USA not a Christian Nation

Franklin Graham and Pat Robertson, and other politically conservative religious leaders Do Not Speak for Me when they attack Islam, calling it a dangerous and violent religion.  Muslim terrorists represent only a very small faction of Islam; to characterize all muslims by this small segment is counterpart to describing Christians by the actions of bombers of abortion clinics and other Christian terrorists.  Graham should practice the Golden Rule and not be criticizing whole groups by generalizations that could be turned around and applied to him and his religious camp.
I think this mind set comes out of a widely-accepted belief that America is, or was at some point, a  Christian nation.  It's arguable whether or not the US was founded on Christian principles or on ancient Greek ideas, but it cannot be questioned that freedom of religion is guaranteed by the Constitution for all citizens.  Conservative Christians seem to forget this.  They want to ring their church bells from their steeples-- but then deny the Muslims at the neighborhood mosque from announcing their call to prayer five times a day in the same way.  Or they want to protest the right of Muslims to even build their mosques in the first place.
It seems that Christians want freedom of religion-- but only for Christians.  Sorry, that's not what the founders of America had in mind.  Freedom of religion is for all.
Further, this meanness that conservatives have for anyone who is different from themselves is hateful, harmful and in direct contrast to the love and acceptance that so characterize the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.  The Lord reserved His harshest criticisms for self-righteous religious leaders like the Pharisees, who were the religious spokesmen of their day.  Today's counterparts would be the self-appointed religious spokesmen like Graham and others, whose prejudicial attacks* on other faiths do much harm to Christianity and the Name of Christ.
I've heard it said that in order to suppress the work of Islamic terrorists, the moral majority of peace-loving Muslims  should speak up and refute their extremist brothers.  Maybe it would help.  And I think that the masses of peaceful Christians should likewise speak up and point out that conservative Christian extremists don't speak for them but only poison the population's overall view of Christianity.
If Christians want to "take back America" as their spokesmen keep saying, they will need to implement the principles Christ taught, especially love and acceptance for all.  Their harmful hateful strategies must be abandoned as counterproductive and anti-Christ.  Where's the love for which Christians are supposed to be known?  Let's have more spokesmen who promote that love toward Muslims-- and everybody else who believes differently than we do.

*See:  CNN,  God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Run the World, Stephen Prothero, professor, Boston University.

Harmful Hierarchy Part 2

Okay, I know where the confusion comes from about this submission to authority doctrine.  Most believers-- and in fact most teachers and pastors-- are thinking of the organization of the institutional church, and the organism of the universal Church, as the same thing, and then trying to apply spiritual truth to a man-made entity.  So let's clarify:
I'm going to define the church (with a small "c") as the man-made denominations, local congregations and structures that have been instituted in order to organize the (capital "C") Church, which is the Body of Believers, the Bride of Christ, that is all believers everywhere.  There are believers both inside and outside this institution, so this organism, the Body of Christ, or the Church, also exists both inside and outside the institution-- the church.
Now, organizations need organization, so some kind of hierarchical structure must be maintained or you'll end with... well, disorganization.  Whether it's a business, an institution, the military, or whatever, there must be hierarchy, and the larger the organization, the more complex the hierarchy.  Denominations and parishes and local congregations are organizations, so they must have an organizational structure-- a man-made hierarchy.  I'm talking about the small "c" church, the institution here.
But the capital "C" Church, the Body of Christ, was not created with a pyramidal hierarchy, it was meant to be an Organism unlike anything else.  It cannot be compared to the military and it should not be run like a business.  There is only one level of hierarchy that exists between the parts of the Body and the Head, which is Christ.  Every part of the Body is answerable directly to the Head.  There are no levels or ranks among the believers, as all are on the same plane and are obliged to respect or submit to one another while submitting to Christ.
All right, I'm not sure that I have cleared up any confusion, but I'll move ahead.  The problem of harmful hierarchies in the church comes when we take a human action such as Paul's appointing of elders in the New Testament churches-- his attempt to organize the local assembles-- and we spiritualize that and build an entire doctrine upon it, calling it a God-ordained clear Biblical principle that should be applied to the church today and without question.
Because this has happened, millions of believers, in their various denominations, are living under an ungodly religious oppression that was never intended by God and is, in fact, anti-Christ, as it perpetuates religious hierarchical empires that stand against the servanthood that Christ taught and exemplified.  The fact is that all believers-- including all leaders in the church-- should "have the same attitude as that of Christ, who...made himself nothing, taking on the very nature of a servant." (Phil. 2: 5-7).  Now where's the hierarchy in that?


Frank Viola speaks for me when he says, "Command-style relationships, hierarchy, passive spectatorship, oneupmanship, religious programs, etc. were created by fallen humans.  And they run contrary to the DNA of the triune God as well as the DNA of the church.  Sadly, however, after the death of the apostles, these practices were adopted, baptized, and brought into the Christian family.  Today, they have become the central features of the institutional church."    ---Frank Viola, Reimagining Church, Cook Press, 2008, p. 37


Viola also says, "The Bible never teaches that believers are given authority over other believers.... The notion that Christians have authority over other Christians is an example of forced exegisis.  As such, it's Biblically indefensible."  --Reimagining Church, p.214, 215


By the way, there is much less confusion about the submission to authority doctrine among believers who are worshipping outside the institutional church in house groups, coffee shops or Boiler rooms*.  Many of those movements are patterned more closely after the New Testament church which had virtually no hierarchy for the first three centuries.  The church in China is an example of one of the largest contemporary house church movements in the world-- where congregations and denominations are outlawed.


* See Punk Monk, New Monasticism and the Art of Breathing, by Andy Freeman & Pete Greig, for more on Boiler Rooms.

Harmful Hierarchy Part 1

I find ironic (even hypocritical) the doctrine of submission to authority as it is widely taught in Protestantism.  The word Protestant means one who protests, and it comes out of a nearly 500-year-old tradition (the Protestant Reformation started in 1517 A.D.) that sprang from the questioning of church orthodoxy by Martin Luther and other reformers.  So, how is it that any Protestant can prohibit another Protestant from being true to the Protestant tradition when he wants to question authority?

Further, many of the existing Protestant denominations rose out of their own protests against earlier groups.  I was raised in the Missionary Church, which was started by a non-conformist named Daniel Brenneman who staged an exodus from the Mennonites.  Yet the Missionary Church is staunch in its doctrine of submission to authority.  Hmm.  Forgetting our roots, aren't we?

I know that this teaching comes from several references citing the naming of elders in the early church and encouraging the respect of those elders.  I believe in respect for elders-- and everybody else in the Body.  Yet the strict and overbearing adherence to this  doctrine regularly generates a forced subjection and oppression that is destructive to multitudes of believers every year as leaders lord it over their people-- in direct defiance of Christ's teaching to the contrary (Matt.20:25-28).*
The submission teaching is an example of a contrived exegesis, and those who promote it are effectively robbing Jesus to pay Paul.  That is, they violate the primary teachings of Christ (servant leadership) while elevating the secondary teachings of Paul (submission to authority).
Further, it's catholic dogma, so Protestants who espouse it are virtual traitors to their own Protestant roots.

The fact is that church leaders often get stuff wrong, and when it happens, there should be questioners who, like Martin Luther, and like Paul who confronted Peter with his hypocrisy (Gal. 2:11-14), will speak up in respectful and appropriate protest.

Shane Claiborne speaks for me when he says, "Dissent is a gift to the church."

Shane Claiborne, author The Irresistible Revolution, thesimpleway.org


See Part 2 of this post for more of who speaks for me on this topic.


*To see a representation of the multitudes of Christians who are hurt every year by harmful hierarchies, visit: www.batteredsheep.com