The Jesus Seminar was founded by the late Robert Funk in 1985, along with other theologically liberal luminaries, including John Dominic Crossan and the late Episcopalian Bishop John Shelby Spong. They spent much of their time attempting to undermine the reliability of the Bible and were the darlings of the media, especially around the celebration of birth or death and resurrection of Jesus. In 1998 we took a look at the process they used to come to their conclusions in "The Hysterical Search for the Historical Jesus." The group still exists, but the drawing power of that fad wore off about a quarter of a century ago. The fad that replaced them was The New Atheists. It turns out many of them have decided Western culture needs Christianity if it is to survive. In "The Short Shelf Life of ‘Inevitable’ Movements," John Stonestreet and Shane Morris talk about a recent online debate ono "The Majority Report" between host, Sam Seder and "an excellent debater" (unnamed):
His was a fate like what has befallen the “New Atheists” of the 2000s. After a meteoric rise, with figures like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens claiming to be on the right side of enlightened history, a new graph by sociologist Christian Smith shows that New Atheism [1] was essentially a 15-year “flash in the pan,” with their media mentions spiking almost entirely between the years 2005 and 2020. In the end, all their books, conferences, and media appearances never made that many new New Atheists, with their numbers nationwide never breaking the low single-digits, percentage-wise. Today, the only real traces of their meteoric movement can be found in old YouTube videos and used book bins.
While it’s too early for a postmortem, the transgender movement seems to be following a similar pattern. Five years ago, gender activists were effectively holding universities, corporations, and governments hostage. CEOs, elected officials, and celebrities alike trembled at the threats from online mobs. Then came J.K. Rowling, the Cass Report, the closing of the U.K.’s main gender clinic, the backlash against male athletes in women’s locker rooms and sports, the wave of high-profile “detransitioners,” and a new administration working to roll back the policy gains of trans activists. Now that sanity also seems to be returning to corporate America, even Target, the future of this supposedly inevitable movement is, to say the least, in doubt.
I am not sure what this tells us, other than that culture is fickle and changes to embrace whoever seems to have a better story at any given time, especially if the tale excludes the God of Scripture, who created all things, provided for them, and offers salvation [2] to those who believe. Is it possible they simply cannot abide a God that is greater than themselves?
https://mailchi.mp/ab30e9504631/who-is-azealia-banks-and-why-should-we-care?e=169825fd77 [3]
