Cultural Christianity

The heartbreak of my life has been the advent of cultural Christianity. This is Christianity which is informed more by prevalent culture than the teachings of Christ. While I may loosely call myself a non-religious Christian I do respect and have incorporated the teachings of this “Jesus” fellow into my life. For this I have at times paid.

What keeps me up at 3am wanting to twitter is people who have no concept of the meaning of the Sermon on the Mount but want to be classified as Christian because they attend church and swear over and over they love Jesus. I grew up Southern Baptist. The Southern Baptist churches I grew up in were conservative but left room for difference by allowing each person with their Bible and working with the Spirit to choose their own path. I felt loved and cared for in those early Baptist churches. But with the advent of the Moral Majority the Southern Baptist convention was hijacked. The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary one of the grandest in the world when I was there was converted into a fundamentalist headquarters of such. Every professor I had was dismissed or saw the writing on the wall and left within five years. The Religion and Arts school gone, the Social Work school gone, female theologians gone, and conservative theologians that did not hold the new creedal line gone. At the last annual meeting of the Convention I observed Ollie North (believer in speaking in tongues, and the second filling of the spirit both anathema to even the new Baptist teaching) was the key note speaker. He spoke in the midst of the Iran Contra Scandal. Now if this was not bad enough during his speech a three story flag was unfurled behind him and most pastors had a small flag which they waved during his speech. Baptists who once were the prophets of separation of church and state were now hoping for a theocracy. There was no turning back.

So here I offer you,You might be a cultural Christian if:

·         You attend church regularly and never hear a single social gospel sermon. 

·          You are anti-gay and do not know Jesus never referenced homosexuality and do not know where all the references of homosexuality are found in the Bible.

·         If you have trouble understanding people who are different from you.

•          If the only love you believe in is ‘tough’ love.·      
•    If saying I was wrong and am sorry is a sign of weakness.
• ·         If you believe poverty is a morality problem and wealth is a sign of God’s blessing.
• ·         If you believe social status is important and something for which to strive.
• ·          If you believe your brand of Christianity is the only way.
• ·         If Jesus’ teaching takes a back seat to what you intellectually believe about his deity and salvific nature. In other words if you say yes to a few doctrinal principles but do not heed his teachings you still consider yourself a Christian in good standing.
• ·         If you believe Jesus’ teachings are metaphors for how to grow spiritually and not to be understood literally.
• ·         If you believe in America. America is equated with the Kingdom of God. The Constitution is infallible and the direct word of God therefore we must understand the original meaning.
•  
• If you believe America is to evangelize, colonize, or dominate the rest of the world with their way of life
•          If you think it is your God called duty to bring your gun to church.
•          If you believe that all the important values come from white culture.
•          If you have trouble when Jesus is depicted as other than a white man.

 Of course this is only a partial list if you want share some of your own. Finally, cultural Christianity is defined in a nutshell as when anything else is treated as more edifying than the teachings of Christ.