On Creeds and Orthodoxy

It's Sunday and I generally try to do something ... uplifting on Sunday. But this is so closely related to church (the Sunday morning one on the corner kind) that I think I have to do it today. Besides, it's so closely connected to conversations and posts of late.

Isn't it interesting that I just wrote this piece on "Useless Creeds which wasn't actually about creeds being useless, but about how ignoring them is dangerous), and then I see this article about a book that traces the origins of American atheism to the American disregard of creeds and orthodoxy and this post from Reason to Stand on the subject of a study of the decline of the Church in America that concludes that "the single best predictor of church participation turned out to be belief – orthodox Christian belief ...". It appears that churches that preach orthodoxy -- that there is a right way of thinking, a true doctrine, and the rest is false -- do much better than those who don't.

Much of American Christianity is more interested in "right living" rather than correct doctrine, more interested in "getting along" and "tolerance" than orthodoxy ("right thinking"). Apparently that is a problem.