A month after Barack Obama’s presidential win, I found myself at a table with progressive Christian leaders; including figures from Obama’s religious outreach and transition teams, as well as some of the East Coast’s most important theologians, seminary presidents, and faith consultants. Our task: To determine how religion could continue to best serve progressive politics.
I was thrilled to join this conversation. But by its end I couldn’t shake the feeling that despite Obama’s victory, progressive religion had played into the hands of the religious right and furthered the fundamentalist takeover of our political process. I remember exactly when it happened. Someone asked the following question: “We’ve been talking about progressive religion for hours, but what about being progressive about religion? They’re not the same thing.”
I’ve come to believe that progressive religion isn’t good enough for our nation. Instead, we need a shift in paradigm. We need to become progressive about religion. But what does that mean? It doesn’t mean atheism or secularization. It doesn’t mean progressive Christianity or progressive religion of any one tradition. None of these options are progressive enough.
In these reflections, I want to think differently. My comments, I admit, speak of a reality that doesn’t yet exist. They’re expressions of desire, of how I’d like us to imagine the future of religion in the United States and abroad. Here’s my argument in a nutshell: Being progressive about religion means moving from a multi-religious nation toward a nation of multi-religious individuals. Let me explain.
Our Religious Situation
The United States lives two religious realities: In our makeup as a people, we’re at the forefront of religious development. But we’re at the tail end when it comes to how our politics handles religion.
We’re at the forefront because we’re the most religious people among the rich industrial nations. We’re also the world’s most religiously diverse nation, with a dizzying array of Christianities, more Muslims than Episcopalians or Presbyterians, more Jews than Israel, and thriving communities of Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Wiccans, Santeros, and others. And befitting a nation where 27 percent of the population says “I do” to religiously-mixed marriages, we’ve elected the first president that embodies the diversity of our make-up. The United States enjoys a level of religious effervescence second to none.
We’re at the tail end, however, because our religious diversity vanishes when it comes in contact with our political culture and process. We’ve become a country that actually requires its politicians to take openly Christian positions if they are to be successful, a country that sets up what I call “Christian litmus tests” for candidates running for office, a country that is unwilling to accept an agnostic, atheist, or non-Christian president. As David Domke and Kevin Coe write in their book The God Strategy: How Religion Became a Political Weapon in America, “politicians need not always walk the religious walk, but they had better be able to talk the religious talk.” And that talk is Christian.
We need to find, in the chasm between our makeup and our politics, a different way to think about religion, as well as a different way of being religious—for us and for the world.
Obstacles: Progressive Christianity and New Atheism
The Christian Right is an obvious obstacle to the emergence of a new way of thinking about religion and being religious. Less obvious is the fact that both progressive Christianity and the new atheism are obstacles as well. They too contribute to the ruling fundamentalism.
How? The Christian right develops religious arguments against gay rights, reproductive rights, social security, and other topics. In response, progressive Christians develop opposing religious arguments. The end result is to make our political culture even more religious, and to legitimize a preeminent role for argument from Christian principles. Now both the Republican and the Democratic Parties stress religion; now both the right and the left speak in Christian terms.
Atheism is no help either. In a world that’s becoming more religious rather than less, atheism can’t be the answer. Advocates of atheism remain tied to the discredited secularization thesis, making them a minority condemned to insignificance except within circles ever more out of touch with global reality. In addition, their strident tone feeds the culture wars and strengthens the right’s belief that Christianity is under siege.
Being progressive about religion requires rescuing the best of atheism and progressive Christianity while discarding their mistakes. From atheists, I’d rescue the commitment to reason. Like them, I’m unwilling to abdicate the use of my rational capacity in the name of faith. Unlike atheists, however, I don’t believe religions are false. Billions of people practice religions; in that sense they’re true. Billions of people believe in God; in that sense God does exist. Religions are true, but they’re not sacred. We need to be as self-reflective and critical of religion as we are of any other part of life.
From progressive Christians, I’d rescue the commitment to progressive understandings of faith and politics. But I’d reject their reliance on the Bible and Jesus. Here they are no different from the religious right, picking and choosing what suits them while ignoring what doesn’t.
Instead: Multi-Religiosity
In a time when religions have literally set the world on fire, we can’t settle for a more progressive Christianity or atheism as the alternatives to fundamentalism. Neither does justice to the United States’ status as the world’s most influential nation. Instead, being progressive about religion should mean taking the logic of religious diversity to its ultimate conclusion and fostering the conditions to create multi-religious individuals.
What’s involved? The United States is currently a multi-religious nation, and a nation that individuals of a variety of religions peacefully co-exist within. But we’re rarely multi-religious individuals: individuals who belong to more than one religion. We still think of religions as closed worlds, sovereign states zealously guarding their territorial boundaries. People aren’t allowed to belong to more than one religion or to borrow the ideas and practices of another without feeling like they’re traitors to their faith.
But religions need not be viewed as mutually exclusive and monolithic structures. Instead, they can be resources to tinker with and borrow from. We’re usually born into a religion, but as human beings all of them are our inheritance. To embrace this view is to become a multi-religious individual, someone who draws from more than one religious tradition to forge a spiritual path. This understanding of religion has scholarly basis. The boundaries between religions were often the creation of specific political interests. They have a time and place of birth. They’re not always as natural and obvious as we’ve come to believe.
Moreover, if everyone from the right to the left of the religious-political spectrum is picking and choosing some parts of Christianity while ignoring and rejecting others, why stay within one religion in the process? If the Bible is so suspect that large parts of it need to be ignored, why not open the process to picking from many religions as well? “What religions do you recommend?” or “what parts of a religion do you recommend?” sound like strange questions. But if we imagine the ability to pick and choose from different religions, then it’s a question future generations will be asking. To practice more than one religion (or better yet, to build a religious life with elements from different religions) is to tear down the walls between faiths that makes fundamentalism possible.
We already have some of the necessary requirements: an immense curiosity for all things religious, a diverse religious population that often enters into interreligious marriage, a growing percentage of people who change faiths, a growing number of people in the “spiritual but not religious” category (and so find themselves outside of traditional institutional boundaries); and we’re part of a process of globalization that shrinks distances and blurs boundaries, bringing even the most foreign of practices to our TV screens and shores.
But if people are going to pick and choose elements of different religions, they need to be given the tools to be able to do so. Stephen Prothero, in his Religious Literacy: What Every American needs to Know—and Doesn’t warned of our widespread ignorance of the world’s religions. We need to ask ourselves what it would take to become the most religiously literate nation on earth. We need to ask ourselves what kind of education in religion makes multi-religiosity possible and what kind of understanding of the separation of church and state provides its best framework.
In God is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith will Change the World, John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge open their book with a Bible study scene that one assumes is set in a part of the country known for its megachurches (Glendale, Arizona, perhaps; or Louisville, Kentucky); except its Shanghai. The ability to shape ways of thinking beyond our own borders is called “soft power” in foreign policy circles, and provides a vivid example of why what we do with religion on our soil is so important. What if we could develop an approach to religion that involved delving into them all?
Tags: atheism, christian right, progressive, religion, secularism
I totally agree, and - in fact - this is an approach which has been around for quite some time. From the Srimad Bhagavatam, an old Hindu text: "Like the bee gathering honey from different flowers, the wise man accepts the essence of different scriptures and sees only the good in all religions."
That said, of course you've opened a big old can of worms. :-)
Are you sure the world is becoming more religious rather than less? In this country atheism has doubled in the last couple decades. It may still be insignificant as you say, but that can change. The number of atheists didn't increase much in the Bush years, but he did set the stage for the number to quickly double again now that he is out of office. If you look at the history of religion, we seem to now be in a period where people are religious, but the ultimate value of religion has never been more questionable. There may be some value in searching for value in various progressive religions, but there is more value in pointing out the contradictions and dealing with the damage caused by conservative religions.
I disagree that there is "more value in pointing out the contradictions" of conservative religions. That's what's going on now, as the original editorial indicated (and as we all know from our own exposure to the "culture wars"). The finger-pointing leads to argument, and the argument leads to further schism. This is obviously not what we want, and a complete change of tack is eventually necessary.
Not pointing out the contradictions 10 years ago has only led to more and bigger contradictions. Schism would be a good thing since lack of schism is what led us to the lockstep Christian Republican voting block.
No - schism is what created the "lockstep Christian Republican voting block." The more they (or any other combative minority culture) feel they are "under attack," the more they circle and regroup as a unified front. Come at them from all sides, and what you've created is a self-righteous island community in a vast sea of perceived animosity. If, on the other hand, you don't attack at all, they're not "surrounded," and have nowhere to go but outward.
They were not under attack when they joined together to attack President Clinton. They were influenced by Newt and perhaps some talk radio. They read left behind novels, and linked with the party of the rich to elect a president. They are under attack now because we can see the results of not attacking them sooner.
They've been under attack at least since 1998-1999, during the first "Evolutionary War" in Kansas. I'm willing to bet that even in the 1920's as the fundamentalist culture as we now know it was sprouting, it encountered its first opponents and organized to "defend" itself. This gulf in Christian culture (or subculture) is not really a recent one; the Left Behind series merely widens a gap which already existed.
The evolutionary war is over, although not everyone knows it yet. The basics were laid down by 150 years of fossil research, but now we have the DNA evidence that can show 100 times more clearly there is a branching tree of common ancestory between all life on earth. The only way to question now is to reject science. The creationists were not under attack until Bush came to power. Science had been trying to ignore the creationists, but in the last few years they were finally forced to engage and the result was an explosion of filling in the gaps and explaining all the creationist objections, and of course that looming overwhelming DNA sequencing evidence.
While I agree that, for the most part, science ignored creationists (and intelligent designers, like Darwin on Trial in the 1980's) for as long as possible, that doesn't mean the group(s) behind creationism weren't already divided from the mainstream at that point. They already existed by the time of Bush's election; they're just more vocal and more vehement now, because we've prodded them into being so. It's one group's response to another group that causes - or alleviates - the widening gaps between them.
PS ~ what a strange and off-topic remark. Did I say somewhere that evolution wasn't scientific fact? No need to argue that with me. And fundamentalist groups have been rejecting science for much longer than merely since the onset of genetic research.
Sorry, I guess you didn't say evolution wasn't scientific fact, but you did bring up the evolution topic and that provided an opportunity to state the most important fact that the new genetic sequencing capabilities provide a better, far more powerful way to tell creationists their theories are not science, and leave them with no way to respond, so I thank you for that opening.
I have to question you about the timing of the gap. I think Bush provided them the cover to become more vocal, and they took the opportunity, and now if anything they are becoming slightly less vocal because they are starting to see the danger of their position.
But can we truly pick and choose religious ideas from the various traditions? I'm not so sure.
Let's put aside the whole problem of taking them out of context.
To channel Paul Tillich here for a second, faith is the experience of being grasped by a power greater than oneself. Can we just grab the religious ideas we like and have a vibrant faith?
Sociologically, maybe the point is that we do that already.
Theologically, maybe the point is that these ideas have already grasped us, and so it makes sense to try to meld them together, somehow.
And yet. I'm not so sure we can do the grabbing. It's not that simple.
As a religious progressive, I think there is a danger in being merely "progressive about religion." Namely, I think it makes a religion of our own progressivism. Speaking only for myself, I'm after the exact opposite of that.
My progressivism is an implication of my faith. To say that my faith ought to be an extension of my progressivism is to misunderstand both.
Perhaps religion should be more like science, keep an open mind, research everything, reject what is disproven and build on that which is proven, and never set up ultimate authorities who can't be questioned. Perhaps a scientific approach is the only way to a better religion.
Jim, I think American intellectual history is on your side here.
This sounds like Pragmatism, a la Dewey and William James -- an important philosophical underpinning for 20th century American social and political progressivism. So the intellectual pedigree of such an approach is impeccable.
But I guess the challenge is that faith actually is about ultimate authority at some point. I'm not sure that can be avoided, or should be.
That said, questioning authority is an important expression of religion, in my book. My feeling is that religion at its best offers us a way to do so responsibly....and with humility.
Part of what can make religion toxic is that we use its rhetoric of ultimacy to dress up our own concerns -- we seek to give ourselves power through it, rather than using it as a corrective that reveals the ambiguity of our own motives.
In theological terms, maybe what religious progressivism needs is a more coherent account of theological anthropology -- aka, what it means to be human in God's universe.
But within that framework, a scientific openness to truth could be very helpful for such a project.
That is a lot to absorbe for one post.
"questioning authority is an important expression of religion"
I think God allows us to question authority, even His. It can't hurt to question.
"religion at its best offers us a way to do so responsibly....and with humility."
I can go along with responsibly, but religious people can make it hard to do with humility.
"Part of what can make religion toxic is that we use its rhetoric of ultimacy to dress up our own concerns -- we seek to give ourselves power through it, rather than using it as a corrective that reveals the ambiguity of our own motives."
Can that use of religious rhetoric be used by both those supporting the religion, and those questioning? This might be a useful technique.
"what it means to be human in God's universe"
Or what it means to be human in society. Religion is the process of society becoming the people's God. It is always dangerous if we forget that.
You say, "Religion is the process of society becoming the people's God," and treat it as though it's a well-established fact. I don't think that's true. I'd argue that religion is, conceptually, the combined and ritualized response of humanity to inspiration; or, on a much more fundamental (pure) level, religion is the unconditioned and unconceptualized response to inspiration. I think it would be more correct to have said "morality is the process of society becoming the people's God."
Is religion of the individual, or of the group? I don't think it can be both, so we probably need two different words to describe these two different things, and I don't know what they are. The only thing that could combine individual religion and group religion would be God, and I don't think He shows any interest in that.
Thank you for putting into words what I could not. I think you are saying something very important.
Faith is not just belief; it is an experience, and the determination to live in the light of that experience. Most genuine faith experiences involve awe, humility, and the acknowledgment of something greater than ourselves. Picking and choosing seems to contradict that experience. Choosing is a more deliberate, intellectual process. I would suggest that in a real faith experience, one does not choose; one gets chosen. At least, that's how it feels.
Without that sense of being connected to something greater, religion (which is, I think, a collection of culturally derived rituals designed to facilitate faith experiences) is ceremony that lacks a core; that is, it lacks the experiential element. Then, religion becomes policy rather than an expression of transcendence.
I think it's one thing to be able to enjoy the beauty of many traditions, cultures, texts, and so on. But when we adopt bits and pieces taken from complex, sometimes ancient traditions, we are guilty of cultural appropriation. We take them out of context, and thereby usually misunderstand them, quite often violating cultural boundaries in the process. Just ask members of American First Nations, traditional yogis from the Indian subcontinent, and Jews.
I must also ask, is this not just another example of our western culture of the self? Isn't the communal aspect of religious life jettisoned, and individuals alienated from one another, if we're all doing our own thing, to borrow a worn-out phrase from a bygone era?
Basya, excellent point. We certainly must be careful that being "multireligious" isn't just an excuse for us to be more egoist. There's a danger of building the religion around ourselves, making us each a carefully crafted and autonomous "unit." I think, however, that there is much to be gained if the idea is approached from the other side: we start from our true (ie, real) spiritual experience, and find the portions of the many religions which best express that truth.
Japanese culture has long found it comfortable to mix Buddhism, Shinto, and Confucianism - and sometimes other religions too.
In the US, we may have a Christian majority, but a very significant part of the Christian population believes things that a generation ago would have defined one as non-Christian - e.g., karma, reincarnation, kabbalah, and so on.
American Catholics include a huge ratio of cafeteria Catholics, who decide they'll follow the Church on some things while accepting humanist positions on some other things and Protestant ideas on yet others.
And, of course, Unitarian Universalism, among its many strands, includes a variety of Interfaith that amounts to universal cafeteria syncretism.
It's no trouble becoming more multifaith in our outlook. The trouble is wresting the power away from people who would control us out of existence.
"control us out of existence?" what do you mean?
"We’re also the world’s most religiously diverse nation . . . "
Wrong. We are overwhelmingly Christian. If we are diverse at all, we are a diversity of Christianities. An analysis that cannot see this is wrong from the get go . . .
At least we have invented the most Christianities.
The challenge is that we are both.
Yes, we remain overwhelmingly Christian, with a diversity of Chrisitianities contending with one another in a very internal kind of conversation. We need to acknowledge that. But we are also the world's most religiously diverse nation. And we need to acknowledge that, too.
In an earlier day, there was a sense that there were two religious "options" in the U.S.: "Christian" and "Other." There was also a corresponding sense of "never the twain shall meet."
Well...they met. Working out what that means now is tricky. And working out what it should mean is even trickier.
maxwell, i think you're exactly right - that's the key question.
We're overwelmingly "undecided," according to all the studies. This one says that "71% say they are more likely to develop my religious beliefs on my own, rather than to accept an entire set of beliefs that a particular church teaches."
Everyone I know says that, but they also all follow the group when it comes to doctrine and beliefs and a majority on voting.
perhaps. but the point is less what we do and what we should be doing. it's all debatable of course, but it strikes me that the piece is trying to get us to think about what religion could be in the future, and the US's role in creating that future. the link you're responding to suggests that there is a starting point for what's being imagined.
The US always wants to take the lead in creating the future. In recent times we have been more religious and stronger believers than Europe. Now that we are becoming more non-believer, I don't think we have any choice but to become even more non-believer than Europe so that we can get back out in front and lead them again.
In 1963, I tried to convince a sophisticated Calcutta audience that it was time to re-export that 19th-century Indian idea that all paths lead up the same mountain -- and that better climbers had learned that. Fundamentalist and strong religions, of course, insist that only one true path exists. I proposed calling this meta-theology.
http://web.me.com/rtapp4/Main/G_files/rk107RIzoning_web.pdf
Whatever we call it, such a religious literacy can be both liberating and humanizing.
Assuming the motion carries, how does it capture, inspire, motivate, change, the culture, society, you, me or our neighbors?
Thomas Payne wrote material that struck fire in the hearts of those who heard or read what he said. Could it be the tinder only needed a strike from Payne’s flint and steel?
Martin Luther's material sounds like a well reasoned blog rant rather than fraternal discussion in the faculty lounge.
Could it be that it was time for their ideas?
We sound like we are filing a legal brief or offering a proposal at a board meeting while secretly hoping for a great awaking. Something tells me we have a long wait.
time for martin luther's ideas? i don't get what you're trying to say.
Thank you for asking.
We don't get revolution, revival, change, even notice if ideas remain paper works for discussion. Ideas, revolutionary ideas that truly define change, ignite the minds and hearts of people and move them to action do so because those ideas have been in the minds and hearts of folks all along. They wait, the ideas, vague feelings, desires, call them what you will, like tinder, for a spark from someone to give them life. And, when they do, an Obama becomes president. Faith takes a new shape and becomes a life force. Rationalism without heart and hands, without passion and action will be left at a chilly distance from the decision making.
This is just a discussion on a side issue. The real issue is still American Christianity has been captured by the conservative party of the rich. What can we do to save them?
"How do we save them.?"
I have hung out with some of these folks who I think would qualify as people who practice what you have termed " American Christianity." Actually, I did this more than I may have wanted to and for reasons I didn't necessarily like. But, I haven’t seen to many American Christians ( and I'm assuming you are talking about the tea bag types) that want to be saved. The ones I've dealt with want control of the system not deliverance from a captor.
I like your “ American Christianity.” I wonder if AC is more of a derivative of Christianity than it is Christianity. My experience of what I think your talking about is more of a calcified structure within an institution. But, I would prefer you tell me what AC means than me try to guess.
I think it’s going to be a hard thing to “save them.”
Basically, when I left the cloister of the religious cocoon, both church and university and took my chances in the big wide world what I found was the street version of pragmatic materialism a.k.a business informing the life and times of the people who spend their hour in the “church of you choice” on Sundays. The watch words seems to be accumulate, protect and control.
If you get bored, try the text, “sell all that you have and give to the poor.” Luke 18:24. Let me know how that sermon plays out.
If they knew they needed salvation the problem would already be solved.
American Christianity is about how Christianity here is different from elsewhere.
The majority of American Christians reject evolution as opposed to the majority of other Christians who believe in the science.
Zionism has been growing here for some time. We think our religion is the best way for us to manage the world, and our foremost authorities on the issue feel we should be helping set the stage for end times. This became an opening for some of the super religious to write the highly successful Left Behind series of books and childrens books and movies. As American Christianity grows and developes, we have more megachurches and television programs and television networks, and of course the Prosperity Gospel is the logical outcome of that large of an audience. That large and dedicated audience was an attractive target for the American party of the rich which in our democracy is always in need of a voting block beyond those few voters who are rich, and always in the market to buy some souls.
American Christianity is also different from how Christianity was here a couple generations ago. The roots of Zionism and Creationism were here, but they were small and didn't flourish until the mass media solidified its control.
Not all American Christians are happy about these directions, but the religion doesn't police itself. The rest put up with these things, and that makes them all just a part of the American spectrum.
American Christianity can't spread to the rest of the world. We might have a hard time seeing how we are different from them, but it is easy for them to see the difference, and they also see the results so now that we have gone there, they know better what to avoid.
I got a head start on you. I got the "joy" of watching/living the life of folks who were once called "moderates". (By know I'm sure that same position is called liberal) find themselves marginalized by what got called fundamentalists. When the late Jerry Falwell spoke the Silent Majority into becoming the Moral Majority the race was on.
The battle, at least for me pre-dates the world of the Left Behind series.
You will get a chuckle out of this, The Late and Great Planet Earth was a textbook when I was in the seminary. We thought it quaint. None of us would have ever dreamed at the time we were holding a time bomb in our hands. Such is the illusion of being a part of the group who assume themselves to be the establishment.
You sound like you are either in seminary or attuned to contemporary Christian trends. My question. Does anyone talk about Biblical preaching anymore? I find the Bible used more as a pretext than a text. There seems to be little concern with finding the meaning of a text then and bringing that meaning forward for now.
In fact, the article we are posting under councils tossing the whole thing out. But, for a "good" Baptist boy I might wait a day or two before I do that. :-) I mean, to take my guide from the "latest research." is almost a comical request. So, tell me. Is Biblical preaching a discussion anymore?
Before you have Biblical preaching, you must decide who the preachers are. When I was young I joined a cult, Armstrongism. They did a good job of showing what was wrong with all other religions, and then as a parting gift they reveled the flaws in their own religion.
"Moderates" is a great term. It recalls a former era. Back then we had the Vietnam war. Perhaps we can learn something by contrasting it to the current Iraq war. Politics of the cold war was to blame for Vietnam. We were balancing the power with our friends, the Russians. The war divided our nation and the hippies dominated the moderates in the culture war. The one good thing about Vietnam was we avoided total thermonuclear exchange.
The Iraq war unlike Vietnam can be blamed on Christianity. The moderates were weak, but the moral majority was strong, and it takes a powerful religion to generate the support required for senseless war. There might be nothing we can do about that moral majority, but we can watch them destroy themselves, and that should mean the world can once again avoid ultimate war.
i agree with the author. as long as the focus remains christianity, the religious right wins. all it does is make our political culture more christian. fighting for christianity is fine and all, but in the end a short term measure. in the long term its playing the game by the rules of the religious right.
They won't win. In fact, they have already lost. People are starting to see through them, and that is a one way street. Nobody rejects them, and then later decides maybe God does support the wars and torture and greed of the rich and vanity of the zionists, maybe God doesn't want empathy and support for progressive causes, so they decide to return to the Christian right. The next generation will have a clear vision of all this.
You can also see it in these discussions and others like it on the web. These things were said virtually never until about 3 years ago, and now they are out in the open on progressive sites. That can't be stopped, it will only continue to spread through other forms of the media.
The religious right has lost, and now the only open question is how much damage they will cause on the way down.
"the true victory occurs when the enemy talks your language. In this sense, a true victory is a victory in defeat: it occurs when one's specific message is accepted as a universal framework, even by the enemy." Zizek, In Defense of Lost Causes, p.189
As an American I will not accept anything less than a secular government. Practice anything you want in your own home but keep it out of my life.
Don't you mean "anything other than a secular government"? Don't automatically assume a non-secular government is somehow "less" than a secular one.
Absolutely right! As an Israeli that lives in America I know how screwed up it would get. God forbid you ever have government that tries to become religious to any degree or in any way messes up with separation of church and state. Life would become a real nightmare.
It is ironic that the kind of multi-religious syncretic communities that you advocate existed in India before purists started forcing people to choose sides. The situation is described here: hindu-muslim
here's the real problem with the article
"In a time when religions have literally set the world on fire, we can’t settle for a more progressive Christianity or atheism as the alternatives to fundamentalism."
so, they wish to have a multi-faith culture and individuals
and yet imaging accomplishing this by picking from their flavour of xtianity and giving it a veneer of athiesm
and ignoring all other religions
the problem with these progressive xtians is that they aren't any different than the usual sort - only less honest
you cannot cherry pick rationality from atheism and then don't take the religions are false - because rationality leads you to that conclusion if you are intellectually honest
i don't think the point is to ignore all other religions, quite the contrary. the seems to be to draw from all of them.
I got a head start on you. I got the "joy" of watching/living the life of folks who were once called "moderates". (By know I'm sure that same position is called liberal) find themselves marginalized by what got called fundamentalists. When the late Jerry Falwell spoke the Silent Majority into becoming the Moral Majority the race was on.
The battle, at least for me pre-dates the world of the Left Behind series.
You will get a chuckle out of this, The Late and Great Planet Earth was a textbook when I was in the seminary. We thought it quaint. None of us would have ever dreamed at the time we were holding a time bomb in our hands. Such is the illusion of being a part of the group who assume themselves to be the establishment.
You sound like you are either in seminary or attuned to contemporary Christian trends. My question. Does anyone talk about Biblical preaching anymore? I find the Bible used more as a pretext than a text. There seems to be little concern with finding the meaning of a text then and bringing that meaning forward for now.
In fact, the article we are posting under councils tossing the whole thing out. But, for a "good" Baptist boy I might wait a day or two before I do that. :-) I mean, to take my guide from the "latest research." is almost a comical request. So, tell me. Is Biblical preaching a discussion anymore?
up like I just did. My apologizes to the IT dept. for adding junk to the server.
??
nice piece. i wonder whether our current understanding of the separation of church and state would have to change to make room for this. or whether this view could fit within it.
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