One cannot serve two masters

From The Washington Post:

A disciplinary committee of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America ruled yesterday that a gay pastor in Atlanta must give up his pulpit, saying it was reluctantly enforcing a "bad policy."

Following a five-day church trial last month, seven of the committee's 12 members voted to remove the Rev. Bradley E. Schmeling, 44, from the clergy as of Aug. 15.

The committee set that date to give the denomination an opportunity to reconsider its policies on homosexuality at its next churchwide assembly, Aug. 6-12 in Chicago. Activists on both sides of the issue predict that Schmeling's case will stir vigorous debate at the Chicago session.

[. . .]

Parishioners at St. John's Lutheran Church, a 135-year-old congregation on the edge of Atlanta's historic Druid Hills neighborhood, have strongly supported Schmeling. Since he arrived as pastor in 2000, the congregation has grown steadily, while the ELCA as a whole has been shrinking. "We always knew he was gay, and we called him because he was the right pastor for us," said Laura Crawley, the congregation's president.

There is an old saying that if a church is growing that it is either doing what God wants it to do or what Satan wants it to do. The reason that St. John's is growing is that they have provided a place where unsaved, but politically correct, persons who wish to cloak themselves in a veneer of "Christian" religiosity can go to fool themselves about their lost condition. The Bible refers to this as "having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof", 2 Timothy 3:5 (KJV), and advises us to turn away from such.

The reason that the ELCA as a whole is shrinking is because they are attempting to have it both ways. They have retained, if only just barely, a Biblical standard. However this causes them considerable embarrassment and is rebelled against by many in positions of leadership and in the laity. This causes pressure for true Christians to seek spiritual sustenance elsewhere so they leave or decline to join.

However they have not completely and publicly abandoned the Biblical standard so those who desire to have the imprimatur of Christian acceptability placed on their sin do not receive the full vindication that they crave. This leads them to leave or decline to join.

In other words they are neither hot nor cold and both Christ and Satan spew them out of their mouths.

The blind leading the blind

Nicole Russell has an essay on The American Thinker about Barack Obama's courting of evangelical Christians:

. . .Senator Barack Obama has begun courting the evangelical right, and some are already waltzing along in perfect time.

With his attendance at Rick Warren‘s church, Saddleback Valley Community, a mega-church in California for a large conference about AIDS, Obama has begun to align himself with an important base of voters to gain what conservatives lost this last year. Already lauded by some prominent evangelical publications for his outstanding "Christian faith" and a person Rick Warren called a "good friend" and a someone he'd like to work with on important issues, Obama is in perfect position, if he can keep the momentum, to use an unusual strategy for political gain.

I believe that Ms. Russell errs in an important point. While Rick Warren calls himself an evangelical and pastors a large church he does not speak for or represent the great majority of evangelicals.

Rich Warren is the inventor and chief proponent of the "seeker friendly" church movement. In a nutshell what this comprises is redesigning the "church experience" in such a way that it will be enjoyable to people who do not like church.

If this causes you to stop and picture what Carmen would look like if it were rewritten for people who prefer DMX to Bizet you have the gist of it.

Taken to its inevitable end this philosophy winds up breeding "churches" which have been described as "christian nightclubs".

The bottom line is that Rick Warren is no more an indication of what evangelicals think than Tony Campolo (you know Bill Clinton's theological enabler).

Rick Warren's association with Barack Obama will do nothing more than hasten Warren's slide into irrevelance. And it won't come a minute too soon.