{"id":13100,"date":"2013-02-25T10:12:08","date_gmt":"2013-02-25T15:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=13100"},"modified":"2013-02-25T10:12:08","modified_gmt":"2013-02-25T15:12:08","slug":"liberal-christianity-around-the-blogosphere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2013\/02\/liberal-christianity-around-the-blogosphere.html","title":{"rendered":"Liberal Christianity around the Blogosphere"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p><a href=\"http:\/\/homebrewedchristianity.com\/2013\/02\/22\/what-is-rick-warren-reading\/?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+HomebrewedChristianity+%28Homebrewed+Christianity%29\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Bo Sanders discussed a bit of revisionist history offered in a tweet by Rick Warren<\/a>, who outlandishly claimed (among other things):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u00a0Liberal theology has never created any university. It just sucks the life our of those that were started by Bible believers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Fortunately<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/rickwarren\/status\/304155009422082050\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"> he received a lot of responses challenging<\/a> his either bizarrely ill-informed or downright dishonest claim.\u00a0And if you missed it, see the meme that he inspired \u2013 and later even contributed to \u2013 on Twitter,\u00a0#RickWarrenTips.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/hallq\/2013\/02\/how-to-deal-with-liberal-christians\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">Chris Hallquist asked how to \u201cdeal with\u201d liberal Christians<\/a>. Since his descriptions of how liberal Christians think seem to represent those who are the \u201cliberal\u201d end of still fairly conservative Christianity, I would suggest that he \u201cdeal with\u201d the phenomenon by realizing that the spectrum stretches far further in the liberal direction than he ever seems to mention or acknowledge.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, <a href=\"http:\/\/otagosh.blogspot.com\/2013\/02\/a-liberal-faith.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Otagosh shared a link to and excerpt from a recent blog post of mine<\/a>, adding this clever bumper sticker:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13102\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/files\/2013\/02\/liberal-christianity-more-fruit-fewer-nuts1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"214\" height=\"81\"><\/p>\n<p>As much as I appreciate the clever wit of the bumper sticker, I don\u2019t think it works well as a slogan. I can see it as an <em>aim<\/em> \u2013 \u00a0trying to be less like those who focus on loudly proclaiming the most bizarre examples of human speculation as divine truth, rather than focusing as New Testament authors tend to on cultivating kindness, humility, and other such characteristics. But in the interest of doing precisely that, I think that trying to claim that this is a description that belongs to us and not to others, rather than an ideal we strive for, is a mistake, and indeed, like wearing a badge proclaiming one\u2019s own humility, sporting a bumper sticker like this one might show just how far we still have to go in the department of cultivating spiritual fruit.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bo Sanders discussed a bit of revisionist history offered in a tweet by Rick Warren, who outlandishly claimed (among other things): \u00a0Liberal theology has never created any university. It just sucks the life our of those that were started by Bible believers. Fortunately he received a lot of responses challenging his either bizarrely ill-informed or [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":13101,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[131,136,139,163],"tags":[1455,1835,1846,6527,9593,10169,10382,11428,11713,13035],"class_list":["post-13100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christianity-religion","category-evangelicals","category-fundamentalism-religion","category-progressive-christianity-religion","tag-bumper-sticker","tag-christian","tag-christianity-religion","tag-liberal","tag-progressive","tag-religion","tag-rick-warren","tag-slogan","tag-spiritual-fruit","tag-twitter"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Liberal Christianity around the Blogosphere<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Bo Sanders discussed a bit of revisionist history offered in a tweet by Rick Warren, who outlandishly claimed (among other things): \u00a0Liberal theology has\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2013\/02\/liberal-christianity-around-the-blogosphere.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Liberal Christianity around the Blogosphere\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Bo Sanders discussed a bit of revisionist history offered in a tweet by Rick Warren, who outlandishly claimed (among other things): \u00a0Liberal theology has\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2013\/02\/liberal-christianity-around-the-blogosphere.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. 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