Wednesday, January 06, 2010

Links to Ponder

A few articles of interest...

1. Timothy Kincaid's call for a more nuanced approach to addressing religious leaders. The point is not to whitewash the prejudice that still pervades much of Christendom when it comes to GLBT individuals, it's to keep in mind that most people don't recognize their own prejudices, and shouting "bigot" at them only pushes them further away and sabotages any opportunities we might have had to educate them.

2. Classically Liberal's analysis of the alleged top ten anti-Christian incidents of 2009. There are Christians in many parts of the world who genuinely suffer for their faith, but the United States isn't one of those parts, as evidenced by the fact that not one of these ten items holds up to any kind of scrutiny. Once again, the persecution complex that many conservative evangelicals cling to is doing more harm to the church in this country than any external force.

3. Andrew Sullivan's note of the growth in non-denominational churches with a political agenda. I add this one with a grain of salt, since some of the churches his reader mentions could well be part of the emergent church movement rather than the religious right - but it's also possible that things are different in the Bible Belt than they are in the northern and western parts of the US.

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