110 Sermon Illustrations on Secularism

While most Americans continue to view Easter as a religious celebration, many of them are unclear on the underlying reason for the occasion, The Barna Group found in a recent study.

“Perhaps most concerning, from the standpoint of church leaders, is that those who celebrate Easter because of the resurrection of Christ are not particularly likely to invite non-churched friends to worship, suggesting that their personal beliefs about Jesus have not yet translated into a sense of urgency for having spiritual conversations with their acquaintances,” David Kinnaman, Barna’s president, said.

Kinnaman noted a substantial gap between people’s openness to inviting an unchurched person to worship on Easter and the likelihood of them actually doing so.

“Realistically, if all of the people who said they would bring unchurched people with them on Easter were to follow through, America’s churches couldn’t handle the overflow,” he said.

“The statistics project to something like 40 million church regulars who claim they are likely to bring someone as their guest. If each of those people brought just one adult as their guest, that’d be the equivalent of adding 115 new people per Christian congregation. That would more than double the size of the average church. That is clearly an overestimate,” Kinnaman said.

“But we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that so many people are at least open to the idea of offering such invitations to their friends and family. One of the challenges to pastors and other church leaders is to find out what’s actually preventing them from following through on that willingness.”

The study, based on telephone interviews with roughly 1,000 adults in February, found that 67 percent of the respondents mentioned some type of theistic religious element in Easter, including the fact that it’s a Christian holiday or it’s a special time for church attendance.

Only 42 percent of those surveyed said the meaning of Easter was the resurrection of Jesus or that it signifies Christ’s death and return to life, Barna said. Two percent said they would describe Easter as the most important holiday of their faith.

“Even within the religious definitions offered by Americans there is a certain degree of confusion: 2 percent of Americans said that Easter is about the ‘birth of Christ’; another 2 percent indicated it was about the ‘rebirth of Jesus’; and 1 percent said it is a celebration of ‘the second coming of Jesus,’” Barna said. “Not included in the theistic category was another 3 percent who described Easter as a celebration of spring or a pagan holiday.”

Evangelicals and those who attend large churches were among the most likely to express some type of theistic religious connection with Easter, Barna said. The youngest adult generation, those ages 18 to 25, were the least likely age segment to say Easter is a religious holiday, which Barna said reflects an increasingly secular mindset in young adults.

Those who were more politically conservative were more likely than those who were politically liberal to describe Easter as a celebration of the resurrection, the study found.

While most active churchgoers said they would be open to inviting people to attend worship services with them, only 31 percent said they would definitely do it this year. Those who identified Easter with the resurrection were no more likely than other religiously oriented respondents to indicate that they would invite friends to church for Easter, Barna said.

Esther is written in a manner that appears extremely secular. For example, it is well-known that God’s name does not appear in Esther. However, it should be noted that the book not only omits His name, but even goes out of its way to avoid mentioning God’s name. For example, in 4:14 Mordecai tells Esther that if she will not help the Jews, “Deliverance for the Jews will come from another source.” Instead of recording Mordecai saying that if Esther will not help, then God will find another means by which to save the Jewish People, the book conspicuously omits any mention of Him.

Another dramatic example of this phenomenon is when Esther instructs Mordecai to fast on her behalf for three days (4:16). One would expect that it would also mention the prayer that presumably accompanied the fasting, as it does elsewhere in the Old Testament (for example, in 2 Samuel 12:16, Joel 2:15, Ezra 8:23, and Nehemiah 1:4). Yet there is no mention of prayer!

God’s name is missing in the book of Esther but his power is not. God’s presence can be seen in the unfolding of events.

Rabbi Chaim Jachter makes this observation:

The twentieth-century philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell, an outspoken atheist, was once asked what would happen if, after his death, he would unexpectedly find himself before God. He replied that he would say that God did not supply sufficient evidence for His existence.

The book of Esther provides a response to such superficial thinking. Esther teaches that there is abundant evidence of God’s existence and mastery of the world. But we have to make the correct choice to discern God’s hand operating behind the superficial, secular mask.

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Adapted by David Holwick from Rabbi Chaim Jachter's article, "Why is Megillat Ester Written in Such a Secular Style?" , March 11, 2006.

It took a religious revival to save one of the nation’s first secular universities. Given the state of our college campuses today, it’s a history lesson worth learning.

Before his death on July 4, 1826, Thomas Jefferson left explicit instructions on what the epitaph on his tombstone should read: “Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom, & Father of the University of Virginia.”

Yet within a few years after his death, his beloved University of Virginia was in deep trouble, and what would wind up saving it would have been a shock to its founder.

As Carlos Santos and Rex Bowman tell us in their book, “Rot, Riot and Rebellion: Mr. Jefferson’s Struggle to Save the University That Changed America,” Jefferson’s vision for UVA was that of an “academical village” and a “forward-looking community with no religious affiliation.” It was to be a place where “Virginia’s best minds could go to study with the world’s best scholars.”

But within a few years after its founding, UVA was none of these things. As Santos told Public Radio’s “Backstory,” the level of violence at UVA during its first decades is difficult for the modern mind to fathom. The young men attending school in Charlottesville had “hair-trigger tempers” and the slightest insult was to set off fights that employed every conceivable weapon: teeth, fists, rocks, knives, firearms, and even bombs. One student even murdered a professor!

As Santos told “Backstory,” every attempt by the faculty to reign in the culture of violence and disorder “failed miserably.”

The violence at UVA literally brought Jefferson to tears and had him, as well as the faculty, concerned for the future of the university. It called into question Jefferson’s controversial vision of a secular university where the pursuit of truth would be unencumbered by religious dogma. Virginia taxpayers questioned whether their money should go to pay for this failed experiment.

Obviously, UVA survived and went on to thrive. But why? Because, as UVA historian Peter Onuf put it, UVA students didn’t get enlightened — ”they got Jesus.” The Second Great Awakening swept through Charlottesville and changed the university’s culture.

Even though some students were still “acting out,” Onuf says there was also “the beginnings of a new culture on the campus–a more evangelical, religious culture.”

The irony of evangelical Christianity saving Mr. Jefferson’s university is not lost on Onuf and the other historians at “Backstory.” Ironically, shortly before his death, Jefferson said that “I trust that there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian.”

But his rationalist deism was not up to the task of taming the unruly passions of young men. It was Christianity that, as Onuf tells us, “finally [succeeded in] creating that kind of serious student that Jefferson had been looking for . . .” It took “serious Christians” to do the kind of “serious thinking” Jefferson had in mind.

A lot has changed since then. Colleges and universities are trying their hardest to limit or even eliminate Christian expression on campus while, at the same time, dealing with epidemics of binge-drinking and even sexual assault among their students. While Jefferson didn’t live to see the impact of Christianity on his beloved university, today’s college administrators have no such excuse.

It’s also a reminder of why we should never stop praying for revival. The first and second Great Awakenings changed the course of American history. Why should we doubt that a third one would do the same? So, pray, my friends, for revival.

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Copyright (c) 2014 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

Religious freedom is the “first freedom.” You probably think that’s another way of saying that it’s the most important freedom. Well, it is. But it’s also the source of all of our freedoms.

In a fantastic address at Cedarville University in Ohio, John quoted the French philosopher Luc Ferry, an atheist, who acknowledged the West’s debt to Christianity. Ferry wrote that “Christianity was to introduce the notion that humanity was fundamentally identical, that men were equal in dignity — an unprecedented idea at the time, and one to which our world owes its entire democratic inheritance.” But Christianity’s contribution to our “democratic inheritance” was not limited to its ideas about human equality. It was Christianity that taught the West that there are limits to the state’s power and it made our ideas about human freedom possible.

The story that sums up this contribution is what German historians call the “walk to Canossa.” In 1077, the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV traveled from Speyer, Germany, to Canossa Castle in Northern Italy. The purpose of his “walk” was to ask Pope Gregory VII to lift his decree of excommunication against Henry. The reason for the decree was an issue that modern minds probably, but wrongly, find arcane: investiture, that is, who gets to select the bishops in a given territory, the Crown or the Church?

Pope Gregory insisted that it was the Church. Henry had insisted it was the Crown, or as we would put it, the State. As Wikipedia puts it, Henry came to realize that his position was “precarious.” So he sought an audience with the Pope. Upon entering Italy he put on a hairshirt and may have walked much of the way as a sign of penitence.

As if to show Henry who was the boss, the Pope kept him waiting three days while a blizzard raged, which is why Italians, who seldom miss an opportunity to tweak the Germans, call it the “humiliation at Canossa.”

The significance of this story goes far beyond medieval power politics. In his book, “The Origins of Political Order,” political scientist Francis Fukuyama argues that, at Canossa, the West gained the idea of an autonomous sphere of authority that could check a ruler’s ambitions.

Stated differently, without Canossa there is no Magna Carta, no parliaments, and thus, no freedom as we understand that word in the West.

What’s more, this sphere of authority leaned heavily on law as a source of legitimacy. This, Fukuyama argues, was crucial in the development of the rule of law in the West. When secular authorities enacted their own laws and established institutions, they were imitating the Church.

And all of this was only possible because the Church insisted that secular rulers had no authority in the spiritual realm.

A thousand-plus years later, secular rulers are once again trying to assert their authority over spiritual matters: From the HHS mandate to whether bakers have to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex wedding ceremony.

Folks, it’s up to us to remind our neighbors that a state that can trample religious freedom is strong enough to put all of our freedoms at risk.

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Copyright © 2014 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

Dr. Stark’s research and reading, specifically about the impact of Christianity in history, was part of what moved him to become a committed believer.

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It’s tempting to think that secularized academics are too intellectual to ever come to the kind of “child-like faith” that Jesus described, or that, if they ever were to trust Christ, they’d have to abandon their academic pursuits. However, like once-liberal theologian Thomas Oden or once-radical feminist English professor Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, the case of Rodney Stark suggests otherwise. Dr. Stark’s research and reading, specifically about the impact of Christianity in history, was part of what moved him to become a committed believer.

Stark was born in North Dakota in 1934. Oddly enough, he played high school football with Alvin Plantinga, the great Christian philosopher. After a stint in the army, he studied journalism in college, graduating in 1959. Once, during his early career as a reporter, he covered a meeting of the Oakland Spacecraft Club where the speaker claimed to have visited Mars, Venus, and the moon in a flying saucer. After Stark reported the story straight, with no sarcasm or snide comments, he was assigned all of the odd stories that came along.

Stark’s ability to treat people’s beliefs seriously and recognize that, at least for them, these beliefs are plausible, was a key element in his decision to shift from journalism to sociology. In 1972, after completing his graduate work at the University of California-Berkley, he was hired as a professor of sociology and comparative religion at the University of Washington.

Stark focused his research on why people were religious. How did they understand their faith? What did they get out of it? How did they live it out? From this focus, Stark developed a theory of conversion that emphasized social relationships, felt needs, and personal choice. In essence, Stark concluded that conversion was a rational choice, based on the expectation that one would receive more from the religion than it would cost to join it.

He was among the first sociologists to recognize that competition between religious groups increased the overall religiosity of a community. In other words, a religious group with a monopoly tends to get lazy and neglect meeting needs and conducting outreach. Stark was also critical of the standard academic view that secularization was an inevitable result of modernization. Instead, he argued this idea was wildly wrong because sociologists misunderstood religion and failed to account for religious revivals and innovation.

His book The Rise of Christianity was published in 1996. In it, Stark argued that the incredible growth and spread of Christianity were because it offered more to people than any of its competitors. In particular, Stark argued that the rapid growth of the Church was, in large part, due to how Christians treated women. This, especially compared to the pagan treatment of women, led to more conversions, which led to the faith being spread through social networks. Also, prohibitions of abortion and infanticide led to an organic growth of the Church, and how Christians responded to persecution and plague led to a growth in credibility. The Rise of Christianity was so groundbreaking that it was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

After this, Stark focused his work on the history of Christianity. After writing two books on the historical impact of monotheism — first One True God in 2001 and then For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch Hunts, and the End of Slavery in 2003, Stark wrote what may be his greatest book, The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success, in 2005.

In 2004, the year before The Victory of Reason was published, Stark commented, “I have trouble with faith. I’m not proud of this. I don’t think it makes me an intellectual. I would believe if I could, and I may be able to before it’s over.” The Victory of Reason first brought Dr. Stark to the attention of Chuck Colson, who was astounded that a self-professed agnostic sociologist was clear-eyed and honest enough to recognize and highlight the effects of Christianity on the world. Chuck featured The Victory of Reason on Breakpoint and included it in the Centurions Program (now known as the Colson Fellows).

After the commentary aired, Rodney Stark contacted Chuck Colson, and thanked him for the kind words. He also told Colson that he had come to faith in Christ, which he publicly announced in 2007.

In 2004, Stark became the distinguished professor of the social sciences at Baylor University, as well as the co-director of the Institute for Studies of Religion and founding editor of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion. Although Baylor is a Baptist school, Stark preferred to call himself an “independent Christian” and continued to produce important and sometimes controversial books on Christianity, history, and culture.

Throughout his career, Stark was an irascible critic of political and religious biases in the academic world, especially in his own field of sociology. His intellectual brilliance is attested by his groundbreaking work, and his intellectual honesty and integrity by his faith, a faith he studied for many years.

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Copyright (c) 2022 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. “BreakPoint” is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.