A prominent liberation theologian at United Methodist-affiliated Iliff School of Theology disdains historic American Christianity as “satanic” and as a justification for “white supremacy.” Instead, the Rev. Dr. Miguel De La Torre argued in a recent podcast interview that real Christianity is defined by whatever definition is given by various marginalized and oppressed minority groups, regardless of whether or not their definitions are in line with Christian orthodoxy.
On an episode of the Things not Seen podcast released June 6, host Dr. David Dault discussed with De La Torre the content of the Iliff professor’s new book, Decolonizing Christianity: Becoming Badass Believers. De La Torre’s studies include “latinx religiosity”, “liberation theologies,” and “postmodern/postcolonial social theory.”
In the podcast, De La Torre sharply criticizes historic American Christianity saying, “While America is a Christian nation, the Christianity that it embraces really justifies a white supremacy that creates all kinds of problems for people that are not white Christians.” He claims this “white Christianity” is false, and “has nothing to do with Christianity, it has to do with social structures that reinforce the oppression of many for the benefit of the few.”
He continues to say that the dominant Christianity subjugates insular minority groups because it has a “eurocentric theological lens that was designed, originally, to maintain their oppression.”
Building on theologian James Cone’s idea that “all white Christianity is satanic,” De La Torre argues that any Christianity that goes against certain political positions is also satanic. While Cone thought white Christianity is satanic because of its abetting Jim Crow, De La Torre extends its satanism to “[C]hristianity that has nothing to say about children in cages, or about the dangers of driving with an air freshener hanging from your rear view mirror.”
When most Christians are asked what Christianity is they likely espouse historic creedal ideas such as the Trinity, Christ’s divinity, and His death and resurrection. De La Torre, on the other hand, says that Christianity is “the faith of the oppressed, and that faith may very well be Christian and it may not be Christian, it really doesn’t matter to me.”
The podcast host admits that for those who have been formed by the theology provided to mainstream pastors through seminary training, this is a conflicting belief. He explains that, “For them, Christianity would be right belief in the right sort of propositions: that Jesus Christ is Lord and that, the God they worship is three in one and triune” but De La Torre confirms the host’s statement that, according to him, these are “not the markers of accurate, authentic Christianity.”
Instead, De La Torre alleges that “for white Christians to get saved” they must “reject the white god they’ve been following and instead bend their knees to the black god, to the Asian American god, to the queer god.” Instead of salvation coming through Christ’s death on the cross he thinks it is found in a person’s conformity to the “faith of those who live in oppression.”
Likewise, while Gospel evangelization is widely understood to be an important aspect of the Christian life, De La Torre affirms the statement of the podcast host that “it’s not my job, given the fact that I’ve been privileged, I’ve been educated, to go and tell someone who is suffering what the good news is”. Instead, we need to “hear from them how the good news is there, manifesting in their life and to change [our] life so that [we are] in solidarity with that.” For De La Torre, the role of an educated devout Christian is not to spread the good news about Christ coming for the salvation of mankind; according to him it is to defer to their definition of Christianity, regardless of its historic validity.
St. Paul identifies “faith, hope, and love” as important Christian attributes; these have historically been known as the three theological virtues. De La Torre, on the other hand, omits the importance of hope, saying, “Hope is the middle-class privilege, that in fact for the vast majority of the marginalized world, it is hopeless”. He alleges that Christianity is being disingenuous by emphasizing hope, thinking “it saves us from having to do anything to interact with their situation.” Instead of hope, he argues for “desperation.” He asserts that the only way the country can recover from its white supremacy is abandoning hope. He says, “Once we embrace this hopelessness then we have nothing to lose and when we have nothing to lose, that’s when we become more radical and can bring about change.”
The full podcast can be accessed here, and more information about De La Torre and his book can be found here.
Comment by Dan W on June 11, 2021 at 4:49 pm
De La Torre writing more books for Christ haters and self hating Christians. I.R.D. using it for click bait. Things are almost back to normal.
Comment by td on June 11, 2021 at 5:30 pm
He will write anything to sell a book. Unfortunately, this is the case for almost everyone these days.
Comment by Donald on June 11, 2021 at 5:36 pm
I just finished interviewing a ministerial candidate for a mainline legacy denomination. Her quote her aspiration: “To be a badass feminist.” I guess it is such seminarians and erstwhile contemporary jobless clergy who purchase his books. It must feed their sense of suffering as they wonder why no parish will hire them as a pastor.
Comment by Joe Montileone on June 11, 2021 at 5:57 pm
This man is lost and he is trying to take as many as he can with him !! Sad…..he takes the truth and twists it !!
Comment by Kelly Gordon on June 11, 2021 at 6:37 pm
The fact that the Methodist Church is even affiliated with such warped thinkers is a huge part of the division that is splitting the Church. Lies. All lies!
If you continue to give a platform to such small minds that are trying to profit and gain recognition through decisiveness is problematic. I live in a somewhat rural area in Tennessee and the local Church has been taken hostage by paid staff that are liberal-minded who endorse most things that don’t represent Christ or His creation. It’s time to expose and cancel the real satanic thinkers, like De La Torre!
Comment by John on June 11, 2021 at 6:58 pm
If he were talking in terms of evangelical American Nationalism not being either true to Evangelicalism’s foundational beliefs and American Nationalism apart from this Christian Nation myth, then he has a point. Even better, would be to separate the Fundamentalists from the Evangelicals as they have taken over the Evangelical movement and have been covertly white supremacists sometimes and at other times overtly so.
None of the above is Christian but it is very American for some. I don’t know what others of us who always considered ourselves evangelical, but not fundamentalist nor white supremacists will do for a new label. I, for one, am going in the direction of Thomas Oden in also calling myself a paleo-orthodox. The more I look into the early Greek fathers who influenced Wesley in my doctoral research, the more I think that label would possibly fit John Wesley also.
Comment by Star Tripper on June 12, 2021 at 1:23 am
Heretic spouts heresy. Well at least some things remain the same.
Comment by Pastor Dave Poedel on June 12, 2021 at 1:51 am
Good grief. If you don’t believe the classic Christian faith, hang up your clerical collar and be a pagan! I am tired of people asking me “Pastor, how can these people claim to be Christian, much less a Pastor?” Good question…..
Comment by Paul Zesewitz on June 12, 2021 at 7:08 am
If this is the kind of theology coming out of Iliff Seminary, then I feel bad for this guy. He is quite obviously racist and bigoted towards anybody who has a theology different from his. No wonder the Methodist Church is splitting with men like this guy in their leadership!
Comment by Mike on June 12, 2021 at 8:35 am
There is a contemporary saying that goes like this’ “haters gonna hate”. Certainly true about this one.
Comment by James Herman on June 12, 2021 at 8:42 am
Sounds like critical race theory dressed up for Sunday church. Back to the scriptures Dr. De.
Comment by Donald on June 12, 2021 at 9:08 am
Paul -I don’t “feel bad for this guy.” At this point, I don’t even “feel bad” for those foolish enough to believe his racist rants or the seminaries that continue to pay their salaries with the endowment monies left by prior graduates. They deserve one another. They and the institutions that serve them are in the running for The Darwin Award.
Comment by Bruce on June 12, 2021 at 9:16 am
This man seriously needs physiocratic help. Satan has a solid grasp on him. Keep praying!
Comment by Loren J Golden on June 12, 2021 at 9:44 am
“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.” (Mt. 7.5)
If racial indifference, and even bigotry in some cases, is the “speck” in the collective eye of the American Church, then the hatred and animosity toward White Christians constitute the “log” in Rev. Dr. De La Torre’s eye.
“De La Torre argues that any Christianity that goes against certain political positions is also satanic.” “‘For white Christians to get saved’ they must ‘reject the white god they’ve been following and instead bend their knees to the black god, to the Asian American god, to the queer god.’”
John Calvin famously wrote, “The human mind is, so to speak, a perpetual forge of idols.” (Institutes I.11.8) To worship the “white god,” that is to say, to worship a god who favors one’s own particular race above the others, is a form idolatry. That American Christians have done this, and that some even today are still doing it, is clearly a sin, and as such it must be repented of.
But it is not the only form of idolatry, and De La Torre’s words exhibit another form of idolatry that is much more common in America today: political idolatry. To be sure, those on the political right, including many “white Christians” (De La Torre’s favorite bogeyman), have been guilty of it, particularly with the uncritical adulation exhibited toward the previous occupant of the White House. Yet for decades, Progressive Christianity, of whom De La Torre is clearly an example, have set up their own form of politics as an idol.
The Lord Jesus explained that there are two great commandments: “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mk. 12.29-31) Most Progressive Christians will act and teach as if they believe that the First (and most important) Great Commandment is fulfilled in fulfilling the Second, in all the ways approved of by Progressive Christianity. To be sure, fulfilling the Second Great Commandment is indispensable to fulfilling the First, for as the Apostle John wrote, “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.” (I Jn. 4.20-21) But to so elevate the Second Great Commandment that it eclipses the First is to make an idol out of it.
Yet it takes unmitigated gall to come right out and say, “You shall love Progressive policies and political agendas with your whole heart, soul, mind, and strength, and you shall bow down to them, show them all adoration and veneration that they are due, learn of their ways, and apply them to your life all of your days, for Progressive policies and political agendas are your gods, O American Christians.” Yet this, in effect, is what De La Torre is saying with his words: “‘For white Christians to get saved’ they must ‘reject the white god they’ve been following and instead bend their knees to the black god, to the Asian American god, to the queer god.’”
“De La Torre extends (white Christianity’s) Satanism to ‘Christianity that has nothing to say about children in cages, or about the dangers of driving with an air freshener hanging from your rear view mirror.‘”
This statement is absurd. First, it is a bald-faced lie to claim that white American Christians neither are concerned about the evils of human trafficking nor speak out against it, as evidenced here, here, and here. Second, it is perverse to put a moral equivalence between the evils of human trafficking and putting an air freshener in one’s car. I am sure that it has something to do with some report that claims that air fresheners somehow pollute the environment, but it is not as if putting one in one’s automobile is tantamount to profiting from conscripting a ten-year-old boy into an army or prostituting a twelve-year-old girl in the sex trade.
“De La Torre affirms the statement of the podcast host that ‘it’s not my job, given the fact that I’ve been privileged, I’ve been educated, to go and tell someone who is suffering what the good news is.’ Instead, we need to ‘hear from them how the good news is there, manifesting in their life and to change [our] life so that [we are] in solidarity with that.’ … ‘Hope is the middle-class privilege, that in fact for the vast majority of the marginalized world, it is hopeless.’ … (De La Torre) asserts that the only way the country can recover from its white supremacy is abandoning hope. He says, ‘Once we embrace this hopelessness then we have nothing to lose and when we have nothing to lose, that’s when we become more radical and can bring about change.’”
It has been said of Evangelical Christians, and with some justification, that they are, “too heavenly minded to be of any earthly good.” But the reverse is true as well. If all we do in this life is nothing more than to make life a little more comfortable for others, to make life more bearable, more livable for those on the margins, and to make life less comfortable for ourselves, while doing nothing to prepare them for the world to come, nothing to instruct them in the ways of Christ, nothing to teach them to repent of their sins and to turn to Him for forgiveness, to trust in His atoning sacrifice on the Cross and in His life-giving resurrection from the grave, then we give them no hope in the world beyond the grave, where there is no salvation from sin and death for those who do not trust in Christ Jesus, with only a fearful expectation of judgment that awaits them for all the sins that they committed in this life. In short, if this is all we do, then we have become too earthly minded to be of any heavenly good.
“Therefore, remember that at one time you Gentiles…were…separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.” (Eph. 2.11-16)
Comment by Palamas on June 12, 2021 at 2:18 pm
“De La Torre writing more books for Christ haters and self hating Christians. I.R.D. using it for click bait.”
Ostrich, head, sand. Some assembly required. Oh, and if you’re a Methodist, your apportionments help pay for this.
Comment by floyd lee on June 12, 2021 at 10:15 pm
De La Torre says, “I’ve been privileged, I’ve been educated…”
Okay, maybe he has somehow been “privileged” (or something). I don’t know. But his current messed-up statements are honestly displaying NO evidence of his latter claim — especially not a biblical, Christian education.
Comment by Jim Radford on June 13, 2021 at 10:43 am
Dr. De La Torre uses James Cone’s hostility and anger (the negative emotions maybe not be totally valid, but they certainly are understandable) toward white supremacy in Christianity to make a point that has some truth in it. The problem is, for many contributors to this site, any thing that even smacks of progressivism is viewed with suspicion. I don’t blame them, really. And I tend to think of much of this conversation to be an extension of post-modernism’s inclination toward historical revision, general distrust of the subject (both the topic and the speaker), and ultimate skepticism toward knowledge about anything. But De La Torre put it this way:
“While America is a Christian nation, the Christianity that it embraces really justifies a white supremacy that creates all kinds of problems for people that are not white Christians.”
What’s not true about that? I am a white person who grew up in the south and indigenous to one of the most egregiously racist counties in the country. That’s a consensus opinion, by the way, not just mine. I repent every day of my racist upbringing (my own participation in the fostering of it) and residual traces of it that still linger in my own being. I hate it. I hate being a progenitor of that culture. I hate being part of a race that subjugated an entire people. God forgive me, but I am white. And, as a pastor, I have made these kinds of statements from the pulpit. One of my parishioners said to me afterwards, in kind of a disassociated and disclaiming tone, “Well, I didn’t do it….” I didn’t say so then, but I would say, now, “Yes, you did. And so did I.” With respect to the comment above about “Christ-haters and self-haters….” I will remind that well-meaning person that Jesus, in a number of places in the gospels, talked about “hating one’s own life” (John 12:25, Luke 14:26) as a necessary prerequisite to entering the kingdom.
I am sure that some you, being white, articulate and intelligent, realize that you–and I–are the beneficiaries of a supremely white world. And that’s also true, if not especially true, for white Christians. And now, it seems, social and cultural parity is encroaching on that lofty status. And I say, “Bring it on. ” It’s high time that we have to look up to, and not down on, people of color.
Think I’m a Progressive? I am not. For me, the presumptions of Modern and Post-Modern culture in all its forms–socially, politically, theologically (especially that one–Rohr, Borg, Spong, Crossan, Ehrman et al), philosophically, make me ill-tempered. But I am bone-weary and tired of racist Christians. I’m tired of being one and tired of having to deal with them. Tired of having to associate with them. Tired of having to withstand the peer pressure to vote for them. I’m just happy to know that Jesus loves them all in spite of it. And me. It’s called Grace.
Comment by Please consider this Jim on June 13, 2021 at 11:34 am
Jim,
Please consider a couple things in response to your post.
1. This ‘White Supremacy’ garbage comes from privileged white and black elitists longing for power using warmed over Marxism. The formula is ‘White supremacy = Bourgeoisie’.
2. If you are white you did not participate in subjugating a race of people. Use your head instead of your riled up emotions. Read some legitimate history instead of late-20th/21st century propaganda labeled ‘history-herstory.’
3. I have spent much of life serving people who are as white as snow and living in squalid conditions worse than inner city slums. Maybe you ought to hear and learn about the roots of Bluegrass music, and why some of it was written.
4. In consideration with #3, consider that this is not so much a race issue as a class issue, the ‘White Supremacists’ have always been the so-called cultural elite in the US, starting with rich plantation owners in the South and going on from there.
5. Finally, When you and I face God after we die we will have to answer for our actions as an individual, not our group, race, ethnic heritage, or any other false category certain people want to label you as a member of. Instead of taking on the sins of everyone else, deal with your own sin, and ignore the modern day irreligious Pharisees who wish to dump burdens and sins on your head so they can build themselves up.
These and other reasons are why people like De La Torre get such a hot reception here and other places. Instead of being someone who works for positive change, he’s a bomb thrower in a crowded theater.
Comment by Jeff on June 13, 2021 at 10:39 pm
“While America is a Christian nation, the Christianity that it embraces really justifies a white supremacy”… Jim, you ask: “What’s not true about that?”
Fair enough question, so: 100%. ALL of it is not true. The entire quoted premise is false. And because the premise is false, the conclusion “…that creates all kinds of problems for people that are not white Christians” is therefore a non sequitur, not proven.
*** ALL AMERICA (not white America) is a Christian nation.
*** “the Christianity that it embraces really justifies a white supremacy” — ANY belief system that is “embraced” as “justifying a white supremacy” CANNOT be Christianity.
Jim, I know my identity in Christ Jesus. You demand that I abandon my identity and wallow in shame and guilt on false pretense. Christ set me free from that! Your hectoring demand is a lie of the enemy and I refuse to walk in the path you set before me. I pray you are not damaging those unfortunate enough to sit under your teaching with this evil you are spreading.
You add: “And I say, “Bring it on. ” It’s high time that we have to look up to, and not down on, people of color.”
Huh? What kind of asinine false dichotomy is that? There are a great many (as you put it) “people of color” to whom I look up, because of the CONTENT OF THEIR CHARACTER. And there are quite a few “people of pallor” AND “people of color” for whom I have zero respect because of their lack of character and integrity.
And: as Paul, inspired of the Spirit, directs me to — I imitate those who imitate CHRIST; their skin color or hair color or tribe, nation, language have NOTHING to do with that choice.
Comment by Mike on June 14, 2021 at 12:41 am
Jim, what you are telling us is the evil in your own heart, and your way of spreading the blame for that evil to others.
Christ has said your sins are forgiven go and sin no more. All your verbal confession and blame spreading is doing is leading others to anger and not to the love of Christ. Give up on your guilt of those thoughts and attitudes you once had. Stop being tired of dealing with other Christians. If you cannot love his sheep, all of his sheep, you are not fit to pastor. Your words show your heart you replaced your old superior feelings you got from racism with superior feelings to those you see as ignorant southern culture. You have not changed one bit and Satan will continue to use you because he exploits the pride that you have announced here so clearly.
Comment by Jim Radford on June 14, 2021 at 10:31 am
Jeff, your point is well taken. The content of one’s character–color or not–is really the determining factor in terms of “looking up” to anyone, regardless of race. I don’t believe, however, that what I said is an “asinine false dichotomy.” I do believe that fair-minded and insightful people (and not that you’re not one of them) read that line and knew exactly what I was talking about. I say again, as white people, we live in the luxury and comfort of a supremely white world that favors us. Basically. Certainly not “100%” across the board. But, if you will, I am not “demanding that (you) abandon your identity in Christ Jesus and wallow in shame and guilt….” Wallow, no. Accept it, move on, and move beyond it, yes. My larger implied point was, I think, that “the other side,” meaning, “progressives,” are not demons from hell. Sometimes, even I hate to admit it, they are correct in their assessments of the way things actually are in this world, and sometimes their criticism of evangelicals is justifiable. Blessings on your life,
Comment by Jeff on June 14, 2021 at 9:17 pm
Jim says: “I say again, as white people, we live in the luxury and comfort of a supremely white world that favors us. ”
“Supremely white world”? Something like eleven percent of the world population is considered to be “white”. You’re embarrassing yourself by exposing your total lack of knowledge of geography — or history of civilization, or the historical spread of the gospel of CHRIST and its effect on the tribes and nations and peoples and languages that embraced the Word early on, ultimately to their blessing. You have no body of fact upon which to base that arrogant but small-minded “I say again” statement — it’s merely your broad-brush opinion, informed by the cultural Marxists, articulated with the words the wokies taught you to say. In short, you have been brainwashed, Jim. It is disturbing that you are in a position of spiritual leadership.
“…Accept it.” No, Jim. I will never accept this lie from the depths of hell. In this globalism and cultural marxism you are peddling are the roots of a satan-led antichristic totalitarianism that will dwarf the horrors of Stalin’s Soviet Union, Hitler’s Third Reich, Mao’s China, and the tutsi-hutu genocides COMBINED. I will die fighting it if that is the will of GOD.
“progressives… are not demons from hell”. No, they are deluded minions that are of the father of lies — some out of ignorance, some with full knowledge of what power they worship. (google “BLM witchcraft”!) Many so-called progressives are oppressed by various demons — and some are totally possessed. All these stand in need of deliverance. They are to be prayed for, earnestly reasoned with, loved, but not accepted nor encouraged nor imitated. And the demons that influence them are to be warred against in the spiritual. “Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”
Comment by Jim Radford on June 15, 2021 at 9:23 am
To those of you out there who think that I have been “brainwashed,” or are disturbed that I am in leadership, let me try one last time to assuage your feelings that I have been captured by the Enemy (or by Marxists). I have not. Like Jesus himself said, “…the prince of this world is coming, and he has nothing in me” (John 14:30). The Prince of this World has nothing in me, and if you believe that, you are believing a lie. I have done nothing, nor will I ever do anything, less than to proclaim the absolute and total supremacy of the Risen Lord Jesus Christ. And, furthermore, He is someone that for me is not merely conceptual. He is the most real experiential presence in my life. I am not a liar, a false witness, and I am not your enemy. Several of you have expressed concern, or disdain, that I am in a position of pastoral influence. This is profoundly unfair, and you are making my points for me, actually. So many contributors here are angry Christians, and you are lashing out seemingly at anyone who disagrees with you. I was expressing anger at my own racism, and decrying what I believe is a fact–that white Christianity enjoys favored status–and this just happened to be expressed by one of your opponents–an angry liberal progressive seminary professor who, I believe, went too far in pronouncing that white Christianity is Satanic. That’s certainly not true.
On the one hand, Jesus did say, “He who does not gather with us scatters,” but then again said, “He who is not against us is for us.” I am not against you. No one on this earth, in my not-at-all-humble-opinion, is more upset than I by the existence and activities of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Karadzic, Mladic, and countless others. I, too, will fight against such tyrannical evil with my last breath. And anything that “exalts itself against the Lordship of Jesus,” meaning strongholds of all kinds, I will do my best to pull down.
Some of you may know about Adolph Eichmann’s 1961 trial in Israel. Philosopher and political theorist Hannah Arendt, who coined the term “banality of evil,” was sent, as a reporter, by the New Yorker magazine to cover the trial. Her book, Eichmann in Jerusalem, was the result of her observations. At the time Arendt was an author and educator, having lectured at various prestigious universities. She with friends with many of post-war Jews who had emigrated to Israel, many of whom had been in the Nazi prison camps. As she took notes on the proceedings, she commented on the ordinary and unremarkable character of Eichmann and other perpetrators of the evils of which they were accused. Many of her Jewish colleagues had expected her to “turn the tables” on the Germans by denouncing them as an aberrant and defective race, less than human, as the Nazi regime had done in their unfair caricatures of the Jews. Arendt refused. She pointed out, rightly, that the Nazis, as a people, were essentially no different than any other people. True, they had done monstrous things, but they themselves weren’t inherent monsters per se. Many of the Jewish friends of Arendt denounced her, and many of you are denouncing me for agreeing, not with De La Torre’s caustic and inflammatory charge that white Christianity is “Satanic,” but with his belief that white Christians are favored. I dared agree with a progressive. That has been my point from the beginning. Many of you who desire this split, this schism, are, in my mind, no different or better than those you accuse of being “anti-Christ.” And this New Church that you think that you are creating is not going to turn out to be the ecclesial panacea that some of you seem to believe that it will be.
Comment by Jeff on June 16, 2021 at 12:14 am
You have tweaked Hannah Arendt’s noble intellectual honesty into a grotesque self serving caricature, and stolen her valor to pass off as your own.. Shame on you. How can your woke subservience to the culture possibly be intellectually honest, devoid of fact and reasoning as it is?
The entire heft of your position, “Reverend” Jim Radford, is in the gauzy — volumnuous but weightless — abundance of your OPINION and FEELINGS. (You refuse to engage in the least with the many factual and reasoned objections that have been made to your opinions and feelings, choosing instead merely to double down on them.)
It was YOU who first shoved your “ordained elder” status in our faces, thereby “appealing to authority”. I have by now lost count of the number of logical fallacies you have employed. And then when challenged on the validity of your authority your response is to cry “unfair”? O learned elder, why not REASON with your challengers rather than seek to cancel them?
At least you showed your true progressive colors with your childish, envious wishing of ill on those who would embrace the Global Methodist Church.
Over & out.
Comment by CHARLES SPRENKLE on June 16, 2021 at 9:23 am
There is a lot of comment on race but I do not want to add to that. I am shocked by the recommendation to abandon hope. In Pilgrims’ Progress we are told that the sign above the gate of hell is to abandon all hope. If that is the message we are delivering to the world, we are telling and leading the people into hell. I do not think that is helpful.
Comment by Jim Radford on June 17, 2021 at 12:55 pm
God bless every last one of you. I’m going to make one final comment, and then I am going to depart the field. I do not believe, in any way, that we are “abandoning hope” by admitting to things that, theologically, just happen to mess with your heads. Some here have expressed, among other things, that I have been deceived, and that I am leading people astray. Not so. The last post alleges that I am expressing (I think he means me), or preaching, the abandoning of hope. I am doing no such thing. “We preach Christ and Him crucified….:” and I myself am “resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” “Hope thou in God for the help of His countenance” is the only hope that I believe is going to save us. As many of you, know in Romans we are told that “….we are saved in hope,” which, for me, is the “flip side” of faith. I am NOT abandoning hope. Not now, not ever. But I am abandoning this site. Again, God’s blessings on you all.
Comment by Lee Cary on June 19, 2021 at 7:52 am
“…Christianity is defined by whatever definition is given by various marginalized and oppressed minority groups, regardless of whether or not their definitions are in line with Christian orthodoxy.”
An attorney friend in Chicago helped me join the “Church of the Presumptuous Assumption’ a few years ago. It occasionally meets on a sailboat in Lake Michigan owned by the ‘Captain Pastor’. The small congregation of 8 sails the lake in deep meditation. Joining is easy. Pastor says, “Raise your right hand and repeat after me: ‘I believe'”. (BTW , sailing expenses are tax exempt.)
I consider this to be ‘Christianity’. I am an, apparently, white Caucasian male but identify as a half-native American Mescalero Apache and half-Chinese Mandarin female.
I’m happy to announce that our small sailing congregation recently voted to make Miguel an honorary member of our Christian Church. He can self-identify however he wishes. But we do not currently have a Mongolian transvestite among us, and we value diversity. Welcome, Miguel.