Difference Between Heretic And Hypocrite

James Fowler developed his stages of faith after conduction in-depth interviews of 359 people. The sample subjects were predominately white, with equal numbers of males and females and included a wide range of ages, from three and a half to 84 years old. Fowler’s interviews consisted of 30 plus questions regarding the subject’s life experiences, relationships, values, commitments and religion. After analyzing the responses, Fowler placed each subject in one of six faith stages. The responses indicated that as the subject’s age increased, so did their stage of faith (Hutchison, 2015).

Within the book You Lost Me by David Kinnaman, the author discusses why young Christians are leaving the church and rethinking faith. He gives us an overview of the trends within the mosaic generation. Through this overview, we as student ministers can better understand the generation in which we are ministering to. With this understanding, we can reach these students and bring them back to their home, that is the Church. In this report, I will discuss the book by chapter and finish with my reflection.

Some adults may live much of their lives with a literal faith. Stage three is group faith Young people start to value the importance of friendship and often come to view God as one who treats them much like a trusted companion. Stage four is person faith. People strengthen their faith by questioning earlier beliefs. Stage five is mystical faith. At this stage of faith the awareness of God’s inner presence leads one to become more aware that God also dwells in others. Interfaith dialogue now becomes not a threat but an opportunity for new understanding. Stage six is sacrificial faith. Jesus, Dorothy Day, and Archbishop Romero are examples of this sacrificial faith. Such people display radical and consistent commitment to the doing of God’s will that is uncompromised by concern for personal security.

For my Meet the Believers assignment, I focused on Catholicism and Nondenominational Christianity. My Catholic interviewee, who I’ll refer to as John, is middle aged and was raised Catholic. My Christian interviewee, who I’ll refer to as Jane, is a young adult and was similarly raised Christian. From my interviews and attendance of worship services of both groups, several themes and concepts came to the forefront: the tensions between fundamentalism and modernism, the important conversation of gender and ethnicity, and the “true” good understood by both believers through their respective religious groups.

Christianity is a religion that has been around for about 2000 years. This religion is based on the birth, teachings, life and death of Jesus Christ. In the early first century, it started to expand from Palestine to the rest of the world. A movement that began with Jesus and twelve Apostles has grown to approximately two billion people worldwide. In America, this religion started from the arrival of Christopher Columbus. Until recently, the religion expanded all over the Americas and was followed by the largest majority of its people. Although Christianity was followed by a lot of people in the Americas, increasingly Christianity faces many challenges and problems, including declining attendance, rise in atheism, religious alternatives,

New circumstances called for re-appraisal of the church: its position and purposes. A pragmatic response to changed

Discipleship students, or those who already have a faith commitment, tend to immediately join one of two categories. The first, or Stagnant, students are those who “made a decision to follow Christ at some time in life but never really grew in faith.” These students, from the outside, look very similar to the world as “the distinction between churched and unchurched students is rapidly shrinking.” These students require time to draw them into a

How can we minister more effectively to young Latino Catholics and help them increase their participation in the Church? These are key questions that are frequently raised and that must be acknowledged and studied carefully as we consider the future of the Catholic Church as well as her numerical growth. If we bear in mind that 44% of all Catholics under the age of thirty in the U.S. are Hispanics (according to the 2013 Pew Research Center survey of Hispanic adults) it would certainly seem that increasing Hispanic teenagers ' participation in the Church would be beneficial not just for Hispanic families and communities, but also for the future Church in general. To effectively minister to Hispanic teenagers, an understanding of what is happening in their lives is crucial. Indeed, family plays a big part, but what we often neglect is how significantly culture impacts the life of an adolescent.

This Christian religion, known as the “church of Christ”, is experiencing rapid growth despite the large amount of opposition it is facing. It seems that this is largely due because of the concerted effort that the Christians are making to teach their religion to everyone in the entire world. But while everything may seem

Dean argues that if teenagers don’t have a firm grasp of core Christian principles and instead worship at what she calls “the Church of Benign Whatever-ism” or they don’t worship at all. She claims that it’s because youth pastors and other leaders have” watered down” the message. The first part of the book draws upon extensive research data to diagnose the problem that teens are being taught a brand of Christianity that is shallow at best. Dean lays the responsibility for the emptiness at the feet of Christian parents and churches.

The Roman Catholic Church is presented as an institution of knowledge and power, influencing the lives of the people. The clear boundaries in catholic society are presented here, by the “right and wrong”, indicating that there was little variation in beliefs and practice in those following Catholicism. However, even though religion is presented as an important part of life, determining people’s decisions and behaviour, it is also presented as something which is taught, rather than followed willingly, indicating that while children, such as Frank, may have no wish to become “good Catholics”, they were forced to do so by society; their parents and teachers. Frank presents the attitude towards religion in school through the following quote, telling the children to: “Know and remember all the questions and answers in catechism, became good Catholics, to know the difference between right and wrong, to die for the Faith if called on”

The identity of a Catholic school is the key variable that sets that school apart from all others, and without a commitment to fostering the Catholic identity, a Catholic school becomes just a school. The Congregation for Catholic Education (1988) cited in Earl (2008) noted that if the Catholic identity "is not present, then there is little left which can make the school Catholic" (p. 197). Integral in developing and maintaining the Catholic identity of a school is the faith formation of both the adults who work in the building, as well as the students who attend. Nourishing the spirituality of these groups is the responsibility of the administration and those who lead the school. However, the faith formation needs of each group are unique, but nonetheless dependent on each other, to form the Catholic identity of the school.

Christianity has been facing many obstacles from all the non religious world views. There has been a lot of contemporary influence in this modern churches and Christian gatherings as they try to fit in and accommodate the changing world views. Due to all this influences, everything about Christianity is being questioned especially on issues of sex, divorce, marriage and birth control. There has also been a rise in non denominational churches started by individuals or a group of people with no ties or relationships to already established churches

Educators need to understand the impact of religion on the lives of their students. According to Gallup poll data, nearly 95% of teens believe in God and 86% believe that Jesus Christ is either God or the Son of God (Gallup & Lindsay, 1999 as cited in Ream, 2003). These and other similar statistics demonstrate the importance of considering religion when dealing with young people. Ream

Throughout the semester, we examined many different topics that are important to know and which are beneficial to the priestly ministry. One of these is the church’s Magisterium which is held as the authoritative teaching office of those who teach the community in the name of Christ. It serves its role to safeguard the truth of God by faithfully interpreting and applying God’s revelation. It seems that, in our current society, many people don’t know what to believe anymore. This crisis of people not knowing what to believe has affected the Catholic Church even moreso because of the whole sex scandal in recent years. Because of incidents like this, Catholics no longer trust nor do they know what to believe when it comes to morality, faith, and