Ken Ham Lists Top 5 Most Worrisome Trends in American Churches
Answers in Genesis CEO and President Ken Ham has posted a list of the top five most worrisome trends he sees developing in American churches, identifying liberal pastors and youths rejecting Christianity as some of his biggest concerns.
"More watering down of the Word to accommodate our culture's lies. We're consistently seeing more and more churches compromising on God's Word in order to preach what is perceived by our culture as a loving and tolerant message (e.g., supporting gay 'marriage')," he wrote Tuesday about the first trend.
"But it's really a message that's loving and tolerant of sin but contrary to the Word of God, which should be our standard for morality (2 Timothy 3:16). Over the next year and beyond, I anticipate we will see more of 2 Timothy 4:3–4 coming true as many churches become places to satisfy 'itching ears' rather than places to satisfy a thirst for truth."
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For the second trend he identified increasing pressure on the church to conform to what he called "the culture's thinking on marriage, gender, and sexuality," and said that many Christian individuals and organizations have already compromised.
Ham, who is also the CEO and president of the Creation Museum in Kentucky, said that pressure on the Church in regards to the sanctity of life will also be increased. He warned that Christian organizations need to refuse to violate their consciences and refuse to pay for abortions or abortion-inducing drugs in healthcare plans.
For the fourth trend, he noted that large numbers of young people continue leaving the church, and embrace culture instead.
"Sadly, by college age, two-thirds of young people are leaving our churches and often the Christian faith. Much of this trend has to do with the fact that these young adults think more like the culture than like God's Word, and they've never been taught to stand on the Bible or to defend their faith," he added.
"As theologically liberal teaching continues to infiltrate the Church, the numbers of young people leaving will likely only increase."
Ham warned about the increasing number of liberal pastors in the fifth trend.
"Instead of building up young people and encouraging them to start their thinking with God's infallible Word, these colleges exalt man's ideas over the Bible," he wrote.
"The result is liberal theology that honors man over God. Sadly, this trend in Christian colleges appears to be continuing, and the result will be more liberal teaching from the pulpit as pastors are trained to think this way."
Ham often warns about what he sees as a troublesome future for Christians in America on his Facebook page and AiG blog, and has spoken out specifically against pastors who choose to ignore controversial social topics like marriage and abortion.
"Sadly, when pastors choose to neglect controversial issues, they do great damage to the spiritual growth of their congregates. We have generations of young people in our churches who simply believe what the world believes on social and moral issues, and they don't think biblically on these matters," Ham wrote back in December.
Last week, AiG won a major religious freedom case in its lawsuit against the state of Kentucky, which had previously denied its Ark Encounter project participation in a sales tax incentive worth millions of dollars. A federal judge decided that state officials had violated the creationist group's First Amendment rights by denying it participation because AiG had insisted on using religious preference when hiring workers.
