Tag Archives: sola scriptura

The Religion Re-Cap

I’ll admit, going into this all, I hadn’t intended to write more than that first post on the exodus we’re currently seeing in Western Christian churches. That done, I guess I felt that there were some more questions to be asked and issues to be pointed to with Western Christianity as a whole, notably the treatment of theology and “pietism”, which shapes so much of Western Christian culture, as well as the question of biblical inerrancy, which I wrote today.

It strikes me that we really ever only take one of two routes when dealing with religion- we’re either unquestioning or we’re dismissive. I don’t think Christianity is so unimpeachable that it can’t be indicted and I don’t think it’s so unimportant that it can be ignored. Whatever your stance on it, these beliefs, traditions, and values have shaped and continue to shape culture and history in this nation and around the world. It deserves the courtesy of us grappling with it on its own turf- no matter where you’re coming from, I’m hopeful this will have at least offer a venue for some more sincere discussion than we typically enjoy. This series may have ended, the conversation, I’m hoping, is just about to begin.

The three posts in this series are listed below:

I. The End Of The Church As We Know It

II. The Problem With Pietism

III. Biblical Inerrancy

The Problem With Pietism

I had said before that I’d be taking up the subject of religion again, and as I promised, here’s another segment in my litany of criticisms.

Two down, 93 more to go…

Despite Las Vegas’s image as a wretched hive of scum and villainy, it’s actually a relatively quiet town. In fact, ol’ Sin City is cited by a few sources as having the most churches per capita of any city in the US. My family once visited one church (we’ll leave out the full name) called “Grace ———-,” in what was perhaps the single greatest piece of religious sarcasm since Saul was told to go to a street called “straight.”

It’s not very straight…

At “Grace ——-” I had the pleasure of sitting on a butt-numbing pew and listening to an hour of the pastor passionately decry something called “Arminianism.” It was vitally important, it turned out, that we understand that these people were fundamentally wrong regarding predestination. Now I’ll freely admit that I’ve forgotten a lot the the pastor’s exact admonitions- just why it’s so essential to believe one over the other. That was about six or seven years ago- if there’s some awful, soul-rending disaster about to happen to me, I’m still waiting for it.

And that brings us to the topic for the day:

Theological “correctness.” Continue reading