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"in 1983, Westmont College New Testament professor Robert Gundry was expelled for arguing that some events in the gospel of Matthew, such as the visit from the Magi, were not historical."

Now here is a good example of evangelical "biblioidoloatry". 2 Tim 3.16 says that scripture is "useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness" nowhere does it say, "and for a perfect modern-scientific understanding of ancient near eastern history, biology, and physics." The author of that verse also specifically was talking about the OT, as the NT had not yet been canonized.

We evangelicals need to firmly rely on the Bible as our chief authority in Spirituality, Ethics, Theology, and Ministry; in these things the scriptures are innerant and inspired. We do not need to force the Bible to be more than it is or more than it claims to be (eg- a biology textbook).

Excuse me. What level of omniscience or maybe textual criticism did Mr. Gundry employ to ascertain that Matthew 2:1-12, as written, never occurred historically?

Getting too fine a point on doctrine could reduce the membership of the society to you and me, and I'm not so sure about you. Shades of the fundamentalism of the last century. Yes, there is a minimal set of criteria that make one a Christian (acceptance of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior being number one in my book). But on doctrines where even the Bible itself is not plainly clear, we would be wise to be more humble. Does the Bible teach foreknowledge (God knows what we're going to do before we do it)? I believe the weight of testimony says so. But does it also teach that God lets us make up our own mind, even against God's will? I believe that too. But some folk can't accept both. Does that make them not a Christian? I don't think so. Ray

The conservative wing of the American Evangelical movement has always been about conserving the concept of white male hegemony as God's divinely ordained regents (As in Regent University)...and at its core, that hasn't much changed, though today it will at least condescend to tolerate other patriarchal minded Christians. (I wonder if anyone ever told Pat Robertson that a regent is one who rules in the name of a sovereign who is out of touch, immature, or incompetent. What kind of trinitarian theology do they teach there?)

You notice that the belief statement never mentions the Golden Rule, and it's really a claim for absolute exclusivity for God's attentions and favors, never mind that the rain falls on everyone, and the sun shines for all, even when there is too much rain or too much sunshine.

If there isn't in any religious statement, a radical understanding of God's Golden Rule, and a definite call for love, hope, justice, charity, kindness, it's really first and last about keeping "those" people away from "our" God and out of "our" heaven, unless they do as they're told by their self-proclaimed, authoritarian minded (and at least subliminally greedy) superiors.

Ray, I don't think for one moment that anyone in ETS believes that only its members can claim to be Christians. Doctrinal standards aren't intended to be judgments of salvation. In a society such as ETS they serve to define the represented constituency of the group. And this is particularly important since most of the members of ETS are scholars and/or pastors who need a firmer grasp on the truth to carry out their tasks.

So it seems to me valid to want to establish the criteria that qualify someone as 'evangelical' for membership in the Evangelical Theological Society.

"So it seems to me valid to want to establish the criteria that qualify someone as 'evangelical' for membership in the Evangelical Theological Society."

But the term "evangelical" is itself a contested notion and cannot be defined by mere stipulation.

This expanding of the ETS criteria comes on the heels of its president becoming Catholic. But what the ETS may do, Pope Benedict XVI cannot. He cannot merely stipulate what is the church's catechism. He is restrained by Scripture, interpreted by the magisterium, and church councils, prior popes, etc In other words, the Catholic who was forced to leave ETS has a more stable theological foundation to preserve orthodoxy than the shifting sands of evangelical theological democracy. The ETS can make it up as they go along, always claiming that they are being "biblical," just as Arius and Pelagius were "biblical."

Former President Beckwith is in a better place, one that has the resources and history to preserve the orthodoxy that ETS can only pretend to know how to defend.

How ironic is that?

Well, of course it's contested. But it's still okay, imo, for any one group to establish their own working definition of it. They're a society - they're allowed to be as exclusive or inclusive as they choose.

Greg said: "The conservative wing of the American Evangelical movement has always been about conserving the concept of white male hegemony as God's divinely ordained regents.... If there isn't in any religious statement, a radical understanding of God's Golden Rule, and a definite call for love, hope, justice, charity, kindness, it's really first and last about keeping "those" people away from "our" God and out of "our" heaven...."

Whew! Characteristic of many radical egalitarians, Greg's sophomoric pronouncment about what "American Evangelicalism" has "always been about" is self-evidently stupid. The problem is that the illiberal tendencies of the radical egalitarians are creeping more subtly in the media, governments and other elite structures, leading ultimately to authoritarianism and a concomitant loss of freedom. Christians, agnostics and atheists must stand together and firmly against such anti-freedom egalitarians and their illiberal values.

How is my argument stupid? Granted, evangelicalism has always been a diverse movement, which is why I qualified my argument with "conservative" Even then, "conservative" as drifted here and there, now and then, but always returning to the theme of:

...conserving established hierarchy as divinely ordained, encouraging inherited privilege, such as abolishing estate tases, and appeals to sometimes rather revised traditions over individual rights and disestablishmentarianism.

In this country, that means "white" as the norm, the measure of all things, an invisible sea in which "white" people easily swim, almost unaware of that in which they swim, with everyone else subject to various degrees of grudging tolerance, at best, at keast unless they could pass as "white," if they could.

An example of conservative evangelical historical revisionism is appealing to the "tradition" of America's conservative Christian founding...a false tradition. AT the time of the Constitution, America was probably about as liberal religiously as it's ever been since. This was the age when a Unitarian Church could be found in every town, and people could start to imagine the previously unimaginable, a Constitution which doesn't even try to legitimize itself with appeals to an official state deity. Of course, the Declaration of Independence does appeal to God as the author unalienable rights for its legitimacy, but conservatives seem not to notice that this God of unalienable rights, isn't specifically a trinitarian God. The Declaration isn't a conservative Christian document, but is instead, very much a Unitarian document.

Of course, later, some conservative evangelicals claimed that the Civil War was brought about by a sinister Unitarian conspiracy, and the wrong side won. In fact, John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute wrote just that in the late Seventies, if memeory serves.

Greg, what you and other radical egalitarians fail to grasp is that our culture is "white," as you put it, in the sense that it was created by European Americans. Whom do you expect to be able to "swim" more easily in a culture created by "whites?" Muslims? Blacks? Of course not, if they otherwise seek to maintain cultural differences at odds with those held by the majority of persons around them. The great melting pot that existed before the 1960's was spectacularly successful precisely because those from other cultures adopted the majority culture that was established by "whites." Your entire post is steeped in the radical egalitarian language and logic that, boiled to its essence, goes something like this: Because American culture is by definition exclusive and oppressive, it obviously cannot coexist with the oppressed cultures that seek equality with it until it has been stripped of its hypocritical pretensions to universality and legitimacy--i.e., until, as a national culture, it has ceased to exist. Well, Greg my boy, that's why I oppose you and your radical egalitarian ilk. I like my culture and my country just fine the way they are, thank you, so long as everyone has equality and equal opportunity guaranteed by law. But don't ask me to appreciate a culture foreign to mine to the extent that I have to forsake my own and give up my liberal freedoms in exchange.

No, the culture isn't "white" because it was created by European Americans, and it wasn't all created by Europeans anyway, as the American vocabulary exposes. Whiteness was created in America as a caste system for the exploitation of a peoples.

My ancestors didn't come from Whiteland to become White Americans. They didn't arrive 'white," they arrived "Norwegian." They were anointed as "white" upon arrival, in order to prohibit them from marrying non-"white," and therefore weakening the already in place caste system of white privilege...and they were expected to be grateful for, and defend that privilege. White privilege was being fully "American." Not to be "white" was not being fully American...though you could still be drafted to fight America's wars. And, not all Europeans were anointed as "white" upon arrival...such as the Irish...though whiteness was laid upon them later, when they had "proven" themselves somehow worthy, and had the light hued skin as required by the caste system.

The "great melting pot" was a racist delusion to maintain white privilege. How else do you explain that it was only when I was in high school, that laws against marrying people of other "races" was finally exposed as unconstitutional? That the 14th Amendment was only finally properly enforced in my life time, even as being deplored as an "inorganic accretion" by the likes of people like William F. Buckley, Jr.?

Anti race-mixing laws had been gradually repealed outside the Bible belt since WW II, but were in full force within the Bible Belt, with no end in sight. Even after the Loving decision, those unenforceable laws weren't removed from state constitutions and such until much later, and with some opposition.

The laws had worked...in just the forty years after their repeal, my family now looks like America, which would have been illegal before the Sixties. We have come to pity America for what it could have been, even as we appreciate what it can be now.

"White" is wack, always a bland and tedious gruel, morally and intellectually pinched and bankrupt and often dangerous, even now. Just happening to have European ancestors is fine, keeping old world traditions alive is fun and gives a nice texture to life, though I'll pass on the Norwegian Blood pudding, but...

America isn't a nation of villages any more, it's an urban, cosmopolitan nation, even in the remaining villages. Pretending that a Bible Belt agrarian, status quo ante is God's will for mankind will probably do little to help the world in a substantive way.

It's a much richer, far more delicious cultural Smörgåsbord today than it was when I was a kid, and it could be much better...if, perhaps, we expand upon the practice the Golden Rule in the manner suggested by the radical abolitionists, rather than the self-serving, "literal interpretation" of the conservative evangelicals, who don't even bother to think of including the Golden Rule in statements of belief. That's just sad.

You've been exposed, then, because YOU initially used the word "white," whereas I put the term in quotes, precisely because there is no such thing as that. There is such a thing as European ancestry that produced a culture in these United States, which you apparently deny or at least disdain.

In any event, you again have shown how you seek the destruction of European culture, what with your Smorgasbord worship and all. Just be aware that one recent major study has shown that "diversity" does not, contrary to leftist egalitarian dogma, produce strength, but rather fear, loathing, mistrust and factionalism.

I'm not sure what all the hand-wringing about your perceived injustices does for the illogic of your presentation, based, as it is, on emotionalism. I would just say that your essentially Marxist approach to Christianity is a rather bizarre philosophical fusion that posits a Manichean approach which necessarily labels everything that has gone before as evil and the steady forward march to your notion of equality as righteous. How otherwise to explain the strange statement that the 14th Amendment "exposes" something as unconstitutional?

I said that having European ancestry and customs is just fine. I like being Norwegian American and draw strength from that, but being "white" identifying is not fine at all. There is no reason for that, except for keeping an evil caste system on life support. Just stop being "white," if only for a week, and see how it goes.

Humans like to label and group things, I think, so just apply another identity label to yourself. Make one up if you wish.

Another interesting exercise in exposing the pervasiveness of whiteness is the "whiteness game." Set aside a week to say things like "I'm having lunch with my white friend. I'm seeing my white relatives this Thanksgiving. My white wife just called and said to pick up some milk on the way home."

Diversity has long been a tourist draw and seems to usually work adequately in the Southwest area where I live. We have little choice but to try to make it so, really. My doctor, dentist and pharmacist are all Hispanic. That just happened and wasn't deliberate. My neighborhood and workplace are quite diverse (the boss is a woman, for starters), not to mention my family, which reflects the diversity of our environment. My family would have been illegal in the Bible Belt of my youth.

Diversity only produces fear, mistrust and factionalism among greedy people of ill will who don't try to practice the Golden Rule. That wouldn't describe Christians, now would it?

You did put "white" in quotes, but used is as a synonym for European Americans. "...our culture is "white," as you put it, in the sense that it was created by European Americans. Whom do you expect to be able to "swim" more easily in a culture created by "whites?" Muslims? Blacks?"

Whiteness was created here by only some Americans who didn't have to do it, and is being perpetuated by Americans who don't have to do it. Slavery could have been abolished when the Constitution was being written. Reconstruction after the Civil War didn't have to fail. The same Supreme Court that allegedly declared America to be a Christian nation, didn't have to rule for the outright fraud of "Separate but equal." There were plenty of Americans of non-European ancestry in America when whiteness was being put together to better exploit them.

Black people shouldn't have to put up with whiteness in their country. Much of America's wealth was built upon their backs, and protected, expanded and enriched with their work, sacrifice and talents.

Reconciliation between "white" and Black is not happening as it should because many people can't even imagine giving up the privileged system or whiteness...even if they think that the system can be expanded to people not-'white.' Who would want to be essentially an honorary "white?"

By the way, thanks for the responses. I appreciate your taking the time.

Greg,

Have you read Doris Lessings book of essays Prisons we choose to cive inside? If not you may find it interesting.

Ken