Posted on 03/11/2009 6:47:32 AM PDT by raynearhood
I have to steal that from you, well said!
FundamentalISTS. They can be the problem. Especially the contingent that believes St. Augustine is just a city in Florida or Billy Sunday was the first great gospel preacher or that every Christian before the 19th century was a closet papist ... or simply using certain phrases means you are on the path to Romanism.
Besides, you mischaracterized his bio to boot.
You have some strange notions. Wesley, a closet “papist?” Calvin, a closet “papist?” Luther, a closet “papist?” Who believes this? Virtually all Christians prior to the 16th century were literal Papists, certain sects such as Copts aside.
But, what role does St. Augustine play in salvation, according to the Bible, topcat54? None whatsoever. Is that too fundamentalist for you?
Who believes Billy Sunday was the first great Gospel preacher? Nobody. Jesus Christ was the first great Gospel preacher. Is that too fundamentalist for you?
“Fundamentalists” founded this country, as a refuge from whom and what? Far from being the embodiment of ignorance, as you seemingly suppose, it seems to me that those peoples and nations who have, as a whole, historically embraced “fundamentalist” Protestantism are the ones who have been most blessed.
Why is that, do you think? Faith in the Bible and faith in God, directly and personally, rather than faith in men, with their rituals and buildings presuming to stand between them and God, perhaps? Is that too fundamentalist for you?
Simply using certain phrases, while speaking of Protestantism as an outsider, while predicting the decline of same, does look like the path to Rome to me.
Is that too fundamentalist for you?
We can see that.
The royal “we,” topcat54?
You appear to know much better than I, where Michael Spenser has been, but it’s fairly clear where he’s heading.
May very well be so.
You want me to seriously consider an article critical of evangelical Chrisitanity from a source that is a cult, critical of evangelical Christianity?
Skip the Mind Science Cult Monitor if you want, and go straight to the source: The Original Coming Evangelical Collapse Posts.
He makes more sense in the interview than he does on his blog. Of course he didn’t touch on theology too much.
The comments about the Catholic Church asking him to become Catholic, I think is a bit misleading. He said that the Lutheran Church never asked him to become Luther, nor the Presbyterian Church, etc...
Well, that could be because Lutherans, Presbyterian, Reformed Church, Reformed Baptist, etc... are less concerned with his denominational membership than they are with his salvation. In our view Lutheran, Presbyterian, Baptist, whatever (within reason of course) - despite our differences - he’s fine. Stay with the Reformed Baptists, brother in Christ, your saved and you will continue to grow.
Catholics think differently. They would think he’s outside of communion with the Church, thus his salvation in trouble. They aren’t recruiting him, they are trying to save him according to their doctrine.
Anyhow, in light of the comments he made and wrote concerning the problems with just filling seats, it seemed odd to me that he would make a comment about Lutherans not trying to ‘convert’ him to Lutheranism.
his analysis of the failings of the American Evangelical movement is just about spot-on, I think.
And not unusual.
Google on "moralistic therapeutic deism".
Everybody seems to be talking about that piece. I just saw the Pyromaniacs piece. I even saw it referenced in a libertarian/anarchocapitalist email list I follow, where a good fraction of the members would likely be rabid atheists.
Very interesting article.
Ok, now I have time.
This is what I wrote back to a local guy (young kid, PCA church planter) who asked me about it:
I've read at least one of those pieces before, from being linked from WSC prof. Scott Clark's blog (http://heidelblog.wordpress.com/ -- recommended).Michael Spenser, aka Internet Monk. I've looked at his site on and off, mostly off, for years. A curmudgeon with some personal issues, is my impression. He may be reading some of those issues into his analysis.
Nevertheless.
Nevertheless, looking around I see (and share) a widespread expressed opinion that all is not well in US-ian evangelicalism. I could get going on a rant. Now, a good rant can be a beautiful thing, performance art. But I think I'll let this one simmer for a while longer, 'til it's good and done.
This stuff's been coming for a good long time.
I'm guessing I'm about 20 years older than you (early 50s vs. early 30s). I remember US presidents before Ronaldus Magnus. I remember when global monolithic communism was a constant looming threat.
I remember, you probably do not, when in the early 1980s Rob't Schuller sent out literally millions of copies of his _Self Esteem: The New Reformation_. I even got one, which shows you how many they must have shipped. (Got a copy here right now, on my "questionable to heretical" shelf. Hmmm. Clark Pinnock liked it. Hmmm.) I remember him putting on a conference, and paying the way for bunches of ministers to go. Our (CRC) pastor at the time went, came back all enthused. Nothing much came of it. Or did it? That was a pretty big conference.
This was about the same time the church growth stuff was appearing. That same pastor came back from another conference with some of those ideas. Sorry, Jack, y-all are already pretty ethnically uniform (Dutch), and that demographic is a bit scarce in those parts.
I remember, back in the late 80s, hearing open theism broached (in a church, not an academic setting) as something to consider. At the time I'd just got done reading Barrow and Tipler's _Anthropic Cosmological Principle_. I found the notion that a God who can make the universe fine tuned enough so stars can form would have a problem with providence, absurd, and said so.
I feel sometimes like Rip vanWinkle. Many years ago I read heavily in theology, as well as I could. I got burned out on it, laid it aside and went on to more pressing things. You were probably in grade school then. I was asleep to much of these things throughout the 90s. I, mindful of Jesus' admonition about treasures in heaven, turned my attention back to this. And the world had become as you see it now.
Close to home, I have seen many good things happen at LocalChurchName$. I have also seen much that is an evangelical cliche. And lately other things that concern me quite a bit.
And the kids graduate and leave. Which is also an evangelical cliche.
It's in God's hands, and the US is not the world. ("Where is the United States in Bible Prophecy?!?!" Who cares, nowhere in particular.).
I'm not one to be a millenarian enthusiast, but sometimes you gotta wonder. "Rabbi Klein" takes Jesus' "As in the days of Noah" to mean that before the final conflict the church will be greatly reduced and embattled.
"If the LORD of hosts
had not left us a few survivors,
we should have been like Sodom,
and become like Gomorrah. "
He wants to be called a "paleo-evangelical" -- a sola scriptura, sola fide evangelical. That title I can live with.
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