spacer

Three Way News

Your Source. For everything. Really.

Contributors

Current Poll

Best comic strip?

  • Bloom County
  • Boondocks
  • Calvin and Hobbes
  • Dilbert
  • Doonesbury
  • Far Side
  • Foxtrot
  • Get Fuzzy
  • Life in Hell
  • Peanuts
  • Pearls Before Swine
  • Pogo
  • Zippy the Pinhead
  
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Recurring features

Hammer's Favorites

Jambo's Favories

Sunday, July 30, 2006

Amen, as they say

Posted by: Jambo / 12:12 AM

It would be nice if this was part of a trend.

MAPLEWOOD, Minn. — Like most pastors who lead thriving evangelical megachurches, the Rev. Gregory A. Boyd was asked frequently to give his blessing — and the church’s — to conservative political candidates and causes.

...

After refusing each time, Mr. Boyd finally became fed up, he said. Before the last presidential election, he preached six sermons called “The Cross and the Sword” in which he said the church should steer clear of politics, give up moralizing on sexual issues, stop claiming the United States as a “Christian nation” and stop glorifying American military campaigns.

...

Mr. Boyd says he is no liberal. He is opposed to abortion and thinks homosexuality is not God’s ideal. The response from his congregation at Woodland Hills Church here in suburban St. Paul — packed mostly with politically and theologically conservative, middle-class evangelicals — was passionate. Some members walked out of a sermon and never returned. By the time the dust had settled, Woodland Hills, which Mr. Boyd founded in 1992, had lost about 1,000 of its 5,000 members. But there were also congregants who thanked Mr. Boyd, telling him they were moved to tears to hear him voice concerns they had been too afraid to share.

...

Sermons like Mr. Boyd’s are hardly typical in today’s evangelical churches. But the upheaval at Woodland Hills is an example of the internal debates now going on in some evangelical colleges, magazines and churches. A common concern is that the Christian message is being compromised by the tendency to tie evangelical Christianity to the Republican Party and American nationalism, especially through the war in Iraq.

...

Mr. Boyd lambasted the “hypocrisy and pettiness” of Christians who focus on “sexual issues” like homosexuality, abortion or Janet Jackson’s breast-revealing performance at the Super Bowl halftime show. He said Christians these days were constantly outraged about sex and perceived violations of their rights to display their faith in public.

“Those are the two buttons to push if you want to get Christians to act,” he said. “And those are the two buttons Jesus never pushed.”

I've been waiting a long time to hear that last point made more publicly. You can count on one hand the number of times The Bible references abortion or homosexuality, and only one of them (I think) is in the New Testament. Yet Jesus spoke often of taking care of the poor and making peace with your enemies. How is it so many "Christians" seem to miss that?

4 Comments:

That's not bad. There has been an awful lot of exposed underwear the last decade or so, I wonder if there is a connection?

By Blogger Jambo, at 1:11 PM  

Unless, of course, you are Captain Underpants.

By Blogger Hammer, at 1:29 PM  

My girls have yet to come across those books yet. Do they get the Hammer seal of approval?

By Blogger Jambo, at 3:48 PM  

I dunno. I thought CU was just OK. It's a fun idea. Big Sister Hammer didn't seem to like it. Little Sister Hammer only liked when CU says, "Tra La Laaaa".

By Blogger Hammer, at 8:19 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home

Blogroll

Special Feeds

Fun with Google

Search Tools

Technorati

Google

3WN WWW

Prior posts

  • Cool kind of games
  • Ah, that old Bush magic!
  • Hot enough for ya?
  • Principles
  • Makeover Mark Kennedy: Not a party guy
  • How to improve Iraqi security in one easy step
  • Overly fair in poll results
  • I'll have what he's having
  • More presidential fucking with science
  • Archives

    • Gone for now

    This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours? Site Meter Get Firefox!