|
Tony Evans, "pastor" of the 2,500-member Oak Cliff Bible
Fellowship in Dallas, was the chaplain of the Dallas Cowboys football
team during the Landry years. Currently he serves in his 10th
year as chaplain for the Dallas Mavericks basketball squad. In
an interview with The Daily Oklahoman Evans reflected that
"the church, which God designed to function as an immune
system in society, has a case of 'spiritual AIDS.'" He continues:
"The reason we are decaying as a Culture is the immune system
his shut down. ... We can't fight back" (Jan. 1, 1993).
Flow Evans would spell this out in detail I am not certain, but
I do know that he is correct in his general assessment. The inward,
ethical decay of our Western culture is a reality agreed upon
by most careful observers that I have read, Christian or not.
Society seems to be on a steep decline plunging into a morass
of an immoral wasteland.
One might think that the church of our Lord Jesus Christ would
find it increasingly necessary to point out the Rock in this weary
wilderness which alone issues forth living waters. But it seems
otherwise. Rather, the church itself is being radically reshaped
on various fronts by a troop of "chop-shoppers" who
busy themselves trying to re-cast our preaching so that it primarily
addresses the social issues of the day. This bumper-brand of theology
is known as the social gospel, the product of a union between
socialism and modernism (James Bales, Modernism, Trojan Horse
in the Church, pp. 88-89). Its unholy offspring would rather
share self-esteem psychotherapy or goals on "liberating children
from sexism" from the pulpit rather than upholding truth
as it is in Jesus.
Social Gospel
Roots of the social gospel trace back to Walter Rauschenbusch.
Rauschenbusch was an American Baptist minister from Rochester
Theological Seminary who, on his way to Germany in 1891, visited
England to discover more about the Fabian Socialists in which
he had become interested. The Fabians, organized in 1884, were
an English socialist educational institution connected with the
British Labor Party. They, of course, advocated socialism as an
economic theory and despised American capitalism. George Bernard
Shaw, Sidney Webb, and novelist H.G. Wells were some of the most
prominent members. Rauschenbusch formed a life-long friendship
with Sidney Webb who, in turn, became his tutor of socialist agendas.
Rauschenbusch is said to be the first man to "Christianize"
and "evolutionize" socialism, which had been so violently
revolutionary (James Bales, The Martin Luther King Story, pp.
37-38). his work in 1907, Christianity and the Social Crisis,
heavily influenced such leaders as Harry Emerson Fosdick,
Reinhold Niebuhr, and Martin Luther King, Jr. King read Rauschenbusch
in 1948 and became fascinated with the "social gospel."
At any rate, Rauschenbusch's ideas helped re-mold religion in
America.
In 1908 he participated in the founding of the Federal Council
of Churches. This hybrid later became one of the parent societies
of the infamous National Council of Churches, which is more a
voice for a one world government than the propagation of the principles
of the Prince of Peace.
The Changing Pulpit
The American pulpit, be it denominational or not, at one time
was outspoken in defense of common decency. Not today. Howard
Clinebell, the author of the text, Pastoral Care and Counseling,
which I used at Harding Graduate University in Memphis, is
a sample of why that is no longer the case. Clinebell insists
upon non-judgmental preaching. Instead, the church should be baptized
into one large "Lifelong Wholeness Center" (p. 209)
by relieving the mental load of the guilty through "acceptance."
Clinebell thinks demands to renounce sin with the traditional
thunderclaps of Moses and Elijah is a misunderstanding of our
role. Top priorities for this brand new breed of pioneer pedagogues
range from "liberating children from society's sexism"
(p. 293) and releasing women from bondage of a male-dominated
world (p. 337) to sermonettes on the environment (p. 212). Awareness
of the nuke arms-race (pp. 166-67), destigmatizing days (p. 276),
and world hunger (p. 166) also should be in a clergyman's repertoire.
One of Clinebell's chief concerns is for us to recognize that
the roles of male and female in the church are entirely a cultural
model.
Effect
Unfortunately, this type of skewed thinking has gradually become
coiled around not a few programs in the churches of Christ. Even
now, as I write, the February 1993 Christian Chronicle, in
an interview with Doug Foster, characterizes itself as middle-of-the
road, while they, on a continual basis, favorably promote and
advertise purveyors of this devilish nonsense about the roles
of men and women. Indeed! We must learn to mellow ourselves and
meticulously avoid dogmatism on almost every innovation and issue.
Of course, there is an exception here. If you need to boil over
a little dogmatic irritation against those who oppose this stinking
mush, just go ahead. We conservatives just need to learn to shut
up when we receive an edict from Abilene or Pepperdine professorships.
The popular party prattle is that "traditional roles of men
and women in the worship assembly are merely cultural." The
right-wing radicals just must learn to be more sensitive!
As congregations are being siphoned off into this newfangled faddishness,
I think Tony Evans' words will haunt us. The disease is sin. The
cure is the Gospel, of Christ - unmixed with popular error. And,
the Gospel, like it or not, makes just a few demands upon us,
one of which is to renounce the way of the world. This theme will,
in direct proportion to the consistency and fervency with which
it is pressed, turn many away. It is not a message riddled with
doses of ecology theology, equal rights for women agendas, or
even a worship designed to make every sinner "feel good"
about himself But without the strong doctrinal dose, our immunity
to malady is broken down. Spiritual AIDS. Protected from nothing.
Accepting of everything.
|
Feature Book: Among the Scholars
by David W. Hester
Paperback, 167 pages
$7.99 + shipping and tax if applicable
Click here to order
|
|
