Here’s a previous IM essay on this topic: “What Do Gays and Lesbians Hear? (When They Are With Evangelicals.)”

UPDATE: I appreciate Andrew’s kind words in the comments. I have to confess that I’m a little disappointed that the emphasis of Andrew’s book- relationships and conversations- seems to be lost, and the discussion is drawn immediately toward “what should churches do to those people?” As I said, this book will not be the normal reading experience. Andrew is trying to do something- in his own experience first- that is incredibly difficult: pay the price to love those who are very angry with us.

This book has been as profoundly unsettling as Sara Miles’ Take This Bread. It’s Jesus shaped Christianity, and it does not leave you alone. It is not what you’re prepared for. It will hit you like Jesus’ love for the unacceptable hit his world..

Love is An Orientation. Andrew Marin. “Elevating the conversation with the gay community.” Inter-Varsity Press.

I’m hoping to write a book in the next few months. I have something I want to say and I think it’s important. I hope all of you buy it, and I wouldn’t mind if a few million people bought it and I could change my life accordingly.

But I want you to hear what I am about to say: If you had two books to choose from, whatever I will write and what Andrew Marin has written in Love Is An Orientation, I would want you to buy Andrew’s book.

What Andrew Marin has written in this book isn’t just interesting. It is absolutely vital that evangelicals hear what Marin is saying about the state of things between Gays and Evangelicals. This is a message that may be more important than any issue evangelicals are currently discussing short of the content of the Gospel itself. [Continue reading]

Without any intro, I’d like to get right into what I would be saying about Matthew 18 if I were lecturing on the “What does Matthew 18 tell us about church discipline?”

I’d begin by noting that the church discipline material in I Corinthians 5 predates Matthew 18 in composition. Assuming Markan priority, it’s safe to assume that the matter of what to do with certain kinds of situations in the early church moved Matthew to include more material for that context than you find in Mark or the other Gospels. There is a focus in Matthew on catechetical material and church context.

The epistles (including Revelation 2-3) are evidence enough of what these situations were and why they were of the utmost concern. They ran the gamut from interpersonal conflicts, family issues, business disagreements, immorality of various kinds and division. Evidence in the epistles also is clear that leaders were to function as shepherds in working toward the resolution of these conflicts. The matter in I Corinthians 5 is a matter of scandalous immorality, but it is also part of the larger Corinthian church problem: complete lack of functioning leadership, resulting in a kind of “charismatic” leadership that was allowing the church to go down the route of Thyatira in Revelation 2. [Continue reading]

Down through the years, I’ve been part of a few in-church discussions about church discipline. They were all memorable. Almost everyone was against it and treated me like I was going off the deep end for bringing it up. Being against church discipline was an issue worth yelling over, and I’ve been yelled at more than once.

In my denomination and tradition, church discipline of a certain kind was common in the late 1800’s and even early 1900’s. I recall reading the business meeting minutes of a church I belonged to that was founded in the late 1700s. In the the late nineteenth century, many business meetings involved the discipline of members for things as trivial as card playing and as serious as shooting another church member.

In the 1920’s, church discipline began to disappear and today is almost totally unknown in Southern Baptist circles. The reason is clear. Southern Baptists and most evangelicals completely lost the ability to see anything positive in church discipline, at least by the measurements they now use to measure what is positive and helpful in church life.

Church discipline was punitive and exclusionary, overstepping the church’s role and destructive to the church’s mission too represent Christ. [Continue reading]

UPDATE: CNN has the same story as USA Today, but with more reference to the academic discussion and the psychology of myth perpetuation. Evangelicals who are angry at me for posting this should just skip it.

Here’s a detailed review of a book by Dave Cullen that is looking at the law enforcement information.

“These are not ordinary kids who were bullied into retaliation,” psychologist Peter Langman writes in his new book, Why Kids Kill: Inside the Minds of School Shooters. “These are not ordinary kids who played too many video games. These are not ordinary kids who just wanted to be famous. These are simply not ordinary kids. These are kids with serious psychological problems.” -Peter Langman

The Columbine high school massacre has, unfortunately, been a professional interest for me. Part of my job involves doing risk assessments of high school students applying to our program, so understanding the dynamics of school violence is a necessary preparation.

As a Christian, I’ve had a different kind of interest in Columbine. The shootings have become part of conservative evangelical culture war mythology. Some of the dead are considered martyrs. Books have been written. Speaking tours traveled through churches and Christian media. The pundits and cultural critics have used Columbine as exhibit A for everything that was wrong with America. Here, we were told, was the results of America’s surrender to secularism and proof that we needed everything from the closure of public schools to the Ten Commandments in every classroom. (Think what a difference seeing “Thou Shalt Not Kill” would make.) [Continue reading]

This post is from November of ‘04. It’s a little quote from Martin Luther that’s the kind of anti-legalism/moralism injection all of us need occasionally. Some of you won’t like it for better reasons than others. I like it because Luther gets Jesus and isn’t afraid to be provocative to help me get him too.

This woud be a great excuse for you to buy the NRP “Weak on Sanctification” t-shirt.

“Whenever the devil harasses you, seek the company of men or drink more, or joke and talk nonsense, or do some other merry thing. Sometimes we must drink more, sport, recreate ourselves, and even sin a little to spite the devil, so that we leave him no place for troubling our consciences with trifles. We are conquered if we try too conscientiously not to sin at all. So when the devil says to you: do not drink, answer him: I will drink, and right freely, just because you tell me not to.” -Martin Luther

Martin Luther is certainly my favorite person in church history. Time and again his grasp of the Gospel and unabashed honest humanity have come to my rescue. Luther has an ability to make the Gospel as outrageous as possible, and to chase the rats of legalism out of the attic before they make a nest. [Continue reading]

I have purposely avoided watching Jesus Camp until this week. One of my Advanced classes is using it to write a response paper to The Screwtape Letters, so over three days we watched it, with some debriefing every day.

In this class of ten, several students could relate to various aspects of the film. One young man had been in similar churches and experiences for the first eight years of his life. One of my Ethiopian girls was from a Pentecostal church in her country. One of my American girls was homeschooled on and off for several years. Others had heard various sermons that reminded them of the rhetoric in Jesus Camp.

I have, of course, been around youth camps, youth rallies and youth events my entire life as a Christian and a minister. I grew up in a church that used high pressure evangelism tactics several times a year. I’ve been to youth events where the speakers or musicians were similar to the adults in Jesus Camp. All my life I’ve been surrounded by end-of-the-world scenarios and Satan-is-out-there-in-Harry-Potter type rhetoric. [Continue reading]

No pictures this time. Just a few thoughts to close out the topic.

Evangelicals have no serious arguments to make against the use of “gear.” We’re up to our ears in our own versions of the stuff. We can point out the differences in what we believe is going on, but we’re no innocents. God using matter and the senses works just fine for evangelicals, so get that smirk off your face.

Have you seen how Bibles are marketed in evangelicalism? The covers? The “Favorite preacher” editions? The things we say will happen if you buy the right one?

Have you seen people buying relics from Spurgeon? (Not bones, but publications, pictures, letters.) Have you seen the picture I posted from the Lifeway at Southern Seminary selling Calvin bobbleheads and busts of Spurgeon? If they were actually selling “hair from Spurgeon” how do you think that product would move? [Continue reading]

UPDATE: Darrell Young’s post is now included. Read it!

The Evangelical Untouchables are seven diverse evangelicals who will give us a window into what’s happening in evangelicalism today.

Who are the Evangelical Untouchables?

Michael Patton is the director of Reclaiming the Mind Ministries and is one of the teachers on The Theology Program.
Tony Kummer is on staff at a Southern Baptist Church in the midwest and blogs at SBC Voices.
Ryan Couch is a Calvary Chapel pastor in Oregon, and blogs at Small Town Preacher.
Kirk Cowell pastors a Church of Christ in North Carolina. He blogs at A Soul In Training.
Lindsey Williams is planting a PCA Church in North Carolina, and blogs at From Acorns to Oaks.
Matt Edwards is a small groups pastor in a Non-denominational/Bible church in Washington, and blogs at Awaiting Redemption.
Darrell Young pastors a Christian and Missionary Alliance Church near Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

This episode’s question: “How has the “seeker” emphasis affected your perception of your congregation’s worship services? Are there changes you have made to accommodate and bring back seekers? Are there changes you would never consider, even if it would put more non-Christians in your service?”. [Continue reading]

The commonwealth of Kentucky where I reside is currently completely captivated by the drama surrounding the firing of University of Kentucky Men’s basketball coach Billy Gillispie. Gillispie had only been at UK for two years. Both years featured lackluster performances in comparison to fan expectation, but Gillispie was just starting to recruit his own players. It’s odd- very, very odd- to see a coach dismissed after two years, but we’re talking about a state where University of Kentucky men’s basketball is the official religion of 90% of the population.

Gillispie’s firing followed one of the strangest and most dramatic paths of the demise of any coach of a major sports program. Gillispie was hired because of his single-minded focus on basketball. He was fired, apparently, because of his single-minded focus on basketball.

The mystery resides in that part of Gillispie’s job description labeled “being an ambassador for Kentucky basketball.” As former Coach Joe B. Hall, the successor to the legendary Adolph Rupp, said, the job of being the UK coach involves being custodian of the entire legacy and meaning of basketball in the state. It’s a job that happens at the practice court, in recruiting and on the floor, but it also happens in visiting high school games, signing balls, going to hospitals, speaking at Rotary, having dinner with boosters, participating in charity, getting along with the press and carrying yourself with the awareness that the program is basketball royalty. [Continue reading]

Rather random. Incomplete. Just things I keep thinking.

1. I’m convinced that some of the news media (***cough*** Fox ***cough***) are using the financial situation to create a “panic” audience. That is, they are putting on every extreme, doomsday voice they can, they are ignoring larger context, they are keeping their audiences convinced this is the end of the world, and then they are hauling in the advertisers. I’m surprised that so many Christians are failing to notice the agenda of much of the news media in this situation.

2. I’m not discounting the seriousness of the situation when I make the observation in statement #1. I’m not saying the doomsday team isn’t right. I’m not in any position to say what is going on, but I am concerned that the news and opinion on some venues is being selected with a good deal of bias. The information picture is large and complex. Throwing the worst case scenarios out there hour after hour seems to be a specific tactic with a specific (political) goal in mind.

3. I listen to a good bit of BBC and CBC. It’s not panic headlines 24-7. There seems to be more context. It’s the same crisis, and there are a lot of very unflattering things said about the U.S., the stimulus, the bailouts, businesses, government, etc. But I don’t hear these media outlets playing the situation for panic, profit or politics. [Continue reading]

One of the things I really don’t like about run-of-the-mill evangelical spirituality is the assumption that we’re all basically clones of each other. Cheerful clones. Mentally healthy clones. Good family clones. Conservative political clones. Happy at church clones. Like the same music clones. Clones who cope well. Clones who think alike. Clones who can take a cheerful verse and dissolve any problem in short order.

Let me take a simple thing. I don’t like Fox News. I don’t have a vendetta about it, but it’s inflammatory much of the time, and their overall harping tone doesn’t do a thing for my blood pressure. They do a lot of name calling, cheap shots, girly pics and “true crime” coverage. I don’t live in England, so I don’t want the screaming British media.

What would be my fate if I stood up at my next public gathering with conservative evangelicals and read the previous paragraph? Let’s just say that many judgments would be made on this one item, most of them far from true. [Continue reading]

The Original Talk Hard: Defending the Role of the Critic in Christianity. Lots I would change in that essay, but it still holds up 6 years or so later.

Recently, I received an email from someone who has been a longtime reader of this blog, giving his reasons for being a regular reader and generous supporter.

This particular reader appreciated the writing I’ve done on the subjects of mental illness, psychiatric medication and emotional health. As this person is a professional in those fields and far beyond me in understanding, I was understandably happy to read that email.

I have received many thousands of emails in the last 8 years of Internet Monk. A sizable portion express appreciation for something that deserves a moment’s consideration: that this blog is one of the few places some folks have found where certain points of view can be discussed with relative civility. [Continue reading]

UPDATE: “Laugh or else” is a category that ought to only be used by people with a sense of humor. All others just stay clear. Apparently poking fun at Ark hunters qualifies me as an angry, Bible rejecting heretic. Well, I’d like to thank all the little people who made this possible…

Since we’re talking about religion and science, let’s see what Baptists are up to.

It has to make you feel good that Liberty University- practically a Southern Baptist School and the recipient of thousands of dollars and students from trusting Southern Baptists- has employed its very own Indiana Jones, who is off to do guess what?

Guess. Really. Guess.

Thank you. Find Noah’s Ark [Continue reading]

With this post I am concluding my response to the series The Unresolved Tensions of Evangelicalism.

This post will look at “Disillusionment With Christian Community” and “Abandoning Christian Commitment Itself.”

The previous “Response” post (with links to the previous four) is here.

Disillusionment With Christian Community

Of the four issues I have examined, the disillusionment with Christian community has prompted the most response from evangelicals themselves. Throughout its history, evangelicalism has addressed this issue through study, discussion, experimentation, success and failure. [Continue reading]

I now come to the last two posts in this series on The Unresolved Tensions of Evangelicalism. All four posts are accessible here.

In these posts I will write a response to each of the four topics of personal disillusionment: The Biblical worldview, Christian experience, Christian community and Christian commitment itself.

In my responses, I hope to say something constructive to those evangelicals who have left or are contemplating leaving evangelicalism, as well to loyal evangelicals within the church.

In this post, I’ll deal with the first two sources of personal disillusionment.

The Biblical Worldview [Continue reading]