Yeah, right…
Susan sent me a column by one Mark Wingfield, writing for Baptist News Global, with the provocative title, “Three words for the church in 2019: ‘we were wrong'” (https://baptistnews.com/article/3-words-for-the-church-in-2019-we-were-wrong/#.XhzGXYh7n3h).
Uh-uh. Not buyin’ it, sunshine. You’re the one who’s wrong.
I smelled a rat, so I peeked behind the curtain. Baptist News Global is, according to itself, part of “the wider progressive movement.” Gotcha. But let’s see what he says the churches were “wrong” about.
Wrong about 1) “race.” Here he just rehashes boilerplate left-wing “white privilege” blather. Apparently he doesn’t know any white people who are poor. 3) Women. Ordain ’em all. To me it’s a debatable point, but he’s not here to debate it. 4) “What it means to be ‘pro-life.’ He seems to be saying it’s wrong to focus on abortion when there are other bad things, like genocide and slavery, going on in the world. Is he saying tackle everything in the world that’s really bad, and only then can you oppose abortion? Or is he just putting words on paper that he thinks sound smart?
“Sexual orientation and gender identity”–some of us think the latter is a lot of bunk–is No. 5 on his list. Churches were wrong to expel homosexuals et al and probably should’ve made them pastors and elders instead, he says. Somehow the Bible got that wrong. 6) Something about measuring progress “by numbers instead of souls.” How does he know what kind of progress a church has made in saving anybody’s soul? And no such list would be complete without 7), we “put our hope in politics.” Translation: Christians voted for Donald Trump. So it must have been “right” to vote for Hillary Clinton, the most corrupt woman in the world?
No. 2 was a charge of churches ignoring sexual predators among the clergy. Do you know anyone who thinks that should have been ignored? Do you know anyone, besides a few leftids, who thinks there should be more sexual predators among the clergy?
The key to understanding where this guy is coming from is his assertion that the churches need to have “various ways to understand Scripture.”
Oh! You mean like the doctrine of “the living, breathing Constitution,” in which the meaning of the Constitution is subject to incessant reinterpretation, depending on whatever innovation Democrats wish to extract from it?
So here we have a kind of “living Scripture,” which changes all the time according to the worldly fad of the moment–never mind how many times God reminds us, in the Bible, that He does not change.
“Living Scripture” is why the liberal churches are dying on the vine.
Yes, a living Constitution where 9 judges on the Supreme Court can dictate to us what is morally acceptable and what is not.
Same old tripe, just a new wrapper.
As long as “liberal churches are dying” I say bring it on. They “ain’t foolin’ us.” And WIngman can wash our feet.