(11-05-2018 12:07 AM)jaaaasonl Wrote: There is a growing number of popular modern "evangelicals" who embrace many marxist and/or socialist ideals. What is interesting and curious to me is factoring in those involved in the recent ecumenical movement...which, at its heart, is socialist. (From Rick Warren to Kenneth Copeland and many in-between, the ecumenical movement has swept across some parts of evangelicalism.)
Calvinist/Reformed darling Tim Keller is the most outspoken on the subject of Marxism, but if you watch closely what certain other prominent members of Keller's Gospel Coalition are saying...there is more agreement among them than one might expect...but few are bold enough to openly espouse and accept the label of socialist or marxist.
As a minister myself, I see other trends creeping in as well...such as adopting leftist verbiage and causes into mainstream evangelicalism. At the very least, it is interesting to observe from the "inside."
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As I said in my post "evangelical" is now used to cover a very broad spectrum indeed.
Have you heard of COCU? Covenant on Churches Uniting. It was a ecumenical movement from the late 80's through the 90's and part of it is still around I'm sure another a new acronym. The basic concept was to close duplicated churches by cross assigning clergy from the Presbyterian USA churches, the United Methodist Churches, and the Evangelical Lutheran Churches of America. What it was in reality was a way of funding many leftist objectives since COCU would have been centered in Washington D.C. and under the auspices of the World Council on Churches. The idea was that by having a union the trust agreements governing the use of the local church properties would be consolidated and duplicated properties sold with the money not going to the individual denomination but rather to the umbrella grouping COCU where the funds could be conveniently siphoned off to what ever acronym group best disguised their objectives.
It was billed as a way to better utilize ordained clergy coming from mainline denominations at a time when clergy were in much shorter supply. When informed regional groupings of the denominations involved rejected the idea, seminaries became the breeding ground for the future resurrection of this idea in different iterations.
Many denominations went through a phase of signing new trust agreements with their churches in the 2000's under the guise of whatever story their gullible congregations would believe. Those that didn't fall for it but who questioned their growth were encouraged to rename their churches, which of course involved a new trust agreement.
This process was all designed to place full control of property in the hands of the denominations regardless of the past stipulations of denominations solidly adhering to their own polity and most of the new documents set up conditions whereby the denomination could claim the property. To put this into perspective there is literally billions of dollars worth of commercial properties tied up presently as non-profit zoning. Take your less successful congregations and impose upon them stiffer financial obligations to the denomination and when they can't afford to pay the church may be closed and the property sold, not by the local congregation who built it, but by the denomination.
No longer are they bound by old polity to teach and preach only from the Bible, to stand for traditional families or family values, or to offer any form of what even the most novice of the congregants would hold to be more conservative Christian values. They don't even have to hold with the "Divinity of Christ". In the past with old trust agreements if they violated these the congregants could rescind their trust, keep their property, and become an independent denomination. No longer is that the case. The old trust agreements were summed up in less than 5 pages (many less than 3), and were simple and straightforward. Not any more. Some now are 50 or more pages in length and have buried clauses in them with terse legal verbiage and they have that for a reason.
So my friend, the bureaucratic agencies of mainline denominations have been in a property and money grab for decades. In part to fund pensions and in other cases to milk the revenue of God's people and to divert that funding to their own alien agendas.
Now try to explain that to the average congregation and they will stare blankly at you like you have 3 heads and single horn. Only when they suffer the affects of this do they grasp it, and then if it happens to one congregation here or there the others think that it will never happen to them and if you can't trust your church who can you trust?
I say give your tithe to the widows, orphans, poor, sick, and sojourner within your gates as we were commanded to do, and let the churches that Satan has stolen fend for themselves. When you give directly to those in need they always ask the same question. Why? There's your invitation for a testimony. Christ built no buildings and sent his people out to minister to others at no cost and individually.
Constantine urged public worship, forbid meetings in secret, and took part of their collections to furnish his military campaigns. He also made the priests (like David did in antiquity) the employee of the state. Europe revisited this after WWII and is dead spiritually speaking. H.W. Bush tried to get a grasp on it with the 1000 points of light and if you took that funding then the government could tell you what your polity would become.
Faith in Christ is free, work for his people is not but it is a responsibility to be born by all believers. Having a hired gun priest or preacher so you can sit in the pew when you feel like it and pay somebody else to handle your Christian obligations has been the stuff of huckters ever since. it isn't Christianity. It's more like an eternal fire insurance policy for the secular.
So don't be surprised by any of this. It's fine to be a minister. Just make sure that you encourage all of your flock to take up ministry and make sure your revenue goes to the widows, orphans, poor, sick, and the sojourner within your gates, and that you minster to the prisoners and that the pew is where your folks get their marching orders, rather than purchase that fire insurance policy.
We still have some solid denominations and some solid churches, but they are getting harder and harder to find. The denominations that have split will have a conservative wing and a progressive one. Both will claim to be "evangelical" but not all of them are on either side of the divide. So I guess that's where you need to use your discernment.
Christianity has socialist aspects in that we help those those in need. But the distinction is between the motives. If your motive is to care for those you love then those social aspects fall under the Christian obligation to provide agape love to one another. If your motive is to spread around possessions it isn't Christian in nature. It's political.