Beyond Sequestration, Christianity Quietly Converges

[cbayer]

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/christianpiatt/2013/03/beyond-sequestration-christianity-quietly-converges/

I’m taking an early Spring Break this week and will be running a guest blogger series featuring some of my favorite writers. Today meet biblical scholar and author, Dr. Eric Elnes.

The move to “sequestration” in Washington, DC is the most recent product of a three-decade trend toward political polarization in America. Yet in the last several years a curious counter-phenomenon has been quietly taking shape underneath the surface of North American religion.

Within the Christian community the trend has become pronounced enough that some of us have begun calling it Convergence Christianity. What is converging are two groups of Christians who are making an increasingly massive exodus from the ranks of both sides of the Great Theological Divide. Many liberal and conservative Christians no longer believe what their fathers and mothers did. Even the fathers and mothers themselves have been changing. This convergence is not a blending of liberalism and conservatism into some “moderate middle,” but is rather a transcending of both liberalism and conservatism into a new alignment that embraces – and rejects – certain values and beliefs associated with their native traditions.

As I walked across the country with CrossWalk America in 2006, for instance, I found Christians associated with the theologically moderate and liberal mainline church who were no longer content to eliminate from their faith and practices whatever the conservatives were doing badly. They were wanting to reclaim Jesus for themselves – but not the Jesus of the fundamentalists. They were getting into Bible studies for the first time in years – but not reading the Bible literally or inerrantly. They were actually praying and opening themselves to having a personal relationship with God. They were in the process of becoming Holy Spirit people without becoming Holy Rollers.
Yet these same people were bringing with them into the wilderness some of the truly wonderful gifts of their mainline traditions. Gifts like commitment to social justice, openness to other faiths, an appreciation of science, inclusion of LGBT persons, and a greater appreciation for diversity of all kinds.

On the other had, we found Christians associated with the theologically conservative evangelical traditions who were leaving behind biblical literalism and fire-and-brimstone theology behind. They were also leaving behind theological rigidity and conformism, lack of concern for the environment, and most every kind of certainty they had ever clung to.

more at link