Brasher, meaner and full of machismo:
Mark Driscoll’s sermons are mostly too racy to post on GodTube, the evangelical Christian “family friendly” video-posting Web site. With titles like “Biblical Oral Sex” and “Pleasuring Your Spouse,” his clips do not stand a chance against the site’s content filters. No matter: YouTube is where Driscoll, the pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, would rather be. Unsuspecting sinners who type in popular keywords may suddenly find themselves face to face with a husky-voiced preacher in a black skateboarder’s jacket and skull T-shirt. An “Under 17 Requires Adult Permission” warning flashes before the video cuts to evening services at Mars Hill, where an anonymous audience member has just text-messaged a question to the screen onstage: “Pastor Mark, is masturbation a valid form of birth control?” Driscoll doesn’t miss a beat: “I had one guy quote Ecclesiastes 9:10, which says, ‘Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.’ ”
God called Driscoll to preach to men — particularly young men — to save them from an American Protestantism that has emasculated Christ and driven men from church pews with praise music that sounds more like boy-band ballads crooned to Jesus than “Onward Christian Soldiers.” What bothers Driscoll — and the growing number of evangelical pastors who agree with him — is not the trope of Jesus-as-lover. After all, St. Paul tells us that the Church is the bride of Christ. What really grates is the portrayal of Jesus as a wimp, or worse. Paintings depict a gentle man embracing children and cuddling lambs. Hymns celebrate his patience and tenderness. The mainstream church, Driscoll has written, has transformed Jesus into “a Richard Simmons, hippie, queer Christ,” a “neutered and limp-wristed popular Sky Fairy of pop culture that . . . would never talk about sin or send anyone to hell.”
Hoo boy!
I love freedom of speech for the following reasons :
1. fuck ass titty bitches.
I can cuss and swear without censorship.
and that MY FREINDS is a democracy.
I love freedom of speech for the following reasons :
1. Fuck ass titty bitches.
The ability to cuss & +swear without censorship…and that my friends is a true DEMOCRACY.
Priceless!!!
Religion – surefire way to turn people into idiots.
“hippie, queer Christ”
Lol!!!
Strangest thing in that piece:
But what is new about Driscoll is that he has resurrected a particular strain of fire and brimstone, one that most Americans assume died out with the Puritans: Calvinism, a theology that makes Pat Robertson seem warm and fuzzy.
I really hope that doesn’t catch on.
Not that anyone cares, but the Puritans weren’t Calvinists. They were traditional Church of England folks. This lady who wrote that article needs to do her research better
Actually, the Puritans WERE closely related to the Calvinists and distanced themselves from many of the practices of COE…
Adam, that’s not true. The heart and soul of Calvinism is predestination, and that’s never been an idea that the CoE accepted. The Puritans were just the (more conservative) faction of the Church of England, that ended up on the losing side of the English Civil War. Calvinism only took hold in the Netherlands and Switzerland. The Puritans evolved into the Episcopal Church, in the US. They are not Calvinists, and never have been. Presbyterians, on the other hand, are Calvinists
Anyway, it isn’t important… I just wanted to point that out, because a lot of people who don’t know any better assume any form of extreme Christianity should be compared to the Puritans. I doubt the Puritans would have even considered Calvinists to be Christian, so it struck me as a very odd comparison.
Seeing as how the basic idea of COE and calvinism was the same (renouncing the pope) and the fact that puritans, as you say, were the conservative wing of COE, sticking closely to the word of the bible, made them very similar to the Calvinists, and much more so than to the COE itself. They may not have had the same origin, but their view of life and interpretation of the bible were very similar, to the point where the Puritans demanded a change in the COE structure from an Episcopalian to a Presbyterian (Calvinist) form.
Adam, all Protestant sects were formed with the intention of getting back to basics, and eliminating the “corrupting” influences of Catholicism. The Church of England was the closest to the Catholics, out of all Protestant faiths (and it still is) – that is what the Puritans sought to change. Luther is the father of Protestantism, not Calvin.
Where Calvin differed from Luther was in his belief that man was irredeemable (nothing a person does in their lives makes a difference) and that the determination about which souls were saved was made by God before the beginning of time. If that isn’t part of a Church’s teachings, then that Church cannot be called Calvinist. Not from a theological perspective, anyway!
Even Presbyterians are not really Calvinists… Presbyterians believe that people can get themselves added to the book of life (I think) which is substantially different from what Calvin taught.
Anyway, if this woman is correct and that’s really Calvinism that guy is teaching, that’s pretty wild! At least, it’s wild here in the US :O
http://thehistoricpresent.wordpress.com/2009/01/10/new-calvinists-give-old-puritans-a-bad-name/
“even the English Puritans who adopted Calvinism changed it”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvinism
“Most settlers in the American Mid-Atlantic and New England were Calvinists, including the English Puritans, the French Huguenot and Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam (New York), and the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians of the Appalachian back country.”
http://www.apuritansmind.com/Reformation/ShortHistoryCalvinism.htm
“With the succession of Edward IV Calvin began to exercise a direct influence upon the Anglican Church and the Reformation going on in their midst.”
“…the Puritans were forming their company to purify the church, yet their impact did not appear until Elizabeth was on the throne. Under the leadership of William Ames’ and William Perkins’ interpretations of Calvinism, they had their greatest influence”
“The Puritans hoped that this Calvinistic King, who liked episcopacy, would set up a Presbyterian government in the Anglican Church.”
http://arminiantoday.blogspot.com/2007/07/not-all-puritans-were-calvinist.html
“for his beliefs since Calvinism dominated the Puritans”
…and we can go on. For all intents and purposes, there is nothing practically wrong in using the words Calvinist and Puritanist to describe the same form of theology…
This is kind of a stupid argument, but:
“Puritan,” as noted, generally refers to a specific historical group of churches & Christians that were part of the more conservative wing of the CoE and then started a lot of the churches in New England.
“Calvinist” refers to a specific set of doctrines, mostly involving predestination, the Biblical covenants, etc. People are always surprised to find out that there are still people who believe it, but Calvinists have always made up a significant minority of Christians since the Reformation.
There was a strong Calvinist emphasis in most Puritan teachings, but it’s obfuscation to say they’re the same thing– it’s like the difference between Hezbollah and Shi’a.
I love Mark Driscoll, for the record, and if you watch some of his videos on youtube he’s hilarious. I’m sure that most readers of this blog wouldn’t agree with him on most of the things that he believes, but it’s hard to hate a pastor whose biggest influences are Jonathan Edwards and Chris Rock and who encourages lots of oral sex!
Oh, dear. Rev. Driscoll thinks that the lambs & children are too limp-wristed and Jesus needs to be more butch?
How can anyone not see this as another Ted Haggard waiting-to-happen?