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Tuesday, January 11, 2005

Christians begin to call a hypocrite a hypocrite
Posted by Jill | 1:53 PM
...so far it's just one here and one there, but frankly, someone other than a lapsed Jew with pagan leanings needs to call the Bushistas and their Fundie Friends for the foul fucking hypocrites they are.

Ronald J. Sider:

Scandalous behavior is rapidly destroying American Christianity. By their daily activity, most "Christians" regularly commit treason. With their mouths they claim that Jesus is Lord, but with their actions they demonstrate allegiance to money, sex, and self-fulfillment.

The findings in numerous national polls conducted by highly respected pollsters like The Gallup Organization and The Barna Group are simply shocking. "Gallup and Barna," laments evangelical theologian Michael Horton, "hand us survey after survey demonstrating that evangelical Christians are as likely to embrace lifestyles every bit as hedonistic, materialistic, self-centered, and sexually immoral as the world in general."1 Divorce is more common among "born-again" Christians than in the general American population. Only 6 percent of evangelicals tithe. White evangelicals are the most likely people to object to neighbors of another race. Josh McDowell has pointed out that the sexual promiscuity of evangelical youth is only a little less outrageous than that of their nonevangelical peers.

Alan Wolfe, famous contemporary scholar and director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life, has just published a penetrating study of American religious life. Evangelicals figure prominently in his book. His evaluation? Today's evangelicalism, Wolfe says, exhibits "so strong a desire to copy the culture of hotel chains and popular music that it loses what religious distinctiveness it once had."2 Wolfe argues, "The truth is there is increasingly little difference between an essentially secular activity like the popular entertainment industry and the bring-'em-in-at-any-cost efforts of evangelical megachurches."3

It is not surprising that George Barna concludes, "Every day, the church is becoming more like the world it allegedly seeks to change."4 We have very little time, he believes, to reverse these trends. African Christian and famous missions scholar Professor Lamin Sanneh told Christianity Today recently that "the cultural captivity of Christianity in the West is nearly complete, and with the religion tamed, it is open season on the West's Christian heritage. I worry about a West without a moral center facing a politically resurgent Islam."5

Our first concern, of course, must be internal integrity, not external danger. What a tragedy for evangelicals to declare proudly that personal conversion and new birth in Christ are at the center of their faith and then to defy biblical moral standards by living almost as sinfully as their pagan neighbors.


Well, I don't know how sinfully I live, and I think Sider's making a cheap shot here. I'm gainfully employed, I've been married to the same guy (first and only marriage) for over 18 years, I don't take drugs, I don't smoke cigarettes, I don't even drink alcohol, except an occasional Dirty Banana in Jamaica. So I don't exactly get where the "sin/pagan" inevitability comes from.

More:

If Christians do not live what they preach, the whole thing is a farce. "American Christianity has largely failed since the middle of the twentieth century," Barna concludes, "because Jesus' modern-day disciples do not act like Jesus."6 This scandalous behavior mocks Christ, undermines evangelism, and destroys Christian credibility.


Well, Davis Danizier would say that Jesus' modern-day disciples act like Paul -- bigoted, angry, judgmental.

But the best aspect of this article is the statistical FACT that the moral police who call themselves Christians outsin pagans like me any day of the week:


  • They sure as hell don't revere marriage: In August 2001, a new poll found that the divorce rate was about the same for born-again Christians and the population as a whole; 33 percent of all born-again Christians had been divorced compared with 34 percent of non-born-again Americans—a statistically insignificant difference. Barna also found in one study that 90 percent of all divorced born-again folk divorced after they accepted Christ. In many parts of the Bible Belt, the divorce rate was discovered to be "roughly 50 percent above the national average"
  • They sure as hell don't give alms to the poor: In 1968 the eight evangelical denominations gave considerably more than the seven mainline denominations. While the mainline denominational members gave 3.3 percent of their income, evangelicals gave 6.15 percent. While this is significantly more, the evangelicals on average still gave less than two-thirds of a tithe. By 1985 mainline folk had dropped their giving to 2.85 percent of their income and evangelicals to 4.74 percent. By 2001, mainline members had recovered slightly to 3.17 percent, but evangelical giving kept dropping and was at a mere 4.27 percent.
  • They sure as hell aren't chaste outside of marriage: in the 1990s the number of unmarried couples living together jumped a lot more in the Bible Belt (where a higher percentage of the total population are evangelicals) than in the nation as a whole. Nationwide, the increase was 72 percent. But in Oklahoma it was 97 percent, in Arkansas 125 percent, and in Tennessee 123 percent. Then we have the Newt Gingrich crowd: Of traditional evangelicals, 13 percent say it is okay for married persons to have sex with someone other than one's spouse. And 19 percent of nontraditional evangelicals say adultery is morally acceptable.
  • They like their porn, too: Citing a recent survey in Leadership magazine, Steve Gallagher says, "Tragically, the percentage of Christian men involved [in pornography] is not much different that that of the unsaved."


Now, if I wanted to be charitable, I could say that the kind of Christians who succumb to these temptations deserve the same kind of support and forgiveness we would give anyone. But naah. They don't deserve it; not when they're out there banging the drum about OTHER people's moral behavior.
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