Thursday, November 02, 2006

A Methodist Defines the Issues

(Just a quick post from school)

As a conservative Christian, it's been strange at times to hear about the decline of mainline Protestantism due to the increasing liberality of the denominations. It's been especially strange because, as a Methodist, I often see stories in the news about the liberal factions in my denomination.

Al Mohler has a post about a recent magazine article, published by a conservative Methodist, discussing the liberalization of the UMC. The article is not online, otherwise I'd link it directly, but Mohler's thoughts (and I can only assume those of the article's author) mirror mine. The issues being disagreed upon in the churches, homosexuality being chief among them, are only a symptom of the problem.

My take on it: If you are willing to deny the fundamental underlying principles of your religion, then why claim it at all?

(I'm an atheist who believes in God! Woo!)

Sounds silly, doesn't it?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just trying to clarify - are you saying that believing homosexuality is a sin is an "underlying principle" of Christianity?

Hal said...

That, no. But it reflects on an underlying principle of Christianity, namely the veracity of the Bible.

If you're a Christian and you say that homosexuality isn't a sin, you have to say that in the face of what the Bible says about it. At that point, you start to undermine it by then going into arguments about what is true in it and what isn't.

And at that point the questions become numerous. Who gets to decide? How?