Why Do They Not Like Us?

For the past few years, the respect for evangelical Christians has plummeted. One survey that asked the participants to rank people from most to the least desirable found that evangelicals ranked only one level higher than prostitutes. Why is this happening? Is it because they don't want to hear and/or don't like our message of redemption through the blood of Christ? Well, they might not like it, or perhaps some would - IF they heard it. Somewhere in the 1980's and 90's many evangelical churches lost their message. So, instead of being despised and disrespected for the right message, perhaps it's because of the wrong one?

1976 was a watershed year in many respects. It was the 200th bicentenniel of the nation, but also in that year a Christian musical was circulating in the churches. "If My People" brought together Christians from every stripe to follow II CHronicles 7:14 - if we pray and fast God would turn an increasing wicked country around. Oops. We seemed to forget the "humbling ourselves" part of that Scriptural passage. At least that is my interpretation as to one reason why the country didn't suddenly and magically change. So, by the late 70's much of the evangelical community got behind those who said "we must legislate morals to change the country. We must take over the government." And so, the Christian Right was born. Sadly, 30 years later, they have failed. But people outside of the evangelical community think this is our message - set up a government with the Ten Commandments and persecute abortionists and homosexuals. I'm not saying we are all in favor of this - I'm just repeating what seems to be the prevailing notion from the unbelieving community about us.

The upshot of this? I just wished we would be despised for our real message

First the books - now the films

First it was the books (see my post of Jan 22. Now it's the films. You might have heard about the Jesus Camp film. It's painful for me to describe, especially from a Pentecostal/Charismatic viewpoint since from the descriptions I've read (the ones by Charismatics, not the ones by the mainstream media), it's a bit frightening. Frightening to Christians I mean. What must it be to unbelievers? But to be fair, I didn't see it. Not do I especially wish to. The other film is by the daughter of Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives. She followed some Christinas around including Ted Haggard (before the "fall"). The reviews are more positive on this one.

However, reviewers from the New York Times and the Washington Post took the opportunity to use these two films to bash evangelicals and other religious "fundamentalists" such as radical musilims. Have you noticed that we are now once again "fundamentalists? And it isn't just the mainstream media and left-leaning pundits that are throwing this at us. Rick Warren and other Christian leaders are lobbing the term around too. We are no longer evangelicals. We are now fundamentalists and the other Christian leaders and their followers are simply "Christians."

Take the three books I discussed (see link above), the review of the films and the vitrioloic language toward the "Christian fundamentalists" - and you have quite an interesting stew of bias. How long will this bias continue until it comes to a head?

The next three posts will examine why people think badly of us and the correlation to what happened in Germany just before WWII.

CT Article - Persecution Posts Continue

The January 25, 2007 daily email from Christianity Today magazine is talking about two of the books I spoke about in my Has the Persecution Begun? post.

CT points out that liberals have traditionally tried to be open minded, but today things are changing. They writes,

"CT columnist David Aikman recently sounded a warning in a commentary for the Trinity Forum. Sam Harris, he noted, not only advocates a shift from viewing religion as harmless to treating it as dangerous, but he also wants to suppress religion. Aikman evoked images of Mao's China and Stalin's Russia as the future of America—if liberals ever abandon true liberalism.

Make no mistake; it is that potential abandonment of liberalism that Harris and Dawkins are calling for. Dawkins told the forum in La Jolla, "I am utterly fed up with the respect that we—all of us, including the secular among us—are brainwashed into bestowing on religion." In a blog post cited by Aikman, Harris wrote that he is as "wary" of his fellow liberals as he is of "demagogues on the Christian Right."

I thought the title of the CT article was very pertinent to what I had written the other day. It's called - The New Intolerance. Maybe I'm on to something?

Who Will Show Up? (Persecution series continued)

If the persecution does get worse, what will our churches look like attendance-wise. Dan at Cerulean Sanctum gives an interesting scenario. Please do read it.

By the way, if you haven't read my persecution post from yesterday, just scroll down one post.

Has the Persecution Begun?

On September 18, 2006 The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins made its debut. Dawkins makes the argument against the irrationality of believing in a God. Dawkins especially reserves his ire for evangelical Christians as well as a piece about Islam.

On the next day, Sept. 19, 2006, Sam Harris' Letters to a Christian Nation: The End of Faith appeared. It basically runs Evangelicals over the coals and especially the Christian Right for trying to establish a theocracy of their own religion.

On January 9, 2007 American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America by Chris Hedges appeared.
Hedges tries to show how the Christian Right operates simlarly to the fascist movements in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and '30s. He points out that these movements masked the full extent of their drive for totalitarianism and were willing to make concessions until they achieved unrivaled power. Just as Hitler used the severe econmic crises and social chaos of Germany in the 1920's and 30's, Hedges beleives that it will take just one more national crisis on the order of September 11 for the Christian Right to make a concerted drive to destroy American democracy. He calls the Christian Right "the American heirs to fascism."

While some things in these books are worth looking at, the overall tone is getting more severe. I don't recall books like this before, although there were some that had elements of what is contained in these more current ones.

Stay tuned for more thoughts on this subject in the days to come. Included will be my comparison of what happened in Germany to what is happening today....but from another view from Hedges. I will also discuss the Christian Right and why the persectution is for the wrong reason. Although this might only be it's first stages, I believe that.....................

The persecution has begun.

Pre-Persecution Post

Before my BIG whammy persecution post due either tomorrow or Monday, here are some good words from Alan Kurschner (courtesy of Steve Camp's blog.

Jesus said,
"If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and the gospel will save it.'" (Mark 8:34-35)
Those who preach a gospel absent of this demand, preaches no gospel.

Jesus functioned on the truth that we heard this past week, “What you win them with is what you win them to.” I.e. If you win them with the demands of self-denial of the gospel, you will win them to commitment and authenticity. If you win them with a phantom gospel with nothing more than self-improvement and a God who is subjected to their terms, you win them to self-deception and unregenerateness.

Will God’s sheep be offended by the Shepherd’s own words of self-denial? No. They will willingly submit to them.

Our Western/American Evangelical myopia of a creature-centered gospel embarrasses me. Embarrass does not describe it all; I am afraid. Just Stop and Think. One sweep of persecution in America would immediately wash away the Evangelical pablum-speak. I don't wish that persecution but it should cause us to take a step back and view our western accretions on the gospel vis-à-vis the non-western understanding of the gospel.

Lee Grady of Charisma magazine visited Nigeria last week (his sixth visit to that country).

He observes that the African church, in his opinion, are way ahead of us here in the west. He gives 5 reasons why:

1. "They pray with passion. Nigerian Christians are not embarrassed to pray in tongues. While we in the United States are still debating whether glossalalia is biblical, the pastors in Lagos stormed heaven with militancy and electric zeal.

2. They pray in unity. Bishop David Oyedopo, founder of Winner’s Chapel—the world’s largest church building, with 50,000 seats—told the crowd in Lagos: “Until we bury our differences we will not make a difference.” Even though Oyedopo’s massive church keeps him busy, he still finds time to link with other leaders in Nigeria. He knows they must create a united front to face the threats posed by militant Islam. (How bad must it get in the United States before we will discover our need for each other?)

3. They stand for holiness. Leaders in Lagos called for repentance and warned that God will resist the church if the pulpits are defiled. “Judgment must begin in God’s house,” declared Rev. Wale Adefarasin, head of the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria. In the Port Harcourt event, called Global PrayerQuake, prayer leader Pamela Eze-Uzomaka led an audience of 7,000 in asking God to forgive and save Europeans who are legalizing same-sex marriage. How ironic it is that the so-called “heathen of Africa” are now the ones upholding the standard of biblical morality while Western denominations have fallen into apostasy, depravity and spiritual lethargy.

4. They support Israel. I found it amazing that the Africans unashamedly prayed for the protection and salvation of Israel—at a time when many believers in the United States are too concerned about political correctness to take such a stand. “Even if no other continent will pray for Israel, Africa will pray for Israel,” shouted Rev. Christy Jireh, who led 7,000 in prayer at the Global PrayerQuake conference on Jan. 10.

5. They understand spiritual warfare. You don’t have to convince a Nigerian to believe in the reality of demons. They have experienced occult powers, so when they become Christians they have no problem discerning the spiritual realm or working miracles by faith in Jesus. That’s why God is sending many of them today to Europe and the United States—to help deliver us from the intellectualism that prevents us from understanding the supernatural realm."

Miracles of Prayer Stopped the Terrorist

In preparation for this weekend's important post here on persecution against Christians, today's post will be a sort of preparation.

In any persection, it's important to see what is happening in the rest of the culture. Persecution doesn't happen in a vacuum. I was going through my library to throw out any books I didn't want to keep and came across one I will keep. The title of this book is Miracles of Prayer Stopped the Terrorist:Operation Esther by Harvey Ward (pub. 1987). After reading his book, Ward will make you a believer of the power of prayer. The scene takes place in Rhodesia (today called Zimbabwe) during the time terrorists were trying to steal farms from the mostly white farmers. A group of women calling themselves "Operation Esther" gave out their phone number for any farmer who was being attacked. The women would then phone each other with the request and pray. The book is essentially about the miraculous events happening because of the prayers.

But I want to quote something near the end of the book.

A country can have a well-trained army and its economy can be the envy of other countries, but if it's moral standards are low, then sooner or later the very fiber of the people of that country will rot and bring about a collapse, as was the case in the Roman empire.....Will the theories of Marxism fuse with the ambitions of Capitalism as they race toward the spoils of intrigue, hypocrisy, helplessness of the unwary--and war? For the moment Capitalism is the berter system under which to live but the freedoms enjoyed may well be short-lived as greed replaces consideration and reason....But worse is the unmitigating attack on the soul of man. As in no other time in man's history, permissiveness pervades throughout society. Depravity is common-place when it should be outlawed. By tolerance of it, unrestrained living rots the fabric of family life.

"No Place For Truth"

Horray! My laptop is finally back with me after three weeks at the computer doctor. It needed a new start button because the priginal one collapsed. And here is the sad part - I have only had this laptop for only 10 months and, I bought it new. Lately I've noticed that things are breaking down within a year. The DVD part of my TV/DVD combo stopped working two months ago after only 7 months. It used to be that things lasted ten or 20 years. Sigh......

Well, now onto the blog post for today.

I read a review of David Wells' book, No Place For Truth (published in 1993) in this month's issue of Modern Reformation magazine. I thought he had some very good things to say, and I was surprised to see him so ahead of the times so many years ago.

Here are some snippets which are exceptionally pertinent:

*As many others are pointing out, Wells also says that the evangelical church has plunged into theological illiteracy. He writes,
"It is a change so large and so encompassing that those who dissent from what is happening are easily dismissed as individuals who cannot get along, who want to scruple over what is inconsequential, who are not loyal, and who are, in any case, quite irrelevant."

Does this remind you of what so many who were in the seeker (PDC) churches have said? When they approach their elders and pastors about not going off the Bible so much, they are often made fun of and and almost always criticized.

*Wells argues that theology is not just for the academic world, but also for the laity in the church. It happens in three places, according to Wells:
--the academy (seminary, journals, books, etc.)
--the church
--and the middlemen-that is, pastors and teachers getting it to the laity in the church.

He says that these are being broken down, i.e. the academy is often disputing the need for a systematic theology; and, pastors often have minimal theological knowledge.

I think this is a book I would like to read. It's certainly a prophetic book, in that Wells seems like he wrote it just yesterday instead of 15 years ago..

51%

News is......51% of women live without a spouse.

I think someone should tell the church that fact, since women attending church alone seem to be treated as "the invisible person."

Next post will be.....

Hi again folks. My poor computer, which is not even yet a year old, is still getting fixed at the "computer doctor." So I will not be posting until the weekend -and hopefully by then.

My post then will be very interesting - "Is the persecution of Christians finally beginning?" I think it is and I will tell you why.

Until then,

Diane

No one says it like Ingrid at Slice of Laodicea when it comes to Christians trying to look like the world to convert people. This is a must read at this site:
http://www.sliceoflaodicea.com/archives/2007/01/reaching_the_re.php

Quote of the Week-Oprah

In the states when kids are asked what the need, the say an IPod or [name-brand] shoes. In South Africa when kids are asked what they need, they reply that they need money to attend school.

___Oprah Winfrey when asked why she set up her Leadership Institute in South Africa instead of the United States.