The Christian Church as a whole is being secularized at an ever increasing rate. I define Christianity as the one-true religion derived from the life and teachings of the God-man Jesus Christ, based on the Bible as sacred scripture, and traditionally professed by millions for 2,000 years.
Secularism is the anti-religious (especially anti-Christian) view that true knowledge can only be found through rational or empirical means. Secularists live their lives with an orientation toward the present world only, as opposed to the Christian view that life is everlasting. Secularism is strongly prevalent in America today because most public and many Christian educators have been taught to teach that its worldview is superior to the Christian Worldview. This process has been on-going for a century or more, and with each succeeding generation the previous influence of the Christian Worldview is reduced by practice and/or decrees.
Because of the overwhelming current influence of the Secular Worldview in the Western world, that view has contaminated many church bodies of all sizes, types and denominations. Some examples of the secular influence in these organizations are:
1. Biblical creation science and biblical apologetics are resisted; or rejected outright.
2. Deep time and macroevolution are accepted as scientific facts.
3. The Bible is not emphasized as God’s authoritative, inerrant and inspired Word – from the very first verse.
4. The gospel message is minimized or missing in many churches and “cultural social justice” dominates the mission.
5. Jesus Christ is not exalted as the Creator God.
6. Perversity, as defined in the Bible, is accepted or even promoted.
7. Group Bible classes and studies are not the top priority they once were, often replaced with secularly-based “conversations,” or totally absent from the church programs.
Some may say that I am making much ado about nothing. I would strongly dispute that charge and submit that this is an important matter bearing on truth, the basic doctrines of the faith, and the influence of the Church on the culture in which we live.
Much of the acceptance of secularism is the result of the introduction of biblical compromise (especially theistic evolutionary philosophy) into the Church by theologians and Christian educators. For reasons incomprehensible to me, they have allowed themselves to be indoctrinated into the ideas that deep time and macroevolution have been proven as scientific fact. In my opinion, they should have exhibited enough initiative to have discovered the truth: that deep time and evolution are merely atheistic presuppositions introduced to diminish Christ and damage the Church. For 1,700 years Church scholars accepted the straightforward biblical interpretation that God created everything in six regular days about 4,000 years before the arrival of Christ here on earth.
The greatest mistake many in the Church made was to accept non-scriptural explanations for the geology of the earth. Men like Charles Lyell gained prominence by promoting uniformitarianism (“the present is the key to the past”). The result was the the worldwide Flood described in Genesis fell out of favor as the explanation for the geology that even today we see all around us. At the time of Lyell there were numerous scriptural geologists, such as George Young, who were every bit as qualified as he was, and who refuted his hypotheses on every point. Yet tragically the Church, by and large, chose to accept the atheistic explanations over the biblical.
Consider too, that both Christianity and secularism assume uniformity in the universe. Biblical Christians can account for the operation of the universe within uniform physical laws as being the result of the intentional actions of a powerful and unimaginably intelligent Creator. Naturalism is foundational to secular thought and requires a total belief in uniformity, but cannot account for it! (Uniformity is undeniable but uniformitarianism is only assumed.) Neither naturalism nor creationism is technically scientific, but both are based on uniformity and God’s providence.
While deep time (millions and billions of years) are the foundational tenets of naturalism and the Secular Worldview, they must be presuppositionally accepted by faith. I contend that the faith required to believe that everything came about by the random-chance interaction of matter is orders of magnitude greater than that required to believe God’s Word exactly as written. Secularism, while overtly anti-Christian, logically disintegrates because of its reliance on Christian presuppositions such as uniformity and the possibility of human rational thought.
I do believe there is hope for the Church to reverse this accelerating trend toward secularism if our compromised seminary theologians, Christian university professors and administrators, and other influential church leaders repent and reject the rampant evolutionary inspirations they have allowed into their thinking. There needs to be a new commitment to accept reality and understand that the Bible is true from the very first verse. Genesis chapters 1 through 11 are foundational to the faith and must not be compromised in order to accomodate the errors in thinking of the Secular Worldview. To continue to do so results in the logical collapse of the foundational Christian doctrines of “death as the result of sin” and “our consequential need for a redeemer.” If there have been millions of years of death, disease, suffering, and extinction prior to man arriving on the scene, Jesus Christ died for nothing.
Finally, people can, and do indeed, believe anything. But those, especially Christian theologians and educators, who tolerate the naturalistic presuppositions at the foundation of secularism instead of exclaiming all of God’s Word, really have no excuse!
By J.D. Mitchell
A CURRENT EXAMPLE OF SECULARIZATION OF CHRISTIAN SEMINARIES:
For information about the attempt of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) to influence Christian seminaries to accept, and teach, naturalism and theistic evolution as being compatible with Christianity please go to the websites listed below:
1. The program is at this site. Be sure to click through all the pages to get a feel for the program.
2. The position of AAAS on evolution teaching is available at their website. Use Google to search for “AAAS position on evolution.” This is the position that will be in place for all contact by AAAS representatives that visit Christian seminaries. There is a complete refutation of this position regarding evolution, Christianity and the Bible in J.D. Mitchell’s book, The Creation Dialogues – 2nd Edition available on this site.
3. For the take of Multnomah University Seminary on the AAAS program go to this site.
Remember that theistic evolution is identical to atheistic (molecules-to-man) evolution in every detail except for the idea that somehow “God did it.” Both atheistic and theistic evolutionary philosophies require a total destruction of the plain historical teaching found in Genesis chapters 1-11 and following books of the Bible. This teaching is foundational to the faith and once compromised results in a logical demolition of the doctrines of Christianity. If death is good and has always been around then Christ died for nothing!
The seminaries involved are all getting large grants of money from AAAS and others as a result of this program. It is another example of the Church bowing to mammon.
