10,000 Monkeys and a Camera

I don’t know if any of my friends consider themselves to be evangelical, but I certainly have some friends who are hard-core Christians. And even though some of them agree that mixing politics and religion is not good for Christianity (in much the same way as it has been bad for Islam), none of them seem at all inclined to do anything about it.

I am alarmed by the activities of the Jerry Falwells and James Dobsons of the world, and people of their ilk not only make me less and less willing to identify myself as a Christian, but they also make me wonder how much damage they’ll do to Christianity before they’re done. However, since I no longer belong to a Christian community, all I can do is watch in horror.

But the Rev. Gregory A. Boyd is an evangelical who has seen past the next election, and he’s preaching a message that is not what you’d necessarily expect to hear from the pulpit (the article is also available after the jump):

Sermons like Mr. Boyd’s are hardly typical in today’s evangelical churches. But the upheaval at Woodland Hills is an example of the internal debates now going on in some evangelical colleges, magazines and churches. A common concern is that the Christian message is being compromised by the tendency to tie evangelical Christianity to the Republican Party and American nationalism, especially through the war in Iraq.

Brian D. McLaren elaborates:

More and more people are saying this has gone too far — the dominance of the evangelical identity by the religious right. You cannot say the word ‘Jesus’ in 2006 without having an awful lot of baggage going along with it. You can’t say the word ‘Christian,’ and you certainly can’t say the word ‘evangelical’ without it now raising connotations and a certain cringe factor in people.

Or as John Aravosis puts it:

Christians are feeling oppressed because their own wacko evangelical fringe has so abused Christ as to make him a bad word. When I was a kid, it was a badge of honor to be a regular church-goer – it meant you came from a good family. Nowadays, if you say you’re going to church on Sunday, my first thought is usually “is he going to hate me because I’m gay?”

If you’re Christian, I suggest you really think about that, because it’s not just gay people who feel increasingly alienated by the new politicized Christianity of Karl Rove, James Dobson and the Dittoheads. And as John points out, the result can be pretty much the opposite of what Evangelical Christians are supposed to try to accomplish:

America is less tolerant towards religion. And that’s because the religious right has used religion as a sword against everyone it disagrees with. And that creates enemies. Not just for the religious right, but for the God on whose behalf they claim to speak.

Put another way, if God is the intolerant, bellicose bastard that George Bush says he is, why should I worship Him?

Continue reading ‘Finally, an Evangelical Christian Sees the Light!’