Hi Friends -
Unity is not the only denomination that is questioning its identity. This past Monday the Christian Science Monitor ran a story, Just Getting Started—Meet the Post-Evangelical Christians.
Post-Evangelicals are, according to the Monitor, younger, more progressive, and ... more concerned about prayer and the Bible than their parents and mentors who want to talk about “culture-war politics and internet conspiracy theories.”
They have chosen, to make it short, to “go forward.” What they have not chosen to do is to “go away.” Those who choose to go away are “the nones.”
Post-Evangelicals believe, according to one scholar, the time has now come to forge ahead and build something new with those [who] are “following Jesus out of American evangelicalism.” Read the Monitor story. Post-Evangelicals are just as concerned about race, gender, compassion, and climate as people in Unity. But they remain committed to the Christian faith. In short, they are looking to shape a new form of Christianity.
How many of them will wind up in Unity churches? Not many, if our national organizations do what the fundamentalists want us to do—for us to declare ourselves not Christian and to go away.
Unity, which all too often never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity, is about to walk out of Christianity at the very moment Christianity is moving forward.
Post-Evangelicals are going forward. So are mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics. You might not like their pace of change, but at least they're going forward.
We have a choice—to go forward in shaping the course of Christianity or to go away and be a none.
Friday, December 22, 2023
