I will try to post something a teacher or pastor said during the week with my thoughts on it. Sometimes it will be because the comment was insightful or maybe it was weak and not thought through. This is one of the reasons this blog exists–to critically think through what is taught or said, to develop discernment. (I apologize that I am posting on Thursday, but school just started a week ago tomorrow so I had to wait for a teacher to make a decent remark.)
Mr. B (I will identify teachers by title and first letter only) made some remarks in his devotional during homeroom this morning about evangelicalism. (Our school and church is fundamental baptist. I am kind of a fundamental evangelical, but that is for a different post.) The gist of his thought was:
I had a question the other day during my Bible class. “What is an evangelical?” was the question. Now, we had been talking about denominations, baptist, presbyterian, methodists, and such. I said now there is an interesting question because evangelical can cover a broad range of denominations. There are evangelical lutherans as well as evangelical presbyterians.
Basically, an evangelical is someone who focuses on being born again. They focus on salvation, and anyone who says you must be born again to be saved is “evangelical”. Hypothetically, that means that the gay women preacher in the lutheran church can be an evangelical. If her church claims that you must be born again then they can claim to be evangelical.
That’s the problem with evangelicalism. It focuses on only a small part of the Bible. The lesbian preacher sees that one must be born again but ignores the parts about homosexuality and men leading in church. So you must decide will you follow the whole Bible or just a part.
Mr. B in this little speech points us to one accurate thing. He shows the breadth of those who claim to be evangelical. On the other hand, he completely misrepresents true evangelicalism.
I have to get to bed; part two will come tomorrow with a critic of his views of evangelicalism.
[...] since projects and papers and homework is beginning to pile up. I will finish up my post on Teacher Tuesday and stop for a while. If I have time I will do some quick blog maintenance that I have noticed [...]