Tag: fundamentalists

Vocabulary: Dispensationalism

The believe that God acts differently towards God’s people and different time in History. This is usually connected to an understanding of different covenants between God and God’s people throughout the Bible. This understanding of dispensationalism is important for many Christians to make sense and even predict the end of times as we know it.
Some kind of dispensationalism is contained in all Christian interpretation, due to God’s salvific work in Christ. An historical event which, according to most Christians, changed the way God and God’s people relate.

Liberalism as the Root of Decline

In the article Death of Protestant America: A Political Theory of the Protestant Mainline (subscription needed), Joseph Bottum seems to come to the conclusion that well educated liberals in charge of the mainline denominations headquarters are to blame not only for the church’s decline but for rising division in God’s chosen country it self.

Many Americans are profoundly patriotic, no doubt, and many Americans are profoundly critical of their country. We are left, however, with a great problem in combining the two, and that problem was bequeathed to us by the death of Protestant America – by the collapse of the churches that were once both the accommodating help and criticizing prophet of the American experiment.

Mr. Bottum is right when he brings attention to the new unity in the religious spectrum.

The horizontal unity of Mere Religion cuts across denominations. Serious, believing Presbyterians, for example, now typically feel that they have more in common with serious, believing Catholics and evangelicals – with serious believing Jew, for that matter – than they do, vertically, with the unserious, unorthodox members of their own denomination.

However, I would not use words like serious and unserious believer, implying that those that don’t belong to the conservative, orthodox, “right-wingishy,” world that Mr. Bottum seems to lean towards are somehow not taking their faith seriously. It is actually possible to claim the oposite as a fact.

The Association of Religion Data Archives

The Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA) strives to democratize access to the best data on religion. Founded as the American Religion Data Archive in 1997 and going online in 1998, the initial archive was targeted at researchers interested in American religion. The targeted audience and the data collection have both greatly expanded since 1998, now including American and international collections and developing features for educators, journalists, religious congregations, and researchers. Data included in the ARDA are submitted by the foremost religion scholars and research centers in the world.

via The Association of Religion Data Archives.

Pewless by Martin E. Marty

This spring a certain Christian layperson has been criticized for not exiting his local church when he disagreed with something his pastor preached.

The experts on the subject have been, as far as I can tell, media personnel who never go to church, do not know what sermons are for, and have not experienced lively congregational participation; people who value fidelity very little and church hopping and sermon shopping very highly; those who have political stakes in their judgment; and people who pay no attention to the contexts of messages.

via The Christian Century.

Islam

Another visit during my stay in Detroit was to a mosque in Dearborn and a visit to an American Arab museum. The fact that not all Arabs are Muslims and not all Muslims are Arabs is obvious but very often forgotten. The website www.discoverislam.com offers some helpful information about the faith. In the context of the US, a fatwa from July 2005 is very important:

Islam strictly condemns religious extremism and the use of violence against innocent lives. There is no justification in Islam for extremism or terrorism. Targeting civilians’ life and property through suicide bombings or any other method of attack is haram – or forbidden – and those who commit these barbaric acts are criminals, not “martyrs.”
The Qur’an, Islam’s revealed text, states: “Whoever kills a person [unjustly]…it is as though he has killed all mankind. And whoever saves a life, it is as though he had saved all mankind.” (Qur’an, 5:32)

Prophet Muhammad said there is no excuse for committing unjust acts: “Do not be people without minds of your own, saying that if others treat you well you will treat them well, and that if they do wrong you will do wrong to them. Instead, accustom yourselves to do good if people do good and not to do wrong (even) if they do evil.” (Al-Tirmidhi)

via Fatwa against Terror (PDF).

Christian Evangelicals Plot to Remake America In Their Own Image

“What they don’t know — what even most conservative Christians who voted for Bush don’t know — is that ‘Christian nation’ means something else entirely to these Dominionist leaders. This movement is no more about following the example of Christ than Bush’s Clean Water Act is about clean water.”

via Christian Evangelicals Plot to Remake America In Their Own Image.

Reminder: Modern Western Concept we take for granted

The separation of religions and religious ideologies on one hand and secular thoughts and ideologies on the other is a modern western concept and completely meaningless to most people that have lived on this Earth. One could even claim that it is meaningless for many Constantine Christians still living in the Empire of Christian thought in the western world.

Alternative Community

It is interesting to think about alternative communities. One could claim that an interesting social experiment took place in Iceland from 930-1262, a community without a king. In 1Sam 8.9 and 8.17-18, we see another vision of community without a king.
Are the thoughts in 1Sam 8 relevant when we think about the situation in Israel today, “the slavery” and walls.