Rui Dai: Why Young People Are Becoming Secular

Christianity is not going anywhere in the near future. It is intimately tied to the history and government of America. Even today, a prayer opens every congressional session. Messages invoking God still grace almost every single legal tender in the United States. "In God We Trust" remains the official U.S. national motto.

As far as I am aware, there is no leftist agenda that plans to kill Christianity. Even if there were, there is no way that they could possibly succeed.

However that doesn't mean there isn't a threat to Christianity. Newspapers and op-ed writers have noted that more and more members of the younger generations are turning away from Christianity. As a college student, I can tell you that from personal experience, this is true. The statistics are correct. Fewer college students are going to church, and more are moving towards secularization.

This trend, however, is not the result of leftist agenda. It's the result of the conservative agenda.

I go to church whenever I can. I believe that Christian institutions have the ability to do great good in the world. However, it's becoming harder and harder to watch the news and stand behind what I believe in at the same time.

I don't ascribe to many of mainstream Christianity's doctrines and beliefs, such as taking the Bible at its word or believing that Christianity is the only true religion. But even without imposing my own beliefs on the argument,?Christianity is not going to disappear just because of modernization or science. Scientists who defend evolution do not invalidate the religion. Christianity is much more than the three passages that start Genesis. Just as Christianity didn't disappear when the world abandoned the idea that the sun revolved around the earth, neither is it in crisis just because evolution is real.

Similarly, homosexuality is not hedonism. It never was and it never will be. It is a biological characteristic, just like having black hair, and we need to accept it. Historical evidence suggests that homosexuality existed and was even quite prominent at the time when Jesus of Nazareth was alive. Plato and Socrates both debated and wrote treatise concerning the virtues of homosexuality openly in the 4th century Before Christ.

I don't like to use the Bible to argue my points, because I think the Bible is flawed. But even in the Bible,?Jesus of Nazareth never fully addressed homosexuality. People were homosexual and it didn't make them any less human in the eyes of Jesus of Nazareth. Just as marriage between two people with black hair is legal, so should that between two people who love each other, regardless of their respective genders.

Yet what should have been common sense, and a natural transition towards modernization, has become a farce played out on national television. Sometimes I wonder if some of the things I read or see are actually true or just one big joke.

The Church of England earlier last week denounced gay marriage. North Carolina in May passed its first state constitutional amendment, just to ban civil unions, and other states have or are doing the same. South Korea just passed a bill to pull material about evolution out of high school textbooks, just as Tennessee passed a law to allow teachers to teach alternative and often nonscientific theories. People still believe that the theory of evolution is not real (it's as real as the theory of gravity).

And then there are the "Stand Up For Religious Freedom Rallies" emerging all over the country. Religious freedom is not being attacked. If anyone's freedom is being oppressed, it's that of anyone who is not Christian.

If Christianity is a victim, it's a victim from its supposed savior, conservatism. Not everyone who is Christian denounces evolution and equal rights, but to the world, it certainly looks that way.

Young people are turning away from Christianity not because the left is out to get the right, but because of the right's lack of willingness to compromise and listen to the other side.

I make it a rule to try to see both sides of the story before forming my judgment, and I keep on trying to make excuses for the religious right. But my excuses are running out. And soon, so will people who believe in Christianity.

?

"; var coords = [-5, -72]; // display fb-bubble FloatingPrompt.embed(this, html, undefined, 'top', {fp_intersects:1, timeout_remove:2000,ignore_arrow: true, width:236, add_xy:coords, class_name: 'clear-overlay'}); });

juan williams victor martinez alcatraz cruise ship martin luther king jr. zappos john elway