Theological Fragments

It is one of the great tragedies of our time that Christians are taught to be ashamed of our past. Anyone who has taken a course in Western history in the last seventy years is undoubtedly aware of the long list of atrocities that are laid at the feet of Christianity, while the list of its victories is short (if it exists at all). Evangelicals have tried to deflect this phenomenon by pointing the finger at certain denominations (mainly Catholicism) or at Denominationalism in general—a maneuver that is neither fair, accurate, nor true—but have largely failed to avoid condemnation. We all drown beneath the onslaught of historical crimes: crusades, witch-burnings, subjugation of native peoples, human slavery, the list goes on. Of course, no one points out the hypocrisy of these accusations (For instance, on what basis can the secular world tell us that killing in the name of God is barbaric—which it is—while killing in the name of a government is perfectly moral?), nor do they acknowled...

I was at work this morning, turning on televisions to start the day, when I noticed that one of the TVs was on the wrong channel. Best Buy has their own internal channel that they pipe through their televisions, but someone had changed the channel on this one so that it was showing one of those extra channels that have cropped up since the switch to digital broadcasting. This is not uncommon, but it caught my attention because the TV in question was showing a news story on a movement called “Charlotte 714,” which is apparently a shindig going on in Charlotte, NC in which a group of area churches have gotten together to call for Christians to look at fixing their own churches before worrying about fixing the government (The article, which is a transcript of the TV segment, can be found here ). I have to say, I am very excited by this movement. Finally, a grassroots movement I can get behind! I’m really excited that people are starting to outgrow the Religious Right’s domination of...