{"id":4736,"date":"2005-07-27T10:03:48","date_gmt":"2005-07-27T10:03:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/onward-christian-soldiers.html"},"modified":"2005-07-27T10:03:48","modified_gmt":"2005-07-27T10:03:48","slug":"onward-christian-soldiers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/onward-christian-soldiers.html","title":{"rendered":"Onward Christian Soldiers?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n

A Books and Culture piece looks at the stats:<\/a><\/p>\n

D<\/strong>uring the past four years a growing number of political analysts have connected the emerging "Bush Doctrine" in foreign policy to the influence of evangelical Protestants. For example, one recent review claimed that<\/p>\n

\n

The influence of Christian evangelicals now extends to many essential matters of foreign policy, quite apart from the Middle East. Dogmatic, unilateralist, and radically nationalistic, this influence ignores international law and is particularly hostile to international organizations.1<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Indeed, it is hard to find a critique of administration foreign policy in publications such as The New Yorker<\/span>, The New York Review of Books<\/span>, the Atlantic<\/span>, or the New York Times<\/span> without a similar complaint.<\/p>\n

Such assertions arise in part because of perceptions that conservative evangelicals are involved in virtually every aspect of American politics, from campaigning for George W. Bush in the 2004 election to mounting the recent "Justice Sunday" rally backing the president’s judicial nominees. What is missing, however, is any systematic evidence that evangelicals\u2014or other religious communities for that matter\u2014actually support or oppose the Bush Doctrine.<\/p>\n

In fact, such assertions fly in the face of much of the existing research. Scholars have found little evidence that religion is a major factor shaping public attitudes toward foreign policy. True, a few researchers (including the authors) have shown that religion is a powerful predictor of attitudes toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and once contributed to anti-communist sentiment, probably stiffening America’s posture toward the former USSR.2<\/a><\/sup> But that was about it. Has the situation really changed? Is religion now influencing the public’s understanding of the United States’ role in the world?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And then in other "Let’s look at the numbers instead of the assumptions" news, is the LDS church really the fastest-growing church?<\/a> Not so. And it has terrible retention rates, too:<\/p>\n

\n
\n

Retaining members: Stewart says Mormons need to be aware of such statistics to be more effective missionaries. To that end, he is publishing his research, along with a description of what he calls "tested principles to improve growth and retention," in a forthcoming book, The Law of the Harvest: Practical Principles of Effective Missionary Work<\/em>.
    "It is a matter of grave concern that the areas with the most rapid numerical membership increase, Latin America and the Philippines, are also the areas with extremely low convert retention," says Stewart, a California physician. "Many other groups, including the Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses, have consistently achieved excellent convert retention rates in those cultures and societies. Latter-day Saints lose 70 to 80 percent of their converts, while Adventists retain 70 to 80 percent of theirs." <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Books and Culture piece looks at the stats: During the past four years a growing number of political analysts have connected the emerging "Bush Doctrine" in foreign policy to the influence of evangelical Protestants. For example, one recent review claimed that The influence of Christian evangelicals now extends to many essential matters of foreign…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nOnward Christian Soldiers? - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/onward-christian-soldiers.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Onward Christian Soldiers? - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A Books and Culture piece looks at the stats: During the past four years a growing number of political analysts have connected the emerging "Bush Doctrine" in foreign policy to the influence of evangelical Protestants. For example, one recent review claimed that The influence of Christian evangelicals now extends to many essential matters of foreign…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/onward-christian-soldiers.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2005-07-27T10:03:48+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Onward Christian Soldiers? - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/onward-christian-soldiers.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Onward Christian Soldiers? - Via Media","og_description":"A Books and Culture piece looks at the stats: During the past four years a growing number of political analysts have connected the emerging "Bush Doctrine" in foreign policy to the influence of evangelical Protestants. For example, one recent review claimed that The influence of Christian evangelicals now extends to many essential matters of foreign…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/onward-christian-soldiers.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2005-07-27T10:03:48+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/onward-christian-soldiers.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/onward-christian-soldiers.html","name":"Onward Christian Soldiers? - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2005-07-27T10:03:48+00:00","dateModified":"2005-07-27T10:03:48+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/onward-christian-soldiers.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/onward-christian-soldiers.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/onward-christian-soldiers.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Onward Christian Soldiers?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4736\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}