The organized church is torn with strife and distrust. Ultimately, the battle is not so much between conservatives and liberals, evangelicals and activists, or fundamentalists and modernists. The issue now is between belief and unbelief: Is Christianity true or false, real or unreal?
What is deadly to the church is when the external forms of religion are maintained while their substance is discarded. This we call practical atheism. Practical atheism appears when we live as if there were no God. The externals continue, but man becomes the central thrust of devotion as the attention of religious concern shifts away from man’s devotion to God to man’s devotion to man, bypassing God. The “ethic” of Christ continues in a superficial way, having been ripped from its supernatural, transcendent, and divine foundation. Read more
While some readers may immediately think of the Anglican Church of Canada and the Episcopal Church in the USA at the mention of the phrase "practical atheism," the maintenance of the outward forms of religion devoid of their substance is also found in the Anglican Church in North America, the Continuing Anglican jurisdictions, and other denominations--both evangelical and non-evangelical.
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