Well, if you look at your post from yesterday. . .Anyhow: I love the atheists. They always seem to be on top of things and they keep everyone informed. That being said: the link to the article that I was e-mailed this week by the Kentucky Atheists was unavaliable, so here’s the text:Disowning Conservative Politics Is Costly for PastorBy LAURIE GOODSTEIN, The New York TimesMAPLEWOOD, Minn. (July 30) — Like most pastors who lead thrivingevangelical megachurches, the Rev. Gregory A. Boyd was asked frequently togive his blessing — and the church’s — to conservative politicalcandidates and causes.Bill Alkofer, The New York TimesThe Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minn., lost about 1,000 of its 5,000members after Rev. Gregory Boyd urged in June an end to sexual moralizingand military glorification and said America should not be proclaimed a”Christian nation.”The requests came from church members and visitors alike: Would he pleaseannounce a rally against gay marriage during services? Would he introduce apolitician from the pulpit? Could members set up a table in the lobbypromoting their anti-abortion work? Would the church distribute “voters’guides” that all but endorsed Republican candidates? And with the country atwar, please couldn’t the church hang an American flag in the sanctuary?After refusing each time, Mr. Boyd finally became fed up, he said. Beforethe last presidential election, he preached six sermons called “The Crossand the Sword” in which he said the church should steer clear of politics,give up moralizing on sexual issues, stop claiming the United States as a”Christian nation” and stop glorifying American military campaigns.”When the church wins the culture wars, it inevitably loses,” Mr. Boydpreached. “When it conquers the world, it becomes the world. When you putyour trust in the sword, you lose the cross.”Mr. Boyd says he is no liberal. He is opposed to abortion and thinkshomosexuality is not God’s ideal. The response from his congregation atWoodland Hills Church here in suburban St. Paul — packed mostly withpolitically and theologically conservative, middle-class evangelicals — waspassionate. Some members walked out of a sermon and never returned. By thetime the dust had settled, Woodland Hills, which Mr. Boyd founded in 1992,had lost about 1,000 of its 5,000 members.But there were also congregants who thanked Mr. Boyd, telling him they weremoved to tears to hear him voice concerns they had been too afraid to share.”Most of my friends are believers,” said Shannon Staiger, a psychotherapistand church member, “and they think if you’re a believer, you’ll vote forBush. And it’s scary to go against that.”Sermons like Mr. Boyd’s are hardly typical in today’s evangelical churches.But the upheaval at Woodland Hills is an example of the internal debates nowgoing on in some evangelical colleges, magazines and churches. A commonconcern is that the Christian message is being compromised by the tendencyto tie evangelical Christianity to the Republican Party and Americannationalism, especially through the war in Iraq. And Mr. Boyd has a new bookout, “The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power IsDestroying the Church,” which is based on his sermons.”There is a lot of discontent brewing,” said Brian D. McLaren, the foundingpastor at Cedar Ridge Community Church in Gaithersburg, Md., and a leader inthe evangelical movement known as the “emerging church,” which is at theforefront of challenging the more politicized evangelical establishment.”More and more people are saying this has gone too far — the dominance ofthe evangelical identity by the religious right,” Mr. McLaren said. “Youcannot say the word ‘Jesus’ in 2006 without having an awful lot of baggagegoing along with it. You can’t say the word ‘Christian,’ and you certainlycan’t say the word ‘evangelical’ without it now raising connotations and acertain cringe factor in people.”Because people think, ‘Oh no, what is going to come next is homosexualbashing, or pro-war rhetoric, or complaining about ‘activist judges.’ “Mr. Boyd said he had cleared his sermons with the church’s board, but hiswords left some in his congregation stunned. Some said that he wasdisrespecting President Bush and the military, that he was soft on abortionor telling them not to vote.”When we joined years ago, Greg was a conservative speaker,” said WilliamBerggren, a lawyer who joined the church with his wife six years ago. “Butwe totally disagreed with him on this. You can’t be a Christian and ignoreactions that you feel are wrong. A case in point is the abortion issue. Ifthe church were awake when abortion was passed in the 70′s, it wouldn’t havehappened. But the church was asleep.”Mr. Boyd, 49, who preaches in blue jeans and rumpled plaid shirts, leads achurch that occupies a squat block-long building that was once a homeimprovement chain store.The church grew from 40 members in 12 years, based in no small part on Mr.Boyd’s draw as an electrifying preacher who stuck closely to Scripture. Hehas degrees from Yale Divinity School and Princeton Theological Seminary,and he taught theology at Bethel College in St. Paul, where he created acontroversy a few years ago by questioning whether God fully knew thefuture. Some pastors in his own denomination, the Baptist GeneralConference, mounted an effort to evict Mr. Boyd from the denomination andhis teaching post, but he won that battle. He is known among evangelicalsfor a bestselling book, “Letters From a Skeptic,” based on correspondencewith his father, a leftist union organizer and a lifelong agnostic — anexchange that eventually persuaded his father to embrace Christianity.Mr. Boyd said he never intended his sermons to be taken as merely a critiqueof the Republican Party or the religious right. He refuses to share hisparty affiliation, or whether he has one, for that reason. He said therewere Christians on both the left and the right who had turned politics andpatriotism into “idolatry.”He said he first became alarmed while visiting another megachurch’s worshipservice on a Fourth of July years ago. The service finished with the chorussinging “God Bless America” and a video of fighter jets flying over a hillsilhouetted with crosses.”I thought to myself, ‘What just happened? Fighter jets mixed up with thecross?’ ” he said in an interview.Patriotic displays are still a mainstay in some evangelical churches. Acrosstown from Mr. Boyd’s church, the sanctuary of North Heights Lutheran Churchwas draped in bunting on the Sunday before the Fourth of July this year fora “freedom celebration.” Military veterans and flag twirlers paraded intothe sanctuary, an enormous American flag rose slowly behind the stage, and aMarine major who had served in Afghanistan preached that the military wasspending “your hard-earned money” on good causes.In his six sermons, Mr. Boyd laid out a broad argument that the role ofChristians was not to seek “power over” others — by controllinggovernments, passing legislation or fighting wars.Christians should instead seek to have “power under” others – “winningpeople’s hearts” by sacrificing for those in need, as Jesus did, Mr. Boydsaid.”America wasn’t founded as a theocracy,” he said. “America was founded bypeople trying to escape theocracies. Never in history have we had aChristian theocracy where it wasn’t bloody and barbaric. That’s why ourConstitution wisely put in a separation of church and state.”I am sorry to tell you,” he continued, “that America is not the light ofthe world and the hope of th
e world. The light of the world and the hope ofthe world is Jesus Christ.”Mr. Boyd lambasted the “hypocrisy and pettiness” of Christians who focus on”sexual issues” like homosexuality, abortion or Janet Jackson’sbreast-revealing performance at the Super Bowl halftime show. He saidChristians these days were constantly outraged about sex and perceivedviolations of their rights to display their faith in public.”Those are the two buttons to push if you want to get Christians to act,” hesaid. “And those are the two buttons Jesus never pushed.”Some Woodland Hills members said they applauded the sermons because they hadresolved their conflicted feelings. David Churchill, a truck driver forU.P.S. and a Teamster for 26 years, said he had been “raised in areligious-right home” but was torn between the Republican expectations offaith and family and the Democratic expectations of his union.When Mr. Boyd preached his sermons, “it was liberating to me,” Mr. Churchillsaid.Mr. Boyd gave his sermons while his church was in the midst of a $7 millionfund-raising campaign. But only $4 million came in, and 7 of the more than50 staff members were laid off, he said.Mary Van Sickle, the family pastor at Woodland Hills, said she lost 20volunteers who had been the backbone of the church’s Sunday school.”They said, ‘You’re not doing what the church is supposed to be doing, whichis supporting the Republican way,’ ” she said. “It was some of my bestvolunteers.”The Rev. Paul Eddy, a theology professor at Bethel College and the teachingpastor at Woodland Hills, said: “Greg is an anomaly in the megachurch world.He didn’t give a whit about church leadership, never read a book aboutchurch growth. His biggest fear is that people will think that all church isis a weekend carnival, with people liking the worship, the music, hisspeaking, and that’s it.”In the end, those who left tended to be white, middle-class suburbanites,church staff members said. In their place, the church has added more memberswho live in the surrounding community – African-Americans, Hispanics andHmong immigrants from Laos.This suits Mr. Boyd. His vision for his church is an ethnically andeconomically diverse congregation that exemplifies Jesus’ teachings by itsmembers’ actions. He, his wife and three other families from the churchmoved from the suburbs three years ago to a predominantly black neighborhoodin St. Paul.Mr. Boyd now says of the upheaval: “I don’t regret any aspect of it at all.It was a defining moment for us. We let go of something we were never calledto be. We just didn’t know the price we were going to pay for doing it.”His congregation of about 4,000 is still digesting his message. Mr. Boydarranged a forum on a recent Wednesday night to allow members to sound offon his new book. The reception was warm, but many of the 56 questionssubmitted in writing were pointed: Isn’t abortion an evil that Christiansshould prevent? Are you saying Christians should not join the military? Howcan Christians possibly have “power under” Osama bin Laden? Didn’t thechurch play an enormously positive role in the civil rights movement?One woman asked: “So why NOT us? If we contain the wisdom and grace and loveand creativity of Jesus, why shouldn’t we be the ones involved in politicsand setting laws?”Mr. Boyd responded: “I don’t think there’s a particular angle we have onsociety that others lack. All good, decent people want good and order andjustice. Just don’t slap the label ‘Christian’ on it.” Thought you might want to know. It’s swinging a different direction in some places. Perhaps getting more set in others, but still.

“I don’t think the answer is the replacement of ‘dualistic’ faith with ‘pluralistic’ faith because I don’t think that any belief system is immune from corruption or selfish impulses.”I think this is the crux of the problem, and I think that the severity of this problem is directly proportional to the degree in which politics and religion are mixed.