While I try to keep a level head most of the time, I’m going to fail tonight. I recently ran across one pastor’s blog that was being blasted by ultra conservative Evangelical spokespeople in the most incredibly rude ways without even trying to understand the pastor in question. There are some ultra conservative evangelical Christian blogs out there that really get me utterly (*delete rude word. Insert respectable word*) exasperated – when I bother to read them, that is.
I.e. I get the feeling that they write enough &%@§ to provide an adequate amount of 'raw material' to sufficiently supply for enough dung beetles to colonise the entire surface of Jupiter. Give a coin for every piece of ‘hermeneutic of hate’ rhetoric they write and you'd be a poor man. Gob in a valley every time they wrote something without knowing what the frigging heck they are talking about, you'd have Lake Phlegm within a month.
Ok, so that was all a bit over the top. I’m just being a grumpy sod because England lost to Germany. But it’s like they forget that they are talking about real people in their rants (‘much like me now’, says a tiny part of my conscience. ‘Oh shut the hell up. Germany won’, says another part – and I continue writing) They squeeze you into their little tinny brained and often totally inappropriate categories and blast you with all the poisonous venom they’ve got.
But I have often asked myself to what extent much of their rhetoric is due to heresy. Yes, the watchdogs of supposed orthodox evangelical beliefs – could they be infested with heresy? I fear so. A series that I should have linked to a long time ago is that of the sharp minded David Congdon: The Heresies of American Evangelicalism. It is quite a while ago that I read it, but I remember being impressed as ever with David's argumentation - even if I wasn’t too sure about his charge of an evangelical Pelagian Soteriology. Anyway, do give it a read.
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7 comments:
No, you're totally wrong Chris. England lost to Paul Robinson.
Chris,
Maybe if you weren't an apostate puppet of the unholy father in Rome and a friend of the new cult of neo-liberalism, you wouldn't feel so vitriolic toward ministries that do so much good in showing us who are True believers and who are hell-bound new-age lie-mongers. So there.
Also, maybe you should stop reading those blogs that you hate...it's not very productive and you should be ashamed of yourself (which ones do YOU like??? i know my favorite pariahs)
Mike
Let's face it, England are basically hopeless at football.
And by football you mean soccer, right? Everyone knows that football isn't actually played with feet. ;)
Probably it makes a difference when you don't actually name the people whose theological approach you are demonising. When you name people, they know for sure that it's you they're critiquing. When you don't, the people you're aiming at probably don't realise and others take offense because they have guilty consciences. :-)
Chris,
Thanks for your kind words! I actually think the Pelagian soteriology is the most solid of my claims. I'll admit that some of them do not apply as broadly as I make it seem, but the Pelagian (or at least semi-Pelagian) character of contemporary evangelicalism seems to be growing by the day. But maybe it's just an American thing.
Thanks JB, your words stopped me weeping for a while. Then Peter and Mike spoke up and I started crying again.
DW, I suspect it may well be an American thing ...
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