Recently in Protestant Category

Several weeks ago, Tim Bayly noticed a college ministry called Gathering 629 had placed this quarter page ad in the Indiana University campus paper, Indiana Daily Student.

“Did you know God is pro-choice?” the ad copy reads. “He gives all of us a choice. He doesn’t desire to force himself and his ways on you.”

Comparing God’s love to the sin of abortion is, as Blayly points out, absolutely blasphemous. But what is almost as disturbing is the impression given by the ad that we have a “choice” about whether we should accept “God’s ways.”

Ironically, the group, a ministry of Sherwood Oaks Christian Church, doesn’t believe that God is “pro-choice” when it comes to being baptized. The church is a a Campbellite congregation of the North American Christian Convention, a denomination best known for its adherence to the doctrine of baptismal regeneration.

What does it say about Protestant Christianity in America when churches put more emphasis on the sacrament of baptism than they do the sanctity of human life?

(Hat tip: World)

Update: SOCC has reponded to criticisms of the ad.

The editorial staff at Baylor University’s newspaper “The Lariat” have roped themselves a controversy with their recent op-ed endorsing gay marriage:

Like many heterosexual couples, many gay couples share deep bonds of love, some so strong they've persevered years of discrimination for their choice to co-habitate with and date one another. Just as it isn't fair to discriminate against someone for their skin color, heritage or religious beliefs, it isn't fair to discriminate against someone for their sexual orientation. Shouldn't gay couples be allowed to enjoy the benefits and happiness of marriage, too?

Naturally, this view didn’t sit well with the many Texas Baptists, including the university’s president Robert B. Sloan Jr.:

If only I possessed half the wit and writing ability of Tim Berglund, then I might have been able to write a post on the Emerging Church as good as this one:

This blog’s deconstruction notwithstanding, I am having a hard time taking the Emergent Church seriously. The movement tends to discredit itself by being overly radical and overly reactionary. It’s impossible to see it as anything other than the current age’s instance of the time-honored tradition of young people doing foolish and short-lived things in their zeal of just having awakened to adult life. They roll out of the bed of their teen years, get a cup of coffee by age 20 or 22, and are shocked to see the horrible state of their parents’ house. The velvet Elvis, the green shag carpet, the olive appliances! They never noticed all these things before. Time to replace all these dated things with the right decor: white carpet, low-voltage halogen lighting, and stainless steel appliances. See how old and busted you were, Mom and Dad? Stainless and halogen, that’s the right paradigm. We get it. You didn’t. The sins of the past have been redressed!

Read the whole thing. You don’t want to miss this one.

If you're still trying to decide what to wear for Halloween, grab your monk's robe and hammer and go as Martin Luther. On this day in 1517, Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg.

For you heathens unfamiliar with Luther, he started the Protestant Reformation which, among other things, is the reason you can't swing a dead cat in Texas without hitting a Baptist.

(Why do I know this and Josh the Angry Lutheran doesn't? Oh yeah, because Tim pointed it out first.)

(A response to Josh the Angry Lutheran (as Tim Berglund calls him))

Jesus' cousin was a Baptist.

To me that is pretty good company to be in. You don't hear about our Lord having any Lutheran cousins, do you?

There must be a good reason for that.

Why #1 -- Why I love Pope John Paul