Evangelical scholar has ‘head snapping’ moment

Did he mean neck-snapping rather than head-snapping moment with regard to the shift in interest among young evangelicals.

Michael Gerson, senior research fellow in the Center on Faith & International Affairs at the Institute for Global Engagement, was merely making an incoherent bid for attention after having belatedly “discovered” the disenchantment of young evangelicals with the political tomfoolery of the Religious Right, which they largely neither admire nor follow.

There is nothing either “head-snapping” or “neck-snappin” about review of issues that have been a topic of active scholarly debate in various forms for some years. Christian Right politics even lost a faceoff recently at one of its former bastions — Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church where the late televangelist D. James Kennedy once held decidedly Republican sway. There, the winning, non-political pastor announced a new direction in January, following a well-established trend.

Obama opens for Lady Gaga

Southern Baptists are well-known for their refusal to welcome “unrepentant” homosexual Christians into their midst. You may recall how the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina followed SBC precepts in acting to “disfellowship” Myers Park Baptist Church. Or this year when the SBC ended “the denomination’s relationship with Broadway Baptist Church, a Fort Worth, Texas, congregation that has been the source of controversy over its stance on homosexuality.”

Some Southern Baptists will not welcome President Barak Obama’s message at the Human Rights Campaign dinner Saturday night:

But some will applaud, if they have not yet joined the Jimmy Carter exodus from the SBC. The year before the Myers Park disfellowship and in response to one of a series of actions which included expelling the late W.W. Finlator’s Pullen Memorial Baptist Church for the congregation’s “unqualified acceptance of homosexual Christians and their full participation in the life and work of the church,” one Southern Baptist college student was moved to write for her blog in the now-defunct North Carolina Biblical Recorder BRBlogs:

Donald Miller once opened a confessional booth on his campus, not to accept others confessions of previous sins, but apologize for our actions (current and historical) as Christians. He apologized for the crusades, for genocide, and bigotry all done in the name of Christ.

Right now, I know why he did it, I feel so ashamed.

From my own confessional booth I would like to say to all of you that this news from the Baptist convention is going to upset, anger, or turn off … I’m sorry. I’m sorry that we as Baptists feel the need to separate ourselves from the very ones we should love. I am so sorry that there was ever a division in the first place. I’m sorry that I am guilty of disconnecting myself with people and places that I am supposed to go and serve. I am sorry.

I am ashamed of this decision and that it is my very denomination making it but hear me, I am not and never will be ashamed of the God I serve. Ever.

Yeah, the church is messed up. But God isn’t. It is my hope and prayer that those of you who do know him are appalled by this…and that you continue to serve our amazing father. If you support the banning of homosexuals in the church…wow.

Reconsider.

Reconsider just because God loves us (as followers) beyond all our stuff that no one sees.

Again, from one of your own.