Why the Christian Church is Marginalized

I've talked before about the problems in the Christian church, namely that too many churches don't stand up for the truth. They feel that hey must not make waves with the culture at large, lest they be deemed 'intolerant "and repel even more followers. Some have said that this is especially true if we want to keep our young people engaged.

I don't believe a word of this. In our relativistic age, young people desire meaning and truth much more than they want complacency. This has bee true even in times of greatest generational change.  Rather than quote from some evangelical pastor or bloggers who have written on this point, I would like to draw your attention to an excerpt from Martin Luther King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail." As I wrote previously, King was hoping that the white Christian Church would have enough of the Spirit to stand up to the immorality of the popular opinion of his day. In these paragraphs, King almost prophetically decries the contemporary church and sees its future marginalization.

"There was a time when the church was very powerful--in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being "disturbers of the peace" and "outside agitators."' But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were "a colony of heaven," called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be "astronomically intimidated." By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests. Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an arch defender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent--and often even vocal--sanction of things as they are.

"But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust."

For a more thorough look at how much the world has gotten into the church, see this five part YouTube presentation.