Too Hot to Handle: Abandoning Evangelicalism

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

Rachel Held Evans, who is post-evangelical herself, documents dissatisfaction among those she calls “defenders of the marginalized” in U.S. evangelical churches. In some quarters, it appears, the fact that so many of their fellow pew-occupiers voted for Donald Trump is not going down well.

Brandi Miller tweets, “I drafted my divorce papers with evangelicalism a long time ago. Tonight I serve them.” Glennon Melton asks, “Does a Love Warrior Go? YES. If that’s what her deepest wisdom tells her to do.”

Tom: What do you think, Immanuel Can? Imagine your fellow churchgoers voted for an immoral, bigoted incompetent with no regard for the dignity of women, as Rachel so delicately puts it. Something worth leaving your church over?

Too Hot to Handle: Poisoning the Well

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

Rachel Held Evans hosts an ongoing discussion of Matthew Vines’ book God and the Gay Christian.

Tom: I’m not so much interested in rehashing the homosexuality aspect. That’s something I think both of us have dealt with elsewhere. But there’s an idea enunciated by Vines in his study of the Old Testament and reiterated by Held Evans in her discussion of his book that potentially applies more broadly; to things like the role of men and women in the church and the home and so on. That is this:

“We can accept Scripture as authoritative and true without accepting the patriarchal assumptions of the culture from which the Bible emerged”.

Immanuel Can, is there a sense in which you would agree with Held Evans’ statement?

A Better Second Fiddle

Back in 1939, theorist Kurt Goldstein coined the term “self-actualization” to describe the motive to realize what he called “one’s full potential”.

In Goldstein’s view this drive might take the form of creative expression, pursuit of knowledge or the desire to contribute to society in some personally-defined way. Goldstein believed self-actualization was any organism’s “master motive” and its most basic drive in life. Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory built on Goldstein’s concept and is probably the most familiar expression of it.

Among others in Christian circles, Rachel Held Evans seems to have bought into Goldstein’s theories.

Too Hot to Handle: Objectively Bad

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

Here we are, Immanuel Can. It’s 2016, and our old pal Rachel Held Evans is once again raising spiritual issues of importance.

I had not realized that she and husband Dan are expecting a baby, but it does explain why her blog output is down to about one post a month. And if my recollection of raising children remains unimpeded by creeping senility, her writing output is likely to remain at an all-time low for the indefinite future, assuming it does not tail off altogether.

Colorblindness, Privilege and Inspiration

Dependability is a great thing.

Whenever I find myself with nothing obvious to write about, it’s a huge relief to know that in a pinch I can always rely on Rachel Held Evans to have written something worthy of polite dissection. Today is no exception.

The inimitable Ms Evans holds forth here on the subject of her own “sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity” after an unfortunate non-PC slip of the tongue at Princeton Theological Seminary.

Too Hot to Handle: Abandoning Evangelicalism

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Too Hot to Handle: Poisoning the Well

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Too Hot to Handle: Abandoning Evangelicalism

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Too Hot to Handle: Vote Hillary Because … Abortion

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

I’m going to stop using Rachel Held Evans as a whipping boy … er, girl … right after this election, I promise. Her leftism and contempt for evangelical conservatives has become so glaringly obvious that it no longer seems reasonable to consider her in any way representative of mainstream Christian thought. More importantly, she is now so predictably modernist that one may as well discuss the musings of secular humanists instead; their conclusions are just as wrong, but at least they make a passing nod to intellectual coherence.

Tom: Only promise me, Immanuel Can, that you will discuss this latest column of Rachel’s with me. Please, oh please. RHE believes American Christians should push the button for Hillary Clinton in November because … abortion. I kid you not.

Recommend-a-blog (19)

Douglas Wilson meets Rachel Held Evans

Douglas Wilson. Ah, Douglas Wilson.

Yes, THAT Douglas Wilson: the one quoted in the notorious Gospel Coalition blog post about men, women, sex and authority, the same post that got Rachel Held Evans mightily agitated and for which its writer, Jared Wilson (no relation, so far as I know), was compelled to eventually apologize (though Jared’s dutiful groveling is now well and truly buried, probably by TGC, and I haven’t got the patience to seek out and link to the inevitable archived version; feel free to concoct your own conspiracy theories).

Doug Wilson remained gleefully unrepentant.

A Tale of Two Speeches

Ah, Rachel Held Evans, what would I do without you?

Wait, I’m pretty sure I’ve used that opening line before.

Never mind. The point is that our good friend RHE has a few words to say on the subject of a commencement speech she gave back in 2003 upon graduating from a conservative Christian university and what, if given another shot at the same gig with proverbial 20/20 hindsight, she would say differently today.

Fair enough. I hope we’ve all learned something in the last 13 years.

A Better Second Fiddle

The most recent version of this post is available here.

No Getting Around That

Rachel Held Evans vs. John Piper? Who could resist weighing in? Not me.

Some background: My favorite popular Christian blogger Rachel Held Evans has been sharing with her readers how well ditching “strict gender roles promoted by conservative evangelical culture” in favor of “a relationship characterized by mutuality and flexibility” is working for her and her husband Dan as they welcome their new baby into the world.

Yes, Dan is helping Rachel out by changing diapers, doing laundry, rocking the baby and making pot after pot of coffee.

Bravo, Dan.

Too Hot to Handle: Objectively Bad

The most recent version of this post is available here.

It Makes A Good Headline, But ...

... that doesn’t make it true.

In a post entitled There Was Room at the Inn, Rachel Held Evans is off and running again, this time about Syrian refugees and how their situation is morally equivalent to that of Mary and Joseph long ago in Bethlehem when a child was born who would change the world forever.

For Evans, saying no to having Syrians resettled in your neighbourhood is like turning away the Lord Jesus.

Could we have another spoonful of cheesy rhetoric, please?

Rehabilitating the Proverbs 31 Wife

Poor, much-maligned wife of the last chapter of Proverbs! Google her and see. After you get through the usual commentary citations, much of what you find is Christians complaining:

• Complaining that the woman in King Lemuel’s acrostic poem is an anachronism. (She isn’t.)
• Complaining that the poem should have been about men instead and rewriting it for our benefit. (It wasn’t written about men. Deal with it.)
• Complaining that Proverbs 31 is not about a “real woman”, it’s about “wisdom” as a concept. (Possibly true, but irrelevant: if it’s about wisdom as a concept, it’s about how that concept looks when it is worked out in the life of a married woman.)
• Complaining that single women (like Ruth before she married Boaz) should be considered “Proverbs 31 women” too. (A single women may be all kinds of wonderful things but the one thing she cannot be is an “excellent wife”, which happens to be the subject matter of this chapter.)
• Complaining that the chapter gets used as a checklist by which modern Christian wives are judged by others.

Hmm, that last one may have a grain of truth to it ...

Persecution Complex (2)

Rachel Held Evans vs. Reality in ten rounds or less:

Rachel: “For the sake of the gospel, drop the persecution complex.” 

Reality: “Kentucky clerk’s office will issue marriage licenses Friday — without the clerk.”

Rachel: “Not only do American Christians experience complete religious freedom in this country, we also enjoy tremendous privilege.”

Reality: “A Kentucky county clerk [has been] found in contempt of court and held Thursday for her refusal to issue marriage licenses after the Supreme Court decision to allow gays to wed.”

The Persecution Complex

Rachel Held Evans, what would I do without you?

The redoubtable (and frequently doubtable) Ms Evans would like believers to stop feeling sorry for ourselves, and to stop feeding Christian paranoia about looming government persecution. Further, we ought to do it “for the sake of the gospel”.

(That “for the sake of the gospel” is delivered with all the sincerity of the progressive’s “It’s for the CHILDREN!”, I suspect, but let’s let Rachel carry on.)

Colorblindness, Privilege and Inspiration

The most recent version of this post is available here.

The “No Harm” Argument (a.k.a. the Do-It-Yourself Millstone)

Care to try on one of these?

How on earth did I get started on this subject?

Trying to deal with arguments for the acceptance of Christian same-sex relationships — and let’s be realistic: everyone I’ve read on the subject actively promotes full LGBT “equality” in the church, not merely the homosexualist agenda — is like trying to grasp a handful of jello. The proffered reasons for acceptance constantly change shape and direction. One could be forgiven for speculating that many such positions are actually Trojan horses: they present as reasonable concessions that mask the true intentions (and possibly even the true identities) of those who advance them.

Such tactics are typical of social progressives but one might hope (perhaps foolishly) to find professing Christians agreeable to recognizing a set of common principles to be employed in debate, if not always completely transparent about the goals they have in mind for church “reform”.

Reorient Yourself

Orientation.

That’s the magic word, isn’t it. That’s the game changer.

We used to talk about sin. Same-sex behavior, for example, was understood to be  sinful. Those who engaged in it were choosing to sin and those who didn’t were choosing not to sin. “Orientation” didn’t enter into it.

Too Hot to Handle: Authority and Cultural Assumptions

The most current version of this post is available here.