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I have been thinking lately about a reality focused in my lifetime, the privatizing of religion and especially of Christianity in our US culture. As we have journeyed through the twentieth into the twenty-first century, it seems that our Christian faith has been transformed, often by Baptists, into what is regarded simply as a private concern. Earlier incarnations in this country of the Christian faith seem to have been focused much more on societal transformation like prohibition, abolition, dealing with, supporting, or fighting integration, working to further education, and investing worldwide in mission endeavors. During the last century, Christianity became more and more focused on a "personal relationship with Christ." It seems that this has come to mean having one's ticket punched for heaven, often meaning that the professed faith has little to do with anything beyond a place in eternity. Indeed, I wonder if we have transformed "eternal life" from being a present reality lived out in many way now and then continuing into eternity into "pie in the sky by and by when you die." What are the thoughts of others in the BL family?

Dave, I agree with you about the growth of a segment of Christianity that focuses only, or at least mainly, on a "pie in the sky by and by when you die" type of Christianity. IMO, a lot of this originates from the revivalistic style of religion rooted in the methods of those like Charles Finney, mediated through other evangelists like Billy Sunday, and door-to-door soul-winners like Jack Hyles who went about selling "eternal fire insurance." This definitely put a focus on just getting ready for eternity and little else. Interestingly, though, many of these themselves were not recluses from the world. IIRC, Finney was a vocal abolitionist, and Sunday a leading prohibitionist in his day.

On the other hand, perhaps a major difference is that we are more fragmented and don't agree on the focus of societal transformation. For example, religionists can be found of both sides of moral societal issues like abortion and homosexual marriage, actively advocating their visions for society. Interestingly, there are also those who are not Christians who would like us to slink back into the shadows and leave the societal revolution to them.

Certainly Christian activity on behalf of the illegalization of abortion is as widespread as was that on behalf of the illegalization of alcoholic beverages a century or more ago.

We can all toss out social issues, but I wonder about another issue. In some of the churches where I have been preaching in their interim times, I wonder how much this affects both church attendance and the existence of the "nones" and "dones." It seems there is less of a corporate sense of church than we used to share in most churches. How much of the issue of church decline also relates to this privatized version of Christianity? When the only goal is "going to heaven," why bother with church?

Ed: Last week I learned something new, at least to me, As a part of our RV Tour we visited the Buffalo Trace Distillery near Frankfort Ky. I was surprised to find out that they other Distilleries in KY where allowed by law to stay open to and continued production during prohibition . Think Legalized pot. By law they produced the same bourbon as before, it was was legally sold by prescription. The only restriction was a one pint per week limit, for man woman and child.
No wonder prohibition failed.

A pint a week is torture.

What if any strictures were there on liturgical wine production, sale, and consumption?

I wonder when and why the Mormons got out of the winemaking business.

I was intrigued as an SBTS student preaching for little churches near distilleries to learn that the members all worked at the distillery, none of them drank, and they felt they were within the "church covenant" since they neither used nor sold it. They just distilled it. Made for interesting conversations.

1823? I didn't think teetotalism had taken root in Baptists (or other protestants) generally that early. I thought it dated more from .

The first New Hampshire Confession was 1833, not 1823, if I remember correctly. I think the church covenant itself dates to around 1853. Both are usually credited to the work of J. Newton Brown.

I've never been a Methodist, neither was I around in 1939. It is my sense, though, that merger and later one could have changed things quite a bit. My paternal grandmother and her family (parents, siblings, aunts, cousins) were Methodists and seemed to differ from us on some theological issues but not social ones. I know many of them were not keen on the merger (but I think that may have been more about the EUB merger). My grandmother eventually joined the Baptists in her 80s. Some of the relatives and the churches they were connected with in southwest Missouri started their own conference. I don't think it was a North/South issue at that point, but differing theological and perhaps practical visions.

One of the interesting things about the Kentucky bourbon distilleries is that quite a few of them were located in "dry counties" in Kentucky. Each county and municipality had to vote on whether to allow the sale of alcohol in the county. In most of the larger areas, alcohol was freely sold, but in largely rural areas, legal alcohol sales did not resume following prohibition, and a number were still "dry" when I was in Kentucky. The same was also true in NC, though its primary liquor making was in illegal moonshine.

While I am concerned about many social causes, what I really questioned in starting this thread is whether church still has the corporate levels on involvement and inter-relatedness that has been our historic norm. Are we simply purveyors of a commodity, salvation, rather than a set of relationships in which we share the "new life in Christ?"