I also found your blog posts through the Christian Science Monitor article. Very interesting set of posts–thanks for writing them!

“g. A hope for all of evangelicalism is a “rescue mission” from the world Christian community. If all of evangelicalism could see the kind of renewal that has happened in conservative Anglicanism through the Anglican Mission in America and other mission efforts, much good would be done. It is time for missionaries to come to America from Asia and Africa. Will they come? Will they be able to bring to our culture a more vital form of Christianity? I do not know, but I hope and pray that such an effort happens and succeeds.”

Just a data point from the Catholic perspective: There are already consecrated religious sisters (“nuns”) and priests coming from Africa and Asia to minister here in the U.S. and fill the void caused by our own lack of priestly and consecrated vocations. Also, there are many priests from Mexico coming to the U.S. to minister.

Faithful men and women from the West evangelized them over the past several hundred years, and now they are returning to re-evangelize us!

(a) liberals make no concessions, retain control of assets.

(b) denomination splits along liberal-conservative lines, with conservatives keeping some church properties.

(c) they work out some sort of deal.

Much of their dispute promises to be about money and power, rather than theology per se. I don’t know enough to predict which will happen. If there is a divorce, then each half would find itself struggling to articulate what makes it different from the Unitarians on one hand, and the Baptists on the other.

I admire John Spong very much. His books are an honest attempt to grapple with theological problems that are as fundamental as they are difficult. I see none of this coming from the evangelicals. As for Gene Robinson, well, he can’t REALLY be the first gay bishop…

As an aside, again and again I see people referring to concepts of “orthodoxy” and “heresy” without explaining (let alone justifying) what they mean. The Nicene Creed, for example, was above all a factional political document. If you embrace it, then what about Chalcedon? (Catholics and Orthodox are required to cheer at this point, Armenians and Copts, to boo.)And if your answer involves the Bible, then how did you decide this–and how did you decide how to interpret it? When you get right down to it, all those crazy cults are really not so different from YOU…!

Eschatological enforcer Thomas Ice claims that someone named Dolcino taught a pretribulation rapture in 1304 A.D. What Ice doesn’t like to reveal is that Dolcino’s “proof” DOESN’T EVEN EXIST! So what does Ice’s claim rest on? Well, LONG AFTER Dolcino’s death an ANONYMOUS person wrote a SECONDHAND history of what Dolcino reportedly penned – a history that was CHANGED SEVERAL TIMES between the 1300s and the 1900s! If you’re wondering about Thomas Ice’s qualifications as a scholar, Google “America’s Pretrib Rapture Traffickers,” “Thomas Ice (Bloopers)” and “Thomas Ice (Hired Gun).” Many are unaware that after the Communists took over Russia and China, there were Christians in those countries who became violent with pastors who had constantly assured them that they would be raptured before anything resembling end-time horrors. Can Ice and other pretrib rapture merchandisers rest assured that if such scenarios occur in America and some other “rapturized” countries, Christians won’t be just as violent towards them?

(Something interesting, saw it while surfing. Sharee)

That is a rather scary urban legend

The name comes from this picture I did for the AnthroCon 1999 conbook, “The Age of Reason has No Need of Unicorns”.

If that is our theology, that we go to heaven and everything else burns, then there really IS no future. Perhaps our theology is reflected in the way we have allowed the earth to be mistreated. — Sue

There’s an urban legend that Reagan’s first Secretary of the Interior said exactly that at his Senate confirmation hearing; since Christ Is Coming Soon and It’s All Gonna Burn, there is no need to conserve America’s resources.

J Michael Jones, another frequent commenter in these threads, has described the same attitude in his blog Christian Monist.

how do you guys avoid dispair? It haunts my steps everyday …

Nice stuff.

I love what Headless Unicorn Guy said (and the name If that is our theology, that we go to heaven and everything else burns, then there really IS no future. Perhaps our theology is reflected in the way we have allowed the earth to be mistreated.

I really can’t shake the sense I get that God is up to great and amazing things within the Body, even though there is so much decay around about. What blows my mind is how vast this Body is. The differences in viewpoint and doctrine and personality is astounding – and I suspect it all belongs. The fragmentation does not belong, but imagine a Body that is accepting of all of its different parts, even if some parts just cannot begin to understand how some of the other parts come to the conclusions they do.

All the parts matter.