Posted on 11/07/2005 6:11:46 PM PST by sionnsar
Frank Griswold makes it official:
Speech for the children of Abraham - that is Jews, Christians and Muslims - speech is the medium of divine self-disclosure. And it is in response to Gods word variously spoken - that is the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Koran - that different patterns of worship and ways of behaving and being in the world develop and evolve.
One of the great sadnesses of the world at present is that religions that might listen to one another and make common cause around the things that they share often confront one another with defensiveness and judgment. How sad this is when they share so much - above all compassion and mercy and love as the ground of all human relationships. How sad it is when instead of making common cause they make judgments of one another that divide the human community rather than unite it.
Since Christs outstretched arms upon the cross embrace the whole of humanity, everyone - whether they are able to acknowledge it or not - has been reconciled to God in Christ. As a Christian, therefore, I am obliged to approach these who name themselves as part of other faith groups as brothers and sisters. I am obliged to look through the lens of my own Christian identity and seek out those things we have in common. I must do this in a genuine spirit of inquiry and curiosity. I must acknowledge that Gods activity is not restricted to what we know or believe about God.
This isn't even close to a surprise. When you have to higher-criticize away as much Scripture as Frank and his party need to do to justify their apostasies, mindless, airheaded universalism like this is pretty much inevitable. Or atheism if you have any intellectual integrity at all.
So it's a waste of time to ask Frank why he thinks that noting all the many, often savage murders committed by Muslims these days constitutes "defensiveness and judgement." And considering the status of women and religious minorities in Muslim countries, it boggles the mind just why Frank thinks that Christianity and Islam share "compassion and mercy and love as the ground of all human relationships."
It is useless to ask the Presiding Bishop of a once-Christian church just why Jesus was up on that Cross to begin with. And don't even bother pointing out to Frank that a religion that is supposed to believe that Christ died on the Cross for the sins of the world and that people need to believe that to see heaven has nothing whatsoever in common with a religion in which Christ is only a prophet(and not even the greatest) and which rejects the necessity of the Cross out of hand.
It's tragic, but the once great protestant denominations are in decline and its easy to understand why. If you deny the truth you will be pruned from the tree. The mega churches are filling the void left by these fools who have turned their backs on the WORD of GOD.
I believe the fastest growing denominations in America today are fundamentalist. People don't want new age gibberish they want the TRUTH.
To my eye, not one iota.
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