Presbyterian Pastors scold their own re. Fountains UMN

John Shore tells us that a group of Presbyterian pastors has rebuked one of the leaders of the 8 churches in Arizona.  I've excerpted just a little-- go read the whole thing.

One of the churches in what I called the “Gang of 8″ is Fountain Hills Presbyterian, pastored by Bill Good.

This didn’t sit so well with some of other Presbyterian churches in the area. So yesterday the pastors of those churches got together and released this:

We … cannot support, condone, nor keep silent about anyone who claims Christian identity and then openly attacks the peace, unity, and purity of the Body of Christ by calling some within it “not really Christian.”

and

We believe Rev. Good’s actions are not in keeping with Jesus’ teachings, nor the teachings of our Scriptures. We implore Rev. Good and his colleagues to stop this divisive behavior. We stand in solidarity with Rev. Felten and our sisters and brothers at The Fountains, and hold them all in prayer. We also hold in prayer Rev. Good, our sisters and brothers in the congregation he serves, and the other clergy and congregations participating, trusting that somehow God’s love will win in the end for all of our sakes.

We implore Rev. Good and his colleagues to stop these attacks, take down their banners, and, in the spirit of Jesus Christ, seek to be in conversation and dialogue to seek deeper understanding and respect, rather than resorting to overly simplistic attacks that further drive a wedge into the heart of the Body of Christ—seeking understanding over division; seeking to love rather than hate; seeking to build up rather than tear down.

 

More commentary on Fountains Church

About the coordinated effort of 8 conservative Christian churches to discredited Fountains Methodist Church,  John Shore:

What is neither fair nor benign, however, is the Gang of 8's pastors calling pastor Felten a tool of Satan, a hypocrite, an apostate and reprobate and comparing what he preaches to Naziism....

Name-calling and the casting of harsh dispersions is typical of bullies and those feeling threatened.

And if there's one message the Gang of 8 is successfully communicating, it's that they're feeling threatened.

Threatened they are, and threatened they should be. For the Christianity they represent is, in a word, ruinous. It holds that the "unrepentant" LGBT person is destined for hell, that wives must be subservient to their husbands, that Christians alone can enjoy a heavenly afterlife.

The Christianity they preach and teach feeds off fear, exclusivity, anger and victimizing "the other."

Erin Wathen has a theory

With more and more evangelical Christians (especially the younger variety) coming around in support of marriage equality, fundamentalist pastors are wondering—‘if our people aren’t afraid of the gays any more, then who are we supposed to protect them from?” .....So then it hits them—Other Christians! Those people who CLAIM to believe in Jesus and scripture, but really think that evolution is a thing. And also are not quite sure about the virgin birth. THEY are the new foil to our ownership of all things holy.

....

But, it is important to acknowledge that the intent behind this ‘fact or fiction’ message—and others like it, coming soon to a suburban mega-church near you! —is not just to diminish or silence. It is to set apart yet another group of people as outsiders; and, as such, as a threat to the ‘real and actual truth’ as it is perceived within a certain institution. This is what gives power to said institution–establishing an adversary, and then selling yourself as the only protection from that danger.

How that equates to ‘gospel’ for anyone, anywhere, is beyond me. But it’s worked for centuries.

Eric Scot English:

The debate between progressive and conservative Christianity is not new. Most of the time these kinds of conversations are hashed out in blogs, classrooms, and churches. However, what is unique about this situation is the way in which these churches are choosing to address the issue. Namely, in an aggressive ad campaign and public forum. The publicity surrounding this series is growing and has caught the attention of many around the country.

Based on what I can already observe by the series agenda, it is likely that these forums will fail to fairly communicate both sides and, thus, allow the townspeople to make up their own minds on these issues. Instead, it’s far more likely that these forums will be an exercise in providing propaganda in order to persuade congregants that the progressive worldview is completely false and ultimately evil.

If you cannot properly articulate what others believe, then you have nothing to argue against. This does nothing, but perpetuate stereotypes and ultimately provides no benefit to anyone. The purpose of this article is to provide what will more than likely be absent in these seminars- clarity, rationality and truth about the progressive worldview.

Fountains UMC sees opportunity.  From on their blog,

Friends of The Fountains like nationally-known author Diana Butler Bass (and others who keep a finger on the pulse of the national religious scene) say that they’ve never seen anything like this before: a coordinated smear campaign/attack by a majority of the churches in one town against a single other church.....

Far from being a bad thing, we believe that in the long run, this is a wonderful opportunity for The Fountains. The outpouring of support from literally around the world has already overwhelmed our office email and Facebook page. Visits to our website have increased a thousand-fold and various organizations and bloggers are picking up our story. ..

While this all may seem scary, it has already proven to be tremendous publicity for our church that “Prays Well With Others” with Open Hearts, Open Minds, and Open Doors. Our strategy is to not be defensive or argumentative, but to keep articulating the positive attributes of Progressive Christianity and always err on the side of grace as we move ahead. There are many who are hungry for the message The Fountains offers – we look forward to this situation helping us reach more and more of them!

Going after Progressive Christians

By now you have heard that 8 conservative Christian churches in Arizona have started an unprecedented coordinated campaign to impugn a progressive Methodist church in their vicinity.

"... when you have an effort collaborated by multiple churches in one community to try to discredit one other way of thinking, that's when it becomes alarming," said Rev. David Felten, head of The Fountains Progressive Christian Church.
....

"That lets people know there's a choice out there, they don't have to deny science, they don't have to hate their gay neighbor, they don't have to read and take the bible in a way that causes them to abandon their rational mind," he said.

So his conservative neighbors find this sufficiently threatening that they are planning a coordinated series of sermons to attack the beliefs of Progressives as "insufficiently Christian".

Jonathan Merrit puts this in the context of the Pew Survey, which shows continued decline of Christianity and a huge increase in the unaffilitated:

Triumphalist evangelicals have missed the point. The biggest threat to evangelicals is not some form of liberal faith, but rather faithlessness itself. Most people aren’t leaving evangelicalism for more liberal expressions, but rather for nothing at all.

While conservative Christians were crusading against their more liberal brothers and sisters in the mainline, the real growth has been in neither camp—the share of religiously unaffiliated individuals in America skyrocketed by a whopping 6.7 percent.

Rather than taking pot shots at more liberal strains of Christianity, evangelicals would do well to focus on the threat that all Christians are now facing: the growing number of people who are apathetic or antagonistic to the claims of Christianity.

If evangelicals continue to treat current trends as a race to the bottom, they shouldn’t be surprised if that’s exactly where they end up.

 Religion Dispatches comments,

It shows a basic flaw in Christianity in the United States: the conservatives don’t believe the liberals are actual Christians, and the liberals think the conservatives are flaming judgmental assholes.

In faith as as in politics, the nation seems to be growing ever more polarized along ideological lines. The net effect is roughly analogous to when campaign ads go negative: the base is kept strong and in line, but the majority of people say “to hell with the both of you, I’m staying home.”

The only discernible difference between the civil declension is that one takes place on a Tuesday and the other on a Sunday. It may work often enough for political campaigns, but I can’t recommend it as evangelism.