As the religious landscape continues to change in North America, many voices are seeking the attention of Christians. Mainline churches were the voice of Christianity for most of our U.S. history. Today, the media often views American evangelicals as speaking for Christianity on issues of faith and society.
Who are these people, the American evangelicals? They range from members of megachurches to devotees of TV evangelists to fundamentalists and conservative denominations. Evangelicals are our neighbors, family members and co-workers.
Some questions often posed about them by mainline church members include: “Do we have conversations with evangelicals? How do we differ from evangelicals?”
[blockquote]Listed among members of the evangelical/Pentecostal line are the Mennonite Church USA, [b]Sojourners, Evangelicals for Social Action[/b], Christian Reformed Church, Salvation Army, International Pentecostal Holiness Church and others. [/blockquote]
The 90% social action/10% Christian Sojourners are not even Christian. No man can serve two masters. The poor will always be with you.
Evangelicals believe in Acts 4:12, “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.” As a result, evangelism is a moral imperative to evangelicals. I am pretty sure this guy couldn’t affirm Act 4:12,
[blockquote]It’s our DNA. In our present age, as we all struggle to find our identities, we must never give up the word ‘evangelical.’ It’s ours! Or at least we share it with others. ‘Evangelical’ is a word that has been used and abused in the popular culture (news organizations regularly confuse evangelical and fundamentalist traditions). Yet, at its core, it bears a message of hope, of good news.” [/blockquote]
They can’t be real evangelicals, so they have to play semantics and modify the term into something more palatable for them.
Stories like this always strike me as yet one more version of “Conservatives in the Mist: The adventures of a Liberal anthropologist who lived among the religious primates.”
carl
Robroy #1: [blockquote] The 90% social action/10% Christian Sojourners are not even Christian. No man can serve two masters. The poor will always be with you. [/blockquote]
Can you clarify what you mean here? I have no affiliation with Sojourners and I’m not particularly interested in an attack on or defense of them. It’s the last half of this paragraph that I find confusing (or perhaps troubling, if I understand it aright).
Are you suggesting that care for the poor and the preaching of the gospel are incompatible? That one who speaks up for and works on behalf of the poor is conflicted and cannot, at the same time, preach the gospel (because one is attempting to serve two masters somehow)? Furthermore, are you suggesting that, when Jesus said, “The poor you always have with you,” he meant we shouldn’t be concerned about them, then?
If so, what do you do with James 1:27? “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”
Note that this passage presents a challenge to both modern evangelicals (older ones never would have seen social action as incompatible with the gospel) and liberals. It challenges evangelicals in that it insists on care for the poor and vulnerable as being an essential part of true religion. It presents a challenge to liberals in that it insists on a life that is shaped by God’s word and God’s rule, rather than the prevailing culture– i.e. it insists on a life of personal holiness.
If I’ve misunderstood you, I apologize. I’m worried, though, by what looks like a growing trend amongst orthodox Anglicans towards neglecting or rejecting the social implications of Christian faith in reaction against liberals.
#2 Very good. There is a marked “they are in our midst” tone to the article. It should have been entitled, “Close Encounters…”
Social action comes from an acceptance of Jesus as one’s personal Lord and savior. Jesus first, social action second, not vice versa. Who is the Master, Jesus or social action? “If you love Me, feed My sheep.” But The ELCA can’t come out and say that at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bend. So they boil Christianity down to some quasi-religious Rotary club. Jesus becomes “nice”. If it is only about social action, the Rotary club more efficient. They don’t waste money on drafty old buildings and candles and seminaries.
“Social action” is a loaded term. I hear it and in my mind’s eye I see Maryknoll priests and nuns supporting communist guerrillas is Latin America, the Berrigan brothers, and nut-jobs picketting the School of the Americas at Ft. Benning. Helping the poor and needy, on the other hand, is something different and the duty of all Christians, as individuals. Christ’s words, “as much as you have done it for the least of these, you have done it for me.” should be reason enough.
Thanks for your clarification Robroy. I think we are probably on the same page, then. It may be, as evan miller has noted, that social action is too loaded a term to be helpful– particularly (perhaps?) in an American context.
I guess the problem is mutual. I would guess many in my (evangelical) PCUSA church believe most people in mainstream churches are not Christians, including those in our own denomination. Of course, in our own denomination, we see evidence of that every day as the denomination is about to shatter over its rebellion against God’s Word.