Brian McLaren bloviating his shame...

I love Doug Wilson's line when he writes:

"Do I not have peculiar gifts in the arena of fisking? Was I not born for just such occasions? With a sigh, I put aside my casual evening, and go out to my shop to find the nine-pound sledge."

I had to laugh at that one.

> Here's an historic parallel from a Christian Jewish friend...

How prophetic, Kamilla.

> "But come 1933, it did not turn them into Germans."

Nor were the Nazis the least bit appreciative of all their patriotism, good citizenship and hard work.

The Quran makes no distinction between respectful and non-respectful Christians, when it comes to their treatment by Muslims in power.

Tim, your comment about McLaren referring to Christ as "our own faith tradition" reminds me of a quote of McLaren's from his book The Last Word and the Word After That:

“Our problem is that we use the idea of hell precisely the way the Pharisees did, exactly the opposite of the way Jesus did. We say everyone not of our elite party—the party of people who believe in certain doctrines, however they’re defined—are excluded and will face not only our rejection in this life but also God’s eternal rejection and scorn forever” (The Last Word, 163).

[To borrow your idea, Tim] When a pastor starts to refer to the rejecting and spurning of the King of the Universe, the refusing his offer of salvation and the substitution of his painful death as "not of our elite party"...

"When a pastor starts to refer to the rejecting and spurning of the King of the Universe … "

I can remember vividly the first (and only) time I thought I was looking at a living human male whom I also thought was eternally damned. How, do you suppose, I came to think such a thing?

It was in an Ash Wednesday service in the mainline Episcopal Church, in the cathedral in Nashville, TN. My wife and I had overnighted near the cathedral on a ministry trip up to Ohio, specifically so we could make the Ash Wednesday service early in the morning before continuing on our journey.

The Book of Common Prayer is nothing if not Trinitarian, replete with prayers, praises, and petitions addressed to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. But that Ash Wednesday, I never heard this name for God once.

Instead, all we heard was "in the name God the Creator, God the Redeemer, and God the Sanctifier" and other such formulas that renamed God in terms of his roles or functions toward us.

Now, with no context, one might think the priest to be daffy. Or avante garde. Or liturgically innovative. But I knew the context -- the same context that now courses through the Episcopal Church, coarsening the last tattered shreds of any orthodoxy remaining in it. That context was (and is) nothing other than a virulent feminism set on deconstructing the Patriachal Christianity that is the heritage of any mere Christian, and erecting in its place a modalistic unitarianism determined to erase forever any memory of the old patriarchal faith.

In such a context, to deliberately *avoid* the name Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and to replace it with some other sexless formula … well, it was tantamount to a refusal to confess the Son as Son, and also to avoid confessing the Father as Father. And, this before a congregation of several hundred attending this early service before going on to their jobs.

In the midst of one of these trendy substitutions, the following words from Matthew rose in my mind: "32 “Therefore whoever confesses Me before men, him I will also confess before My Father who is in heaven. 33 But whoever denies Me before men, him I will also deny before My Father who is in heaven."

Does Jesus' denying a man before His Father in heaven equate to damnation? I've never had such a case of goosebumps in my life, then or since.

>"We are deeply committed Christians."

A more self deluded assertion is difficult to imagine. I'm trying to imagine Mclaren explaining these deeply held committments in accordance with his decision to observe Ramadan to a Christian who was more intimately acquainted with the nature of Islam-perhaps a Knight of St John during the siege of Malta.

>"We want to come close to our Muslem neighbors."

I know some Armenian Christians who would advise you not to get too close.

>"Among the core values of Ramadan are...resolving conflict."

Yes, and the Islamic solution to conflict involving multicultural tensions has typically featured such tested and time honored approaches as slavery and genocide.