Curious Christian

Reflections on culture, nature, and spirituality from a Christian perspective

4 topics that get Christians talking

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Matt Stone

2010-07-18

When I look back over the five years I’ve been blogging here, it’s interesting to observe what topics got Christians commenting and talking amongst themselves.

Here are four that stand out:

Abortion. Two of my most commented on posts from 2009 and 2008 were on abortion. Is it prolife to assassinate an abortionist?, Abortion, Politics and Christianity. This is all the more interesting given I don’t post on abortion very often.

Church. Church, particularly church abuse and church reform, is definitely something that interests a lot of Christians and a lot of others. Some popular posts over the years have been Priesthood of all Believers, Four Models of Emerging Churches, Hillsong in Trouble Over Mercy Ministries, Just to explain … Hopefully and How to Survive Church.

Atheism. Athiesm, or possibly more to the point, evolution, seems to get everyone excited. Richard Dawkins Stumped, Is Evolution Atheistic? and Is Atheism Acultural? were amongst the most popular. It seems there’s many people who dislike the evolution debate being hijacked by Atheistic evolutionists on the one hand and Christian creationists on the other.

Mysticism. Mysticism, meditation and prayer are topics I’ve explored in depth over the years, so it’s unsurprising my more controversial posts have sparked conversations. Personality and PSI, Joyce Meyer and Positive Confession, Entranced Prayer The Yoga Sutras of Sri Paul, Healing Prayer, Moving Meditations and Towards a Christian Theology of Meditation were just some that got people talking. Some got me labelled a heretic. Such is life.

Observing this I’m left with mixed feelings. Because, on the one hand, as popular as some of these topics are, I’d prefer not to focus on a number of them. But, on the other hand, it forces me to acknowledge that people need a safe space to wrestle with these topics, and the rarity of such spaces is possibly why the public conversation has not moved on. What do you reckon?

Tags Abortion

5 responses to “4 topics that get Christians talking”

Steve Hayes

2010-07-19

Nothing bores me more than evolution debates.
Social Darwinist arguments are a little more interesting.

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Kalessin

2010-07-19

Now lets see a list of the most constructive discussions. 🙂

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andrew park

2010-07-19

Agree with Steve about the evolution debates. A bit on the tired side.
Surprised that your many blogs about war, pacifism and the Anibaptist-Calvinist debates weren’t mentioned. In my observations they attracted a lot of comments, from a fairly diverse range of opinion. Certainly kept my interest and had me reaching for church history, media and wider theological sources in order to build up my own comments and responses.

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Matt Stone

2010-07-19

Well, what interests me personally is discipleship. Specifically: what does discipleship look like in multireligious and multicultural contexts? How do we disciple others? How do we measure up as disciples ourselves?
It’s far more important than evolution, far broader than abortion, and I go as far as to say that missional discipleship is even more important than the missional church conversation. After all, most Christians have minimal say on structural reform but discipleship is something we can all be involved in.

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Matt Stone

2010-07-20

Andrew, in answer to your comment (sorry, hadn’t seen your comments when I last commented), though my posts on Christian nonviolent activism, etc, are obviously close to my heart, they don’t draw nearly as much commentary as the ones on abortion and evolution. Such is life.
At the moment I’m wondering, insofar as I will continue to tackle abortion and evolution *occasionally*, are there some more interesting angles that get ignored by the mainstream? After all, one of the more interesting abortion conversations was the “Is it prolife to assassinate an abortionist?” one. That’s more interesting to me personally than the standard “abortion is bad” rant. Steve’s comment on social Darwinianism could be worth pursuing. Maybe I could explore the ironies of fundamentalist groupds like Westboro using viral marketing.

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