children of the Great Revival

1950s

2015

(least offensive image I could find)

I have seriously studied Revival for the past decade or so.  Yet, until I juxtaposed the two images, above, it never occurred to me that the people celebrating 'gay pride', in the bottom photo, are the children and grandchildren of those (shown in the top photo) who experienced one the greatest periods of Revival in history.  So I asked myself, How did a nation of churchgoers--many of whom experienced the Great Revival of the early 20th century, produce a generation of devils?  How did American culture degenerate so rapidly in the span of merely a couple of generations?

'post-Christian society' (part 1)

It is often said that what once was called Western Society is now 'post-Christian'.  But that phrase is not intended to define what contemporary (Western) culture has come to be.  Rather, it is an acknowledgement of the apparently insignificant influence of Christianity in contemporary culture. The above image is a photograph of a section of a wall in an abandoned church somewhere in Russia.  The image is powerful in its simplicity.  The upper and lower halves of the photograph convey extreme tension: the detailed drawing in dark tones, in the upper portion, suggests the faded realism of a Christian worldview; whereas, the starkness of simple graffiti spray painted on a bright, formless background, in the lower half of the picture, strongly suggests the purely subjective contextualism of postmodernism.  "Punk's not dead", but Christianity is, the image seems to say.

mixed multitude

According to many sources, Bono (the lead singer of the rock band 'U2' - see above image) is something of an icon for the Emergent Church Movement.  He has even reportedly been called "the official theologian" of that Movement.  To many in that movement, as well as to very many others in more traditional Christian churches, Bono is a kind of holy man, in an eclectic sort of way: he's cosmopolitan, pacifistic, postmodern and, above all, ecumenical - besides being super rich and (as some think,) way cool.  Oh, yeah, and he's a Christian. 

Or, so he says.

tattoos and piercings

"That's just wrong!"

If not for wanting to emphasize my point in this what I believe is a very needful essay, I would not otherwise be willing  to put the above image on this blog.  It is shocking, disgusting and very offensive.  Any reasonable person - certainly, any Christian person, would say, "That's just wrong!", to tattoo such a demonic image on the body.