{"id":2229,"date":"2010-08-30T17:43:04","date_gmt":"2010-08-30T21:43:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ispeculate.wpmudev.host\/main\/?p=2229"},"modified":"2010-08-30T17:43:04","modified_gmt":"2010-08-30T21:43:04","slug":"fake-christians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ispeculate.net\/writings\/2010\/08\/30\/fake-christians\/","title":{"rendered":"Fake Christians"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>No matter their background, Dean says committed Christian teens share four traits: They have a personal story about God they can share, a deep connection to a faith community, a sense of purpose and a sense of hope about their future.<br \/>\n&#8220;There are countless studies that show that religious teenagers do better in school, have better relationships with their parents and engage in less high-risk behavior,&#8221; she says. &#8220;They do a lot of things that parents pray for.&#8221;<br \/>\nDean, a United Methodist Church minister who says parents are the most important influence on their childrens faith, places the ultimate blame for teens religious apathy on adults.<br \/>\nSome adults dont expect much from youth pastors. They simply want them to keep their children off drugs and away from premarital sex.<br \/>\nOthers practice a &#8220;gospel of niceness,&#8221; where faith is simply doing good and not ruffling feathers. The Christian call to take risks, witness and sacrifice for others is muted, she says.<br \/>\n&#8220;If teenagers lack an articulate faith, it may be because the faith we show them is too spineless to merit much in the way of conversation,&#8221; wrote Dean, a professor of youth and church culture at Princeton Theological Seminary.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>From <a href='http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2010\/LIVING\/08\/27\/almost.christian\/index.html?iref=obnetwork'>Author: More teens becoming fake Christians  &#8211; CNN.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>No matter their background, Dean says committed Christian teens share four traits: They have a personal story about God they can share, a deep connection to a faith community, a sense of purpose and a sense of hope about their future. &#8220;There are countless studies that show that religious teenagers do better in school, have &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/ispeculate.net\/writings\/2010\/08\/30\/fake-christians\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Fake Christians<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[97,105,115,168],"class_list":["post-2229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","tag-leadership","tag-mission","tag-pilgrimage","tag-youthwork"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ispeculate.net\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ispeculate.net\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ispeculate.net\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ispeculate.net\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ispeculate.net\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ispeculate.net\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2229\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ispeculate.net\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ispeculate.net\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ispeculate.net\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}