No Bibles in Iowa: The Curious Case of Cedar Rapids

This informative article has tremendous bearing on national trends. Although the evangelical church is growing a little in Cedar Rapids, Bible reading is down.

IMO, the trend in the evangelical world is “about anything OTHER than reading the Bible.” Whether ashes on Ash Wednesday or mission trips — anything but Bible.

….is that Iowa City is more or less the Boulder of Iowa. Couple that with collapsing mainline churches, a lot of bachelor farmers without kids, young people leaving the state as soon as they can (half my workplace is Iowa State grads), and this is to be expected.

Wonder if Dan Miller is doing well. He’s in Cedar Rapids, if I remember right, so he might have something interesting to say.

JoeB, quite a family background you have. Yes, the liberal mainlines are collapsing. With so many in that region in the mainlines, this makes sense. I, for one, never could understand going to church without believing the Bible was true.

I’m actually thinking of attending a service at a mainline church one day, just so I can see what on earth they talk about. Maybe during Christmas.

In the past, before it was normal to be able to learn about a church on the internet, and all you had was the phonebook listing, it was actually quite common when visiting an area to end up at all kinds of wacky churches. Never hit a Catholic one that way, but independent churches can be everything from similar to mainline to charismatic, etc., and I visited more of them as a kid with my parents than I care to remember. When my wife and I were a young couple, we tried to get recommendations before going to an area, and that helped, but you could still end up in a church that you’d prefer not to have visited. This is definitely an area where the internet has helped immensely.

I even found my current church by looking on the internet, and that was in 2003. Properly selected search terms are extremely helpful.

Joe B., thanks for sharing his testimony. The mainlines have been predominantly liberal since before I was born. There were some islands and groups that held out longer than others, and there still are some Bible-believing pastors in liberal denominations (we have a lot of United Methodists in Indiana where the pastors do believe the Bible — a big change from the Chicago area, from which I hail).

But, interestingly, even “conservative” churches (like the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod) — while clear on salvation by grace alone through faith alone (mixing it up with baptismal regeneration) define faith in such a way as being identical to “knowing about.” Now I believe there are many saved people in this group, but it (and other formal groups) can have a way of making faith mechanical.

I don’t know what kind of Lutheran church your grandfather went to — it may have been liberal, perhaps not. My guess would be that it was liberal.

At the same time, I fear that Cedar Rapids is a microcosm of our nation’s future, esp. with the abandonment of the Kingdom by Millennials. Young Urban Professionals often have little use for God, other than taking His Name in vain. Like the Europeans, they view our faith as antiquated and filled with unnecessary restraints and other “fun killers.” They want to shack up, change partners after a while, or consider sexual alternatives. No one is to be judged,

Fortunately, God has His elect, even from the Millennials. But the non-elect are not as accommodating to the elect as they once were.