Christianity Today Magazine was founded to counter the liberalism of The Christian Century, but now it's become its self-loathing mirror image

The Korean American who wrote this story and fancies herself a person of color spends ZERO time, ZIP, ZILCH, NADA, contemplating the endemic racism of her home country against actual people of color, nor how the supposedly racist West's American heirs numbering over 36,000 bled and died so her home country could be free from communist tyranny, including about 3,400 African Americans.

Instead of fixing what's wrong with her own country she's here telling us what's wrong with ours, and Christianity Today wants you to know it.

Bunch of pompous ingrates.

 

 

Protestantism's missionary gospel of inclusive brotherhood has been self-annulling

From the review of Protestants Abroad: How Missionaries Tried to Change the World but Changed America, here:

As Hollinger notes, by the end of World War II, commentators such as Congregationalist leader Buell Gallagher were observing that the “gospel of inclusive brotherhood” that missionaries preached abroad had begun to return home like a boomerang to “smite the imperialism of white nations, as well as to confound the churches.” Many missionaries and their families who had been assigned a key role in converting the benighted darker races to Western ways had instead gained abroad an appreciation for cultural diversity and had come back to the United States to challenge “cultural imperialism and arrogant paternalism” and play a leading role in contesting white Protestant hegemony. Hollinger charts the intriguing flight of this boomerang. ... As he sees it, their greatest importance in the 20th century is to be found in the effects of a contradictory, potentially self-annulling belief system. 

These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. -- Matthew 10:5ff.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. -- Matthew 23:15

No one blamed Dylann Roof's race-war shooting on the "moderate" Christianity of ELCA-style Lutheranism?

So says an ELCA vicar from New York here:

Not pretending also means being honest about what is happening inside our churches. When Dylann Roof, a member of an ELCA congregation, murdered nine people at a historically black church last year, there were no talking heads asking moderate Christians to condemn the shooting, no protestors denouncing Christianity as anti-American. Not pretending means more than speaking out against the unfair treatment of others. It means holding ourselves to account, even when no one else will. It means not just speaking out against injustice in the world but also being honest about the racism and xenophobia in our own congregations. It means acknowledging that the brokenness of the world includes the church.

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How can anyone expect ELCA Lutherans to be honest about racism in their congregations when they can't even be honest about what kind of Christians they are?

Moderates?

They are liberals, and have been forever.

Why is it that liberals can't call themselves what they are?

The honesty ought to start there . . . good luck with that.

Perfect freedom eludes us

From Carol Zaleski on Samuel Johnson, here, who with fine turns of phrase has captured the humanity and wisdom of the man who navigated the divide between pre-modern and modern man more heroically than any English writer before or since:

'No writer has more convincingly described the failure to “scheme life,” the near futility of hygienic self-improvement. Not piety alone, but piety weathered by illness, disfigurement, financial worries, marital difficulties, overwork, and hereditary melancholy (to the point that he feared madness), as well as his bungled attempts at self-discipline, made Johnson skeptical of the Enlightenment ideal of autonomy. He was a kind and courageous man (notwithstanding his well-known combativeness in debate), full of charity, whose setbacks inoculated him against spiritual pride.'

Phil Jenkins never tells you the crackpot solution of Ellen G. White to "The Great Disappointment"

Namely, The Investigative Judgment, a doctrine wholly derived from "a charismatic prophetic leader" and not found anywhere in Scripture, here:

"The Adventists grew out of the millenarian fervor that swept the United States in the 1840s. In 1844, William Miller warned of the Christ’s imminent return and the world’s destruction. In fact, he did so twice, and the double failure provoked what is termed the Great Disappoint­ment. A rem­nant of Millerites then reconstructed their movement under the visionary leadership of New England–born Ellen G. White."

Seventh-day Adventism is a failed apocalyptic cult, not unlike Christianity itself.

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. By their fruit ye shall know them. "Does a spring pour forth from the same opening fresh water and brackish?" -- James 3:11

Phil Jenkins should know better, but practices a form of political correctness all too characteristic of the contemporary academic community by not addressing Seventh-day Adventism's raison d'être. Too prickly no doubt for The Christian Century, and for his career. So much for thinking critically, living faithfully.

The religion of Ben Carson does no real harm in the world, except insofar as its adherents are occasionally no better than your average criminal, which Jenkins does mention. Thank God for small favors, I suppose.

But Adventism is still nuts.

Moses and the American founders

From James P. Byrd, here:

[T]he story of Moses and the Exodus was one of the most cited biblical texts in revolutionary America. In 1776, John Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, about “a Parallel between the Case of Israel and that of America.” John Adams had heard this preached in a sermon, and he thought it was enlightening because it “indicated strongly the Design of Providence that We should be separated from G. Britain.” ...

In 1776, when Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson discussed what should be on a “Great Seal” for the new nation, they both thought of the Exodus story. As John Adams reported, Franklin wanted the seal to feature the parting of the Red Sea, with Moses raising his staff while Pharaoh and his chariots of soldiers drowned as the waters closed in on them. In contrast, Jefferson wanted another scene from the Exodus, with the Israelites led through the wilderness by a cloud in daytime and a pillar if fire at night.

Some of the founders saw themselves as politically enslaved by the British “pharaoh,” King George III, and his oppressive policies. ... [M]any patriots adopted this story, viewing themselves as the new Israel, and naming George Washington the American Moses. ... 

[Thomas Paine] turned to 1 Samuel 8 to make his case. Paine asserted that God did not want the people to have a king. God warned that kings would oppress them, and so they did, Paine argued. 

Reason 4,107 Not To Be A Roman Catholic

Reported here:

The U.S. Catholic bishops on Thursday (Feb. 24) threw their moral weight behind the pro-union protesters in Wisconsin, saying the rights of workers do not abate in difficult economic times.

Yeah, and my right not to have my pocket picked NEVER abates, but especially in difficult economic times. 

 

Be content with your wages.   

-- Luke 3:14