Confessions of a Recovering Pharisee

Yesterday I heard a radio advertisement on a Christian station asking Christians to join the “I Vote” campaign. This campaign involves placing billboards and putting bumper stickers on cars that say “I vote.” The advertisement said to let the liberal government know that “we” (Christians) don’t like what they are doing.

Now, I’m as conservative as they come. But something didn’t set well with me when I heard this ad. Why is it that the vocal Christian media makes it sound like Christians are “AGAINST” everyone and everything. I’m not happy with what is going on in our government but instead of complaining I’ve been praying. I’ve actually been praying “FOR” not against those whom I disagree with. Hasn’t God used people who opposed his will in the past? Do Christians want to be known for what we are against or what we are for?

Personally, I want to be known for being a praying man. I will vote and will support the candidates that I believe represent what is best for my Christian worldview. But if they don’t win, I will continue to pray for all of our government leaders even if I don’t like their views. Why because Jesus said to pray for them! So instead of complaining and letting the world know “I VOTE”…. I want the world and my leaders to know that…

I PRAY!

[LA TImes]

Calling multi-faith expansion the next step, the school will offer training for Muslims and Jews in a program that strains its historic ties to the Methodist Church. In a bow to the growing diversity of America’s religious landscape, the Claremont School of Theology, a Christian institution with long ties to the Methodist Church, will add clerical training for Muslims and Jews to its curriculum this fall, to become, in a sense, the first truly multi-faith American seminary.

The transition, which is being formally announced Wednesday, upends centuries of tradition in which seminaries have hewn not just to single faiths but often to single denominations within those faiths. Eventually, Claremont hopes to add clerical programs for Buddhists and Hindus.

Although there are other theological institutions that accept students of multiple faiths, or have partnerships with institutions of other religions, Claremont is believed to be the first accredited institution that will train students of multiple faiths for careers as clerics. The 275-student seminary offers master’s and doctoral degrees.

Read more here.

[From me]

Why? If a person wants to go study to be a Cleric, then go to a school for that religion. Studying other religions is one thing but you go to a “Christian” Seminary to study about Jesus Christ not Mohammed, Buddha or whatever else is the flavor of the month. I sure hope the good folks in the UMC stop sending them money. You can get this kind of education at a secular school. How will they pray in class? Maybe they don’t pray at all at Claremont. I had a great Seminary experience and was grateful to have professors who prayed for us daily. I saw God do great things through my professors because I knew they believed what they taught. This who story is strange.

[Time]

One Sunday last fall, Bill Hybels, founder and senior pastor at the Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago’s northwest suburbs, was preaching on the logic and power of Jesus’ words “Love thine enemy.” As is his custom, Hybels was working a small semicircle of easels arrayed behind his lectern, reinforcing key phrases. Hybels’ preaching is economical, precise of tone and gesture. Again by custom, he was dressed in black, which accentuated his pale complexion, blue eyes and hair, once Dutch-boy blond but now white. Indeed, if there is a whiter preacher currently running a megachurch, that man must glow.

Yet neither Hybels’ sermon, nor his 23,400-person congregation, is as white as he is. Along with Jesus, he invoked Martin Luther King Jr. Then he introduced Shawn Christopher, a former backup singer for Chaka Khan, who offered a powerhouse rendition of “We Shall Overcome.” As the music swelled, Larry and Renetta Butler, an African-American couple in their usual section in the 7,800-seat sanctuary, exchanged glances. Since Hybels decided 10 years ago to aggressively welcome minorities to his lily-white congregation, Renetta says, few sermons pass without a cue that he is still at it. “He always throws in something,” she says. She’s been around long enough to recall when this wasn’t the case.

In 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. famously declared that “11 o’clock Sunday morning is the most segregated hour of the week … And the Sunday school is still the most segregated school.” That largely remains true today. Despite the growing desegregation of most key American institutions, churches are still a glaring exception. Surveys from 2007 show that fewer than 8% of American congregations have a significant racial mix.

Since Reconstruction, when African Americans fled or were ejected from white churches, black and white Christianity have developed striking differences of style and substance. The argument can be made that people attend the church they are used to; many minorities have scant desire to attend a white church, seeing their faith as an important vessel of cultural identity. But those many who desire a transracial faith life have found themselves discouraged — subtly, often unintentionally, but remarkably consistently. In an age of mixed-race malls, mixed-race pop-music charts and, yes, a mixed-race President, the church divide seems increasingly peculiar. It is troubling, even scandalous, that our most intimate public gatherings — and those most safely beyond the law’s reach — remain color-coded.

But in some churches, the racial divide is beginning to erode, and it is fading fastest in one of American religion’s most conservative precincts: Evangelical Christianity. According to Michael Emerson, a specialist on race and faith at Rice University, the proportion of American churches with 20% or more minority participation has languished at about 7.5% for the past nine years. But among Evangelical churches with attendance of 1,000 people or more, the slice has more than quadrupled, from 6% in 1998 to 25% in 2007.

Read more here.

[From me]

Lets hope this trend continues. I saw the beginning of the end when I started inviting people of color to a church I was serving at. The thing is my children don’t see color. My daughter’s best friend before we moved here was a different shade than she is. And many of my son’s best friends don’t look like him either. If we truly believe in John 3:16 then we must reach everyone!

What do you think?

[HT] Vicki Frye

[NPR]

A billboard at a New Zealand church depicting a downcast Joseph lying beside Mary in bed and the heading “God is a hard act to follow” provoked more than the intended reconsideration of the meaning of Christmas.

The sign was defaced by a paint-wielding vandal just hours after it was erected Thursday outside the St. Matthew-in-the-City Anglican church in Auckland, and triggered passionate and sometimes angry debate on talk radio and the Internet.

Church vicar Archdeacon Glynn Cardy said the billboard was intended to challenge stereotypes about the way Jesus was conceived and get people talking about the Christmas story.

“This billboard is trying to lampoon and ridicule the very literal idea that God is a male and somehow this male God impregnated Mary,” said Cardy, who described his church as having very liberal ideas about Christianity.

“We would question the Virgin Birth in any literal sense. We would question the maleness of God in any literal sense,” he said.

Read more here.

[From me]

Do you think this sign will really bring people into hear the message? I just think it was a cheap attempt to be funny.

What do you think?

[Parade Magazine]

America is generally thought to be among the most religious nations in the Western world. We Americans are often portrayed as people who believe in God, pray often, and teach our children to do the same. All true, confirms PARADE’s new national poll on spirituality.

But our faith is also far more complex than these stereotypes. PARADE’s survey reveals a nation looking heavenward—but with its feet firmly planted on the ground of modern life. Spiritually speaking, Americans are a very practical people, moderate and tolerant in ways that would have astonished our grandparents.

Our nation was built on a foundation of strong faith, and in some respects, that hasn’t changed. In fact, 69% of Americans believe in God, 77% pray outside of religious services, and 75% believe it’s a parent’s responsibility to give children a religious upbringing. But even though 45% of respondents called themselves religious, 50% said they rarely or never attend worship services.

More than a quarter (27%) of respondents said they don’t practice any kind of religion. As books with titles like God Is Not Great and The God Delusion have climbed the best-seller lists in recent years, sociologists have speculated about a new atheism in the U.S. No such thing, according to PARADE’s survey—only 5% of respondents didn’t believe in God, 7% weren’t sure about the existence of God, and 12% didn’t believe in an afterlife.

Do you believe in God? Take the poll…

Read more here.

[From me]

I think we are definitely more spiritual but what “Spirit” is it? It isn’t a matter of believing in God…it is which God or Gods? In some ways it makes it easier to talk to people because they are often open to spiritual matters. On the other hand they all of these religions blur the truth. Part of the problem with the poll is what is their definition of spiritual vs. religious. I don’t consider myself religious. Religious means a bunch of rules. I do consider myself spiritual because I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

What do you think?