Marginal Christianity

More Ways the Beast Seduces us Dr. Daniel Akin, president of Southeastern Seminary, lays out four ways in which the Babylonian empire sought to bring the Jewish exiles in line with their pagan ways. These strategies show us how the world, in every era, can pressure Christians to conform. [1] #1. Isolation Akin writes: “The first step in making Babylonians out of the four Hebrew teenagers was isolation from their homeland, family, and friends. The Babylonian strategy was to seize upon their vulnerability once they were separated from all that was familiar. Over time, they would be more likely to abandon their faith and become like the Babylonians.” Being in exile doesn’t harm the Christian. Not being with God’s people does. Isolation from other believers and immersion into a world of false assumptions make it difficult to maintain your Christian convictions. #2. Indoctrination Akin writes: “The second step was to take these sharp and impressive young men and...

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on LinkedIn Share via Email More Options Share on Whatsapp Share on Pinterest Share on Google Plus Share on Google Plus Share on Pinterest Share on Tumblr Resize Text Print Article By Emily Badger June 9 Follow @emilymbadger This image, from San Francisco, courtesy of Flickr user Ken Walton under a Creative Commons license. Americans are pulling apart. We're pulling apart from each other in general. And, in particular, we're pulling apart from people who differ from us. The evidence on this idea is varied , broad and often weird . We are, as Robert Putnam famously put it , less likely to join community bowling leagues. We're more likely, as I mentioned yesterday  after a police confrontation with a group of black teens at a private swimming pool, to swim in seclusion, in gated community clubs and backyard pools that have taken the place of public pools. We're more likely to spend time isolate...

  For the most social of creatures, the mammalian bee, there’s no such thing now as society. This will be our downfall       George Monbiot   ‘Social isolation is as potent a cause of early death as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Loneliness is twice as deadly as obesity.’ Photograph: Feri Lukas/Rex What do we call this time? It’s not the information age: the collapse of popular education movements left a void filled by marketing and conspiracy theories . Like the stone age, iron age and space age, the digital age says plenty about our artefacts but little about society. The anthropocene, in which humans exert a major impact on the biosphere, fails to distinguish this century from the previous 20. What clear social change marks out our time from those that precede it? To me it’s obvious. This is the Age of Loneliness. When Thomas Hobbes claimed that in the state of nature, before authority arose to k...

COMMENTARY: Isolated in America Tom Ehrich | Apr 23, 2013 | Leave a Comment   3   1 reddit 0     0 (RNS) I wonder if social isolation — not extremist religion or Chechen roots — explains the two brothers who set off bombs during the Boston Marathon, killing three and wounding more than 170. The older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was quoted as saying “I don’t have a single American friend, I don’t understand them.” One emerging theory is that, he dealt with isolation in America by seeking his heritage in Chechnya and there, some think, found purpose in violence against his unwelcoming home. In feeling isolated, the alleged bomber isn’t alone. Isolation is the new normal in America. More than one in four Americans have no friends for sharing troubles, a recent study of social isolation found. Those who do have friends tend to hav...