Religious Content Alert


This sums up a trend I've been watching in some combination of horror and disgust for years now. You could call it a climactic event...but it isn't. There will be worse.

When worse comes, you will not find me defending the church. I never have. I never will. It is not my responsibility to justify the indefensible and wretched acts of a thing so dissociated from Christ that, were he to return tomorrow, I do not believe he would recognize it anymore.

I speak not of the members of the congregations, but I do not ignore the reality that they have sat complacently in their pews while this vitriol has taken hold and spread. Nor do I believe churches are devoid of good people, but I cannot suspend judgment on the entity itself any longer. This is my final straw. I was hoping for a change, for better...

But like any massive institution with clout, it has grown cumbersome under its own weight. The illnesses associated with prolonged exposure to too much money and political power have begun to produce more and more prominently visible symptoms.

The result? I left. Others have left. More will leave.

What's worse is that the things we were taught are being directly and irreparably countered. Do as I say, not as I do.

In this stand against gay marriage, against poor people (not poverty), against science...the church - at least, the evangelical/baptist/etc church - has chosen its hill to die on.

And die it shall. It will not be quick, it will not be pretty. But the illnesses will weaken it and the external backlashes will topple it and the masses of believers left will be crushed to death under the debris. I do not say that lightly.

In fact, there are a large number of hills I would have happily stood with the church to die on. But not these. These are...disgusting. Deplorable. The battles we have fought for no cause but our own hubris have alienated - probably *forever* - millions of people. That damage will likely not be undone in my lifetime...if ever.

What's tragic is that according to the very tenets of evangelism, there is no greater crime than pushing away those to whom we could minister.

Yet, here we are.

Summed up as such:

“I don’t think I’m an evangelical anymore. I want to follow Jesus, but I can’t be a part of this.”

I want to follow Jesus, but I cannot be a part of -this.-

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2014/03/31/how-evangelicals-won-a-culture-war-and-lost-a-generation