Posted on 05/24/2007 7:20:35 AM PDT by epow
An official with the Institute on Religion and Democracy says it is outrageous that a leader in the United Methodist Church has called for the removal of U.S. flags from the denomination's churches.
Minister Clayton Childers of the Capitol Hill-based United Methodist Board of Church and Society said the presence of a national flag can imply endorsement of national policies, which often are counter to the teachings of Christ. Childers even noted that the Swastika flag was displayed prominently in German churches during the Nazi era.
Mark Tooley is with the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD). "Obviously," he notes, "there are a number of serious problems with that Nazi-American analogy; but one of the problems, of course, is that American churches display the American flag completely voluntarily. No one is compelling them to do it -- whereas, of course, in Nazi Germany the totalitarian state compelled its churches not only to display the flag but to support the government's policies."
Meanwhile, the IRD spokesman remarks, United Methodist officials apparently are not concerned about the fact that many churches display politically correct, rainbow paraphernalia and peace banners. He says the comments from Childers are not surprising.
"This illustrates one of the many, many problems with liberal theology, which de-emphasizes the need for evangelism and for conversion and for salvation," Tooley contends. "If you set aside all of those things," he says, "what do you have left but simply using the church for social justice issues?
Man, and I was just being sarcastic! The world has totally lost it!!
I think so too. But I'm afraid that several other mainline denominations would side with the UMC if it came to that. The UMC as a whole probably isn't much, if any, farther down the skids to apostacy than many of the other liberal mainline denominations.
In the late 1960s I left the Southern Baptist Convention church where I had been saved and a member for years and joined an independent Baptist church because of the SBC's movement in the same liberal direction that the mainline denominations were already taking. But after conservative, bible-believing Baptist leaders like Adrian Rogers, Paine Patterson, and W.A Criswell managed to stop the SBC's drift into liberalism, remove liberal, modernist, and agnostic professors from SBC seminaries and some SBC supported colleges, and basically return the SBC to it's fundamentalist roots, I wouldn't be reluctant to join a SBC church again if it was practical for me to do so.
In a theological sense, doesn't that automatically exclude them from the Christian familiy?
Clayton Childers is NOT an American; he just lives in America as a leech, sucking the life blood of better men.
He did not equate it with bomb making and said that is still a difference (so far).
As for communism, flip open your Methodist hymnal to the World Social Affirmation found a page or two after the Apostle’s creed where “collective” guilt is confessed.
From my perspective in Central America in the 1980s, the Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church was about as communist as it could get. The FMLN were pure evil terrorists but were viewed as a legit liberation movement by the UMC.
I know there are some conservative congregations but we’re a long way from pulling out of the WCC or greatly shaking up the Left/Trendy tilt of the church bureaucracy.
When members of the national council have been confronted about this Sophia worship, they try to claim that it's just another name for God, who is wisdom. :::cough, cough, what a crock, cough:::
Sophia is the ‘goddess of wisdom’. When confronted about this Sophia worship, the members of the national council try to claim that it is just another name for God, who is wisdom. (Yeah, right.)
I left the UMC many many years ago, over stupidity like this.
Devil’s advocate...
WHY is it appropriate for a house of worship, especially one devoted to Christ, to display an American flag?
If it's true, it certainly places them in disobedience to the Great Commission which Jesus gave to the Church just before his ascension. Jesus assigned a specific duty to the Church before he went back to Heaven to sit at his Father's right hand.
Mk 16: 15-16, "And He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned."
There is no ambiguity in that charge to the Church, evangelizing the world is the duty of every Christian.
But I don't remember ever having read any passage of scripture that commands me to take part in worship of "Sophia", whoever or whatever "Sophia" may be. I tend to think that this entity called "Sophia" is no friend of our Lord or his Church. IMHO it's more likely that she, he, or it, as the case may be, has soot on her/his/it's face and smells like brimstone smoke.
Perhaps in an ultra technical sense, but I consider the UMC as part of the universal Christian church as long as the church professes faith on one of the creeds or all three.
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