Interesting Reading
I haven't had time to blog lately, but I did run across an interesting post on another blog. The title is End of the Religious Right? by Dr. Sean Lucas. Sean is a church history professor at Covenant Seminary. He always has interesting things to say, ranging from baseball to the PCA to Robert Lewis Dabney. I think he captures well some of the younger evangelicals' concerns about the religious right without casting stones.
posted by Mark Bates | 2:32 PM
2 Comments:
Good stuff, and as one of the young evangelicals in question, I think Lucas' conclusions are more on target than Cox's.
There was an interesting article in yesterday's NYTimes about a similarly "progressive" pastor of a megachurch. A quote:
'In his six sermons, Mr. Boyd [the pastor in question] laid out a broad argument that the role of Christians was not to seek "power over" others — by controlling governments, passing legislation or fighting wars. Christians should instead seek to have "power under" others — "winning people’s hearts" by sacrificing for those in need, as Jesus did, Mr. Boyd said.
'"America wasn’t founded as a theocracy," he said. "America was founded by people trying to escape theocracies. Never in history have we had a Christian theocracy where it wasn’t bloody and barbaric. That’s why our Constitution wisely put in a separation of church and state.
'"I am sorry to tell you," he continued, "that America is not the light of the world and the hope of the world. The light of the world and the hope of the world is Jesus Christ."
'Mr. Boyd lambasted the "hypocrisy and pettiness" of Christians who focus on "sexual issues" like homosexuality, abortion or Janet Jackson’s breast-revealing performance at the Super Bowl halftime show. He said Christians these days were constantly outraged about sex and perceived violations of their rights to display their faith in public.
"Those are the two buttons to push if you want to get Christians to act," he said. "And those are the two buttons Jesus never pushed."'
This same pastor Boyd was a primary participant in the recent debate over open theism, where I disagree with his conclusions. But here, at least as far as the article goes, I tend to agree.
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