Re: The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience

Apart from yet another of Ed's attempts to have a go at Christians, I
fail to see what this has to do with the list topic of relationship
between Science and Christianity.

In any case, as an Evangelical, I don't claim to be morally better
than the next person. Romans 3:23 springs to mind. Yes, some
Christians are insufferably self-righteous and therefore hypocrites,
but what has this to do with Science/Faith issues?

Iain

On Fri, 25 Mar 2005 02:43:46 -0800 (PST), Edward Babinski
<ebabinski2002@yahoo.com> wrote:
> In a new book, The Scandal of the Evangelical
> Conscience (Baker), Ron Sider steps on the toes of the
> body of Christ, detailing the facts of its
> worldliness. When an excerpt from Sider's book
> appeared in CT's sister publication Books & Culture,
> it created enormous buzz on the religion blogs.
> Liberal observers said the book shows that religious
> folk are hypocrites after all, while evangelical
> bloggers saw our reflection in the mirror and bewailed
> our condition.
>
> --------------
>
> Title: THE EVANGELICAL SCANDAL. (Interivew with Sider)
> Source: Christianity Today Apr. 2005, Vol. 49 Issue 4,
> starts on page 70, 4 pages
>
> INTERVIEWER: What troubles you the most about
> evangelicals today?
>
> SIDER: The heart of the matter is the scandalous
> failure to live what we preach. The tragedy is that
> poll after poll by Gallup and Barna show tbat
> evangelicals live just like the world.
>
> Evangelical Christians and bom-again Christians get
> divorced just as often, if not a little more, than the
> general population. And Barna has discovered tbat yo
> percent of tbe born-again Christians who are divorced
> got divorced after they accepted Christ. On sexual
> promiscuity, we're probably doing a little better than
> the general population. Josh McDowell bas estimated
> that maybe our evangelical youth are 10 percent
> better, Lord help us.
>
> INTERVIEWER: So at least it's a measurable difference.
>
> SIDER: Well it is measurable, although there's not so
> much hard [data] on that question as with some of the
> others. John Green, one of the hest evangelical
> pollsters, says that about a third of all evangelicals
> say that premarital sex is okay. And about 15 percent
> say that adultery is okay.
>
> Take the issue of racism. A Gallup study discovered
> that when they asked the question. "Do you object if a
> black neighbor moves in next door?" the least
> prejudiced were Catholics and non-evangelicals.
> Thenext group, in terms of prejudice, was mainline
> Protestants. Evangelicals and Southern Baptists were
> the worst.
>
> Several studies find that physical and sexual abuse in
> theologically conservative homes is about the same as
> elsewhere. A large study of the Christian Reformed
> Church, a memher of the NAE, discovered that the
> frequency of physical and sexual ahuse in this
> evangelical denomination was about the same as in the
> general population. One recent study, though, suggests
> that evangelical men who attend church regularly are
> less likely than the general population to commit
> domestic violence (CT, August 2004, p. 44).
>
> Materialism continues to be an incredihle scandal. The
> average church member [from across the denominations]
> today gives about 2,6 percent of his or her incomeóa
> quarter of a titheóto the church. Evangelicals use to
> be a lot better [in giving] than mainline
> denominations. But their giving has declined
> every year for several decades, and they're now
> getting very close to the norm. The average
> evangelical giving is ahout 4.2 percentóabout
> two-fifths of a tithe.
>
> Six percent of the "horn-again" people tithe; nine
> percent of evangelicals do. Our income has gone up
> fabulously over the last 30-plus years. The average
> household income now in the U.S. is $42,000-plus. If
> the average American Christian tithed, we'd have
> another $143 billion.
>
> -------------
>
>
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