31 replies

  1. Russia surprises me as they thought they were pretty religious.

    But UK really isn’t surprising, perhaps a sign of the danger of the religion being tied to the state. An evaporated identity means the old traditions lose meaning as the meaning of words change to denotions of praise and denegration.

  2. Indeed, the stats for the UK are shocking.

    Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, Bilney, Wycliffe, Tyndale, Knox, The Wesleys, and more modern English godly Christians like John R. W. Stott – they are all sad and grieved in heaven.

    the danger of the religion being tied to the state.

    Yes, as Christianity was never suppossed to be one with the state government.

    This danger includes Islam also, as it is by nature tied to the state government and political power and military might – Muhammad and the Caliphs.

    Maybe that is why I have noticed a lot of comments here and other Muslim blogs say things like “the sad state of our Ummah in our days”

    I wonder why Saudi Arabia is not in the survey?

    • ‘Christianity was never suppossed to be one with the state government.’

      1) Jesus never intended to start a new religion called ‘Christianity’. His religion was Judaism.

      2) Jesus’s mission (it seems) was to establish a highly political Kingdom on earth. He would be a king like David. His disciples also would be seated on thrones, Matt 19:28

      3) Later Christians spiritualised this earthly political Kingdom – especially John in his less than historical retelling of the life of Jesus.

      • Funny you should quote Matthew 19:28, which also mentions Jesus building His church (16:16-18; 18:15-20) and taking the kingdom away from Israel – Matthew 21:33-46

        Matthew 21:43 – “therefore, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation/people that produces the fruit of it.” . . . the chief priests and Pharisees understood that he was speaking about them” (Matthew 21:46)

        Matthew 19:28 – that is “in the new world” or “in the regeneration”, they will sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” – means in the new heavens and new earth – see Revelation 3:21 & chapters 21-22. See Revelation 21:12-14 -both the 12 tribes of Israel and the 12 apostles of the Lamb. (Israel & the Church together)

        So, Christianity is the fulfillment of proper Biblical Judaism. Messianic Jews are right, and the kingdom of God expanded into all the nations and continues to do that in history.

        So, you are wrong.

        “My kingdom is not of this world” John 18:36

        Totally historical.

      • The quote in John is probably unhistorical. According to OT prophecies the messiah was to build a utopian kingdom on earth, a political kingdom like that of David. Later christians like Paul turned Jesus into an object of worship, modeled on the hellenistic mystery cults.

      • wrong. read all the verses I demonstrated from Matthew.

      • You are mistaken. Modern scholarship for good historical reasons does not see the gospel of John as factual or historical, but largly fictional.

      • It does not matter what some modern secular & mostly liberal and unbelieving scholars say.

        Besides that issue, leaving John aside; Matthew still teaches the church is the fulfillment of Biblical Israel; the kingdom of God is expanding into all the nations through churches.

        see the verses from Matthew that I gave you.

      • You throw away biblical scholarship which is sad. You could learn so much about the gospels. Fundamentalism forces you to be stupid. Biblical Israel was a this worldly political reality with a king, army, laws and so forth. Your exclusively spiritual thing is NOT from from the religion of Jesus or his teaching, once you strip away later man-made corruptions of his teaching.

      • One can still do good scholarship and also believe the Gospel of John is historical.

        Fundamentalist Islam forces you to be stupid. the author of Qur’an did not know history nor what Christians believed for 600 years.

      • You consistently reject any scholarship that questions your rigid fundamentalism. Intellectually your views are a waste.

      • Qureshi as a dishonest liar who maligned the noble Islamic faith.

      • Just because he did not always define his former Islamic sect as Ahmadiye (or Qadiani). But he did enough times, he explained that.

        But in the video he makes lots of good points, quoting the Qur’an and Hadith and History.

      • You still never deal with all the other verses in Matthew that I demonstrated you are wrong.

      • No. You failed. The gospels are unreliable as history, but we can reconstruct what Jesus probably taught. Just read any standard intro to the gospels.

      • Christopher M. Tuckett, another of your favorite scholars, states that, although the exact reasons for the death of Jesus are hard to determine, one of the indisputable facts about him is that he was crucified. The Cambridge Companion to Jesus, p. 136.

      • why are you quoting scholars whose work you reject?

      • Because even they agree with me that the historical Jesus was crucified and killed on the cross. Deal with it.

      • I have. Repeatedly. Deal with that!

      • no; you cannot deal with established history of Jesus, His crucifixion and death.

      • Ken you need learn to respect that people have different views from yours on this. I don’t appreciate you taking out your obsession on this blog. It’s not the subject of this post.

      • People in glass houses..

      • Funny you should quote Matthew 19:28, which also mentions Jesus building His church (16:16-18; 18:15-20) and taking the kingdom away from Israel – Matthew 21:33-46

        Matthew 21:43 – “therefore, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation/people that produces the fruit of it.” . . . the chief priests and Pharisees understood that he was speaking about them” (Matthew 21:46)

        Matthew 19:28 – that is “in the new world” or “in the regeneration”, they will sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” – means in the new heavens and new earth – see Revelation 3:21 & chapters 21-22. See Revelation 21:12-14 -both the 12 tribes of Israel and the 12 apostles of the Lamb. (Israel & the Church together)

        So, Christianity is the fulfillment of proper Biblical Judaism. Messianic Jews are right, and the kingdom of God expanded into all the nations and continues to do that in history.

        So, you are wrong.

      • “Ken you need learn to respect that people have different views from yours on this. I don’t appreciate you taking out your obsession on this blog. It’s not the subject of this post.”

        Kenny gets frustrated when he can’t refute someone, so he starts declaring victory by saying things like “nope, you’re wrong” or “you lose”, etc.

    • “Christianity was never suppossed to be one with the state government.”
      Historically speaking, christianity has been and still in an illegal affairs, like the whore spreading her legs with increasing promiscuity to anyone who passed by, with all kinds of governments to back its fragile case. And that’s why we can see white people live in America today. That’s why many zionist christians back the illegal state of Israel.
      Moreover, it’s very ironic that christians insist that the kingdom of Jesus is spiritual, yet the prophecies in Isaiah & Daniel are talking about a real kingdom on this earth, yet christians shamelessly still speak about the “fulfillment”!

    • I think I should be a bit more specific as to what I mean by the state being tied to religion in the UK as I am referring to the unique history of Anglicanism going all the way back to King Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.

      The church here has always struggled with being both a teacher of Christianity while being a church for the people of England and thus desiring to accommodate both the Catholic and Protestant members thereof especially as its split from the Pope came not through theological (unlike Luther, Calvin etc) but rather by political differences (for reasons not too dissimilar to the current debate over ‘Brexit’ i.e sovereignty vs allegiance to a union whose policies are binding yet not determined by any one state).

      Islam, naturally, with respect to the nations in which it has dominance is different and cannot be equated with the church’s history since even when the church became the majority in Rome and elsewhere (the Balkans for example) was again a political maneuver intended to unify the various tribes under one banner, belief, and language. In this respect, I agree with Ken that as far as the Apostles were concerned they had no clue that the Church would grow to become a shaper of nations but like any religion, it is shaped by the experiences of those who succeeded it just as much as those who came before it and thus I have no desire to press the reset button and try to pretend that it never happened.

      Islam, as far as I know, has always had a system for public life whereas the church did not and hence adopted much of what was already there in those societies it ruled even in America where the church and state are technically separate have nonetheless been influential to one another. In that respect, the protestant reformation is different from the Islamic reform movements in that it seeks to maintain its developed identity while honoring the Apostolic vision as holistic and distinct from the ruling powers.

      Yeah I have no idea while Saudi is not listed perhaps they’re too busy praying 😉

      • All the “state churches”, whether Anglican in England, or Lutheran in Sweden and Norway or Germany, or Reformed in the Netherlands and Switzerland, or Roman Catholic in France, Spain, Italy, all have long ago failed and gone liberal.

        Henry VIII was terrible and he was more Roman Catholic in his theology.

      • True, it seems that these churches are struggling to reconcile themselves to modernity and be true to their beliefs but that’s hardly unique to them, we’re all struggling with these things as there is also the other extreme of fundamentalism, burying ones head in the sand and doubling down, refusing to engage with modernity et al

        With that in mind what would be your solution?

  3. All of Christian western tradition had rules and etiquette for proper public behavior, modesty, speech, etc. (based on Scripture, not on previous cultures) until the 1960’s sexual revolution in the west, which has been corrupting our cultures worse and worse and now continues to this day.

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