Every summer, lots of religious people sit in lots of national conventions and hear lots of leaders with impressive titles deliver lots of long speeches about complicated theological issues.<\/p>\n\n
After a few weeks, people forget 99 percent of what\u2019s said during this siege.<\/p>\n\n
But people are still talking about the Rev. Dirk Ficca\u2019s \u201cUncommon Ground\u201d sermon at the Presbyterian Peacemaking Conference in Orange, Calif. It has sparked something unusual \u2014 a hot mainline Protestant story that isn\u2019t about sex.<\/p>\n\n
The sound bite was a stunner: \u201cWhat\u2019s the big deal about Jesus?\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Why do so many Christians, asked Ficca, think they need to convert people in other religions to Christianity? Don\u2019t they believe their God is powerful enough to work however He sees fit, even through other faiths? Don\u2019t they believe in the \u201csovereignty of God\u201d?<\/p>\n\n
\u201cGod\u2019s ability to work in our life is not determined by being a Christian,\u201d said Ficca, a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) minister who directs the Council for a Parliament of the World\u2019s Religions in Chicago. \u201cOK \u2026 if God is at work in our lives whether we\u2019re Christian or not, what\u2019s the big deal about Jesus?\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Ficca has seen traditional Christian missionary work and he rejects it, outright. Members of other faiths, he said, testify \u201cthat when Christians approach them with the sole purpose of converting them to Christianity, it feels like \u2026 a kind of ethnic cleansing. What (missionaries) are saying is: Your religious identity is not acceptable and my job is to eliminate it from the face of the earth.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Presbyterian evangelicals are crying, \u201cfoul\u201d \u2014 early and often.<\/p>\n\n
The result has been a clash between traditionalists and leaders of the denomination\u2019s progressive establishment. Much of the heat is in cyberspace, but there have been flare-ups in public meetings. Many documents linked to the July 29 sermon can be found through the \u201cJesus Debate\u201d link at the WWW.PresbyWeb.com news site.<\/p>\n\n
Conservatives are quoting centuries of doctrine and catechisms, such as the Scots Confession, which proclaims: \u201c\u2026 For there is neither life nor salvation without Christ Jesus; so shall none have part therein but those whom the Father has given unto his Son Jesus Christ, and those who in time come to him, avow his doctrine, and believe in him.\u201d And, of course, they are quoting the Gospel of John: \u201cJesus answered, \u2018I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.\u2019 \u201c<\/p>\n\n
Ficca reads those passages differently. He dedicated much of his address to undermining what he called the \u201cinstrumental view\u201d of Jesus and salvation.<\/p>\n\n
It teaches that \u201cJesus is the sole and only instrument of God\u2019s salvation \u2014 through one person at a certain point in history, who lived and died in a certain way, only through this person does God\u2019s salvation come into the world,\u201d he said. \u201cHere the Gospel is about Jesus; Jesus, himself, is the Good News. ^?And if Jesus is the sole instrument of God \u2014 if it is only through Jesus that salvation comes \u2014 then the only way for the world to be saved is for everyone to become a Christian.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
In place of this view, Ficca advocated a \u201crevelatory view.\u201d It teaches that the \u201cGood News is not the good news so much about Jesus, but the good news of Jesus: The Good News that Jesus preached. What this view says is that Jesus reveals how God has been at work in all times in all places throughout history in all people to bring about salvation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Thus, Christians no longer have to engage in \u201cproselytizing \u2026 for the purpose of converting people to Christianity.\u201d God offers believers many religious paths to reach one eternal destination, said Ficca.<\/p>\n\n
Presbyterian evangelicals are urging their denomination to publicly reject this approach \u2014 doctrinally and financially \u2014 as soon as possible.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cApart from God\u2019s unique act of self-identification with fallen humanity in Jesus \u2026 the Christian faith simply has nothing else to say about \u2018salvation,\u2019 \u201d said the leaders of the powerful Highland Park Presbyterian Church in Dallas. \u201cThere is no \u2018Good News\u2019 apart from what God has done for us in the life, death and resurrection of Christ.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Every summer, lots of religious people sit in lots of national conventions and hear lots of leaders with impressive titles deliver lots of long speeches about complicated theological issues. After a few weeks, people forget 99 percent of what\u2019s said during this siege. But people are still talking about the Rev. Dirk Ficca\u2019s \u201cUncommon Ground\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":610,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n