Go to My Study Page on H. Richard Niebuhr & his classic book Christ and Culture
The Rapture Exposed was recently featured in The Lutheran. It was written by Barbara Rossing who teaches New Testament at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago. In her book she discusses the Theology behind the Left Behind Series which is felt to be heretical and very young. This Theology is commonly referred to as Dispensationalist and Rossing fears its infringement into Mainstream Denominations. Rossing feels that this Theology presents an escapist morality, a Triumphalism condemned by the Lutheran Church, as well as promoting horrid Middle East policy.
See More on this book
Written by Minnesota's Own Gregory Boyd, the author of the popular Letters to a Skeptic, the Myth of a Christian Nation expresses the concern of an Evangelical Pastor with the church becoming too connected to any political or National ideology claiming that when it does it is disastrous for the church and harmful to society. In this book Boyd explains differences in the forms of Godly vs. worldly power as the difference of a power over force and a power under love. In this book he challenges many of the Evangelical convictions of America being a "Christian Nation" or of Christians trying to "take America back for God."
Go to the Website on this book and the sermon series by Greg Boyd
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor, Theologian, and participant in the German resistance movement against Nazism. Involved with Karl Barth and others, he helped to establish the Confessing Church and its resistance to the state Protestant Reich Church. Are there similarities today with aspects of the American Church and the Protestant Reich Church? Is there a similarity anytime the church becomes too connected to ANY Nation or national ideology?
Go to my Page on Dietrich Bonhoeffer
ELCA Pastor Paul E. Wee, author of American Destiny and the Calling of the Church, has held numerous positions in the Lutheran World Federation, the Lutheran center in Wittenberg, and the Lutheran School of World Ministries. His book, American Destiny and the Calling of the Church is used by professors in ELCA colleges and was recently mentioned in The Lutheran.
In a post-Cold War, post-9/11 world the United States has been thrust into a position of global leadership with awesome responsibility. People of the church are called upon, not simply to accept but to help define the U.S. role. Based on biblical/theological/ confessional norms, the ideology our country adopts needs to be understood and critiqued by people of the church. It is urgent that congregations, in a bipartisan spirit of openness, subject this issue to debate in the public forum. The author's approach to the issue is based on a three-fold commitment — to the centrality of the gospel, to the ministry of the church, and to the responsible role of the nation in the world. ---(Amazon Review)
Links to proposed courses of action presented by Paul E. Wee
Facing Terrorism by Edward Le Roy Long
I haven't read this book but it was recommended by a St. Olaf College Professor whom received his Ph.D. in Theological Ethics from the University of Chicago
Twenty-five years ago, when Pat Robertson and other radio and televangelists first spoke of the United States becoming a Christian nation that would build a global Christian empire, it was hard to take such hyperbolic rhetoric seriously. Today, such language no longer sounds like hyperbole but poses, instead, a very real threat to our freedom and our way of life. In American Fascists, Chris Hedges, veteran journalist and author of the National Book Award finalist War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, challenges the Christian Right's religious legitimacy and argues that at its core it is a mass movement fueled by unbridled nationalism and a hatred for the open society.
Hedges, who grew up in rural parishes in upstate New York where his father was a Presbyterian pastor, attacks the movement as someone steeped in the Bible and Christian tradition. He points to the hundreds of senators and members of Congress who have earned between 80 and 100 percent approval ratings from the three most influential Christian Right advocacy groups as one of many signs that the movement is burrowing deep inside the American government to subvert it. The movement's call to dismantle the wall between church and state and the intolerance it preaches against all who do not conform to its warped vision of a Christian America are pumped into tens of millions of American homes through Christian television and radio stations, as well as reinforced through the curriculum in Christian schools. The movement's yearning for apocalyptic violence and its assault on dispassionate, intellectual inquiry are laying the foundation for a new, frightening America.
American Fascists, which includes interviews and coverage of events such as pro-life rallies and weeklong classes on conversion techniques, examines the movement's origins, its driving motivations and its dark ideological underpinnings. Hedges argues that the movement currently resembles the young fascist movements in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and '30s, movements that often masked the full extent of their drive for totalitarianism and were willing to make concessions until they achieved unrivaled power. The Christian Right, like these early fascist movements, does not openly call for dictatorship, nor does it use physical violence to suppress opposition. In short, the movement is not yet revolutionary. But the ideological architecture of a Christian fascism is being cemented in place. The movement has roused its followers to a fever pitch of despair and fury. All it will take, Hedges writes, is one more national crisis on the order of September 11 for the Christian Right to make a concerted drive to destroy American democracy. The movement awaits a crisis. At that moment they will reveal themselves for what they truly are -- the American heirs to fascism. Hedges issues a potent, impassioned warning. We face an imminent threat. His book reminds us of the dangers liberal, democratic societies face when they tolerate the intolerant.
|
CLASSIC READINGS Martin Luther on Secular Authority ML on Secular Authority |
|
Individual Denominations and Denomination statements etc **IN FULL COMMUNION the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) the Reformed Church in America the United Church of Christ. |
Joint Statements |
| 1 2 3 4 # # # # # # # | |
|
Joint Resources
1 2 3 4 |
|
|
LUTHERAN The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America 4.9 million 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 The Lutheran World Federation 65.9 million 1 2 The Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod 2.5 million International Lutheran Council 3,450,000 Evangelical Lutheran Synod Confessional Evangelical Lutheran Conference 21,729 members Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod over 398,000 Unaffiliated Lutheran denominations |
|
|
United Church of Christ The United Church of Christ 1.2 million 1 |
|
|
Reformed United Reformed Church 1 2 3 4 World Alliance of Reformed Churches 1 Reformed Church in America 1 Christian Reformed Church (300,000) 1 Canadian and American Reformed Churches(16,000) Confederation of Reformed Evangelical Churches Netherlands Reformed Congregations Protestant Reformed Churches in America Free Reformed Churches in North America Heritage Netherlands Reformed Congregations Orthodox Christian Reformed Church (1500) |
|
|
Presbyterian
the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) 2.4 million 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Presbyterian Church in America,331,126 the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church,70,000 members the Reformed Presbyterian Church, the Bible Presbyterian Church, the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church (ARP Synod), the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, the Reformed Presbyterian Church in the United States (RPCUS) |
|
|
Methodist United Methodist Church 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 5 African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Free Methodists, the Wesleyan Church ( the Congregational Methodist Church First Congregational Methodist Church |
Anabaptist Anglican / Episcopal Baptist Evangelicalism Pentecostal and Charismatic Quakerism Restoration movement Seventh-Day Adventists Non-denominational
Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox and Protestant. http://www.cjd.org/paper/jp2war.html http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/872017/posts --------------------- RELATED -history of Palestine and Israel -Disponsationalism/Darby -tabernacle -creation account? -Just War Theory -Bonhoffer..state church -fascism