Monday, July 24, 2006

Them's fightin' words

I will keep saying it until I have no more reason to: Evangelicals are propagating more heresies today than in any other era of the church. These include a Pelagian doctrine of salvation, a unitarian doctrine of God, a docetic christology and Bible, a gnostic doctrine of eschatology, and a Constantinian doctrine of church-state relations—which, by the way, was what led the German church to support Hitler. Do I really need to unpack these in more detail? I am afraid that I will have to, since I doubt most realize how much the American evangelical sector has capitulated to these grave heresies and called it "a personal relationship with Jesus."
From The Fire and the Rose. We'll have to see how that series progresses and how specific it is to the American scene, since 'evangelical' can have a range of meanings in different cultural contexts.

This great blog has a series of fascinating film reviews, including two of my favourites: Magnolia and Me and You and Everyone We Know. I highly recommend both the films and the reviews.

Oh, and just added is a collection of links to many many posts on universalism in recent blogging.

8 comments:

Christopher said...

Oh Byron, I was keen to see your reply.

byron smith said...

Chris is referring to a very lengthy spam post which I deleted. I have seen this same message on other sites. It was a rant about how the author is the Messiah and everyone else reads the Bible incorrectly. He simply cuts and pastes a few thousand words trying to sell his book. There is no inidication he has ever read anyone else's blog or ever returns to comments made in response. I consider it unsolicited advertising material and so have treated it as spam.

Christopher said...

"There is no inidication he has ever read anyone else's blog or ever returns to comments made in response."

That's a relief I was worried by posting a comment the I might attract his heat.

byron smith said...

Who knows? But my guess is that he just does blog searches for key terms like 'eschatology' and then drops his lengthy 'comment' into the first available post.

David W. Congdon said...

Byron, thanks for the plug. I am currently working on a post that will elaborate on my "fightin' words" in more detail.

Glad you enjoyed the reviews!

michael jensen said...

Yes, I have encountered similar hostility to evangelicals from US Christians of more post-liberal/mainstream denoms/radical orthodox hue here in the UK. But they seem totally thrown by those in the UK (and OZ) who self-designate 'evangelical' but who share few of the vices of the American evangelical mainstream.
What to make of a bearded lefty like you, for example, Byron?

byron smith said...

MPJ: Perhaps I need to start my own movement - Evangelicals with Beards.

DWC: looking forward to hearing in more detail about your theological concerns re (US?) evangelicals (we'll see how appropriate they are over here in Oz and perhaps MPJ can comment re UK).

Drew said...

Evangelicals with beards?

I'm in! Another inner circle...