(And a few others)
Posted on 06/20/2006 4:20:54 PM PDT by Gamecock
Is it any wonder that people are leaving liberal churches like the PCUSA in droves?
(And a few others)
LOL. Great article.
In the end, Andy Ferguson left the liberal seminary, converted to Catholicism, and went into the business world.
One step forward; one step back.
Don't worry about those empty churches.
In a few years minarets will be placed around them and and the pews replaced with prayer rugs with no room to spare. The call to prayer will be heard throughout the land 5 times a day.
People keep asking for that "old time religion," well, they're going to get it!
Great article.
A "wee" ineffectual god.
Pretty well nails it, as does the last line of special significance to this united methodist: "Mainline Protestantism will reach a certain point where it will appeal only to Wiccans, vegetarians, sandal-wearers, and people who play the recorder. No one will feel at home there if they believe in God."
----In this case, seminarian Andy Ferguson, who had questioned the anti-supernaturalistic claims of his seminary professors, was confronted by a fellow seminary student who said, "We've been talking about you. We know you're having a rough time, and we've finally figured out what your problem is . . . . You're the only one here who believes in God." Andy Ferguson decided that his fellow student was right. "They believed in things like the redemptive power of the universe, but I was the last one there who wanted to defend the biblical God—the God who makes claims on us, who said we should do some things and not do others, and who put each one of us here for a purpose."---
The redemptive power of the universe?
Once you give up the divinity and sacrifice of Jesus, Christianity is meaningless...might as well start chanting Hare Krishna.
As a soldier about to retire after serving my country for 27 years, I salute you.
When you go to church now, you hear about how BAD our Commander in Chief is, how horrible the soldiers are in Iraq. I have found this true in the Episcopal Church lately.
The soldiers need God, we (our country) have lost two boys this week by torture and death....what do we have to turn to if there is nothing to believe in but a liberal version of God and Jesus? When you are under fire, you don't call out for some washed down version of God...
I hope this is true.
About time.
Annalex, earlier today you asked...
"I am not looking for doctrinal fights with any of you over this, but this is something that honestly perplexes me....do you have any insight into what these people were thinking as they removed the Holy Spirit from the Trinity and put Mary into the Trinity?".I would suggest this thread as a good place to gain insight, into why some people think the way they do.
The story about the decline of the mainline denominations is an old one. About ten years ago a book titled "The Empty Church" articulated the same reality.
In fact, the decline of ECUSA escalated after the invalid and non-canonical "ordination" of women in 1976. The Robinson debacle was just the culmination of a long trend toward apostacy. It's just a million things - that in the aggregate - have ruined ECUSA.
Yes, but as you know Catholicism has the same virus going. Good thing we don't get to vote on doctrinal matters. This I am familiar with, and I am resigned to the fact that the wee worshipers are going to be with us.
My question this morning was not "Where these people are coming from socially?" (I know where, -- Harvard), but rather "where are they coming from scripturally, traditionally, and theologically?"
I gave the example of how Christianity can be reasonably feminized: Mother, Daughter, Love (or, quite scripturally, Advocate). This I'd shrug off as so much silliness.
Another example is various christological heresies, e.g. Divine Father, Human Son, etc., or Trinity as three gods. I can see how one reads the scripture and comes away with these. Again, heretical and wrong but not puzzling.
There is a Catholic feminization of the Holy Trinity project too. It is, I believe, Creator, Redeemer, Advocate. Dumb, but not surprising.
This "womb" thing floored me because of the totally unintended, I am sure, mariological aspect. Calvinists invented Mariolator Trinity! It is not just liberal, it is --- words fail me.
I thought all lesbians were Episcopalian...and vice versa.
Lesbians tend to be less religioous than homosexual men. An old study of religious preferences in San Francisco found that half the homosexual females were atheists compared with just 25% males
Thank you for posting this. I especially liked this quote " In Shiflett's turn of a phrase, these liberal theologians believe in a "Wee deity," a vapid and ineffectual god who is not much of a threat and is largely up for individual interpretation"
I use the term Pocket Jesus to mean the same thing. A god that we think we control and can keep in our pockets to pull out and display when we feel like it. Of course
we know " He is not a tame lion"
Just because they're atheists doesn't mean they aren't episcopalians. In fact, that's the point of the article.
Right into the arms of the e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-ee-ee-vil MEGA-churches! Oh my!
CC&E
The answer should be obvious - they're not "coming" from any of those places (as we hold to them) at all. The only rule they hold to is Protagoras' axiom "Man Is The Measure Of All Things" - where the individual human being, rather than God or an unchanging moral law, is the ultimate source of truth, logic, ethics, and meaning.
My point is that it more likely to be the homosexual men who are attracted to the liturgical style of the Episcopal Church. Certainly to the Protestants among them it looks like cross-dressing ;-)
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