tft-short-4578168
Ken Ammi’s True Free Thinker:
BooksYouTube or OdyseeTwitterFacebookSearch

United Church of Christ: liberal-leaning unorthodox views of God – the pseudo neo dogma

It is reported that “Duke’s campus minister for the United Church of Christ, the Rev. Mark Rutledge helped lead weekly worship services – reading Scripture and reciting the creed.”[1]

Yet there is a lot more to this minister than worship, Scripture and creeds as he holds to what he refers to as “unorthodox views.” The “liberal-leaning United Church of Christ” has “allowed him to work as a campus minister in such places as…the University of New Mexico-Albuquerque.” He has also been a part of one of the most discredited scholarly hoaxes of modern times the (anti) Jesus Seminar which is described as “a colloquium of scholars who tried to peel off layers of church dogma to unearth the historical Jesus.” Yet, the Jesus Seminar attempted to bury Jesus in layers of secular anti-supernatural dogma of their own making (for info on the historical Jesus please see: essays at this link).

So, what is the issue?

Rutledge is the first to admit he does not believe in a supernatural God with supernatural powers. ‘The cosmic guy in the sky is not a credible image of God,’ he said…Rutledge says he still believes in God, but not the God who sits on a throne in the sky. To Rutledge, God is a process of mysterious cosmic creativity that makes for greater love and justice. He thinks of God as a force working within human beings and nature, and he sees his role as trying to imitate that divine character whose greatest exemplar is Jesus.

Certainly, he is dealing in caricatures as no one holds to theology of a God who sits on a throne “in the sky.” This is setting up a straw-god so as to ease knocking such a concept down.

Now, what of the aforementioned “mysterious cosmic creativity” referenced by ex-University of New Mexico-Albuquerque “minister” Mark Rutledge?

While Jesus was the “greatest exemplar” Jesus preached no such God. Note what one time atheist C. S. Lewis noted in referencing to this form of theology which he variously referred to as Life-Force philosophy, or Creative Evolution, or Emergent Evolution:

One reason why many people find Creative Evolution so attractive is that it gives one much of the emotional comfort of believing in God and none of the less pleasant consequences. When you are feeling fit and the sun is shining and you do not want to believe that the whole universe is a mere mechanical dance of atoms, it is nice to be able to think of this great mysterious Force rolling on through the centuries and carrying you on its crest. If, on the other hand, you want to do something rather shabby, the Life-Force, being only a blind force, with no morals and no mind, will never interfere with you like that troublesome God we learned about when we were children. The Life-Force is a sort of tame God. You can switch it on when you want, but it will not bother you. All the thrills of religion and none of the cost.

Is the Life-Force the greatest achievement of wishful thinking the world has yet seen?[1]

Note:
[1] Yonat Shimron, “Pastor sticks up for modern view of God,” News Observer, Aug 02, 2010 AD

[2] From C.S. Lewis’ book Mere Christianity, chapter 4 “What Lies Behind the Law”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A plea: I have to pay for server usage and have made all content on this website free and always will. I support my family on one income and do research, writing, videos, etc. as a hobby. If you can even spare $1.00 as a donation, please do so: it may not seem like much but if each person reading this would do so, even every now and then, it would add up and really, really help. Here is my donate/paypal page.

Due to robo-spaming, I had to close the comment sections. However, you can comment on my Facebook page and/or on my Google+ page.


Posted

in

by

Tags: