Show Summary for July 18

  • David Fitch joins Paul to discuss his new book, The Church of Us vs. Them: Freedom from a Faith that Feeds on Making Enemies.
    • Fitch argues that within the church, various factions are extracting their positions on issues like sexuality out of their contexts, turning those positions into a moniker or banner (ideology), and aiming those positions (ideologies) against those who disagree with them, using the Bible as a blunt instrument to win an argument.
    • “The way people are organized politically (as groups) is around antagonisms or against somebody else. All the energy, all our identity, all of our anger, meaning, gets built around being against that ‘awful, evil person, object, other.’ And it’s empty because if you took away the enemy, there would be no reason to gather anymore.”
    • “The only way that we can ‘opt-out’ is to be a people submitted to and present to His presence….There is no other alternative to living except (either) antagonism or the presence of Christ.”
    • “I still claim to be an evangelical in some kind of way, although it’s getting harder, and harder, and harder. Progressive evangelicals are leaving the church in droves. They are angry, p—ed off.”
  • Theology on Mission Podcast