Posted by MD on 4/13/2002, 2:47 pm

At the private school for girls where I used to teach up till last year here in the capital city, sometimes I would ask them in class, sitting there in their school uniforms, for a show of hands to indicate how many were Catholic, how many were evangelical, and how many Mormon and Jehovah’s witness. In most of the classes (classes of about 20 and 30 girls), there was a slight majority Catholic, but in some classes there was a majority evangelical, usually with one or two of them Mormon or Jehovah’s witness. (In one small class I had of three girls, one was Catholic, one was Mormon and the other was JW. I don’t remember coming across a Seventh Day Adventist at the school; they have their own schools.) Around the banana plantations by the Caribbean, where I have fellowshiped in the UPC churches, I sometimes have gone for long walks from plantation to plantation, and whenever I ran into people, I’d stop and talk to them, and in the conversation, I would try to work in asking them what religion they were, Catholic or evangelical. In that part of the country, as it turned out, they were ALWAYS evangelical. I’m not kidding, I’m not exaggerating. I was walking along this dirt road out in the middle of nowhere, where there were rows and rows of banana trees on both sides, nobody around for miles, and I passed a girl walking along. I stopped to talk, and in the conversation, I asked her, “Are you Catholic or evangelical?” “Evangelical,” she said. “Do you know what speaking in tongues is?” “Yes.” “Do you practice this yourself?” “Yes.” “Does everybody in your church?” “Yes.” I came to the river. Some girls were there washing clothes. I sat down on the bank to talk. I asked them if they were Catholic or evangelical. “I’m not anything,” the girl I was talking to responded. “By that you mean you’re Catholic?” (Some who are Catholic say “I’m not anything”; from their point of view, they think “Catholic” is just what you’re born, and if you’re “something,” it means being one of those other religions.) “No, I mean not anything,” she replied. “She’s evangelical and she is too,” pointing to the girls on each side of her, “and my mom and dad and brothers and sisters are all evangelical, but I’m not anything.” Okay, one person who wasn’t anything, but in that part of the country, of all the men, women and children I asked, I swear, I didn’t even meet ONE person who was Catholic. (I know there are some, because what about the Catholic church in the town? But I’m saying I didn’t meet any.) And since the days of the big revivals of their parents, these people are still walking in it. And I think there are similar situations in many other parts around the world. The evangelicals down here are often surprised to learn that Protestant churches in the U.S. (“iglesias evangelicas,” as we’re speaking in Spanish) have crosses on their buildings. The only religions most people have known here have been Catholicism and Pentecostalism. Once not many years ago I visited a finca where I had known people in 1980. At that time there were two churches in the town: the Catholic church and the United Pentecostal Church. Now there are five: the Catholic church, the UPC church, an Assembly of God church, a Seventh Day Adventist church and another oneness Pentecostal church not affiliated with the UPC. They’re still walking in it. And taking the numbers worldwide, the U.S. and the rest of the world together, they form quite a majority. ---------- To Steve [Part 4] Posted by Marvin on 9/28/2001, 2:41 pm , in reply to “To Steve [Part 3]” And while we’re on this subject, this reminds me of another case you’ve made against Chapel. You've pointed out the high divorce rate that occurred during the connections debacle. Perhaps it was as high as three out of every four. And you alleged that this proves that Chapel is no good. But in all the time before that, the Chapel had an extremely low divorce rate (compared to our country's nationwide statistics, at the very least). I think it’s safe to assume that the divorce rate in the Lutheran churches is no different than the national average. A statistic I just pulled from the Internet, compiled a few years back, said: “Almost one out of every two marriages in the United States and 60 percent of second marriages now end in divorce. A study done by the University of Minnesota projects that if the current increase continues, by the year 2000, two of three marriages will end in divorce.” (“Jesus and the Intellectual,” http://www.cci.org/intellectual/purpose.html) In the early eighties, with about 2500 people at Chapel at the time, I remember George Alberts saying, “There have been seven divorces in this church now. The number of completion. I want that to be the last one.” We may respond to that now, saying “Dream on,” but if you add all the time before at Chapel with the brief time when the many divorces took place during the connections debacle, the overall average is not higher than one out of every two, the national average; in fact, it’s lower. What does this mean? In the Lutheran churches, considering the same time period, from ’69 to ’88, there have been proportionately more divorces than there were during that same time period at Chapel. I know that in your endless crusade against Pentecostalism you will also be saying there are more divorces among Pentecostal/charismatics than among the old-line denominations. But if we go worldwide as we should, you’re wrong there too. Latin America has a very low divorce rate. Divorces happen here, but there’s a low rate compared to the U.S. and Europe, where the greatest amount of the old-line Protestant churches are. Here in Latin America, Pentecostalism is very common. It’s almost the only Protestant religion. Now do an overall average of the statistics. So worldwide, fewer divorces among Pentecostals. Near the end of your post you ask me: “How do you define being ‘born again’?... Do you mean that someone has to have an emotional experience in a revival meeting to be truly ‘born again’ in your eyes?” No. As I mentioned in the post to Chris, I accept and applaud the Four Spiritual Laws approach that is being taught in many Lutheran churches. There are also other approaches that stick to the Scriptures. These are “quiet” conversions. “Revivalist religion is better able to manipulate people’s emotions into conversion experiences than other religions. But are the conversions thus produced deeper or more lasting than the ‘quiet’ conversions?” I’ve never disputed the “quiet” conversions. And as for whether they’re deeper and more lasting, that’s not an easy thing to determine. We would have to do a throrough study of lots and lots of different people in lots and lots of different churches and situations. I don’t think the answer is as obvious as you think it is. “The answer is not in finding an approach that ‘appears’ to be alive to drug addicts, but in preaching and teaching the living Word to all.” I agree with that, but I also think the Spirit of God can and does come—and manifest itself—in powerful ways, and this is the approach I advocate. I think God wants us to experience the most of him that we can. I am not disdaining quiet born-again Christianity. I just want everything there is for me. And this appears to be the trend Planet Earth is following. Steve, for your own good, you need to put your anger aside. Hatred is going to eat you up. Learn to do what I did. Forgive the people who have hurt you (whether they deserve your forgiveness or not) and move forward. Otherwise, you’ll only be hurting yourself. As much as you criticize doctrinal choices based on emotion and not on the Word of God, I think your decision to dump so much of the theology you leaerned at Chapel was a decision based on emotion, rather than on careful study of the Word of God. “What?” you say. “First I have no emotion or passions, and now my decision was based on emotion?” That’s right. Wrong that you have no emotion or passions, but right that your decision appears to have been based on them. It looks like somebody at Chapel did or said something, or propagated some incorrect belief, falsely in the name of the truth of God, that was humiliating or otherwise hurtful to you. Then you decided that the way to prove that this was not so was to prove that Chapel’s theology was all false, all a “bag of mawkish Pentecostal tricks.” So now you spend your whole life on this board zealously using all your clever debating techniques to take on everybody on every point, and never stop till you have the last word with everyone, in your endless quest to salve the feelings of pent-up anger that you hold inside, and see if you can anesthetize the pain that way. Well, let me tell you that’s not the way to do it. The way to do it is to forgive the people who have hurt you. Hand it over to God and ask him to deal with the negative feelings inside that are afflicting you so. “Be still and know that I am God,” the Scripture says. Until you learn to do that, you will continue with the torment you are suffering, and the pain will never go away. Marvin