Our church starts each service with a confession of sins and an assurance of forgiveness. How can we confess our sins if not acknowledging them? Then I feel really “clean” for awhile, until I look at someone in another pew and judge them. (wry humor, I hope you get it.) Jesus had a lot of statements against judging. I’d say that there has been a lot of judging in many of the comments above.

So, yes, we are all in need of forgiveness, but after we hear that we are forgiven, we move on to service. We don’t need to dwell in our sins, or not in our past sins.

But I do think that a pastor walks a thin line: the Bible has a lot in it to tell us to live more generously, not hoard money, take care of people, etc. but pastors who only preach sin and forgiveness are not preaching the whole Bible. Pastors who preach this stewardship and caregiving might be damned as liberals, yet it is very biblical. Pastors who strongly preach this way, which is anti-current-culture, risk losing people in the pews. Pastors who preach the gospel of success apparently have the pews filled with people, but that’s not the whole bible either.

As someone who comes from an upbringing in the Catholic Church, I still sometime feel a bit out of place among some of my 3-generation deep Presbyterian colleagues even after 15 years as a pastor. But that wasn’t the case at all in our gathering; perhaps the promise of a sabbath rest allowed us to drop our denominational and theological defenses and be “real” to and with one another.

God’s blessings on you in your sabbatical time—it should give you plenty of time to decide your vote in the next presidential election.

Climbing the rhetorical heights. Really, I should see the error of my ways and appreciate the beauty of the fellowship of the doctrinally pure.

The PCUSA just affirmed their “purity” standard for ministry.

So they were nice to me because they have abandoned all doctrine and purity? Can I assume that’s why I also was nice to them?

There are many reasons you may have a positive impression of your new ‘mainline’ brethren, and one group is all the reasons you have chosen to step away from the evangelicals you knew ‘too well.’

Why aren’t the mainline people as abrasive, etc, as the evangelicals? Well, perhaps, nobody competes to rule a ghost town. Another is that what created the separation in the first place was the massive feminization of the mainline churches, even before women were being ‘ordained.’ Purity, the ethic of main fundamentalist groups, often leads to arrogance, abrasiveness, argumentation, division, and many other nastinesses. Tossing away purity leads easily to tolerance and then pluralism, and so to a complete lack of real identity. Great. No improvement there, but it sure feels alot more soothing.

Each group has maintained cardinal virtues; unity has been championed by the Roman Catholics, both in time and across time; collegial respect is actually the preserve of the Orthodox; purity in doctrine (and attempted purity of thought and deed) is the province of fundamentalists; evangelicals more broadly have embraced vigorous activity; mainline protestants have chosen ‘playing nice with others’ – gentleness, tolerance, etc. Each has had to largely abandon the virtues the others held to most dearly. It takes too much effort.

This is most clear with the fundamentalists because Purity is the most demanding standard. However, the others have their own purity codes – just not for doctrine. Purity in unity – togetherness at all costs. Purity in tolerance – unwilling to accept any judgments – an often commented on seeming paradox that isn’t a paradox at all.

Can I agree that some mythical ‘center’ is the place to be? Not really. To need all these virtues doesn’t mean we can dump purity – and purity by definition doesn’t compromise. We need absolute unity under an absolute doctrinal standard with no concession to being rude or unjust and a willingness to serve each other. Seems unachievable, but that’s the calling.

It isn’t well served by this breathless embrace of just another failed strategy at ‘being the church.’

They flocked to Him while the going was good. As soon as they figured out what He was about,they left Him in a N.Y. minute.

Who was left with Him at the cross? One or two of His disciples and His Mother. The disciples were probably only there because she was there.

We aren’t much different than they were. Dying, for us, just doesn’t seem to be at the top of our ‘to do’ list. Selling evrything we have and following Him just seems a bit too radical. Crossing into the bad side of town and eating with drug users and prostitutes isn’t our idea of a nice relaxing weekend.

Our personal holiness comes about when He gives it to us, at our baptism, and in His supper. If we have to somehow rise to the level of personal holiness by being obedient to His commands, well…it aint’t gonna happen.

I do agree with you, Ragmuffin, that we stray to either end of the spectrum far too easily.
Instead we ought look to the center, which is Christ and His work for us. The center is anchored in Word and sacrament, lest we get too uppity and smug in what WE are doing for God, for others, or for ourselves.

The center is the place of death, and of ressurection. A daily dying to the self, and being raised again to new life by the forgiveness of sins for Jesus’ sake.

It’s not an easy life. But it is one of freedom. Freedom from ‘religion’, and freedom for the neighbor, without having to look over our shoulder at a beetle-browed diety that demands performance.

To me, that’s the center of the Christian faith.

Thanks Ragmuffin.

– Steve

It’s funny. Jesus was never shy about telling people about the ugly reality of sin, even pointing out that His law, while certainly having an outward dimension, goes deeper to a person’s motives (such as adultery not just being about not having intercourse with someone other than your spouse, but the lusts from which such actions spring). Yet at the same time He was calling people to repentance and personal holiness, so many people didn’t recoil and feel beaten down and unwelcome. They flocked to Him, drawn in by the warmth of His love and wanted to be around him (not something you can often say for modern conservative Christians.) Yet down here in the 21st century, we try to choose one aspect of His character and virtually ignore the other.

That’s simply not an option.

A few months ago Wall Street Journal’s Taste Page had a book review about “The Social Gospel”, the early form of what you refer to as “liberal” and “God…working for justice”. (I’ve experienced the fermented form of it in the “Social Justice Movement” of the early Eighties, when it became Marxism with a Christian coat of paint before Pope John Paul shut it down.)

One line from the book review stuck with me: “They ended up with a Gospel without personal salvation.”

And we’ve also seen the reaction to it, from Fundamentals of the Faith in the Twenties to Left Behind: A Gospel of personal salvation and ONLY Personal Salvation.
(See “Wretched Urgency”, “Leave Your Seat, Leave Your Sin”, and “Marriage Made in Hell” in the IMonk archives.)

Well, of course they’re not going to argue about doctrine once they’ve decided that doctrine isn’t something churches really need to have. — Josh S

Then, just like “Non-denominational Denomination”, they have “Non-doctrinal Doctrine”, i.e. a Doctrine that states “We Need No Doctrine”.

Looking for the “church” under the guidance of a bishop who blatantly denies the resurrection is looking for something else entirely. — IMonk re Spong

Yeah, that does kind of defeat the whole purpose of the exercise…