How is this news?

Last updated on: August 24, 2016 at 8:46 am by Dave Griffey

How is this news? 2016-08-23T22:50:57-04:00 Dave Griffey

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An associate pastor of a United Church of Christ has published a book saying sex outside of marriage is just fine, as long as it’s mutually pleasurable and affirming. OK. And? This is the United Church of Christ. It’s like a news story telling me Jack Chick wrote a book suggesting Catholicism is wrong.

I attended a UCC early in my Christian walk. Theological novice that I was, I nonetheless got whiffs of something wrong. Amateur thinking was all I possessed when it came to religion, but that still gave me the idea that entering a new religious world view should somehow challenge the dominant world view of my culture. And coming out of a state university culture in 1990, I struggled to find something in the UCC that didn’t sound like what I received pressed down, shaken together and running over at my college Alma Matter.

Shortly after attending a few months, I moved on. Over the years I came into contact with ministers from the UCC. Don’t get me wrong. Most were friends. The last ministry association I belonged to had a sweet older lady who was pastor of the local UCC. We got along just fine, and I considered her a friend. But there comes a point when the question is worth asking in the same manner of the historical fundamentalists: At what point do you cease to be a Christian when you seem to deny or renounce almost everything that would define the word Christian?

I know this is post-modernity. The fundamental truth of today is my awesomeness and my right to live any way I want and say anything I want, because reality only exists insofar as it affirms me (with the exception of a few million words deemed unacceptable because of their offensive nature). So I can sit at Lambeau field in 20 degree below zero weather with a foam cheese on my head, half naked and painted in green and gold, with lifetime season tickets and still insist I don’t really care about football because, well, I say so. I have no doubt that in such a culture, a denomination that produces self proclaimed Christian ministers preferring Gnosticism and questioning the existence of a personal God will fit right in.

But we shouldn’t be surprised when one of its representatives publishes a book that abandons the traditional teachings of the Faith it claims to follow. In fact, the only thing that surprised me was that it took this long for a UCC minister to publish such a book.

Christianity in the Post-Modern World

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