Confessions of a Recovering Pharisee

[Ken Silva  & Alpha and Omega Ministries]

Ken Silva asked:

Can you be a Christian and deny the Deity of the Savior you profess to believe in? Yep. And further you can even be inducted into the Southern Gospel Music Hall of Fame as was Joel Hemphill in 2007.

Read the story here.

Phillips, Craig and Dean’s songs have been standards for years in Contemporary Christian Music. Their successful career in Contemporary Christian Music and popularity among evangelicals is impressive; even more so when it is realized that the members of Phillips, Craig and Dean (PCD) are Oneness Pentecostals who deny essential Christian doctrines, including the doctrines of the Trinity and of justification by faith alone!

Read more here.

[From me]

First, this isn’t to cast stones at Mr. Hemphill or PCD. I disagree with Mr. Hemphill and PCD. But it is a story that is in the news and worthy of discussion. Where do they get this teaching?  Groups like the Way International and of course the “Gnostics” of the 1st century believed this.  

Do you think someone can be a follower of Jesus without believing in His deity?

What do you think?

[London Free Press]

It’s a match made in eco-heaven. Science blushes in her starched, white lab coat while Religion stands tall in his flowing black robe. They exchange vows, pledging to have and to hold each other in sickness and in health. And then they’re pronounced “Mr. and Mrs. Ecotheology.”

It’s an unlikely coupling between two institutions that have traditionally been at odds with each other over life, death and everything in between. But what used to be considered a fringe movement among a marginalized tree-hugging clergy in the 1970s, has become a serious scholarly field of study, said Dennis O’Hara, a director at the Elliott Allen Institute for Theology and Ecology at the University of Toronto.

Indeed, in 1991 U of T’s St. Michael’s College became the first university in North America to offer a doctoral degree in ecotheology. Since then, interest in the subject has grown so much that it’s now taught at 25 colleges and universities in Canada alone.

Ecotheology is a branch of theology that explores the connection between God and His creation, O’Hara explains. “It’s recognizing the sacredness of creation,” he said. “We find God not only in the Scriptures, but in creation.” 

It’s also a philosophy taught at the highest levels of Godliness. Last year, the Vatican hosted a climate change conference and called environmental abuse tantamount to sinning. Meanwhile, evangelical leaders in the U.S. teamed up with a coalition of scientists issuing Washington “an urgent call to action” and Southern Baptist leaders also called it a biblical duty to stop global warming.

At a time when church attendance is on the decline, especially among younger generations, the environment has been described as the new religion: a devotion to the safeguarding of the planet’s resources which belongs to everyone, regardless of faith. It isn’t an organized religion, but it fills a human need for the metaphysical, experts say.

“People want something bigger than themselves,” said Mishka Lysack.

Read more here.

[From me]

People of faith ought to be concerned with taking care of earth. God created it and made us stewards of the world so we should make sure it is well taken care of.  I think the problem comes when people start worshiping the earth and the environment and act as if it is more important than people.

What do you think?