When Red Is Blue
posted by Stan Guthrie at 1:49 PM
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Friday, November 30, 2007
About Me
- Name: Stan Guthrie
- Location: Chicagoland, Illinois, United States
Stan Guthrie is an editor at large for Christianity Today magazine. His latest book, All that Jesus Asks: How His Questions Can Teach and Transform Us, is scheduled for November release from Baker. He is author of Missions in the Third Millennium: 21 Key Trends for the 21st Century. Stan writes the monthly "Priorities" column for BreakPoint.org. Besides authoring, writing, and editing books, Stan is a literary agent, bringing together good authors, good books, and good publishers. Stan has appeared on National Public Radio's "Tell Me More," WGN's Milt Rosenberg program, and many Christian shows, including Moody Radio's "Prime Time Florida." He is a weekly guest on "New Day Florida." An inspirational speaker, he hosts a weekly podcast with John Wilson of Books & Culture. He also is an author and editorial advisor for ChristianBibleStudies.com. A former columnist for CT, Stan served as moderator for the Christian Book Expo panel discussion, "Does the God of Christianity Exist, and What Difference Does It Make?" Stan is married to Christine, and they have three children and live in the Chicago area.
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StanGuthrie.comPrevious Posts
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9 Comments:
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Well said.
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It is nice to see someone in Christianity Today actually engaging with Tony Campolo. As a resident of New Zealand I can tell you that the overwhelming impression that people outside of the USA have of evangelicals is that they are a wing of the Republican Party. Yet it was listening to Tony that I found out a lot about the positive attributes of US evangelicals in terms of financial generosity, etc. The review of his book in CT, "Letters to a Young Evangelical", was a total disgrace/joke (the reviewer listed 4 "errors" in the book - in fact 3 of them were not errors at all!).
I enjoy your writing in CT, and while on this occasion I do not totally agree with you, you are at least engaging with the subject rather than attacking Tony. May this attitude rub off on other contributors at CT.
An interesteing post.
However, as a UK blogger, I have an affinity with Barry's comments regarding the perception of US christian's in UK - right wing fundementalists, anti-gay, anti-abortion often led by rich tele-evangalists, and used and abused by the political right.
Irrispective of political/theological views it's a great shame that the over-ruling view is anti-stuff rather than PRO LOVE.
I appreciate your position and thank the Lord for your clarity of thought. May we all remain true to the Holy Scriptures in their entirety.
Thanks, Stan, for your article. Good food for thought. While I am personally ambivalent about which lever to pull and find the politification of the evangelical conversation unfortunate, the real issue is the way we read the Scriptures. I was surprised to read that Tony Campolo has completely misunderstood the Lex Talionis, which forms the basis for biblical and societal justice, both then and now. Tony's truncated understanding of the Sermon on the Mount contributes to a problem among Evangelicals that I believe he himself decries: one dimensional thinking about what it means to live as Christ-followers in today's complex world.
Stan's "When Red is Blue" & the follow up by Tony Campolo is a clear illustration of the division in American Christianity. Tony's view is really a view espoused by advocates of Liberation Theology. According to this view the duty of Christianity is really one of social transformation or money transferal. Some nations are too rich and it is their Christian duty to level the playing field. All this, we are told flows directly from the lips of Jesus; but is this the teaching of Our Lord? Our a priori's admittedly effect our understanding of the Bible but a careful and honest hermeneutical reading of the text should not find us pitting Jesus against Paul, Peter, John or for that matter Moses. The preferred method is to see them in a complementary way. I find it amazing to see "Blue" Christians in bed with those that support abortion, gay rights, more taxes, big brother etc. that radically opposing we "Red" Christian from “Alabama.”
Barry Ickes
I think what bothers me the most about the RLCs is that they self-righteously proclaim that their political positions are exactly in line with the words of Christ. In the end, they are no different than the Religious Right they disdain: they seek to make the world "better" by using government to force others into compliance with their view of how it should be. If anything, the "red letter" text indicates that only Christ changes peoples lives and it is that individual change, demonstrated in how we live, that changes societies and the world.
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