Point 1
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I certainly agree that Christians have the right to vote too. However, as the God ordained messengers of the Gospel AND portrayers of Christ, it makes sense to me to sincerely question a) political activism and b) what is most important in the long run?

Point a, by nature, publicly states what you are most interested in to the rest of society. Point b should always be “spreading the gospel and modeling Christ to the people around you”.

Given that, do you really want to send the message to the rest of the world that what you’re focused on is constraining their behavior?

Point 2
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I’m glad you do, but the vast majority of Christians don’t. Instead, they focus solely on church culture and maybe give a few dollars to those that do (as you’ve just shown).

However, being inwardly focused to the exclusion of the outside world is blatantly wrong. They are not modeling Christ’s outreach to the “sinners” at all.

If, in fact, one out of three people self identify as Christian here in the US, I should be getting many invites at work, at the mailbox in my apartment complex and from people who self identify as Christian in the local chat rooms I frequent.

In actuality, there’s exactly two people in my 46 years of life who have done this.

You talk about getting death threats and such from the over the top folks. I have to say “so what”? It didn’t stop the early church at all. Why should it stop you?

Besides, you know as well as I do that most of those posts aren’t serious. The few that are constitute a tiny minority of the overall non-Christian population. How often does someone get killed or injured in the US by someone just because they are a Christian?

Yes, it does happen. However, a much larger number of people get killed in car accidents in any given year. Yet we all still drive.

When you combine the political activism of point 1 with the almost total lack of interest by Christians in point 2, non-Christians see a pretty ugly picture.

What we see is a bunch of people who’s sole interest in us is a need for control over us.
That’s a pretty ugly picture. It’s about as opposite the priorities Christ set for Christians as you can get.

I’m not the first person to advocate this. In fact, you’ll find major debate among Protestants between prohibition and the Cold war on this very topic.

Does this mean IMonk can be expecting a call from the Jesuit with No Name? Hunting bounties for the Order of St Borg?

My old Dungeonmaster (D&D, not BDSM) put it this way:

“(My real name), Christians are like a spaghetti western. You have The Good, Rhe Bad, and The Ugly. And it looks like you were in a position to see a LOT of the third.”

And some small shred of sympathy for our afflicted brother in California; he probably is nuts, but then again, he may just be in the diocese of Cardinal Mahony, a prelate firmly devoted to – in the liturgy at least – the Spirit of Vatican II two words for you: Liturgical. Dance. My personal bugbear, and if I were faced with it every Sunday and holyday of obligation, I’d be pinning the mantilla on my head and gibbering about the smoke of Satan, too

I’m in that archdiocese; the local drive-time radio wags refer to “Cardinal-Pedophile Mahoney”, and our Cathedral in LA is hands-down the UGLIEST cathedral in existence. (I’m sure you’ve seen its infamous statue of St Mary that resembles a Stalinist “Joe the Worker” with arms straight out of Popeye; if I was St Mary, I’d have a cease-and-desist order underway.) Fortunately, the madness hasn’t affected my parish; we haven’t even used “Gather Us In” (THE most overused lightweight of an entrance hymn) in months.

As for Liturgical Dance, I’d take it over the infamous Clown Masses done “In the Spirit of Vatican II”.

Remember how both Catholics and Evangelicals flake out, just in different ways? Well, this is another of the standard Catholic flakeouts.

“Tridentine Latin Mass Uber Alles!” is one of the obsessions of Catholic flakes. It’s our version of the Evangelical obsession of the 1950s as a Godly Golden Age; both hearken back to the Godly Old Days before The Sixties.

Maybe you could get the transsubstantiation guy to answer the predestination woman’s question! (Or would that be too Taoist?) — Zla’od

Reminds me of the guy who was on the mailing lists for both Jehovah’s Witnesses and Scientology. He arranged forwarding addresses so all the JW junk mail went to the Scientology Org and all the Scientology junk mail went to the Kingdom Hall. Figured now it’s THEIR problem.

1) Christians are citizens, too. They have the right to advocate legislation like anyone else. Why do non-Christians feel the need to try and eradicate the practice of Christianity in the public square by legislation? Everything you mention in both these questions is a two way street.

I agree that legislation is not the church’s calling, but Christians in America have the right to participate in the process. You people act like any vote for a Republican is a vote against your right to be a non-Christian. Give me a break. How over the top are we going to be. Are non-Christians now going to tell us how we have to vote in order to not persecute them? (And evangelicals whine the same way about liberal candidates. It’s asinine.)

2) Millions of evangelicals spend their their lives working with and ministering to non-Christians. More than 70% of the students at our school are non-Christians. I’ve been here 17 years, working for less in a year than many readers make in 3 months. I have 150 co-workers doing the same.

As to the non-Christians who have sent threats to this discussion- which I haven’t posted- I can understand why some people don’t want to spend time with people whose only agenda is stated as “I want to poison you and your children” or “evangelicals are vermin.”

“Chris:

Is there a specific question you are asking? All I’m reading in your posts are taunts posed as questions, which would simply be a waste of time to respond to because it doesn’t appear you are looking for a discussion but an argument.

If you have a specific question, I’ll be glad to answer it if I read it. I miss a lot of what’s written here because I can’t read every word with retention.

peace

ms”

—

All right, I apologize for the last post. It was emotional and juvenile but it did have the core of the two questions/challenges:

1) Why do any of you feel a need to try to
legislate the actions of non-Christians to
meet your standards?

It’s not IN in the New Testament! In
fact, the gospels and the book of Acts shows
a distinct aversion to meddling in government
and attempting to control the lives of
non-Chrisians. Jesus was explicit in his
denunciation of the Pharisees and Saducees
over their laying “extra burdens on peoples’
backs”. He was equally emphatic about paying
the Roman occupation’s taxes.

In all of Paul’s letters the only people he
rebuked were other Christians. I believe his
attitude was the same as Jesus’ that we deal
with our own and leave the rest to God to
sort out.

2) Why don’t all of you become involved in the
lives of us non-Christians in the same manner
Jesus did with the “sinners” of his own
community?

He himself spent time cultivating warm,
caring relationships with prostitutes,
thieves, adulterers and the like. In fact,
he rebuked the Pharisees for trying to
criticize him for doing it with the analogy
of a physician needing to be among the sick
rather than the healthy.

Those are my questions/challenges – hopefully free of any sense of mockery. Note that I’m saying that this is an individual responsibility rather than something you can hand off to a ministry.

I’d like to see some real discussion on this – at least with you and hopefully more than that.

I’m struck by especially one comment you made:

“I was reminded again how many of us are homeless in evangelicalism.”

That’s it. I feel homeless. I was raised in the Church of Christ tradition and still frequent the waters. These days, however, I spend quite a bit of time visiting Baptist churches for events and conferences. In virtually every situation, what I see and what I hear just don’t match up to what I am convinced the church should be. The list of qualifications for Christianity seem now to be:
A) Church on Sunday
B) Vote Republican
C) Listen to “Christian” radio
D) Buy as much “Christian” books, “Christian” t-shirts, “Christian” music, “Christian” mints, “Christian” salt and whatever other “Christian” crap from the “Christian” retailer as you can
E) Soak in the consumer lifestyle, after all, God wants us to be happy, so God’s blessed us with all the “stuff” we can buy, regardless of how it affects our local, or global, neighbors.

I thought it was more about how you treat your neighbor and proclaim “good news” about reconciliation with God first, and then the person next to you, living simply, giving generously, and loving personally.

Homeless – that’s it.

Well, we ought to create a mutual admiration society. I’ve been following your blog for some months, one of only a half-dozen. I think you have good instincts when it comes to surveying the current evangelical landscape. I tried to say as much when Moody interviewed me last week.

Ted Olsen and I are going to be writing a piece on the new shape of evangelicalism (which may be a more positive way of talking about “the collapse” of the older cultural expression ), so naturally we’ll want to interview you as we make our way.

Is there a specific question you are asking? All I’m reading in your posts are taunts posed as questions, which would simply be a waste of time to respond to because it doesn’t appear you are looking for a discussion but an argument.

If you have a specific question, I’ll be glad to answer it if I read it. I miss a lot of what’s written here because I can’t read every word with retention.

peace

ms

Maybe you could get the transsubstantiation guy to answer the predestination woman’s question! (Or would that be too Taoist?)

For comparison’s sake, in Orthodoxy there has been great controversy over translations of the Bible into Russian (instead of Church Slavonic) and modern Greek (instead of Koine). Part of it was just resistance to change, and part of it was the issue of whether the content of the translation would be “improved” as well (for example, by relying on the Hebrew instead of the Septuagint for the OT).