Yes, we do ask for a written testimony of salvation. We ask that church members take a church membership class where we clarify church doctrines and expectations. We reserve membership to those we think earnestly have a relationship with Jesus Christ.
This is not a thread beginning with President Bush applying for church membership at either one of our churches. Personally, I cannot imagine that even the interpretations of this journalists would constitute a basis for rejecting President Bush for membership. If you and your church want to deny him membership— which he never applied for as far as I understand— then go ahead.
Keep this example in mind:
I think this Christian has every right to his opinion. I flat out think he is wrong. I don’t think it is even close.
As my tagline suggests, I am fed up with hateful Bush bashing. It comes from very sincere conservatives— including conservative Christians. Obviously it comes from hateful leftist reactionaries.
I think all the Bush haters actively confuse the intensity of the knowledge they have from the Media with some actuality of reliable judgement about who Bush is in his soul. I am saying— Back off. This has gotten way out of hand.
Secularists sincerely want to murder him and Christians sincerely want to send him to Hell. I don’t agree with either camp. I am confident that President Bush is a Christian. I am also confident that you are a Christian. But at the end of the day, I am not going to pretend to judge you on the matter. And yes, as an Elder I have passed judgment on the question for our church. That to me is a distinct matter from this thread. IF Bush were applying for Church membership, my personal sense of his statements were easily trump what a journalist said he said. I have never once been quoted accurately by a journalist.
“We reserve membership to those we think earnestly have a relationship with Jesus Christ.”
So, you do have to make a JUDGMENT, and some would even accuse you of being “judgmental” (in a ridiculous sense) when you do.
“I am fed up with hateful Bush bashing.”
Don’t let yourself get so emotionally hung up on Mr. Bush.
I’ll just be frank and say that although I voted for Mr. Bush in two elections, I’ve never considered him more than representing a Democratic Party Lite (Republican Party). He was just better than either Gore or Kerry, and no third party had as yet stood out to me. I agree that a war against terrorists must be prosecuted. I don’t agree that Mr. Bush’s method was the correct method. Sorry, but I’m not hung up on Bush.
From 2001, I had a long stream of pastor friends tell me how they thought it so wonderful to finally have a Christian president. I have been asking them to give evidence of his conversion to Christ ever since; after all, it is they who told me that he was a Christian. I didn’t insist that he wasn’t. I merely asked them for the basis of the statement that he is a Christian.
Mr. Bush’s compromise on the Genesis issues is pretty well confirmed, it is not merely the words of one or two journalists. If he is a Christian, then he has not been willing to make a public stand for the word of God.
The discussion of whether he can join anyone’s church is a measure of illustration to make the point that the evidence for Mr. Bush’s conversion to Jesus Christ is awfully weak, and that’s all it is.
You are upset about Bush-bashing. I will be upset about Bible-bashing, which is what Mr. Bush did with regqard to Genesis.