LIBERALISM “LEFT BEHIND” AND THE COMING GLOBAL FAMILY


An Apprising Ministries reader sent me a link to Keep the Faith the blog of “Rev. Matt” Tittle, “A reader blog about liberal religion” hosted by the Houston Chronicle. Tittle informs us that he “is minister of Bay Area Unitarian Universalist Church in Houston.”

What our astute reader brings to our attention in this Left Behind entry from Tittle is a vivid example of the coming unity of apostate Christianity through orthopraxy (what we do) at the expense of orthodoxy (what we believe).

This is a common mistake made by missionaries, who we will allow in their zeal to see people become “Christ-followers,” have turned proper Christian missions into precisely the reverse man-centered order that does nothing more than produce false converts who then attempt to follow a Jesus they never really knew.

Look very carefully at what Tittle tells you about the postevangelical and emerging church reimagined social gospel of “Deeds Not Creeds”:

A couple of weeks ago, I preached a sermon titled, “Left Behind…Again!” in which I said that religious liberals needed to take a lesson from and even join forces with the emergent church movement and new evangelicals, because these groups were doing amazing work on issues of human rights, poverty, environmental justice, etc.

We liberals are mostly sitting around talking about justice, but doing very little. In essence, I said that the emergents and evangelicals were now preaching our centuries old liberal message and actually practicing it! We liberals are about to be left behind…

I actually played a little trick on my congregation by reading some very progressive [i.e. liberal] quotes, implying that they came from Unitarian Universalist sources (and they sounded like they did), but never actually said “Unitarian Universalist.” Then I broke the news that the quotes had come from the 2005 Emergent Church Conference, and from Rev. Brian McClaren, and from Rev. Jim Wallis.

I then told them the story of Rick Warren and Saddleback Church’s social justice efforts. I think they got the message, because it caused quite a stir….One group in my congregation sat down with me this week to make a list of local congregations (Christian, Jewish, and Muslim) to approach for collaborative efforts!
(Online source, emphasis mine)