Reflections on culture, nature, and spirituality from a Christian perspective
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Being a Christian is more than just an instantaneous conversion – it is a daily process whereby you grow to be more and more like Christ – Billy Graham.
Billy Graham is often associated with road to Damascus style evangelism in popular consciousness, which is why I find this quote by him all the more striking.
I was just listening to a Tony Campolo talk from Surrender Conference 06. He was talking about the centering prayer and how important it is for him to do that everyday.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what the “Good News” actually is.
I’m really looking forward to what the Andy Crouch and the Christian Vision Project authors have to say next year – there question for the year is “Is our gospel to small?”
I love that question and I think it is the one posed by your post.
Thanks for your blog.
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I think the simple formulas trotted out by many Christians as “the gospel” are indeed too limited. For starters, I think they are often unbalanced in focusing on the atonement to the almost complete neglect of the crucifixion. But more, the New Testament encompassed for more than forgiveness of past personal sins, far more.
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Actually, your can parse through just about any preacher’s sermons and find quoted nuggets of wisdom. Billy Graham seems mellow nowadays, although we all recoiled in horror when he was in his heyday.
Nowadays the hard-core fundies are calling for assassinations and openly promoting religious prejudice. They also expect to be able to mete out jail time to those who disagree with them. The new fundies are terrifying masters of the politicians they control. The prospect of losing the Christian voting bloc keeps them awake at night and they will go to any length to cover up any past political stances the fundies don’t like. Politicians also realize it doesn’t matter to fundies if they lie, even if the fundies know they are lying. It matters only that the fundies agree with the lies.
Today’s murderous, hate-filled fundamentalism makes Billy Graham look like a gentle old codger.
He never called for political assassination, and he never openly supported racism and anti-Muslim violence, even if his followers were reading that stuff between the lines of his sermons.
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Yogi-one, lot’s of anger there obviously, but please note that this is not the hang out for the sorts of fundies who call for assassination, so before you fire off that shot gun again I’d appreciate it if you asked a few questions first. We try to keep things harmonious here and projection doesn’t tend to contribute towards that. Care to tell us your story so we can see where you are coming from personally?
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