John Walley wrote:
I think the things we are against reveal the things we were
victimized by previously. Cameron can brush off YEC because he is from
Canada and it is a non-issue there. He has never been led astray by
that influence or felt the shame and scorn of having to hold the party
line against intellectuals to defend the faith. The rest of us who have
still remember. The wounds are still raw.
Like Cameron I am from Canada although I have lived in the USofA a
number of times for periods of one to four years. In Canada I think it
depends upon the particular church and possibly social group that one
is a part of. In the fundamentalist denomination that my parents were
part of, YEC beliefs predominated and if you did not accept that belief
your faith was in substantial doubt and the implication was that in all
likelihood you were destined straight for hell. In some churches in
that denomination even having fellowship with Christians from other
denominations was considered unacceptable or at the very least
discouraged. I would strongly agree with Cameron that the relative
influence and public militancy of such groups in Canada is much much
less than in the USofA but that is true of the Canadian church in
general.
Until I left home, I had learned to keep my mouth shut in the many
areas where I disagreed with the reigning dogmas to which I was
exposed. Essentially I was more of a fundamentalist than the fundies
with which I attended church. I held that the essentials of the gospel
were quite limited and did not include many of the extraneous beliefs
and practices held by the church which we attended. For example I
thought the mode of baptism was of very little import and that the age
when baptism occurred was of secondary or lower importance. Like John
I still have the bruises because some times I would make mistakes and
publicly take a position not acceptable to the pastor or the deacons of
the particular church where I was at the time.
I don't ever recall the term YEC explicitly being used but then I
started to leave the denomination in question when I began university
in 1959. My separation was essentially complete by the time I finished
graduate school in 1965, thus that was a long time ago and I could
simply have forgotten. Now we attend a Christian Reformed Church and
the topic does not arise very often. At times one finds someone who is
not trained in the sciences and has not thought much about the issue
and they accept a simple straight forward reading of Genesis. One
could consider such a position to be folk YEC as opposed to militant,
conscious, thought out (to some extent) YEC.
Fortunately my dad had at least one OEC book in his library and
probably was OEC himself although we never discussed the issue.
In summary I have more sympathy for the anti YEC position in this group
than Cameron does but at times I get tired of making it a constant
issue. But when most/much of the Christian culture makes the issue of
origins a matter of the essence of the gospel I can well see how it is
a big issue south of the border in the USofA.
Dave W
To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Fri Oct 30 05:24:37 2009