At Last Good News From Evangelicaland?
Actually, there are lots of good news stories if you look under the surface. However, this one from the NYT really caught my eye. Apparently, mega-church pastor Gregory A. Boyd has got himself in hot water (no baptism jokes please) for saying, of all things, that being evangelical doesn’t automatically make you a military-worshipping right-wing […]
Actually, there are lots of good news stories if you look under the surface. However, this one from the NYT really caught my eye. Apparently, mega-church pastor Gregory A. Boyd has got himself in hot water (no baptism jokes please) for saying, of all things, that being evangelical doesn’t automatically make you a military-worshipping right-wing conservative.
Wow!
OK, I’m being a little cynical, but the fact is my patience is a little low with the current state of evangelicalism these days. On a doctrinal level, my beliefs would land me in the middle of the bell curve of historical evangelicalism. But, if we take into account the today’s sociological reality, then thing don’t look so good, in fact they look scary (a few prior examples from this blog are here, here and here).
That’s why example’s like Pastor Boyd’s are so important. They are nothing less than signs that evangelicalism, or some future form of those current disatisfied and disenfranchised by evangelicalism (but not ready to jettison the doctrines), has hope, life and faith. Boyd has clearly, and insightfully articulated the idolatrous thrall that ensnares to many evangelicals today, especially in the US (something this blog has commented on before here, here and here). As Boyd put it,
“When the church wins the culture wars, it inevitably loses,” Mr. Boyd preached. “When it conquers the world, it becomes the world. When you put your trust in the sword, you lose the cross.”
This is powerful stuff, not just because it criticises the direction of much of evangelical “politics” today (and with it evangelical cultural hubris), but also because it helps to uncover the resentiment that I believe is the unamed force behind such approaches ( see On Fundamentalism and Resentiment). The rhetoric of the cultural wars always begins with a claim about cultural displacement and speaks from a position of how that “wounded” the church. Boyd, is turning that on it’s head and opening the doors for others to see how that resentiment is the real wound for the Church.
[tags] Evangelicalism, Resentiment, Ecclesiology [/tags]
