The Decline of the Open Evangelical

Notice what is happening at the Fulcrum discussion boards?

It used to be a place where reasonable evangelicals (like Graham Kings) might debate with those like themselves and others, presumably to give credence to the notion that they have substance to their intellectual position and they can defend it.

Certainly people like myself have been able to post there, as an outsider, and its not something I have done or want to do on Conservative Christian blogs, and usually people like me are unwelcome there.

But Fulcrum has been captured by a small group of Conservative Evangelical posters, motivated by the gay issue, and because Open Evangelicalism compromises with them they have been neutered by the Conservative side.

Posters on this site of the restrictive kind go by the names of DaveW, Carl, Pageantmaster, Phil Almond and Nersen, the latter being Nersen Pillay or NP as once at Thinking Anglicans. They all have particular techniques of posting. Nersen is repetitive, and refers to the same touchstones as if they are factual set - such as "the mind of the communion", a phrase from Rowan Williams he uses at convenience. I knew when he first appeared that every argument would be forced into a sock of his own shape. All that matters for NP is that people obey the literalist rules: the silence of progressive bishops, regarding the recent House of Lords vote to prevent religious communities having registrars at gay partnership ceremonies, he sees as a good sign. Phil Almond treats Bible texts as given, and then quotes them as legal-like proofs of a stance in which most are condemned and few are saved according to a neo-Calvinist view, and in an argument with him he will refer back to a previous post made years ago if it is there. Pageantmaster (who posts similarly on Titus One Nine) insists that the Civil Partnership was not brought into law for the purpose the Quakers wish to put it, and he has stated:

A vicar or imam could bless Fido's dog tags and lead, and prayers could be said for the mutual fidelity of Fido and his owner, promises on the one party to provide tins of chum, and on the other part a commitment to bark at visitors. Similarly a service for the handing over of TV licences and tax returns could be held annually in the presence of the DVLA and tax inspectors.

Carl is simply a narrow literalist evangelical, and DaveW insists that there is but one Christian view on the whole gay blessings topic - his. He wrote, typically:

David Baker also makes a valuable observation about some of the tactics which spins the idea that when the individual poster is speaking about 2000 odd years of historic apostolic Christian belief its somehow just the individuals idea or a few crazy evangelicals. No, this is the Christian view, same sex sexual relations are error, there is no other Christian view.

There is, and other Christians make it. It is not for me to put the other view, but I have, adding my own extension:

the Bible says nearly nothing positively on same sex relationships - actual relationships - but it says a lot about relationships - about trust and faithfulness. But when the Bible is inadequate or wrong, it is to be said. It is both on this matter: it simply is inadequate regarding the breadth of human relationships, and wrong to equate gay sex with idolatry.

That these people are evangelicals, and are closing down debate with other evangelicals, shows how the ideology works. First it closes down an open evangelical position, second it goes after the liberal Christian view:

To Clare,

In an earlier post you wrote 'did Jesus say these thing, perhaps so of them'

What is your position then to discuss universalism when you cant be sure of scriptures what we base our trust and faith in. We know salvation is through faith in Christ according to the NT and yours is uncertainty in that respect. How can we discuss our faith compared to yours when they have such completely different worldviews and starting points.

I don't care what DaveW or anyone else calls my stance, which has moved on to a religious humanism. What I care about is how we think today, and why (it delivers results, sustains its arguments), and I ask how religious language as reflective and contemplative - asking ethical questions - can function among the ordinary understandings we have. Liberal Christian L Roberts has put it that it is:

Hard to equate the nasty posts here with true religion. But then that's satanic - right ?

That's the characteristic of this end of evangelicalism, as it comes on to a broader site. But it is on a mission, using the gay issue to crack eggs and force itself as 'the only view'.