Word: methodist
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...reason is that any deviation beyond the rote "He gave his life for us" quickly plunges into metaphysical formulations for which all but religious scholars lack the basic vocabulary. "Most people don't live in the theological nuances, including clergy," says Dr. Philip Blackwell of Chicago's First United Methodist Church. And even if we did, says Jack Graham, pastor of the Prestonwood Baptist megachurch in Plano, Texas, a full understanding might still elude us. "There are many mysteries of atonement that we won't understand this side of eternity," he says. Discussion is also stunted by American Christianity...
...experience is akin to rehabbing a muscle you had forgotten you had. Thus in this Lenten season the Rev. Byron Shafer, pastor of Rutgers Presbyterian Church on Manhattan's Upper West Side, gave his first atonement sermon in "eight or nine years." Chicago First United Methodist's Blackwell found himself lined up with two other talking heads on MSNBC, debating the topic as if it were an election issue or celebrity trial. And back in Geneva, the issue continues to fascinate the Bible students and their church's associate rector, Tony Welty. "The question is," says Welty, "O.K., if this...
...strongly does Thistlethwaite feel this that a few weeks ago, she convened a group at Chicago's First United Methodist Church to talk about Gibson's film. It was a war movie, she told about 30 attendees, the most violent she had ever screened. A colleague of hers said the film seemed to assume the theory of substitutionary atonement. "The problems with this classic Christian theology," he pointed out, are the "glorification of death and suffering, the encouragement of scapegoating and making forgiveness the [Christlike] burden of the victim...
Jonathan Ramey raised his hand. Ramey, an ordained Baptist minister who is homeless, had gravitated to First United Methodist while living in a nearby shelter. "Can't a person benefit from someone else's suffering?" he asked. "My brother saved me from getting beat up more than once by taking the beatings himself. I'm going through suffering now," he said. "If I look at Jesus' suffering, I know I can do this." The other participants humored him for a few minutes but gave no ground...
...world, for every Christian like Reagan White Jr.--a Texas Baptist who recently passed up an exemplary-oriented congregation because "even the best organ in the world can strike a sour note if the sermon that follows it waters down the essence of Christianity"--there are probably five like Methodist Janet McLeod, a publicist from the same state who notes, "We get our strength for living from Jesus' parables and his mission work. In the Crucifixion, we get our hope for what comes next." Graham, the Plano Baptist pastor, says, "It's like asking which wing of the airplane...