Ernie: Maybe Andy Stanley is exactly who you say he is; I am more than willing to take you at
your word. But the point is that Evangelicals -there are exceptions- are defeatists when it comes to social values issues. Everywhere you look, they are in retreat, no fight in them, with a caveat for abortion. I know who the exceptions are and God bless them. But nobody else seems to be listening. Again, with some exceptions, but very few considering that around 25% of the US population consists of Evangelicals. Worse, they don't seem to care what happens to kids, except their own. Meanwhile, Evangelicals are quite eager to win souls for Christ. * A Christ who doesn't care what happens to children? * A Christ who doesn't care that an entire civilization is becoming accepting of sodomy? * A Christ who doesn't care that still other kids are being brainwashed into thinking that their gender is an option and that it is "good" to ask for a sex change operation? I can't speak about other people on the matter but do know that for their own reasons most of the young are walking away from the Church. It would really be valuable to find out what those reasons actually are, not just guesses but empirical data. What I can tell you for sure is that when I am approached by any Evangelicals with a hope to win me over that -while I remain mindful of the great good that Christian believer may do- they are terribly hypocritical. Win me over to a Christ who has abandoned the field to homosexuals? A Christ who is indifferent to atrocities done to children? Like I just said, it is very hard for me to think of any Christians who really give a damn and are willing to fight for what is right. Another poll that I heard about recently has it that while most Trump supporters admit that he sometimes messes up, one thing is for sure, he is a fighter and most of the time he fights for what he believes is right -and his supporters admire exactly that. This explains why, for all of my criticisms of the man, I still think well of Pat Robertson. Sure, sometimes his head is screwed on backwards, I know that. But he always fights for what he believes is right. And what is the basis of the Evangelical appeal to me, when I hear it? "Gentle Jesus meek and mild" -and a Jesus who runs away from every fight over social values. Do you get it, Ernie? Do I really need to spell it all out? I'm not talking about abandoning the RC ship. Centroids has value to me. But I am talking about other matters and on those subjects you have lost me, really lost me. As if this was Luther at his greatest test of faith and he didn't say, "here I stand," but instead said: "Here I kneel." Thank God the Luther of history was willing -at the greatest possible risk to himself- to take a stand. Then, at the moment he most needed to take a stand. All of history changed after that. He didn't kneel in the face of his harshest critics, he stood before them and showed the greatest possible courage despite their power, which was overwhelming, vs. his lack of any visible power at all. You'd think there is a valuable lesson in this...... Billy ________________________________ From: Centroids <drer...@radicalcentrism.org> Sent: Friday, February 8, 2019 8:07 PM To: RadicalCentrism@googlegroups.com Cc: Billy Rojas Subject: Re: [RC] [ RC ] Evangelical political witness a "panicked mess" ie on ward christian soldiers, in full retreat Hi Billy, Kindly tell me of any Evangelical you might name who gives a damn, who is well informed, and who is not a defeatist. Nobody is well-informed by your standards, but Andy Stanley of Your Move is remarkably clueful and able to engage the culture. He isn’t fighting the same battles as you, but he is very aggressive at critiquing culture. And savvy about not getting lost in biblical literalism. There is even a tiny evangelical center, though again probably not to your taste. E Anyone at all. -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <RadicalCentrism@googlegroups.com> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to radicalcentrism+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
