Steve Thorngate’s Recent Comments

• Click here to view comment in original post

  The churches

  This post is in general right on target, but I take issue with the idea that "American churches from evangelical to liberal have turned their focus to individual fulfillment."

  Certainly, this seems to be the general cultural trend, and it's affected liberals and conservatives alike, if somewhat differently. And in any situation, the church is constantly living in the tension between challenging culture and simply reflecting it. But the mainline (roughly equivalent to "liberal") church has been generally pretty insistent about talking about "we" rather than "I," in particular because this trait has become its primary distinctive in its ongoing struggle to keep its members from being secularized or evangelicalized. The mainline church is as interested in the priorities named here as it ever was--but its influence has declined dramatically in the last 50 years or so.

  Meanwhile, most recent attention to religious environmental activism has focused on evangelicals, on the "creation care" movement. I worry that this group's theology and culture will make it difficult to move beyond green lifestyle/consumer issues to more collective and systemic efforts. But the movement is part of/is coinciding with other trends in that community, trends away from simplistic individualism and toward communalism, reations against the Church of Me, with its prosperity gospel and its spiritualized self-help promises ("10 Steps Toward Godlier Personal Finances!").

  The evangelical church often uses the "personal not private" line to describe the way that faith should be lived out. I'm hopeful that they will grow into a role in which they fill some of this civil void, as the liberal church once did and continues to try to do. If this happens, a top priority of those who make it happen will be addressing global warming.

  stevethorngate.blogspot.com On It's not that individuals can't do anything about climate -- they just can't do it by themselves posted 2 years, 2 months ago 30 Responses