{"id":3498,"date":"2019-08-02T10:03:09","date_gmt":"2019-08-02T15:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/?p=3498"},"modified":"2019-08-02T11:41:33","modified_gmt":"2019-08-02T16:41:33","slug":"run-sheet-for-friday-august-2nd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/run-sheet-for-friday-august-2nd","title":{"rendered":"Run Sheet for Friday, August 2nd"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p style=\"text-align:center\" class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/player.listenlive.co\/58341\">LISTEN LIVE AT 1:00 PM ET<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><a href=\"https:\/\/ifirstdvd.com\/products\/the-alpha-and-the-mega-by-morgan-mead\"><strong>The Alpha and the Mega<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TODAY&#8217;S GUEST: <\/strong>Morgan Mead, Director of the film documentary <em>The Alpha and the Mega.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\n\nWhat is a megachurch?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Within the world of religion there exists a church so large it houses thousands of people, so popular that it brings in millions of dollars every year, so influential that it can sway a presidential election, and so misunderstood that less than 15% of America knows the truth about the megachurch. Over 1,250 megachurches are spread across the United States and with their growing numbers comes growing opposition to their size, their methods, and their ideology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Alpha and the Mega explores the megachurch phenomenon with a look at the different types of megachurches, their origins, and of course their opposition.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">BBC: <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.com\/future\/story\/20190801-tomorrows-gods-what-is-the-future-of-religion\">Tomorrow&#8217;s Gods: What is the Future of Religion?<\/a><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/paulchoudhury.com\/\">Sumit Paul-Choudury<\/a>: <em>&#8220;If religions have changed so dramatically in the past, how might they change in the future? Is there any substance to the claim that belief in gods and deities will die out altogether? And as our civilisation and its technologies become increasingly complex, could entirely new forms of worship emerge?&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>&#8220;&#8230;there\u2019s a growing consensus that the future of religion is that it\u00a0<em>has<\/em>\u00a0no future.&#8221;<\/li><li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/www\/berger.pdf\">Sociologist Peter Berger in <\/a><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/www\/berger.pdf\">1968<\/a><\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/www\/berger.pdf\">:<\/a> <em>&#8220;By the 21st century, religious believers are likely to be found only in small sects, huddled together to resist a worldwide secular culture.&#8221; <\/em><\/li><li>&#8220;&#8230; Religion will continue to grow in economically and socially insecure places like much of sub-Saharan Africa \u2013 and to decline where they are stable. When life is tough or disaster strikes, religion seems to provide a bulwark of psychological (and sometimes practical) support.&#8221;<\/li><li>&#8220;In 2005, Linda Woodhead wrote\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wiley.com\/en-us\/The+Spiritual+Revolution%3A+Why+Religion+is+Giving+Way+to+Spirituality-p-9781405119597\">The Spiritual Revolution<\/a>, in which she described an intensive study of belief in the British town of Kendal. Woodhead and her co-author found that people were rapidly turning away from organised religion, with its emphasis on fitting into an established order of things, towards practices designed to accentuate and foster individuals\u2019 own sense of who they are. If the town\u2019s Christian churches did not embrace this shift, they concluded, congregations would dwindle into irrelevance while self-guided practices would become the mainstream in a \u201cspiritual revolution\u201d. <\/li><li>&#8220;&#8230;people have started constructing faiths of their own:<ul><li>Syncretism: combining elements of multiple faith traditions;<\/li><li>Streamlining: rewrite the Bible with no supernatural elements; &#8220;Sunday Assembly&#8221; with all the elements of a lively gathering with no reference to God; <\/li><li>Paganism: <em>&#8220;Reinventing half-forgotten \u201cnative\u201d traditions allows the expression of modern concerns while retaining the patina of age.&#8221;<\/em><\/li><\/ul><\/li><li>&#8220;Munificent economies, good government, solid education and effective rule of law can ensure that we rub along happily without any kind of religious framework.&#8221; <\/li><li>Some actual emerging religions:<ul><li><em>Transhumanism<\/em>: &#8220;&#8230;by giving ourselves over to information flows, we can transcend our earthly concerns and ties.&#8221;<\/li><li><em>The Turing Church<\/em>:  We will go to the stars and find Gods, build Gods, become Gods, and resurrect the dead\u201d <\/li><li><em>Jediism<\/em>: the faith of the Star Wars franchise: &#8220;Its members are \u201creal people that live or lived their lives according to the principles of Jediism\u201d <\/li><li><em>Witnesses of Climatology<\/em>: &#8220;&#8230;invented to foster greater commitment to action on climate change.<ul><li>The founder, Olya Irzak and some friends set about building [a religion]. They didn\u2019t see any need to bring God into it \u2013 Irzak was brought up an atheist \u2013 but did start running regular \u201cservices\u201d, including introductions, a sermon eulogising the awesomeness of nature and education on aspects of environmentalism. Periodically they include rituals, particularly at traditional holidays. At Reverse Christmas, the Witnesses plant a tree rather than cutting one down; on Glacier Memorial Day, they watch blocks of ice melt in the California sun. <\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">WXYZ: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wxyz.com\/news\/scammers-pose-as-waterford-township-pastor-to-scam-parishioners-out-of-money\"><strong>Scammers pose as Waterford Township pastor to scam parishioners out of money<\/strong><\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>LISTEN LIVE AT 1:00 PM ET The Alpha and the Mega TODAY&#8217;S GUEST: Morgan Mead, Director of the film documentary The Alpha and the Mega. What is a megachurch? Within the world of religion there exists a church so large &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/run-sheet-for-friday-august-2nd\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3498"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3507,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3498\/revisions\/3507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}