Here's John Stackhouse's ideas on "Red Letter Christians" here
Here's my response that I posted:
I think that we’ve misunderstood Tony’s heart on this. He is not purposing that we only read the red letters, that we read them more often, or even that we give them more weight. He is attempting to swing the previous overemphasis Evangelicals had with the Pauline sections of scripture back to Christ. Tony makes Jesus at the center of his reading/understanding/application of scripture instead of Paul.
A few other random points:
-The return to ancient ideas within contemporary evangelical faith is very “au courant.” Read some of Robert Webber’s work (he has a series called Ancient/Future Faith, Worship, etc). Thus, using the term “red letter” fits within the mindset of emerging (not a big fan of that term though) christians.
-If you read first hand the works where Tony brings up the idea of a Red-Letter Christian, you'll see he is not pushing for the use of the term as a new designation or sect. He is simply trying to communicate the need to focus on Jesus as the center to not only our lives but also our bibles.
-You are right to say that RLCs are more blue than red. I don’t think that Tony’s point of RLC is to put people on the knife’s edge of politics. The point is to remove the political colour as the master status and replace it with Christ. RLCs will always be in flux between the political poles as they search to vote for what they think is right.
-Lastly, I’m just a guy who works to pay my bills and seeks to follow my Lord the best I can. I’m not the final authority. I’m not the last word.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Response to "'Red-Letter Christians': A Bad Idea with a Bad Name, Alas"
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2 comments:
Hey you are back to blogging. Sort of.
Yes, I think you are right that Stackhouse seems to have missed a lot of the good stuff that Tony has to say here.
But I still think that the whole RLC thing is wrongheaded. I don't think living Christianly is as easy as simply reading the red letters and then doing what the red letters say.
And to me it seems like RLC folks, like Wallis especially, are too quick to equate America with Israel. Every time I read him or hear him, he's going on about how the OT prophets were always worried about poverty. True. But how come the political left doesn't accuse him of being a theocrat? Isn't he a theocrat?
I guess I'm against left and right wing theocrats.
I agree that that trying to answer the complex questions of Christianity with just the red letters of scripture is tricky. However, I think this is where we start. And when we read the rest we read it through the red letters, through the incarnation, through Jesus. That's my current hermeneutic; or at least part of it. Though it changes as I try to balance growing in knowledge and simplifying life/faith.
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