Great post. I need to read more of your stuff.

Bill Dunlap

http://billdunlap.wordpress.com/

Hey thanks!

~From the author of “Fundamentally Misguided”

But I think these are very different things.

I said the majority of fundies I’ve met have had rough lives or grew up in a fundy household.

Growing up in a fundy household may just mean that you are following like sheep, you might not need or be looking for anything at all other than to not rock the boat. Very different path from coming to fundy-ness by having a rough life or directly needing something. Most of my fundy clan have just never thought that there was a life any other way.

Hey, I’m agreeing with you, but rarely have I EVER heard a sermon on “truth claims” of scripture outside of “academic churches.” No, what I’ve always heard from the pulpit is that we should open our hearts and receive Christ on a purely emotional level. Sort out the truth claims later, we are told. I also contend that there is a HUGE divide in what preachers and teachers assume people in the pew know and have done on their way to faith and what people in the pews hear and actually respond to. Never have I heard in a pointed sermon that we should believe because of this or that evidence before coming to Christ at the altar call (and I certainly never came to Christ that way) nor had anyone else I’ve talked to in my 25 years experience in churches. We all had similar stories of emotional upheaval and turning to Jesus as the solution.

Perhaps therein lies the key to deconversion and/or why many now are repulsed at Christianity and other religions that espouse fundamentalism. To use a silly analogy: You can’t convince the horses to come into the educational barn after the barn door has been flung wide and everyone scampers outside willy nilly most of the time. I think the Catholic church has it right to make you go through nearly a year of classes before joining. Of course, it’s a crash course in Catholic dogma, but still they have the order right.

“If it’s such a “gross misunderstanding” of the gospel, perhaps preachers shouldn’t offer it to the laity in such terms. ”

How do I make the “stunned” emoticon with wide eyes? Please give me the names of said pastors so I may “extend the right hand of fellowship” on behalf of misinterpreted scripture…. /sigh. It kills me to hear that, and I would wholeheartedly agree with you. There is some critical negligence from many pulpits across the world. Many pastors are woefully aware that half of what they preach is privileged western individualism. In short: I agree!

“But, I still maintain that people do not usually come to Christ after reading and reasoning their way there. They come as an emotional response because that’s what is offered to them.”

Not completely, no. This is why I am not interested in trying to convert anyone while blogging. It just doesn’t happen and would be an insult as well as a waste of time. I would say it is a “both/and.” It was an emotional experience that got my attention, but there was no way I could get on board before spending over a year critically analyzing the truth claims of scripture. We are holistic beings. We have a mind, a heart, and a soul. All parts of us must be called for us to be fully on board with the God thing.

Christians should not be required to check their intellect at the door, nor should they be required to respond after reading a “logical” tract handed to them by some stranger… And don’t get me started on THAT load of horse puckey…