Word: pastorate
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...that once insular component of American religion known as Fundamentalism. Before Falwell, Fundamentalist preachers denounced evil in "the world" in order to compel their flocks into strict isolation from it. Nowadays those same jeremiads are a stern call to social action. "When I was growing up," recalls Fundamentalist Pastor Keith Gephart of Alameda, Calif., "I always heard that churches should stay out of politics. Now it seems almost a sin not to get involved...
...protest sex channels on cable TV. The shelves of religious bookstores are filled with their social protests, in which the buzz words "secular humanism" are used to cover anything and everything the authors disapprove of. The Fundamentalists "have moved into the center of America's cultural stage," says Baptist Pastor William Hull of Shreveport, La., who is unsympathetic to them...
...specter of schoolbook censorship, legislation of private morality, and the packing of courts with doctrinaire "pro-family" judges. Some of the most thoughtful objections come from the Evangelical movement. The "packaging of the Gospel with politics" is unfortunate for the faith, says Chattanooga's Ben Haden, a conservative Presbyterian pastor and TV preacher. He compares the Fundamentalists who are venturing into politics to the church liberals who stressed social action over the Gospel in the 1960s. Charles Colson, the Nixon aide who served seven months in federal prison for his role in the Watergate scandal, is a born-again Christian...
...more we found ourselves maturing in Christianity the more disappointed we became with the spiritual food we were receiving. We were looking for someone to teach us out of the Bible." The Rev. W.A. Criswell of Dallas, 76, the leonine patriarch of the Southern Baptists' insurgent Fundamentalist wing and pastor of their largest congregation, charges that liberal theology "empties the churches. Wherever liberalism places its leprous hand, there is death...
Personal spiritual force often leads to political action at citadels like the Los Gatos, Calif., Christian Church. Pastor Marvin Rickard founded the congregation a quarter-century ago with 83 followers and an unshakable belief in inerrancy. Today a huge redwood-finished church sits on a trimly tailored 28-acre property, and 6,500 worshipers pack the three Sunday services. From this solid base, Pastor Rickard organized a referendum campaign that in 1980 helped repeal a Santa Clara County ordinance forbidding discrimination on the basis of sexual preference...