Marginal Christianity

"What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to ... read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting plea...

And it looks like this: The Church is the largest single provider of healthcare in the world, and also the largest single provider of education in the world. The Early Church Fathers successfully campaigned against infanticide , and the same Church Fathers stood up for the rights of women by codifying marriage as a sacrament. The first orphanages were churches, and churches pioneered the first homes for the elderly and the first homes for the disabled .   It was the evangelicals of the 19th century who led society to abolish the slave trade (Wilberforce), and those same evangelicals pioneered modern social work (Jane Adams), modern foster care (Charles L. Brace), modern nursing (F. Nightingale), and free health care for the  terminally ill (Douglas Macmillan). 100 out of 110 US universities were church founded (including Yale, Princeton, and Harvard), and it was a missionary who pioneered the most successful wo...

    Iain Provan, in his book Seriously Dangerous Religion: What the Old Testament Really Says and Why It Matters (Ch. 10) makes the claim that God is a gradualist. This has significant implications for biblical society, the lessons we should draw from biblical society, and the attitude we should take toward our society today. From all of this it is clear that, in the biblical way of thinking, God does not deal with the world in an all-or-nothing way. He works with the world as he finds it, and (indeed) he accommodates himself to the world as he finds it, so that the world—and human society—may continue. When it comes to the new Jerusalem, God is a gradualist. He nudges the world slowly in the direction of this great city, rather than dropping it from heaven directly upon the world. (p.264) The “all of this” that Provan refers to is the way God works with people in Genesis and Exodus. No one is perfect, and some are downright disgusting at times. G...