Marginal Christianity

Written by Keith Anderson . Posted by Bearings on May 7, 2015 , in 21stCenturyMinistry Can you hear it? It’s the sound of Mainline ministry leaders around the country breathing deep sighs of relief, patting themselves on the back, and smiling in self-congratulation in response to the recent news that what Millennials—that generation woefully absent from their churches—really want from the church is . . . the sacraments. In her new book, Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church , Rachel Held Evans chronicles her journey from the evangelicalism of her youth and young adulthood to The Episcopal Church. That shift is grounded in, and the book is organized around, the seven historic sacraments recognized by Anglo-Catholic Episcopalians: baptism, confession, holy orders (ordination), communion, confirmation, anointing the sick, and marriage. In a recent and widely shared opinion piece for The Washington Post , “Want millennials back in the pews? Stop trying to m...

  April 15, 2015 by Ben Witherington 11 Comments It’s tax day and Rachel Held Evans’ latest book has just emerged, Searching for Sunday (Nelson Books, 269 pages, $16.99 pb). In some ways this book has appeared at just the appropriate moment, because in some ways it is like a refund check from the IRS, much anticipated, and a big help. In some ways however, the book is simply taxing, burdened down with a false sense of righteous outrage about an issue Rachel should have given more thought and prayer to before choosing to start firing away against the Evangelical womb from which she has emerged. This is not to say that she isn’t right that a large portion of the church has wrongly stigmatized and singled out gay and lesbian people, and wrongly treated them as if they were somehow worse sinners than the rest of us. We have often done that. Hypocrisy stinks, and Rachel is right to stress this point. I will speak about what she says on the issue of same sex relationships a...

  Someone posted Rachel Held Evan’s post on the sacrifice of Isaac in Gen.22, “I would Fail Abraham’s Test (and I bet you would too).” (   http://rachelheldevans.com/blog/fail-abraham-test )  In her usual winsome and engaging way, Evans asks the wrong questions and gives the wrong answers to the issues raised by this text and other texts in the Old Testament where God is involved in violence of some sort. Her main target is those who share the sentiment and view of the Bible as John Piper, who she quotes:   “It’s right for God to slaughter women and children anytime he pleases . . . God is God.” Even though Evans acknowledges that the Ancient Near Eastern context “makes a bit more sense” of Gen.22, she does not draw on any of it to contest views like Piper’s.   Instead she goes on to query whether any of us today would or should heed God’s call to sacrifice our children.   She bookends her post with a similar comment:   “Maybe the real te...