Say It Ain't So!

On Saturday my husband pointed out to me that there was an interesting article in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette entitled "Nonbelievers in pulpit--a tip of the iceberg?" The author is Terry Mattingly who is the director of the Washington Journalism Center at the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. Many of us who have been reared practically in conservative churches have been concerned in recent years about the growing liberalism in America's churches. Of course, we have always known that churches typically have either a conservative slant or a liberal slant, and this idea is not the new revelation. What's new about it is that traditionally conservative churches are now reporting that many of its pastors and church leaders no longer believe in God, the divinity of Christ, or the authenticity of the Bible.

When I taught at John Brown University, I remember that one of our Biblical Studies professors would frequently ask his students this question, "Should we be intolerant of tolerance?" As an English professor at that time, I don't think I understood what his point was. Now I do. On the one hand, none of us has the complete truth in front of us; we believe what we have either studied and determined to be true or perhaps what we have been taught as truth by others through the years. In an age of multiple beliefs and diversity, traditionalists worry about being viewed by others as being rigid and intolerant. But . . . I ask this question, "Should not some elements of our faith be held on to tightly?"

In Mattingly's article, he reports an interview with a Presbyterian who states, "I reject the virgin birth, I reject substitutionary atonement. I reject the divinity of Jesus. I reject heaven and hell in the traditional sense, and I am not alone." A United Methodist states, "I've thought of God as a kind of poetry that's written by human beings." A Southern Baptist states that the "grand scheme of Christianity, for me is a bunch of bunk." While I am a believer in free speech and belief, I still am old-fashioned enough to believe that one should not be in the ministry unless he or she supports the church's stated theology, whatever it might be.

I believe that believers in 2010 long for hope in their lives since the everyday culture is consumed with talk of wars, great recessions, oil spills, and house foreclosures. They long for morality and truth that they can apply in situations which might tempt them to make bad choices. They want assurance that there is an afterlife and that the present world is not all there is. Religion should offer these hopes. If it can't, what good is it to anyone?