Today is one of those days where in the 20 minutes I have while passing by the computer, I discovered that somebody else has already said something profound or interresting enough for today… I have a couple of things brewing — if one of them doesn’t come out too nasty I may post a rant about it soon. In the meantime on a rant-related subject, yesterday’s Quote of the Day from the Generous Orthodoxy ThinkTank is as follows:
It’s my impression … that most people reared in the evangelical subculture either embrace it altogether or abandon it altogether. Either option strikes me as disingenuous, as an easy way around a tradition that is at once rich in theological insights and mired in contradictions.
— Randall Balmer, quoted in Living on the Boundaries: Evangelical Women, Feminism And the Theological Academy. I, of course, seem to be continually moving toward the latter of the two positions mentioned.
Then to suggest that not all evangelicals or their theology are bad, there’s a real gem for today: Len Hjalmarson comes up with Karl Barth on the emerging movement:
Recently Karl Barth was seen haunting the halls of a certain eastern seminary. While Barth apparently died in 1968, his spirit has lingered on through his words and his writing and his passion for God and His Kingdom.
Karl was interested in engaging the emerging church conversation, even if posthumously. Sitting at a PC in a student lounge, he was surfing some of the more prominent blog sites when he ran across Scot McKnight’s post of November 2nd. In response to Scot, he quoted from one of his better known works, “Evangelical Theology.” Karl’s comments are in red.
I fail to see the disingenous nature of someone reared in evangelical subculture leaving it. Of course, that may have something to do with the fact that I’ve pretty much done it.
Someone’s path is someones path. Who is the judge of the genuineness (or not)?
Maybe the reason why it must be either embraced altogether or abandoned altogether is due to what has become, over time perhaps, the extreme nature of some of evnagelicalism, as coopted by right-wing politics, “big-business” styles of ecclesiology, a seeming preoccupation with the trendy sometimes at the expense of the true (in my opinion), and a theology which tends to make “salvation” into fire-insurance, just to name of few of my own difficulties with it. I could go on, but I won’t. The critiques of evqangelicalism as it is now primarily incarnsted in North America, are many and have been well stated on many a blog for years.
I reached a point where I felt that I had to go elsewhere to find, once again, something closer to the center…. Is that disingenuous?