Today I will be chatting with a couple of post-Christian friends. The description is mine. I am not sure they would self-describe in this way. For by post-Christian I mean that they are of the current position that something must come after the sort of Christianity, or form of, currently reigning in the West.

I do not have time to walk through the ways I am thinking about this at the moment but think an interesting juxtaposition of a couple of themed articles will get you started. Either you will ridicule me or you will help me think through this designation better and offer a different perspective.

First, Ed Stetzer posted a response to Norm Miller’s criticism of a certain sort of leader, a particular kind of Southern Baptist leader. Miller named Stetzer as his example, though he likely could have included me if my name had reached the SBC constellation of note. Miller’s concerns are with preserving a nuance of Baptist, Southern Baptist, distinctives founded upon its own merits. Some would refer to Miller as a hard SBC foundationalist.

The subject in question is Lifeway’s, The Gospel Project, curriculum of which Stetzer is General Editor. I offered my take on the betrayal yesterday. Over against Miller’s hard SBC foundationalism a person may argue that The Gospel Project represents a soft SBC foundationalism. Most familiar with philosophical constructs would immediately see why among conservative, yeah fundamentalist, would heat up such an argument. We Southern Baptists find it hard to be soft on anything.

Dave Miller weighed in, as has Alan Cross.

Meanwhile there are more important things to value than whether or not Stetzer allowed conservative Anglicans, Methodists, and Presbyterians to be quoted in The Gospel Project material. Check out Dave Miller’s follow up post noting the ways Baptists have been more ecumenical musically. The comments will take the matter to a whole nutha level.

Second, and here is where the matter of post-Christian comes into play, Marty Duren is running a series on sexual abuse and sex-trafficking. It is a hard read. There are immediate visceral responses that are only muted by a certain level of self-control. Here is the point. While internecine squabbles are not hard to find among Southern Baptists, our understanding that the matters of human life ignored in our energies to be right – Traditionalists, non-Traditionalists, save the SBC, shutter the SBC, conservatively resurge the SBC, or liberally let it be – real life dramas call that as is structure into question. That is, if we continue to exert our energies over who gets quoted and whether or not we may preserve precious Baptist distinctives, we deserve to be relegated to the dung heap in search of something post-Christian, something beyond that sort of iteration that keeps us trapped to these sorts of arguments.

I will be back after lunch with one of my friends. Then, I will chat with other via Skype. We will see what you may come up with in the meantime.

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