Tried With Fire

These are more quotes from Made in America by Michael Horton. The 2nd chapter is titled "The "How-To" Gospel" and discusses the problem with pragmatic Christianity, which in my opinion is a slightly less noxious version of the prosperity gospel. "If we seek to justify Christianity on pragmatic grounds, ours will continue to be just another self-help, self-improvement program. Among the array of wonder drugs and guaranteed formulas, Christianity may continue to be stocked, but only as long as it is not replaced by something that works better. Temporal salvation, however, is not the goal of the gospel. The Bible doesn't offer us simple solutions to our political, financial, or physical ills." pg. 51 "[T]he seed of civil religion (that is, a religion that worked best for society) was planted. Pragmatism is only a further more systematic exploitation of vague Christianity. The eminent British research group, Oxford Analytica, predicts, "As...

I can't remember when I purchased this used copy of Michael Horton's Made in America . I think it may have shown up in the "other customers purchased this" section on the web site after I got Christless Christianity . I probably flipped through it and then shelved it until last night when I picked it up in light of Jerry Falwell, Jr.'s recent interview at the Washington Post. This book was first published in 1991 and the paperback in 1994. It's remarkably appropriate for today but in a sad way. It would have been better if we had heeded this call 25 years ago. The Bible commands, "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind" (Rom. 12:2). While much fuel has been spent on trying to get people to act like Christians, the Bible insists that we must first think like Christians. The transforming of our minds takes place not through magic, superstitious techniques, or superficial devotions,...

I tend to be careful about airing my political opinions because it can be so divisive. However, I need to get these thoughts out of my head or I will have trouble sleeping again tonight. These are my opinions. Feel free to form your own. The cognitive dissonance must be off the chart when professing Christians, who make a big show of being pro-family and pro-life: 1. Are instrumental in electing a sexual predator to the highest office in the land. 2. Feel torn between losing a senate seat and electing an alleged pedophile. This has flabbergasted me even prior to last year's election, and I continue to be astounded as self-appointed Court Evangelicals 1 make a trumpery (yes, I used that word intentionally) of Christianity. But I am also troubled that average professing Christians are more  willing to turn a blind eye to what would be condemned in someone of the opposing political party. At this point, being a "Christian" or an "Evangelical" is rapidly ...

The following are quotes from Surge of Piety: Norman Vincent Peale and the Remaking of American Religious Life by Christopher Lane, Yale University Press, 2016. I had gotten the book after reading this review at The Gospel Coalition. I was hoping it would give me some insight into the mind-meld between conservative Evangelicals and politics. The reviewer suspects there is a connection between Peale's teaching and President Trump. While that may be true, I am more interested in Peale's influence on the average professing Evangelical and the morphing of Christianity into "God, self, and country," which is civil religion in a nut shell. As to who "God" is, I think He is left conveniently vague enough to satisfy anyone's agenda. Amy Mantravadi just wrote a post on The Ascent of Trump and Impact on Evangelical Ethics.   It is spot on. Her post is the main reason, why I finally started reading about Peale.  As the Bible says, there is nothing new under the s...

It's been interesting and rather sad, at the same time, to witness the divide between professing Christians over the 2016 election. It's true that social media may not be the best tool of observation, but even among people I know, there are folks with strong convictions and very different opinions. If I was a sociologist, this would be worth studying. But since I am not, it seems like a good time to start reading Christian America? What Evangelicals Really Want  by sociologist Christian Smith. In the introduction, he mentions several fallacies that must be avoided to understand evangelicalism. This is the first and one worth noting. The Representative Elite Fallacy - A most common error that observers of evangelicals make is to presume that evangelical leaders speak as representatives of ordinary evangelicals. In fact, evangelical leaders do not simply give voice to the thoughts and feelings of the millions of ordinary evangelicals. Nor do ordinary evangelicals simply fo...

I've been reading Aimee Byrd's new book,  No Little Women. So far, so good, and a review will be forthcoming, Lord willing. I did skip ahead, though, to the 9th chapter "Honing and Testing Our Discernment Skills." 1 Aimee shares four essential questions to ask about what we read, and then lets the reader put it into practice on excerpts from popular women's books. I'm posting more on these questions at Out of the Ordinary  tomorrow, so stay tuned. As I was considering Aimee's call for discernment, my gut feeling is that women are at a disadvantage in pursuing a life of the mind  because of past cultural norms. Therefore, we may be more inclined to accept rather than critique. But does evangelicalism even encourage this type of critical thinking in the first place? I may be wrong, but I believe it promotes the very opposite. If you read authors like Nancy Pearcey, Mark Noll, David Wells, and Nathan Hatch, to name a few, history has shown that Americ...