Someone Gets it - Pastor says religion and politics should be seperate [View All]

[PatGund]

Kudos to Pastor Gregory A. Boyd, of Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minn.

While an evangelical "megachurch", Rev. Boyd constantly turned down those in his church who wanted the church's rubberstamp for their political cause of the day. Finally he did six sermons called “The Cross and the Sword” saying that the church should "steer clear of politics, give up moralizing on sexual issues, stop claiming the United States as a “Christian nation” and stop glorifying American military campaigns."

And it cost him 1/5th of his membership. But the 4/5ths that remain are stronger and richer for having stayed.

http://articles.news.aol.com/news/_a/disowning-conservative-politics-is/20060729195809990004?ncid=NWS00010000000001

The saddest part though, was this post here:

"Mr. Boyd gave his sermons while his church was in the midst of a $7 million fund-raising campaign. But only $4 million came in, and 7 of the more than 50 staff members were laid off, he said.

Mary Van Sickle, the family pastor at Woodland Hills, said she lost 20 volunteers who had been the backbone of the church’s Sunday school.

“They said, ‘You’re not doing what the church is supposed to be doing, which is supporting the Republican way,’ ” she said. “It was some of my best volunteers.”

It's very sad that these people were so shallow in their faith that they felt the church's role should have been to support *politics* rather than to support their faith. What they wanted was the churches rubber-stamp on their political beliefs - and left when they didn't get it.

Church should not be used to support a *political* belief. Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, Pagan, Unitarian, Democrat, Republican, Green, Libertarian, etc. If your faith leads you to support a political action or cause, so be it. But to see your churches' function as *support* for that faith is, at best, misguided, and, at worse, mocking of the very faith one claims to be. I would be just as offended by a Unitarian's saying their church's "purpose" is to support the "Democratic Way", or for any faith - my own included - to see their purpose as supporting political group x, y, or z.

Kudos to this pastor again. He could have taken the easy road like many of the evangelical "megachurches". But he listened to what his faith and heart said. The 1000 that left are poorer spiritually as a result - but the ones who remained and those who have since joined are richer as well.