Not babylonbee or parody, bet real news: 'Panicked' London train commuters force open doors, flee onto tracks when man reads the Bible aloud

As far as I know, western Europeans and the English in particular are getting more religiously oblivious by the day. I'm not worried or anything, but I already notice myself getting creative when thinking about raising my children the right way.

I remember seeing this somewhere in the news a while back.  Yeah, it's sad and disturbing both.  Unfortunately not surprising.  I'm glad I don't live in England - but how long before that sort of mentality becomes widespread here?

It does remind me of a Babylon Bee article someone (I think it was Kerrick?) posted once.

http://babylonbee.com/news/california-christians-must-now-register-bibles-assault-weapons/

Fun fact:  Snopes has done fact checks on the Babylon Bee 12 times so far. 

Andreas89 wrote:As far as I know, western Europeans and the English in particular are getting more religiously oblivious by the day.

It's happening in the U.S. too.  And not just more religiously oblivious, but more openly anti-religous.  Two reasons this is a big problem:

First, religious freedom.  Secular people tend not to care about freedom OF religion, only freedom FROM religion.  Unless you're a trendy-lefty, in which case you defend minority religions even when their ideology is radically opposed to yours - i.e. Islam.  As far as I can tell this is because these groups are minorities and because conservatives are often critical of Islam rather than because they care about religious freedom itself.  Eventually, they will turn on Muslims and other religious minorities too.

Second, evangelism.  The primary mission of the Church is to spread the gospel and lead the lost to God.  That's becoming more difficult in our society and will continue to do so.  It used to be you could take it for granted that most people believe in God.  That they at least had some sort of vague, nominal faith.  Those who weren't Christian tended to see our faith as something positive, or at least benign.  The same with Christian values.  Evangelism is easier when there is some common ground.

All too often that's no longer the case.  People are less likely to believe in God or any sort of higher power, and are even less likely to agree with us on basic moral principles.  To these people, Christianity is at best something ignorant and old-fashioned, at worst dangerous and insane.  It's not as pervasive in the U.S. as it is in Europe, but the shift has begun.  We are going to have to craft our message to reach not merely the "unchurched" but those who lack basic knowledge of our beliefs and will sometimes be hostile to them.

Andreas89 wrote:I'm not worried or anything, but I already notice myself getting creative when thinking about raising my children the right way.

You know, I feel bad for Christian parents in this day and age.  I mean, I suppose it's always been tough, but some periods of history are worse than others.  We may not have worry about being killed and tortured for our beliefs, but as parents there is a whole lot going against you right now.  And let's face it, the internet is probably a bigger influence on kids than their parents much of time.