Surfing through the gap between Liberal and Conservative Christianity

Last Sunday was frustrating. I was trying to find a church to go to. I ended up at Hyde Park United Methodist Church. I looked at some more Progressive fellowships, but after looking at them on the web, I realized I wasn't ready for that yet. The Methodist service was okay, but the problem is that I'm looking for people more like myself, caught in the middle between Liberal and Conservative Christianity, and I don't know where to find them.

So this afternoon I took to the web. Not surprisingly, Google led me to Rachel Held Evans, and a blog post of hers titled Liberal Christianity, Conservative Christianity, and the Caught-In-Between. The post documents responses to her followers on Facebook that expressed a similar exasperation at not being able to find a place of worship where they weren't met with accusations of heresy or smug superiority.

But then Rachel mentioned that she tried to roll her own, so to speak, and that the experiment resulted in failure. I was intrigued, so I went out in search of more information. I found it in Christianity Today in an article entitled Rachel Held Evans Returns to Church. The article spoke of a fellowship called The Mission that was started in 2010, and appears to have lasted around four years, but apparently was plagued by financial issues and fell apart. And again I'm reminded of Leticia's maddening, crazy proposition that we start a church.

But then I got tripped up by almost a peripheral comment. I say almost, because I'm not sure how it fit in to the story about Evans yet, but it definitely resonated with me. And this was actually a reference from yet another article. So then I went to find that one. I found it at christandpopculture.com. Hannah Anderson posited that Evans and other post-evangelicals like her "are perpetuating the very things about evangelicalism that they profess to deplore." Though in truth I liked the way it was stated in Christianity Today better:

Evans and other young, progressive Christians sometimes react to culture-war flashpoints with as much declarative verve and binary categories as the leaders they're countering. The de facto response to one fundamentalism isn’t always nuance; often it’s just another fundamentalism.

Anderson's article points out that using politics as an evangelical tool to dispense morality is a relatively new phenomenon, and immediately my mind went to Jerry Falwell. The very name would cause most liberals to recoil, but I actually remember when Falwell was just a preacher. Our family listened to the Old Time Gospel Hour.

But back to Anderson's article for a moment. She really got me with this:

* * *

 In Religion in America, historians Winthrop S. Hudson and John Corrigan describe evangelicalism as:

a mood and an emphasis [more] than a theological system. Its stress was upon the importance of personal religious experience… it was a revolt against the notion that the Christian life involved little more than observing the outward formalities of religion.” (99)

Central to this identity is a strong emphasis on personal conversion in order to effect societal change.

* * *

This definition of evangelicalism is so good! And this explains how evangelicalism is trying to change society for the better! Such good intentions! How did we go so wrong?

I get Falwell's motivation to start the Moral Majority. I'm starting to understand how Liberals see the government as the way to represent not only their interests but their values as well, and it makes sense that Falwell would see things the same way. Use the government to further your beliefs and agenda. It actually makes sense. How did we go so wrong?

Critical thinking

Do I think critically? I think I do. I've looked at several different web resources this morning that talk about critical thinking, and several of them stated that nobody thinks critically 100% of the time.  The last one that I looked at that was useful was this one. And when I looked at this one, it seemed like I met most of the criteria.

How does that relate to Christianity though? I didn't question it. I mean I did, but there were some things that I didn't question until now. Well, that was part of the culture. I mean, there were times when my mind butted up against those boundaries, but I always shied away from them again, because that was just wrong. So, it was made into a moral issue. It was wrong, or a sin, to question certain things. Or it showed a lack of faith. Or it would lead to destruction, death, and hell.

Introverts and speaking

Came across this article. Not even sure how that happened. I apparently clicked on a bunch of links yesterday and am reviewing them this morning. I don't remember the context and don't feel like backtracking. But I think it explains a lot and I want to come back, read it again, and share it with others. But not right now.

Pagan Christianity

A couple of years ago, my father was experiencing some disillusionment with the local church. I was living in Maryland at the time, while he was in his native Port Arthur, TX. We had tried virtual studies before, with varying degrees of success. I wasn't sure what to do. I decided to look for books about why church is the way it is, and alternative models. The two books I ended up with were Simply Church by Tony and Felicity Dale, and Pagan Christianity, by Frank Viola and George Barna. The latter book was pretty provocative. It talked of how Christianity was altered by the its "legitimatization" from the Roman Empire to become something completely different, and not necessarily better.

At the time I was really pro small group, and had been feeling particularly critical of the fact that the generic modern church model is so different from what Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 14. I was thinking home church was the way to go. I don't know if my father mentioned it at the time, but one of the problems with the model is the potential lack of accountability and training, which can lead to serious abuse. My friend Leticia has told me that she has heard so many horror stories during her time as a counselor about small churches that twist the scriptures to impose their will on well-meaning but gullible parishioners. Home churches would probably be worse.  How do you find that happy medium between large institutions and small bodies of believers?

Open Letter to those who knew me at Radiant Church

I imagine that at least a few people are wondering why I am leaving. The decision may seem sudden, and in a way it was. But part of me never wanted to settle at Radiant anyway. We had narrowed our search down to three churches: Covenant Life, Radiant, and Relevant. I liked Covenant Life, but my wife voted for Radiant. I'm not sure that she liked Radiant herself, but she felt our daughters liked it. Our younger two daughters are not saved, and my wife felt that any place they liked would be that much better because there was more of a chance they would be saved through that ministry. I didn't agree. I felt we would play a greater role in their salvation than a church, and so we needed to go where we, the parents, would be growing the most. When I started doing production, the girls stopped coming. But that's not the real reason.

I was looking for fellowship. I was looking to connect. We've been moving around for the past 19 years, and the worst part of moving is having to find a church each time. And we've had the worst time here in Tampa. After being here for 9 months, there is not a single person in Tampa that I would call a friend. I can't blame Radiant for that, but Radiant really didn't help either. I joined the production team because I figured that would help. It did, but not as much as I was hoping.

But there's another reason beyond that. I've been a Christian my whole life. I was raised by strong Christian parents, steeped in the Campus Crusade for Christ movement. I feel like there's never been a time when I didn't know the Four Spiritual Laws. I was baptized when I was 7; I am 45 now. I am more than halfway through a Masters in Biblical Interpretation. But lately I have begun questioning the bible, my faith, and the church in a way that I never have before. And the answers that I'm coming up with aren't in keeping with the way I was raised, which was Baptist, followed by Pentecostalism as an adult. Some of the answers line up more with Progressive Christianity. Some of them don't line up anywhere. But my spiritual journey is leading me off the beaten path, and I'm not sure where I'll end up, but I doubt it will be Radiant Church.

Spanish words of the day

Today's words are:
asustar - to frighten
pesadilla - nightmare

Spanish word of the day

Cese del fuego - Cease fire. Also alto el fuego.