Reading Time: 7 minutes In the spring a Gen X blogger’s fancy lightly turns to this year’s Annual Meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). In election years, these meetings get extra-exciting for observers of this embattled denomination. And this year’s election is going to be extra-dextra-exciting, because it occurs during one of the SBC’s schisms. This year, the Old Guard and Pretend Progressives will clash for temporary ownership of the SBC. Winner takes all. Today, let’s meet the two candidates offered up by the Old Guard.
Denominations
Posted inCulture
Culture warriors just wrecked an old denomination
Reading Time: 7 minutes In 2012, the RCA began to break apart over homosexuality. One faction –the more mainline end — wanted inclusion. The other — the culture warriors — wanted to the denomination to be bigots-for-Jesus. That breakup completed this month, with 43 congregations full of culture warriors leaving. They’re joining a new denomination, ARC (Alliance of Reformed Churches). All this, over a culture war evangelicals lost over a decade ago!
Posted inReligion
John Ortberg: The Scandal That Just Keeps Getting Worse
Reading Time: 9 minutes Recently, yet another megapastor lost his cushy gig due to scandal. John Ortberg battled against this inevitable conclusion for weeks, but yesterday he finally resigned (effective August 2nd). This scandal’s got a lot of similarities to the ones we’ve seen erupting out of evangelicalism like the angriest volcano ever — so I wanted to look at it today. Today, let’s examine John Ortberg’s scandal — and see what it tells us about that end of Christianity.
Posted inReligion
One Denomination to Rule Them All (Won’t Happen)
Reading Time: 10 minutes Hi and welcome back! Lately, we’ve been reviewing a classic 2005 evangelical book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience. In it, author Ronald J. Sider tried his darndest to convince evangelicals to start obeying their own rules. In this installment, I’ll show you a totally-out-of-left-field suggestion of his from Chapter 4. See, he wanted churches to […]
Posted inReligion
‘Tis the Season–for More Christian Infighting (LSP #74)
Reading Time: 7 minutes Nothing brings out the Christian love quite like Christmas. It’s that wonderful time of year when Christians fight over the proper-and-correct way to celebrate their favorite holiday. Gaudy entertainment meets sanctimonious simplified displays meets complete secularization in a Battle Royale to the finish! Come sit in the gladiatorial arena and watch the spectacle! Today, Lord Snow Presides over a whole different kind of tradition beloved by way too many Christians.
Posted inReligion
The Big Problem with Denominational Infighting.
Reading Time: 11 minutes I’m reading this weird little sermon transcript about “The Difference Between Calvinism and Reformed” and it’s making me think anew about the big problem with denominational fights: namely, that their proliferation and quarrels only illustrates the lack of validity for Christianity’s claims.
Posted inReligion
Post-Traumatic Church Syndrome: Reclaiming the Journey.
Reading Time: 7 minutes I’m reading this book, Post-Traumatic Church Syndrome by Reba Riley, and I wanted to talk about something that really sprang out at me about it that I thought y’all would find interesting.
Posted inReligion
When We Can’t Both Be Right
Reading Time: 10 minutes Sometimes it happens that two people have two completely opposing opinions about something. We can take identical lists of objective facts, filter them through a big variety of cultural conditioning, expectations, mores, and personal inclinations, and come out with an opinion that might totally differ from someone else with the same exact list of facts. […]
Posted inReligion
The Christian’s Field Guide to Ex-Christians: “Bad Christians”
Reading Time: 7 minutes I guess every single ex-Christian out there’s heard this one: “You just left because some ‘bad Christians’ made you upset!” The accusation is all but a joke to some of us by now, it’s so threadbare from overuse. I hope by the end of this entry to convince Christians of why that is a ridiculous […]