follow the threads

Ok, how about some threads.

Diane Butler-Bass, in her book "Christianity for the Rest of Us", takes an approving look at one St. Andrew Christian Church in Kansas. Here is an excerpt from that church's beliefs page on their website.

We welcome and affirm all children of God of any color, class, sexual orientation, age, gender, ability or thought.

While following the guidelines of the denomination, we have developed as a congregation that is particularly passionate about preserving the dignity of all, valuing diversity, seeking justice for the disadvantaged and preserving the delicate balance of Earth’s ecosystem.

In other words, a church that's so in the liberal's back pockets.

This church is a part of a group with the oxymoronic name The Center for Progressive Chrisitanity. The CPC's website's links page has come interesting things on it, like a link to the Westar Institutes, the people who have given us the travesty called the Jesus Seminar.

And there's the link to the progressive hymn writer, William Flanders. And from his site, one can find the lyrics to his hymns. Here's a couple of stanzas from one of them, with a possible spelling correction noted by me in one of them.

The God that we love is no God we hear.
While “Thus says the Lord” rings bold and sincere,
The words are the prophets’, theirs evermore.
Still unheard but, our God, listened for.

The God that we love may not even be;
To face this our mind must always be free.
Our heart says that God awaits us, instead,
Our (perhaps that should by 'out') of sight and, always, up ahead

So, in this man's head (and likely in that of these 'progressives' he writes hymns for), when the prophets said "Thus says the Lord" they were only speaking and writing their own words, and the God he claims to want to hear from may not even exist.

Don't be surprised at this, please, unless you really are new to this kind of progressive non-thinking. There are many out there who claim the name Christian who are really little more than athiests in their philosophies and beliefs--Spong, Borg, Crossan, Caputo, Vattimo, and others, and one can see the emergents going the ways of these people, though they are not there yet (while noting that Butler Bass is an emergent in her own right, and it was her book that lead to finding this songwriter).

Why these people want to call themselves Christian while denying everything true in Christianity is beyond me. Were they honest, they would drop the pretenses and own up to their athiesm. Since they don't, I don't think it too harsh to think that there are subterfuges and manipulations they can pull off on the 'inside' of the church that they can't do if they were 'outside' it as self-proclaimed nonbelievers.