If the Christian Bible isn\u2019t true, Christian morality is not good, and the Christian God doesn\u2019t exist, why be a Christian?<\/p>\n
Certain beliefs ought to disqualify a person for certain jobs. For example, a vegetarian probably shouldn\u2019t be the lead chef at a steakhouse. A pacifist wouldn\u2019t make a good general. And an atheist shouldn\u2019t be a pastor. At least, that\u2019s what you would think.<\/p>\n
A liberal denomination in the true north is giving that last bizarre scenario a go. The leadership of the United Church of Canada has settled a years-long controversy by voting to allow Reverend Gretta Vosper, a self-proclaimed atheist, to keep her post as lead minister at West Hill United Church in Toronto.<\/p>\n
In her sermons and in her book \u201cWith or Without God,\u201d Vosper has made it clear she doesn\u2019t see the Bible as the authoritative word of God. She views \u201cGod\u201d as not a personal Being, but as a metaphor of love, compassion, and beauty. Each Sunday, members of West Hill United Church replace prayer with \u201ccommunity sharing time,\u201d and then sing hymns that have been rewritten to accommodate secular sensibilities.<\/p>\n
The head of Reverend Vesper\u2019s denomination says he\u2019s happy with the decision to keep her, preferring to emphasize \u201cinclusiveness\u201d over the most basic belief of the Christian faith \u2014 namely that God exists.<\/p>\n
In another recent story from the world of progressive Christianity, Reverend Nadia Bolz-Weber, a self-named \u201cpastrix\u201d in the liberal Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, downplayed the immorality of pornography. In a recent, hard-to-follow interview with a New Jersey LGBT publication, she seemed to be arguing that viewing pornography is mostly fine, as long as it\u2019s \u201cethically-sourced.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Bolz-Weber, there are \u201cissues of justice and exploitation within the porn industry\u201d that could make it immoral, but she denies that the consumption of pornography itself is a cause for shame. \u201cPeople have viewed erotic imagery since we could scratch it on the inside of caves,\u201d she says, and then she concludes that people who denounce porn are wrong and they probably look at it, too!<\/p>\n
The interview was part of the promotion campaign for her upcoming book on sex. And as part of the campaign, she\u2019s encouraging young women to mail her their purity rings so she can melt them down and forge them into a giant statue of a female body part.<\/p>\n
Progressive Christianity \u2014 represented mostly in mainline Protestant denominations \u2014 nearly all of which are in membership freefall \u2014 has become almost impossible to parody. And that\u2019s at least partly because, as theologian J. Gresham Machen said of liberals in his day, the faith they\u2019re teaching is not Christianity at all. It\u2019s a completely different religion, a social reform agenda fueled by feelings, informed by secular thought, while barely draped with religious language.<\/p>\n
In his book, \u201cChristianity and Liberalism,\u201d Machen contrasted liberalism with real Christianity, which began with an announcement \u2014 a revelation about the supernatural life, death, and resurrection of Christ, and the implications of this good news for our lives. The faith once delivered to the saints makes demands on us. It has the power and the right to change us and our world. It challenges our deeply help beliefs. It rewrites our deepest concepts of who we are and what\u2019s true. It demands our lives change, be remade after the life of our Savior, and redefined by the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ.<\/p>\n
If your god \u2014 however you define him, her, it, or they \u2014 never demands change, then your god is you. This is what progressive Christianity has largely become, and why it\u2019s dying. If God\u2019s desires are indistinguishable from our own and His commands identical with the progressive social agenda \u2014 to the extent that you don\u2019t even have to believe in Him to pastor a church \u2014 then we might as well all stay home on Sundays and listen to NPR [National Public Radio].<\/p>\n
Thank God, though, Christianity is worth believing. Thank God it is true, that it does make demands on our lives, and that it offers a salvation better than any that our culture mistakenly will ever call \u201cprogress.\u201d<\/p>\n
________<\/p>\n
Resources<\/p>\n
\u201cChristianity and Liberalism,\u201d by J. Gresham Machen (Eerdmans Publishing, 2009).<\/p>\n
________<\/p>\n
Copyright (c) 2018 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. “BreakPoint” is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If the Christian Bible isn\u2019t true, Christian morality is not good, and the Christian God doesn\u2019t exist, why be a Christian? Certain beliefs ought to disqualify a person for certain jobs. For example, a vegetarian probably shouldn\u2019t be the lead chef at a steakhouse. A pacifist wouldn\u2019t make a good general. And an atheist shouldn\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1233,58,1277,597,1276,1275,1132],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8041"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8041\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}