Mark Osler, who describes himself as an evangelical Christian, believes that arrogance on the part of the faithful is driving more and more people to identify themselves as “nones” who affiliate with no organized religion. Writing at Huffington Post, he says:
I know quite a few Nones. Few of them were raised in the absence of any faith tradition. Instead, most were part of a Christian denomination at some point, but consciously made the decision to leave. What interests me about their stories is this common thread: The majority left Christianity because of the attitudes of a person, and that person was not Jesus. It was an overbearing parent, or a judgmental minister, or a congregant who told them they did not belong because they were gay or they were questioning or they had conflicted ideas. In many cases, it was a combination of these types of influences.
Something is wrong when we drive so many people away. I think a big part of that something is arrogance.
This raises the question, then, of how to be a public Christian, even an evangelical Christian (which is how I identify myself), without running the risk of arrogance.
I don’t embody the ideal I’m about to describe in answer to that question, but I know some people who do. These are the people who made me want to be a Christian. What I see in them are three key attributes: They are authentic, unashamed and honest.
He goes on to elaborate about each of those characteristics, and writes that “it might be that our first job in responding to the rise of the ‘Nones’ is that we should stop creating so many of them through our own arrogance and our attempts to judge others (contrary to Christ’s express instruction). People are drawn to those who are strong and humble; is there any more compelling combination of attributes? Perhaps it is now the time to be those things, as Christ was, rather than smug in the conviction that we are always correct, and always the best.”
Read his full post here.