Safe Haven

To follow up on a point I was making on Facebook, we don't realize the scandal as Christians we've created by all our denominations. The principled way to be in one is only this: "My other choices are so wrong on doctrinal point X that we have to separate." In today's evangelical world, to suggest that someone might be wrong enough to be in danger of Hell is, to say the least, uncool. Even when it's absolutely true. Door-to-door Arians, liberal Protestants, etc. looking in your direction. We say completely stupid things like, "Well, as long as so-and-so believes the gospel" WITHOUT EVER SAYING WHAT IT IS, and apparently not caring that we all are telling a slightly different story on that point. It simply doesn't bother us that we receive the Body and Blood of our Lord (variously understood) but that we don't share it in common, largely. We share common rites (baptism, Eucharist) but we understand them differently. We even deny them to each o...

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I've been away for a few days. The internet has been down at the house; I think the previous residents (my mother and stepdad) forgot to pay the bill again. [Would you pay it, if you didn't live there?--ed.] They said they would, through this month. Anyway, my grandfather was in town; my big-mouth mother told him about That One Thing At That Secret Place. He's Church of Christ. He matter-of-factly stated that I was looking into a cult. I recovered, though: I told him I was doing research for a book. (Totally true.) I will never again speak ill of anyone whose family relations present a difficulty for them. I need to be honest here, though: I utterly hate the Restorationist movement. I hate most of its theology, its hostility toward other Christians, its antipathy for serious theology, its view of history, and the rather prevalent tendency toward fundamentalism. I love many people in those churches, not least my family. But I gotta call it like I see it. [That denial of orig...