The merely «Religious» had a comparatively poorer showing at 45 percent, indicating that self - conscious
lukewarmness in matters of faith may carry over into one's sex life.
But it is obvious that we do not want to
overcome lukewarmness with the destructive fanaticism that those beliefs engender today.
I hope you will see that if we think of Christ in this way, there is no reason
for lukewarmness.
Lukewarmness arises when we recognize that there is a tension between our very relative beliefs about Christ derived from the past and the ultimate centrality that we have accorded Christ in our faith.
To the degree that members of oldline Protestant denominations participate in this reinstitutionalization of society and in the consequent erosion of deep values, their loyalties will be dispersed over a number of different social worlds, they will exist without what JeanFrancois Lyotard has termed a societal «master narrative,» and they will surely experience
lukewarmness with respect to traditional faith.
What is the relationship
between lukewarmness and statistical indications of denominational decline?
Christ declared that he would rather we were hot or cold but
lukewarmness merits nothing but vomiting out.
And if we grant that notion, what contributed to
making lukewarmness the prevailing quality of oldline church life?
Cobb provides the reader with an illuminating account of the historical and recent setting of
oldline lukewarmness.
To stop halfway, clinging to the old while making concessions to the demands for change, is to
insure lukewarmness and continuing decline.
Our sickness, that is, our
current lukewarmness, results from the failure of our oldline churches to present a Christology that is convincing to late twentieth - century people in these two ways: truth and importance.
I very much welcome Captain John R. Cheydleur's point that «growing up in church» can lead to routinized religion and
lukewarmness among evangelicals too.
Yet the only time Alpers writes without her
characteristic lukewarmness is when she talks around Katz's art, particularly when expressing her impatience with those who treasure «art as something distinctive, something which might have its own history.»
If they conduct themselves in a confidence from the word they get eaten alive by gossipy nonrepentent pew warmers seeking justification and empathy
for lukewarmness.
What is the relation
between lukewarmness or the loss of vitabty and the churches» abandonment of their theological vocation?
The unifying theme of my lectures is that the failure of the church to think through the meaning of Christ for our time is the deepest cause of
the lukewarmness in our oldline churches, which in turn is the deepest cause of our decline.
For those believers who genuninely live within the linguistic system, it may overcome
lukewarmness, but it renews the dangers of the earlier exclusivism.
This lukewarmness is healthy.
That led me to stop being contemptuous of the church for
its lukewarmness and its compromises and to join it myself.
CHRIST AND EXCLUSIVISM The unifying theme of my lectures is that the failure of the church to think through the meaning of Christ for our time is the deepest cause of
the lukewarmness in our oldline churches, which in turn is the deepest cause of our decline.
I. CHRIST AND
THE LUKEWARMNESS OF OUR CHURCHES The general thesis of these lectures is that one major reason for the decline of our oldline churches is theological and that at least this cause of the decline could be reversed.
Love that verse lol keep on going man i stumbled upon this when i googled something about
lukewarmness and it lead me to this lol like Youtube haha but anyways love your posts keep it up all from the Heart N Soul - Uriel God is......
What idea of ecclesial vitality does Cobb have in mind when he charges the mainline churches with
lukewarmness?
But transformation is one of at least two ways in which the church can respond to the problem of
lukewarmness.
Lukewarmness and transformation are both theological notions; accordingly, his criteria for vitality are not statistical but theological and ethical.
If the oldline has not retained its own young adults, is it because of «
lukewarmness»?
Three major themes interact in Reclaiming the Church: the loss of vitality (what he calls «
lukewarmness») in the mainline churches, an inquiry into what brought about this condition, and a proposal about what a new vitality (Cobb's term is «transformation») would look like and what would bring it about.
At one point he says that
lukewarmness is the deepest reason for the churches» decline.
Lukewarmness may characterize late 20th - cen tury oldline churches, but historical perspective shows that it has been long in coming.
Nevertheless, one may hazard the guess that
lukewarmness would give way to excitement.
In that condition,
lukewarmness is inevitable.
But these beginning steps do little to overcome
lukewarmness.
Thus far, therefore, all these forms of repentance have contributed to
the lukewarmness of the old line churches.
This lack of fit contributes to
their lukewarmness about the church.
It is the absence of these characteristics from most of the members of the oldline churches that leads to
our lukewarmness.
And
lukewarmness is the deepest cause of our decline.
The result can only be
lukewarmness.
At present the movement of women's liberation in the church does little to counter
the lukewarmness of our oldline denominations.
The lukewarmness engendered by vagueness and irrelevance could, in principle, be replaced with wholehearted conviction of truth and importance.
Let us not, in such a time, hold back in hesitation and
lukewarmness.
For one thing, this pagan practice of a Christian virtue shows up
the lukewarmness and indecisiveness which have paralyzed so much of the Christianity of the modern age, for if the church had remained true to herself she would not have seen her children transferring their allegiance elsewhere and laying their Christian spirit of devotion at the feet of false gods.
Even
your lukewarmness is, by your own descriptions / interviews / articles, reliant on opinions, not science.
For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order,
this lukewarmness arising partly from fear of their adversaries, who have the laws in their favor; and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had actual experience of it.