Stop Calling Yourselves a Church Already UPDATED

That’s it. Becoming Anglican has taught me to be slightly more polite about such matters than I used to be. But no more. This is the last straw. St. John’s with St. Andrew’s Waterloo is hosting a Sea of Faith conference.

Here’s a taste of the toxic water Sea of Faith serves:

We want to demonstrate that, for all religious traditions, the humanist agenda — of love between people making a better world of justice and peace — must be primary. All else is the fabric of mythology, ritual and ethics for incarnating this ideal.

There is great value in having a concept, or concepts of God, but that's what they are — human concepts. There is great danger in objectifying our God-concept into a supernatural Being.

So Christianity is mere mythology? God is a human concept that is no God at all?

Why is a “church” hosting a conference from this group? Because it is no church at all.

At the risk of repeating myself, Nothing ticks me off like libchurchers pretending they are Christians while they commit such outrages against the faith. And since they will not get off their fence of claiming to be Christians while they are not, I will do my part to push them off the fence. And that not just because of my orneriness, but because these libchurchers are wolves in sheep’s clothing, a danger to many.

Henceforth, the policy of this blog will be to use quotes to identify those who name themselves as Christians or as a church when their own actions and words shout that they are not. If that offends, too bad. I am finished with accommodating those who claim to be of The Faith while they willfully oppose it.

I obviously do not and should not pretend to know whether each and every congregation or person is of The Faith or not. Only God knows. But Jesus did say “you shall know them by their fruits.” And the fruit of some makes it all too obvious who at least some of the phonies are. It is disservice to the truth and to those who are honestly seeking the truth to continue the pretense that these phonies are even remotely the real thing. The church fathers called out phonies and heretics to protect seekers and the faithful. I will do my best to follow their godly example.

So this blog will clearly indentify such phonies with quotes, appropriate adjectives or other identifiers. I have done that at times when in a punchy mood. That will now be my permanent policy.

I should add that, say, when I write “The Episcopal ‘Church’”, that is not at all to imply there are not Christians in the Episcopal “Church”. There are Christians in any number of non-Christian groups for various reasons good and bad.

Also, I should emphasize that my issue is not with those who have issues with Christianity and are not Christians and are honest about it by not claiming to be Christians or of the Church. I appreciate and welcome such honesty.

My issue is with those who oppose The Faith while claiming to be of it by calling themselves “church” or “Christian.” Such is false advertising of the worst and most dangerous sort.


Addendum:

I may from time to time also apply this policy to those whose identity as churches or Christians is so questionable, even if possible, as to merit scare quotes. Again, I do not claim to see all.