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Originally Posted by Evangelical
However, my point about the degradation is not a red herring because it is directly related and a sign of the degradation. If you disagree that homosexuality is a sign of degradation, then please offer your alternative definition for degradation?
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I would not go so far as to attach 'degradation' to any particular issue, nor would I attempt to define it, because I am not interested in making sweeping generalizations about Christians. That serves no purpose.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Evangelical
As long as you and others consider every church in that table to be part of Christianity, and as long as those parts of Christianity are highlighted green, then I think "Christianity is degraded" is a factual statement.
If I believed that just having gay members is a sign of a degradation I would have said that. But I did not say that, I posted a wikipedia page that shows the positions of the denominations. It's one thing to have gay members, it's another to support gay marriage.
Times have certainly changed as the table shows, and 20 years ago that table would have been mostly red, and now there is a lot of green. The situation does not seem to be improving. So I think there is something to be said about degradation becoming worse than what it was years ago.
But that is just one aspect of degradation. Behind that is the turning away from God and the general spiritual degradation that the bible talks about will occur in the last days.
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The churches which ordain gay ministers and support gay marriage are mostly mainline denominations, particularly those which have become increasingly
socially liberal. It is worth noting that many of such denominations have had declining membership for many years. No doubt, that decline could be at least partially attributed to reaction or schisms related to positions that they have taken on a variety of social issues. It is also worth noting that just because a denomination takes a position on a certain issue, it doesn’t mean that everyone who is part of that denomination agrees with it.
It seems you don’t recognize the fact that many evangelical Christians groups are not supportive of the more liberal stances some denominations have taken on homosexuality. Thus, it is unfair to argue that because a select group of denominations are increasingly supportive of homosexuality, that Christianity as a whole is ‘degraded’ according to your definition of degradation. That chart you linked is not representative of Christianity as a whole, neither can all of Christianity ever be generalized by any one particular issue.