Quotes about Decline
The central conclusion is that the American church is dying due to lack of strong spiritual leadership. In this time of unprecedented opportunity and plentiful resources, the church is actually losing influence. The primary reason is the lack of leadership. Nothing is more important than leadership."
— Ed Stetzer
In his book Vision America, Aubrey Malphurs asserted that much of the perceived church growth in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s was actually due primarily to the redistribution of believers, not genuine church growth. He stated, "The problems of the church in the 1980s carry over into the 1990s. The church as a whole continues to experience decline and the unchurched increase."
— Ed Stetzer
Another area of the moral and spiritual decline of Christendom is the abandonment of Christian mores. The movement away from Christian moral standards has not meant moving to an alternative humanistic system of moral standards as was anticipated, but moving into a moral vacuum, especially in the areas of eroticism.
— Malcolm Muggeridge
The age of the proof is in decline, it is the hour of 'witness' that is coming, hour of the 'marturioa', very calm and very complete: a hope which seems close to being realised.
— Henri de Lubac
Medora Manson, in her prosperous days, inaugurated a literary salon; but it had soon died out owing to the reluctance of the literary to frequent it.
— Edith Wharton
America can't beat anyone anymore.
— George Clooney
The reliance on authority measures the decline of religion, the withdrawal of the soul. The position men have given to Jesus, now for many centuries of history, is a position of authority. It characterizes themselves. It cannot alter the eternal facts.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
We are perfectly designed to achieve what we are currently achieving. If Christianity is in decline, at least part of the issue goes to the contemporary way we live out faith in a watching world.
— Alan Hirsch
if the church fails to make the shift to apostolic movements again, Christian influence in Western culture will continue to fade, and church attendance will remain in its current trajectory of decline. All we can say in writing this book is, not on our shift! Not if we can help it.
— Alan Hirsch
Governments grow as God declines, in both Europe and the United States.
— Dennis Prager