Odds and Ends are letters covering important topics that do not necessarily require a whole article.
FINDING FAITH
World Magazine reported statistics regarding the deepening religious recession facing the United States:
64%
The estimated share of Americans who in 2020 identified religiously as Christians according to a recent Pew Research Center report. If trends continue, Pew warns, Christians could make up less than half of the nation’s population within decades.
384,000
The number of religious congregations in the United States according to a 2017 estimate based on the National Congregations Study.
4,500
The number of churches shuttered in 2019—compared with 3,000 started—according to a report last year from Lifeway Research.
47%
The share of Americans who said in 2020 they belonged to a religious congregation, down 20 percentage points from 2000, according to a Gallup survey(wng.org).
TRANSGENDER CHILDREN
This report is from Minnesota, the state where I reside in America. It is a sad situation, to say the least.
Gov. Tim Walz signed an executive order Wednesday making the North Star State a sanctuary for gender transitions, including for residents of other states with more conservative laws.
Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan said that listening to and believing children “when they tell us who they are” is “what it means to be a good parent.” (See video at – https://x.com/AlphaNewsMN/status/1636146393130627079?s=20)
A new poll from the Center of the American Experiment found that the overwhelming majority of Minnesotans are opposed to sex change operations for minors. Even a slim majority of Democrats agreed(alphanews.org).
NIGERIAN PROSPERITY PREACHER EXPANDS REACH INTO THE UNITED STATES
Ministry Watch reported: One of the wealthiest prosperity preachers in the world is making inroads in the United States. In 1981, Nigerian pastor David Oyedepo started Living Faith Church Worldwide, also known as Winners’ Chapel, after claiming he had received a vision from God “to liberate the world from all oppression of the devil through the preaching of the word of faith.”
Since then, over 5,000 Winners’ Chapel congregations have been planted all over the world, including in Africa, Europe, Asia, and North America. There are Winners’ Chapel congregations in over 30 American states.
Winners’ Chapel congregations in the U.S. are growing rapidly. For instance, the Houston congregation was started in 2008 and holds two services each Sunday morning in a facility that seats 1,000.
In October 2021, a new sanctuary and headquarters for Winners’ Chapel in the United States was dedicated in Maryland. Both of Oyedepo’s sons, David Jr. and Isaac, have served as resident pastors for the Maryland congregation, but now David Oladasu serves in that capacity(ministrywatch.com).
THOUSANDS LEAVING THE METHODIST CHURCH
CBS News reported that Bishop Karen Oliveto sees her consecration in 2016 as a breaking point for some of the thousands of people who have made the once unthinkable decision to leave the United Methodist Church.
Oliveto is the church’s first openly gay bishop and oversees congregations in Colorado, Montana, Utah, Wyoming and one church in Idaho. Her service defies long-standing rules in the denomination. Disregard for those church laws is fueling divisions that have already led to the exodus of about 20% of the United Methodist Church’s congregations across the U.S. since disaffiliations began in 2019. The number of members who have left with their congregations isn’t as clear, as the latest figures from 2021 don’t reflect the total number of departures.
According to the church’s Book of Discipline, which outlines church laws, LGBTQ people are banned from ordination. Same-sex marriages are also forbidden. Under church rules, Oliveto shouldn’t be holding her elected position.
For years, these rules have been challenged — and upheld — by the church’s global legislative body, the General Conference. The United Methodist Church is among the country’s largest Protestant denominations and has millions of worshippers worldwide. Methodist congregations outside the U.S. that tend to be more conservative have helped keep change at bay, voting among those who want to uphold the existing rules.
The church largely hasn’t taken action against the congregations that are allowing the consecration of LGBTQ clergy or marrying same-sex couples, and more conservative congregations are typically the ones leaving — more than 6,000 of them, according to a United Methodist News Service tally. That’s about a fifth of all U.S. congregations(cbsnews.com).
NEXT GENERATION IS LEAVING THE FAITH EARLIER THAN YOU REALIZE
The next generation is often leaving the faith while under the supervision of parents who believe they’re passing on their religious values.
When church leaders imagine young people turning away from Christianity, they may picture a college student being convinced by an atheist professor or an older high schooler getting a driver’s license and using their newfound freedom to leave church behind. In reality, the secularization of the next generation may look more like a 14-year-old watching YouTube in their room.
New analysis published at the Institute for Family Studies (IFS) reveals children born in the 1980s and ’90s never absorbed the faith in their home. And they walked away from it at an earlier age than most parents and leaders suspect.
In the early 1990s, no more than 16% of 8th, 10th, and 12th graders said religion was not important to them at all, according to the Monitoring the Future survey series. By the early 2000s, however, the percentage of high school seniors who completely dismissed the importance of religion to them personally began to increase dramatically.
For close to a decade, sophomores were more like 8th graders, with both hovering around 15%. But around 2010, 10th graders became more like 12th graders in terms of their disregard for religion. A few years later, the percentage of 8th graders who said religion is not at all important began to rapidly increase.
In the latest study, close to 30% of seniors and sophomores and almost 25% of 8th graders said they didn’t consider religion to have any importance (research.lifeway.com).
PREACHING THE GOSPEL IN ROME
Report from the Billy Graham Association: In Rome Saturday night, people gathered in circles on the floor of the Palazzo dello Sport—Roma, praying out loud for a move of God. Many were from churches all around Italy, volunteering at the two-day Noi Festival with Franklin Graham.
Later, God answered that prayer, as Italians streamed down to the front of the stage from all over the arena in response to Franklin Graham’s invitation to receive Jesus Christ by faith.
More than 500 people made that decision at the historic outreach, the first of its kind in Rome. More than 150 evangelical churches came together to partner with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association in sharing the Gospel in Italy’s capital city (billygraham.org).
IS MATH RACIST?
Few subjects seem less political than math. There is little room for subjective judgment because its truths are universal. No matter what you look like or where you’re from or how you feel about it, two plus two will always equal four, and the area of a circle will always be π r². Math is so objective, in fact, some scientists have theorized that prime numbers could offer the basis of communication with supposed intelligent life elsewhere in the cosmos. However, even if aliens know that math has no racial or gender bias, some educators on Earth seem to think otherwise. Even amid plummeting math scores in the latest Nation’s Report Card data, a growing chorus of progressive voices insists that racism and sexism are the biggest problems we face in how to teach math.
A couple years ago, in an article in the Scientific American, Rachel Crowell complained about the racial and gender disparities among those who make a career out of mathematics. She pointed out, for instance, that “fewer than 1 percent of doctorates in math are awarded to African Americans” and that only 29.1 percent “were awarded to women.” More mathematicians, she writes, have been pushing to discuss these issues and “force the field to confront the racism, sexism and other harmful bias it sometimes harbors.”
Though, undoubtedly, examples of identity-group bias in all fields exist, Crowell chose to root her complaint in intangibles: Math doctorates are not “earned” or “received” or “completed;” they are “awarded,” a word choice that not so subtly reinforces her conclusion that something about math education is racist.
Writing at Newsweek, Jason Rantz cited examples of public schools teaching students that math itself, and the way it has always been taught, is oppressive. In Seattle, recently introduced guidelines for K-12 math teachers in several pilot schools claim that “mathematical knowledge has been appropriated by Western culture” and that “math has been and continues to be used to oppress and marginalize people and communities of color”(breakpoint.org).
RESOURCES
https://wng.org/articles/fading-faith-1665025267
https://alphanews.org/flanagan-good-parents-believe-kids-when-they-tell-us-who-they-are/
https://ministrywatch.com/wealthy-nigerian-prosperity-preacher-expands-reach-into-united-states/
Kairos Ministries 
This article surely emphasizes our mandate to pray fervently for those younger than us. Describing the Biblical time of “a great falling away”. Sending much love and intercessions, precious Pastor Alan. Seeing you made my heart happy. Shalom. Psalm 121.