years after his election in 1977.
The three candidates to be the next UUA president are all white women. Each has pledged to foster greater diversity in leadership, if elected.
This is not how we are to live. The church is not a place for social activism. We are not the praying arm of the Labour party, nor are we the religious end of the Tory party. We are to raise families, settle our children into careers and marriages. We are to honour mothers and encourage motherhood as a holy order. We are to pray for our cities and build them up.
And God will let the apostate fall into their death spirals. They will continue in their errors. They will double down then double down again, even when the house is stacked against them.
If we are the church, we belong to Christ. We are to remain grafted to him. Our lives in this time of apostasy are to be a witness.