I have moved this blog and its first few posts to my new site http://www.athinkersfaith.net Sarah's blog will stay here.

I recently heard a pastor speaking about how the Atheists are trying to take away our Bibles. I’ve heard a lot of this sensationalism growing up in the church. It seems like there is always some new group of people that we are supposed to be afraid of because they are secretly plotting our demise. Back in the eighties, it was the Satanist who where placing evil spells on Cabbage Patch dolls. We envision these entities charging in to our churches with guns drawn. They confiscate and burn our Bibles, and those individuals that don’t deny their faith are carted off to prison.

I believe that the reality is much simpler. The battle of our age is all about worldviews. Slowly, Christians are accepting the philosophy of secular culture so that though we claim to be different, our values are becoming just the same as un-believers’. We think that it is more important to be tolerant than to proclaim the truth. False teachers have twisted Scripture to allow churches to be inclusive of all kinds of sin. Sure, we might get an emotional high in church on Sunday, but if our belief in God requires anything in the way of personal sacrifice, don’t count on any action on our part. We’ve begun to believe that raising “well-adjusted” children is more important than teaching kids about the need for a Savior. We sit in our pew and shiver at the thought of “those Atheists that are trying to take over America” but on Monday morning we send our kids to the government schools to be taught by “those Atheists” that we are all animals and there is no such thing as right and wrong. How many generations can the church last under these circumstances?

No, I don’t think our freedom of religion will ever be taken away. We will give it away by becoming so much like the secular culture that we are inconsequential in the world around us. If the doors of our churches are closed, it probably won’t require armed men. If our Bibles are burned, they will have long been replaced by man’s philosophy anyway.