Weekly Standard on the Evangelical Left
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Mark Tooley writes in the Weekly Standard about Greg Boyd and his new book on the myth of America as a Christian nation. Here's the conclusion:
"Will evangelicals hearken to the separatist, neo-Anabaptist mindset that Boyd espouses, as transmitted through Yoder and Hauerwas? It seems unlikely, but Yoder and Hauerwas are popular in many evangelical seminaries. For evangelicals uninspired by the traditional Religious Right, the Yoder-Hauerwas model seems to offer an alternative, without succumbing to theological liberalism. Expect to hear more from such disciples as Rev. Boyd."
"Will evangelicals hearken to the separatist, neo-Anabaptist mindset that Boyd espouses, as transmitted through Yoder and Hauerwas? It seems unlikely, but Yoder and Hauerwas are popular in many evangelical seminaries. For evangelicals uninspired by the traditional Religious Right, the Yoder-Hauerwas model seems to offer an alternative, without succumbing to theological liberalism. Expect to hear more from such disciples as Rev. Boyd."
posted by JT at Thursday, August 10, 2006
2 Comments:
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Despite their ostensibly rejecting politics, Yoder-Hauerwas fans are typically condemning of America as "empire." After 9/11, Hauerwas suggested that America got its just desserts, comparing it to Chile's supposed equivalent of 9/11 on September 11, 1973, when Socialist Salvador Allende was overthrown by the Chilean military.
There are several problems with this paragraph.
1. Neither Yoder nor Hauerwas "rejects politics." Maybe that explains Mr. Tooley's confusion. Yoder believed that the church should constantly critique the state. I can't imagine it doing that without taking some political stance.
2. As far as I can tell, Hauerwas never suggested that Americans deserved to get killed on 9/11. Hauerwas's public reference to Allende (which I found in another Tooley article) was about why the rest of the world might be mad at us for helping replace Allende with another sadistic regime.
3. It's just poor exposition. The subject sentence is a study in how not to write. Among other problems, it refers to "Yoder-Hauerwas fans," but then the rest of the paragraph is about something Hauerwas allegedly said.
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