Ike in Texas challenged Mr. Brooks’s description of the candidate as “a stranger to most of what would generally be considered the Christian virtues: humility, mercy, compassion and grace.”
“Tell that to the unborn children he is fighting for every day. I didn’t see Obama leave an empty seat for them” during the State of the Union speech, Ike wrote. “Tell that to the nation of Israel, whose trust and relationship the current administration has thrown away.”
.. Other readers said evangelical Christianity today emphasizes fundamentalist interpretation, not mercy.
“Evangelical Christianity in the U.S. is about politics, not religion,”Gillian Scobie wrote. “Its literal and highly selective reading of the Bible feeds political interests and pays little or no attention to the so-called Christian virtues.”
For others, the rise of Mr. Cruz recalled dark moments in the history of Christianity.
“There’s a wide range of beliefs among evangelicals. Yes, there are those that believe in following Christ, in compassion, generosity, paying more attention to one’s own faults than other people’s,” Jeff in Evanston, Ill., wrote. “But there is also the fire and brimstone crowd, the true believers, the kind that hunted down witches in puritanical New England. Ted Cruz is one of them.”
Was Wheaton Wrong?
With those provisions made, I am standing up for Wheaton in principle because I think it is important for religious institutions to police their theological boundaries. Most Catholic universities in the US haven’t done so, and the result in many, many cases is this kind of embarrassment, and a radical degradation in what it means to be educated in a Catholic institution of higher learning.
.. If the statement is meant to exclude anyone, that would be liberal Protestants or half-hearted evangelicals. I do not believe there has been any point in Wheaton’s history—until now—when the college’s board of trustees has looked at the Statement of Faith with Catholics in mind.
.. Wheaton is an “umbrella” institution rather than a “systemic” one. Umbrella institutions welcome all sorts of people, with all sorts of beliefs, onto their faculty, as long as those people can support the principles on which the institution is founded. (Thus Notre Dame in no way compromised its mission as a Catholic university when, some years ago, it hired Nathan Hatch—an evangelical Protestant who both graduated from Wheaton and served on its board of trustees—as its provost.) But Wheaton is in fact a systemic institution which asks all of its faculty—and indeed its other employees—to affirm, not merely to support, its core beliefs.
.. The concern is completely reasonable, especially, as Jacobs points out, that compromising on orthodoxy has never worked out well for the orthodox within Christian higher education:
Evangelical Christianity: Behind America’s Moral and Spiritual Decline
First because God has already given completely that which is trying to be gained, and second, because you can’t gain, earn, or receive anything from God through your performance, effort, pursuit, pressing in, or actions, no matter how spiritual they may seem. To do so, is to fall from Grace and declare the cross as foolish and insufficient, and yourself as capable and worthy at some level or another.
.. A few years back, the Barna Research Group showed that the overall divorce rate among Evangelical themed denominations was between 27-34%, while the divorce rate among atheists… 21%.
.. Christians and Christian leaders who believe their job is to point out sin in the world, and declare that God loves people so much that if they don’t say a certain prayer and clean up their act, He will justly throw them into an eternity of torture by demons, flames, and a desire to die that will never be granted; calling it all… good news.
.. They would do well to move away from “hating the sin and loving the sinner,” and just loving people, period. They would do well to let the Holy Spirit discern and change people, and instead, concentrate on doing their job, which is to love people, unconditionally.
.. They would do well to proclaim that God loves, accepts, embraces, favors, and blesses all people far beyond what they could ever imagine. He is not angry, vengeful, waiting to punish, or licking His lips to pour out wrath, but rather, His love is deeper, wider, stronger, and more generous and scandalous than they ever imagined.
Phil Vischer: Dude Ranches in Texas with Guest Bob Roberts
Muslim imams and evangelical pastors camping together on a dude ranch in Texas?? Some kind of bizarre reality show coming to cable this Fall? Nope! It’s the real life work of Texas megachurch pastor Bob Roberts – who joins us on the podcast to describe his unlikely and somewhat controversial role as a bridge between conservative Christian leaders and their Muslim counterparts.