Unfundamentalist

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God Can’t Use My Life

by Darrell Lackey in Christian Spirituality

So much of my early life in the fundamentalist-evangelical world was about how God was “using” my life then, or, was going to use my life in the future. A common theme or question during those years was: What were my spiritual gifts and was I allowing God to use those gifts in my life? I was told to give my “life” to God. All of me. My talents, gifts, resources, dreams, hopes, and all the rest, so God could use my “life.”

“God is going to use your life son,” I heard more than once growing up. And I know they meant well. They didn’t want a person to waste anything God had given them. None of us do. Much like the US Army, we want to “be all we can be” for God. We want God to use our life. We don’t want to be like the one servant who buried his talents and did nothing with them.

For those old enough to remember the movie The Graduate, there is a scene where Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman) is moving past the adults present at his graduation party, trying to escape, really, their questions. Everyone wants to know what Benjamin is going to do with his life, what his plans are and some have advice. One man cryptically pulls Benjamin aside, and almost conspiratorially says one word to him, “plastics.”

This was in the late 60s, so perhaps plastics were the next big thing. Today it would probably be Tesla, Solar, or Bitcoin, I don’t know. We want young people to be “successful” and to live with purpose, vigor, and gusto. We want them to hone their skills and talents—put… [Read more…] about God Can’t Use My Life

My daughter is one of countless children who live in fear since Trump came into power

by Sana Khatib in Current Events

I recently made the difficult decision to send my daughter to a counselor. At her first session, she was so overcome with emotion that she could barely string together a few sentences. How did we get to this point?

Last November, my daughter and I were featured in a video in which we cooked a traditional Syrian holiday meal during Thanksgiving. While many people shared warm and encouraging comments, some comments left us flabbergasted: “This is exactly why Trump wants to get rid of all these minority traitors. GO HOME.” Knowing that somebody watched my beautiful daughter cook with her mother and felt inspired to spew out hateful rhetoric in response was deeply disheartening.

Protecting our children is the most fundamental parental instinct. When our children fall, we pick them up and kiss their scrapes. When they encounter a bully on the playground, our blood boils as we restrain our desire to run to their rescue. So what are parents to do when the bully is our own president who continues to divide our country and encourage xenophobia?

Van Jones of CNN encapsulated the nightmare of a Trump presidency best on election night when he said, “It’s hard to be a parent tonight for a lot of us. You tell your kids, ‘Don’t be a bully.’ You tell your kids, ‘Don’t be a bigot.’ You tell your kids, ‘Do your homework and be prepared.’ And then you have this outcome, and you have people putting children to bed tonight, and they’re afraid of breakfast. They’re afraid of ‘How do I… [Read more…] about My daughter is one of countless children who live in fear since Trump came into power

God, Guns, and Grieving

by Lydia Joy in Current Events

I live in small town USA, so I’m told. Here in rural Virginia, we’re surrounded by farmland. Crops that are dedicated entirely to peanuts, corn, soybeans—and my county is one of the largest suppliers of cotton. With a population of no more than five hundred, a few family-owned businesses, four churches, one stop light, and the nearest shopping mall a thirty mile drive, it’s safe to say we’re smaller than most. I’ve spent most of my childhood here and, with neighbors knowing neighbors, I grew to love the security it provided. When you were in need, you were helped. It didn’t matter for what, someone always would step up.

Growing up in the South, there are advantages to being surrounded by profound history. Heritage is something that is nothing short of identity for many I have known over the years, even if I never shared that feeling. With both of my parents originally from Upstate New York, there was always a disconnect to how strongly rooted those around me were. But I was raised in a fundamentalist church and it was common to see signs of that southern identity everywhere.

“Dixie” was sung for special occasions, and shouting and cheers about how “the South will rise again” regularly occured during Sunday evening services. The Rebel Flag was worn on lapels and Stonewall Jackson’s prayers were recited. Sermons dedicated to America returning to the God that She had turned Her back on were constant. Old Glory, George Washington, Patrick Henry, and General Robert E. Lee… [Read more…] about God, Guns, and Grieving

remember you are dust

by Jill Crainshaw in Christian Spirituality

Embed from Getty Images

Wednesday, February 14, was Ash Wednesday. Many Christians in my community attended worship and left their sanctuaries with ashes smeared on their foreheads to mark the beginning of a Lenten season of reflection and repentance.

On Wednesday, February 14, a gunman shot and killed students and teachers in a Florida school.

This Sunday, the first Sunday in Lent, we hear ancient Gospel words:  “and immediately the Spirit drove Jesus out into the wilderness” (Mark 1). The wilderness is too real in our world—in our hearts—right now. May God have mercy on us as we seek our way.

what prayer dare we utter when
unspeakable horrors silence
songs of children paralyze
tongues of poets we stumble over
all that remains—unspoken—

perhaps some ancient tree will
whisper wisdom into this unending
night—wilderness people do not
recognize its edenic lyric we
are dust to dust we will return we

are all dust and we are all creating
this mad mad world imposing
premature imprints of mortality on
unblemished foreheads of children
turned to ash in our clenching hands

save us creating one from this fickle
foolishness why do we sacrifice innocent
blood to the thirsty ungroundedness of
our being we flinch gritty truth marks
us we are exiles in our own homes

holding our breath as tongues of fire
consume what really matters—save us
open our mouths to exhale the ashy
smell of repentance make our bones
remember we are… [Read more…] about remember you are dust

The Authoritarian and the Finisher of My Faith

by Alex Camire in Fundamentalism

I have a love/hate relationship with institutionalized religion. I love the church, and I miss being part of a local church, but I can hardly abide what the church has become, particularly the modern American church.

There are times when I find myself pointing out all the bad and others when I’m defending any good. I’ve seen the church help a lot of people, yet I’ve seen a lot of harm done as well. And it’s not always clear to me who’s to blame in a system that’s built on an unseen, unheard authority figure.

We were taught in church to give “double honor” to those who held authority. We read First Timothy 5:17 to demonstrate that this was a biblical principle, followed by verse 19 where it loosely says, “don’t accuse your leaders of anything wrong, unless you have a lot of people willing to back you up.” Not that it was ever stated this directly, but, essentially, the message was fall into submission to the leaders over you and don’t question them or their directions.

Obedience was revered as a quality of a morally upright person. It was akin to righteousness, and disobedience or disobedient persons were always made the example of what not to do or how not to act. To be disobedient was to be rebellious and this was always demonized as the worst sort of behavior at the root of all other sins.

There is a study conducted by Stanley Milgram in 1961, aptly referred to as The Milgram Experiment. The purpose of the study was to examine obedience to authority.… [Read more…] about The Authoritarian and the Finisher of My Faith

Jesus the Feminist

by Jean Bonin in Christian Issues

As a little girl Sunday school scholar, my favorite Bible story was the Old Testament story of Deborah, the Prophet turned warrior. I grew up in a time when it was strongly implied, if not outright preached from the pulpit, that a woman’s place was to be subservient to a man’s. Our whole purpose for being created was to serve our husband, therefore our whole purpose had to be to have a husband, and, if you were blessed, you would also have children to serve and a house to clean.

A woman was allowed to serve/lead in church as long as she was ministering to women, or until a man stepped up to take over whatever ministry it was that had temporarily allowed a woman at the helm. As I matured, so it seemed did the church—the music changed and got louder, the organ was replaced by drums, pastors wore trendier clothes—but the place of women seemed to stay the same. Now we were assured from a plexiglass pulpit that we weren’t less than a man in God’s sight, we were just different—the difference being that we just weren’t leadership material. But I still had my story of Deborah to cling to.
Deborah, the wife of Lappidoth, was a prophet who was judging Israel at that time. She would sit under the Palm of Deborah, between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim, and the Israelites would go to her for judgment. One day she sent for Barak son of Abinoam, who lived in Kedesh in the land of Naphtali. She said to him, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, commands you:… [Read more…] about Jesus the Feminist

Jesus Called Followers Not Worshipers

by Chuck Queen in Christian Spirituality

In the Gospel texts that tell the story of Jesus, one thing is undeniable. Jesus called disciples. Do you ever wonder why Jesus said, “Follow me,” but never said, “Worship me”?

He said to some fishermen, “Follow me and I will teach you how to fish for people.” For whatever reason, he invited them to walk away from their vocation of trying to lure fish into a net and to pursue a calling that would involve luring people into a greater purpose and cause that Jesus called the kingdom of God.

I like to call it the kin-dom of God, because it’s all about loving relationships. Jesus said, “Follow me and I will teach you how to love God with the totality of your being and love your neighbor as yourself” (see Matt. 22-34-40). This is grounded in the reality that we are all connected and constitute one family. (See Acts 17:22-31 where Paul tells the Athenian philosophers that we are “all God’s offspring” and that “in God we live, move, and have our existence.”)

Jesus says, “Follow me and I will teach you how to heal people’s brokenness and liberate them from the life-demeaning, life-diminishing forces that oppress and hold them in fear and bondage. As you heal and liberate others, you will also be healed and liberated from your own false attachments, addictions, and sins.” (Almost all the healing and exorcism stories in the Gospels teach this.)

When we follow Jesus we discover the honesty and humility to face our own sins (greed, pride, prejudice, selfish ambition, etc.),… [Read more…] about Jesus Called Followers Not Worshipers

When Fear Is Your Faith

by Laura Grace in Fundamentalism

Independent Fundamental Baptist. If people would ask me, an adult woman, “what is the first thought that comes to mind when you hear those three words?” my answer would be these three words: Fear. Fear. Fear.

Fear? Yes. Plain out of your mind, “I’m gonna’ die” kind of fear. The form of fear that grips your heart and your eternal soul. Fear that doesn’t allow you to think rationally—after all, it is an out of this world sort of fear, the kind that means eternal damnation. A fear of forever being lost—although you have already been found. A fear that terrifies you that maybe you were never found, so you will forever be lost. It does not have boundaries and limits, because it does not know boundaries and limits. It is the fear of missing Heaven Celestial forever with Jesus, the fear of eternal torment in Hell with Satan and his demons.

A fear that controls. A fear that confines. A fear that steals you from yourself. But most of all, I am talking about a man-made fear.

The fear within fundamentalism.

I was born and raised in IFB. It was my identity. It was my life. I also had another identity within it—I was marked—I belonged to the crowd that was not always labeled, but they were whispered about. I was one of the Doubters.

One of those who just couldn’t “know that you know, that you know.” Whom some have referred to as a “Doubting Thomas” (taken from John 20). My salvation just wasn’t as secure as some of the others. I wasn’t as sure as others.

As a… [Read more…] about When Fear Is Your Faith

How I wrote an article critiquing John Piper … and got attacked by egalitarians

by Randal Rauser in Christian Issues

I recently posted an article in which I argued that John Piper’s ill-formed and poorly argued prohibition on women teaching in seminary reveals that he is sexist, i.e. prejudiced against the female sex and gender. I did not anticipate that my argument would receive resistance from egalitarians.
Trash!
One individual named Henry Imler replied:
Heirarchy [sic] within the Trinity is trash (innovation Grudem & Piper introduced to frame their argument) Complementarianism is trash; espousal of its views is trash; its lived practice is trash.
As best I can guess, Imler assumes that a condemnation of Piper as sexist on the terms of complementarianism somehow entails a morally culpable tacit endorsement of complementarianism. But this is clearly false.

Here I’m employing the very pedestrian form of argument known as assuming arguendo, the discursive device of assuming premises for the sake of argument and then showing problematic consequences based on those premises. This makes it all the more surprising that Henry Imler, an assistant professor of philosophy and theology, should seem to completely misunderstand the argument.

Garbage!

Another response came from JR Forasteros (who wrote a great book that I endorsed last year). JR wrote: “I’m really way over allowing for Complementarianism. Also misogyny. Also garbage theology.”

https://twitter.com/jrforasteros/status/955827011309723650

First observation: JR also seems to… [Read more…] about How I wrote an article critiquing John Piper … and got attacked by egalitarians

Turning Suck into Succulence: Coming Out Trans

by Dana Stinson in Christian Spirituality

Two years ago, my world came crashing down around me. Over the course of the next 4 months, my ever evolving world took an unexpected turn.

All it took was one question.

“Daddy, why do you like to wear girl clothes?” my oldest daughter asks via a FaceTime chat.

I was stunned. I wasn’t ready for this.

Even though I knew it was coming, I wasn’t prepared. I had delayed out of fear. I also wasn’t ready to deal with the aftermath of telling my church.

“Are you gay?”
“Were you molested as a child?”
“Why aren’t you seeing a Christian counselor?”

No. No. Hell no.

It was a tense exchange. No matter how much I tried to explain this was a good thing, I was met with a never ending stream of conspiracy theory laden reasoning and staunch opposition.

“Maybe Satan is using you.”
“Maybe Satan is going around you just to get to someone else.”
“Maybe you’re mistaken’”

Prayer begat promises of friendship and refuge.

Acting outside the boundaries of church doctrine, I was basically stripped naked and left out in the cold. For the first time in my church life I wasn’t allowed to participate, teach, or even advise. I wasn’t even allowed to explain why.

As much as this was pretty much a total suckass, God had other ideas.

I have always been a strong believer that the right people come into your life at the right time. Through a rather heated and emotion-filled conversation with my pastor, I was inadvertently introduced to someone who would give me guidance a… [Read more…] about Turning Suck into Succulence: Coming Out Trans