Who Would Jesus Smack Down?
Monday January 12, 2009
Categories: Church
That's the apt headline over the New York Times Magazine's profile of Seattle pastor Mark Driscoll. Fascinating story, not least because there is so much theology in it--Molly Worthen does a commendable job of summarizing Driscoll's neo-Calvinism and capturing how...
Filed Under: Christianity, Mark Driscoll, Mars Hill Church, Molly Worthen, New Life Church, New York Times, Ted Haggard
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This blog is no longer updated and is closed for comments. We welcome your comments about Christianity in our Christianity forums.
Patton Dodd is a senior editor for Beliefnet and the author of My Faith So Far: A Story of Conversion and Confusion (Jossey-Bass).Search This Blog
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I guess you'd have a real problem with other leaders, then, like Moses, Joshua, Samuel, David, Jesus and Paul, to name just a few. They were all pretty authoritarian about their ideas too. I wonder how many of them like Ted Haggard also struggled to suppress their homosexuality.
Since I don't see any of those men as models of professional or church leadership (excepting Jesus, though that's complicated), I don't know that I'd have a problem with their ways of leading in their own contexts. But then, the BIble is plenty clear about the leadership failures of several of your examples, so one wouldn't want to emulate them blindly.
I know you were just being cute, but there was a serious point lurking in there somewhere, yes?
This is hardly surprising. Christianity (and most religions) require that you suspend reason and become an unquestioning follower of the "mysteries" of that faith. Any questioning is automatically answered with the catchphrase, "ye of little faith."
Authoritarian cults are quite similar, whether they are acceptable Christian churches or fringe Moonie groups. Give him a year and he will be making headlines from his own sex or money scandal (or sex for money).
Ironically, ds0490, those kinds of sweeping statements don't suggest that you're asking very hard questions. I've spent most of my Christian life exploring my doubts, and I've remained a Christian precisely because I've discovered that the Christian tradition is actually very amenable to questions. Not all Christian cultures deal with skeptics as well as others--but then, many cultures in general (religious or not) don't quite know how to handle questioners, so that, as you say, is hardly surprising.
Check out Andrew Jones' reflections here - I added my two cents about my time to check out MD in action.
http://tallskinnykiwi.typepad.com/tallskinnykiwi/2009/01/neo-calvinists.html
Am I the only one who finds it ironic that this place is called Mars Hill? 'Fight Club Christianity' sounds more like the worship of Mars than of Jehovah.
Driscoll has, as they say, "issues." It's too bad that he's projecting them onto Christianity to the detriment and embarrassment of the rest of the Church.
Don't you think "Who Would Jesus Smack Down?" is just fundamentally (no pun intended) the wrong question to be asking?
It turns us into a bunch of adolescents screaming, "Pick me, God!"
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