Christianity and the Future of Faith

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Christianity and the Future of Faith

Zionic ministries is located on the corner of Webster and Park Avenue somewhere in the Bronx. With a congregation of about a hundred and fifty adults cutting across a number of racial and cultural lines. It is only a small church but within its ranks you will find a diverse history of religious experiences, a common appreciation and accommodation of individual differences and perhaps even a prophecy of the future.

Nowhere is the meeting more alive on any Sunday morning than in the youth department. It is here the church trains its reserve, from its teenagers down to babes in arms. My interests lie mainly with the teens. Bold and uninhibited they are a product of the hip hop culture recently grafted into the body of Christ. There is a liberty to their worship and faith. Their conversation (in the literal and biblical sense of the word), both within and without the church premises is the same: straight shooting and ceding to nothing that can not prove its practical usefulness. I cannot say that this unequivocation concerning faith is as a result of their having reconciled, in their mind, the conflict between the principles of the kingdom of God and the practices of circular society (often it is the same uncertainty that drives us to closer scrutiny to verify the things we have believed); but this, rather, seems to be the fruit of a way of thinking that values, above else the immediately profitable. A standard of values that retains or relinquishes information (even doctrinal information) by this criteria. Of course on fundamental issues we are all in agreement.

As on the need and process of salvation, but of others like the terrestrial benefits of salvation (in fact almost an...

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...oribund culture and that to such an extent that we stand in danger of losing it.

A common encouragement among evangelical preachers is that Jesus commanded the disciples to "go" not "huddle." But perhaps there is a need now to huddle. At least for long enough to re-discover the our place and importance in society, beyond providing a moral base from which the world is steadily moving. It is time we were presented with a holistic explication of faith that defines every aspect of human existence, instead of disjointed theological principles. It may be our only hope for a future.

Works Cited

Freud, Sigmund. The Future of an Illusion. London: W. W. Norton and Company, 1989.

Harris, Sam. The End of Faith. New York: W. W. Norton & Company Inc, 2005.

Davis, Don C. "Faith for the Future." The Futurist Sept. 2005: 51-54. EBSCO Research Data Base. EBSCO.

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