By Andrew Walker
A Southern Baptist theologian called for a new “Christian conservatism” while addressing an audience at the Family Research Council.
Dr. Owen Strachan, a professor of theology and church history at Boyce College, the undergraduate school of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, offered his remarks during a scheduled lecture on the “Sacrificial Witness of the Christian Moral Tradition.”
Read more here.
Comment by dover1952 on October 25, 2012 at 6:49 pm
No. It will not. Christian fundamentalism and conservative evangelicalism have been defined as a “form of religion from which all love has been drained away, ” leaving behind only a set of rules to be followed. It is a modern form of Old Testament legalism with a little “pin-the-tale-on-the-donkey” appendage that gives lip service to Jesus and his words in passing—and getting passed him and them as quickly as possible. The true Christian faith will re-emerge only when people forget about the Old Covenant, with some minimal tip of the hat to Timothy, and look again to the New Testament and the red words of Jesus as the basis for faith—and put back the love that has been replaced by hatred in organizations such as the Family Research Council. Any faith based on rules and hatred is doomed. This is why Christian fundamentalism and conservative evangelicalism are doomed. This is why Islam is doomed. You may be sitting there all proud and puffed up in your megachurches and spreading yourselves like a green bay tree now—but the road you are on now is the road to doom. Mark my word.
Comment by Tierce on October 25, 2012 at 11:46 pm
Dover,
If you really and truly believe that fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals are irrational, loveless people who do not have the true Christian faith, why do you post on this blog?
And when you post on this blog, what do you hope to accomplish? Saying that my faith is based on rules and hatred is hardly likely to get me to change, and this is one of the more conservative blogs that I’ve seen around, you are unlikely to find many people here who you can scare away just by attacking.
Out of curiosity, if you throw out the Old Testament, what does love mean? Or perhaps I should just ask you, what does love mean to you?
And you shouldn’t conflate fundamentalists/conservative evangelicalism and the mega-church movement (it makes it look like you haven’t actually studied the doctrines of conservative evangelicals).
Comment by Ben Welliver on October 26, 2012 at 10:38 am
Tierce, dealing with evangelicals as we really are is not even an option for these people. They create the wicked Straw Evangelical, full of hate, stupid, irrational, etc, etc., and that’s the sinister force that they pit themselves against. It makes them feel important, they’re not fighting human beings, they are up against the Powers of Darkness. It’s all delusion, but they cannot be argued out of it because fighting against Darkness is so much a part of their self-image.
I’ve read that Eskimos don’t fish in certain lakes because they believe those lakes contain giant monster fish that can swallow a whole man. There is no evidence, of course, but that doesn’t affect their beliefs at all. Never assume human beings are rational, there is way too much evidence to the contrary.