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“The situation is especially severe in black churches, whether established or storefront. Although the preachers are men, the congregations are overwhelmingly women. The absence of men has especially sad consequences for the black community.

The established churches have long made a parade of their concern for civil rights and for the plight of minorities. But there is one minority whose cause they quietly ignore: black men. The problem of criminality and drug abuse among inner-city black men is a problem of a distortion of masculinity. But the liberal churches have little to say about masculinity except to condemn it as an obstacle to women’s liberation. Churches that spend their energy hunting out and obliterating the last vestiges of patriarchy are in no position to help black men attain the status they so desperately need for their own good and the good of black women and children: that of patriarchs, responsible fathers who rule their families in justice and love.” (Leon Podles, The Church Impotent, 1999, p. xvi)

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“Ellen white explains: ‘The discipline of a human being who has reached the years of intelligence should differ from the training of a dumb animal… it is not God's purpose that any mind should be thus dominated. Those who weaken or destroy individuality assume a responsibility that can result only in evil. While under authority, the children may appear like well- drilled soldiers; but when the control ceases, the character will be found to lack strength and steadfastness.’ Ed. 288

All this illustrates what I have previously said about the two types of religion. If religion only fosters a dependency upon some parental or ecclesiastical authority, if it causes you to put your mind in neutral, if it calls for blind unreasonable belief, then it may well deserve the charge of its critics that it is the ‘enemy of morality.’ A religion worth transmitting is a careful consideration of the evidence, a studied shift from external human authority to the internal authority of the enlightened conscience.” (Roger Dudley, Passing on the Torch, 1986, p.64)

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“This relationship with Jesus is not just an emotional experience. It is an experience based on God’s word, which reveals to man the experience of the ‘lamb slain’ for them. Many today are getting caught up in Satan’s counterfeit of a real relationship. This counterfeit movement has imperceptibly moved into many Christian churches, even the Adventist church, under the guise of ‘having a relationship with Jesus.’ This counterfeit is sometimes called ‘spiritual formation.’ This concept puts the relationship that you need to have with God in the arena of feelings. The danger of a feeling-based relationship with Jesus is that it is actually a subtle form of spiritualism.” (Debbi Puffer, Earth’s Last Generation, 2011, p.24)

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“Faith has become a consumer commodity in America. People shop for congregations that make them feel comfortable rather than spiritually challenged. They steer clear of formal commitments to Christian communities. They flee when they are not quickly gratified or when they encounter interpersonal problems. Changing churches has become as routine as changing jobs. As a result, churches are no longer able to help people develop solid moral characters.” (G. Jeffrey MacDonald, Thieves in the Temple, 2010, xi)

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“The church growth movement is a recent example. Having watched a large segment of the church become content with short yardage and lousy scores [the author’s golf swing], some decided that there had to be a better way. The church was not penetrating society; she was not pulling in the masses; she was not making a significant impact for the gospel. It was not that the church leaders didn’t care; it was, it seemed, the lacked the ‘know-how’, the tools, to effect change. The gospel was still ‘the power of God for salvation’ (Rom. 1:16), but it was being rejected out-of-hand by too many. What was needed, apparently, were new methods to reach the lost, new techniques to promote the church, new packages for the gospel message. People, we are told, were not rejecting the gospel or Christ; they were rejecting our out-of-date, unappetizing forms, philosophies, and methods.” (Gary Gilley, This Little Church Went to Market, 2005, 15-16)

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“Many modern scholars classify the Biblical stories of Creation, the Fall and the Flood as myths by which a primitive people sought to explain their origins. Because of similarities between the Genesis account and the Babylonian creation myths, some have assumed that the Hebrews copied their account from the Babylonians. This assumption overlooks the possibility that both the Hebrew and the Babylonian accounts may have been derived from an older common source. But the Babylonian and other pagan creation myths invariably deal with the ordering of a pre-existing world, while the Genesis saga relates the creation of the earth and its order from nothing (exnihilo).” (Richard Coyne, Roots and Branches of Christian Beliefs, 1994, p.1)

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“Prejudice is so prevalent that it seems to be an integral part of the human condition itself. Even those who suffer the intolerance of others will in turn display their own biases. While prejudice lurks everywhere, it becomes especially deadly when those in positions of power exercise the powerless. Then it erupts in acts of avoidance, violence and extermination…George Kelsey and Kyle Haselden look upon prejudice from a theological point of view. Kelsey calls racism a faith, a form of idolatry. As faith it does not rest on facts. ‘Declarations of faith do not need to be proved from evidences in the objective world of facts. They do not need to be proved because the devotee of a faith is convinced that his faith assertions are reflections of the fundamental order of reality.’ For example, Kelsey sees racism as calling into question God’s justice in that the Blacks suffer not only for Adam’s fall but for a second, special, racial one. While God made provision for the first fall, such racists believe, He did not do anything for the second, so ‘the Negro is a permanent victim of history and ultimately without hope.’” (Sakae Kubo, The God of Relationships, 1993, p. 19-20)

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“The devil is the worst enemy of Christ and therefore of His followers. The other two foes are the world and the flesh. Just as the devil is opposed to Christ, so the world is opposed to the Father and the flesh to the Spirit. The Trinity of evil has been described as follows: the devil is the enemy against us; the world is the foe around us; and the flesh is the traitor within us.” (William MacDonald, Worlds Apart, 1993, p.15)

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“Many Christians rightly sense that the church is a marginal factor in the lives of most Americans, and even of many self-identified Christians. Many believe that the church is increasingly irrelevant, that it has failed to keep up with the times, that it no longer addresses people’s perceived needs. For those who name the church’s problems in such terms, marketing philosophy looks like a godsend. These persons look out at the business world and see marketing’s impressive ability to create and to maintain markets around the globe, and they reasonably ask: ‘Might such techniques be used to save the church from slipping into utter irrelevance and oblivion?’

The answer from many quarters seem to be a resounding, ‘Yes!’ Many churches have self-consciously adopted a marketing orientation and have experienced (sometimes remarkable) numeric and programmatic growth…We believe that the issue is not simply whether marketing principles and techniques can be used effectively to draw ‘unchurched’ people to a worship service or to create a support group for men with midlife crises, as commendable as these activities might be. The more fundamental issue concerns the impact a marketing orientation has on the church’s self- understanding and mission. Put as starkly as we know it, the question is, Can the market-driven church remain Christ’s church?” (Kenneson & Street, Selling Out the Church, 1997, p.15-16)