Colson v. Wallis

Phil Steiger at Every Though Captive alerted me to Chuck Colson's Breakpoint Commentary criticizing Jim Wallis.

Now, I respect Church Colson. I've read a number of his books. But in the last few years, I've come to realize that his slant on things are (a) very modern: he sees things only from a propositional/foundational point of view {see Brain McLaren's An Open Letter to Chuch Colson}, and (b) very politically conservative: his opinions usually line up with the Republican and/or Religious Right's positions.

In this commentary, Colson's argument seems to be: Abortion trumps all other issues--even the care for the poor. He writes, "Sorry, Jim Wallis, all issues are not morally equivalent. The first one, the right to life, is non-negotiable. It undergirds all others: Take it away, and the whole house of cards collapses." (Do you hear his foundational view of philosophy in that satement?)

He makes a false dichotomy: He implies that the Religious Right has it correct: Abortion is the foundational issue. The Religious Left has it wrong: Poverty is not a foundational issue. We must therefore choose who we will support based on this issue.

Colson even criticizes Mark Noll: "I was disappointed by his decision not to vote because he thought neither party was right about the issues that concerned him most, including poverty." Colson's point: You must vote, and you must vote conservative, because they have the foundational issue right.

Here's a few of the ways that this is a false dichotomy:
(a) Poverty is a Life issue. People's LIVES are at stake because of poverty.
(b) Jim Wallis is pro-life! He is as against abortion as Colson is. He is not advocating one issue over the other, but is saying that there must be more than one issue that is important to Christians.
(c) And that's the crux: Is there one issue that is the foundational issue? Are we really supposed to be ONE-ISSUE VOTERS? Colson says yes. Wallis says NO.

I tend to agree with Wallis. If Christians do not broaden their view of Life Issues to include poverty and hunger and HIV/AIDS and globalized economy and war, then we are simply being lazy in our ethics.

No, I don't think "all moral issues are equivilant," as Colson accuses Wallis of thinking. But that's not the point. Wallis is saying that the moral issues are more complicated than just saying "I'm against abortion," or "I'm pro-life." What causes abortions? What can we do about those root issues? Is not poverty part of those root issues?

Does not being "pro-life" also mean to be "pro-getting rid of poverty," "pro-feed the hungry," "pro-health," "pro-give everybody an equal chance at making it in this world," "pro-peace"?

Apologetics and Theology Both Need to Change

"Apologetics" is the "ready defense" that we need to be prepared to give anyone "who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you" with "gentleness and respect." (1 Peter 3:15). In the past 100 years, this has taken the form of using Reason and Philosophy and Argument to try to help people with Modern/Enlightenment sensibilities to get past their mental stumbling blocks on their way to meeting Jesus Christ.
I think, since we are entering a postmodern age, that such techniques need to be replaced with a more "embodied apologetic" displayed in the way we live and love and worship.

“Theology” is our “in-house debates/discussions” about things we are trying to understand in the Bible (things like the nature of God, the end-times, Calvinism v. Arminianism, the meaning of the Atonement). These are not concerns of those outside the faith--they are concerns of those already in. It is a noble pursuit to seek to more purely understand God (which is what "theology" is supposed to be!).

So, here is what needs to change:

Our apologetics needs to change--from a purely reasoned argument (though we cannot ditch Reason and become unthinking) toward an embodied (incarnational) apologetic. We still need to know how to answer people’s questions, but before that, we need to show them that God is real and that living in Christ’s Kingdom is a superior life that is attractive to the outsider.

AND...

Our theology needs to change as well--from a purely academic exercise (though we must always love God with our “minds”) toward an embodied (incarnational) theology that takes those intellectual concepts and immediately applies them to the way we live in the Kingdom of God. Theology needs to be moved down from the ivory tower and put on the streets. Theology needs to be figured out not in isolation by individual scholars but in community.

Top Lecture I Listened to in 2004

Creation & New Creation in the New Testament by N.T. Wright
(4 Lectures on tape or CD)



This lecture series has rocked my theological world! Understanding the concepts Wright advances here is revolutionizing my categories—the Resurrection is the beginning of the "New Creation," and our cooperating with God in the advancement of the Kingdom of God is watching the re-creation of humanity and the world.

My eschatology will never be the same (that may be a good thing or a bad thing!), and my hope in Christ has been deepened immensely.

Thanks to Tall Skinny Kiwi for the favorable link!

Andrew Jones at his blog, Tall Skinny Kiwi, linked over to my website vanguardchurch.com, where I posted my e-mail conversation with Steve Camp about Brian McLaren's new book, A Generous Orthodoxy.

Thanks, Andrew.


___________________________


This essay is one I once wrote for a friend when he asked me about my "reading program." I have long been a huge fan of essayists; I find novels uninteresting (and it annoys me that I do, because I genuinely try to read those long-winded Russians). The essay is ruminative and not argumentative, but I'd welcome others speaking up for their own reading habits. (By the way, I begin my day with prayers and Bible reading, and I like to use Phyllis Tickle's Divine Hours as the stimulus; my first blog was on this.) But here it is... hope it helps someone out there in County Blog. Never Alone by Scot McKnight (pdf file)

A new book that will sell like hotcakes!

Rick (at cheaper than therapy) commented on Albert Mohler's critique of Brian McLaren's new book with this bit of satire:

I just got some breaking news from Lifeway. Dr. Mohler will be joining with D.A. Carson for a new book entitled Malevolent Orthodoxy (Generosity is for girly-Man Theologians): Why I am a Parochial + Patriotic+ Fundamentalist/ Calvinistic + Rigid/ Angry + Republican/ Warmongering + White/ Southern + Flag Waving/ Rush Loving + Manly + Modern/ Propositional + Baptist + Complete Christian

Cracked me up!

One More Shot at the Bush Budget Proposal

This budget admits that the national debt is a BIG problem. The country is EIGHT TRILLION DOLLARS in debt this year! How many zeroes is that? 12!
$8,000,000,000,000

Bush predicts a $390 billion deficit for 2006. Again, look at the zeroes:
$390,000,000,000

That’s actually an improvement over the past couple of years (2005—427 billion, 2004—$412 billion).

So, in order to get to this lower deficit, here is the solution given by Bush: Cut domestic spending (things like funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, health insurance for children, grants for local law enforcement and fire fighters, spending for environmental protection, support for American Indian schools, funding veterans’ benefits, and especially programs for the poor: food stamp programs, block grants that aid poor communities, housing and urban development programs, Medicaid programs for poor children, child-care assistance, and home-heating aid).

This will save about $66 billion per year, about 17% of the budget deficit. “Hey,” the reasoning goes, “We’ve got to tighten the belt somewhere!”

But the Bush budget also proposes to make permanent the tax cuts for high-income brackets, for capital gains, and on dividend income. If these tax breaks for the wealthiest in our country were rolled back, that would yield about $120 billion per year in extra revenue, about 31% of the budget deficit.

It astounds me that the ones who are asked to make the greatest sacrifices due to the national debt and the budget deficit are always the poor and needy, while the rich are not asked to sacrifice a whole lot.

.You trample on the poor
. and force him to give you grain.
. Therefore, though you have built stone mansions,
. you will not live in them;
. though you have planted lush vineyards,
. you will not drink their wine.
. For I know how many are your offenses
. and how great your sins.
. (Amos 5:11-12)

Two New Lists

Getting Rid of BAD Discipleship Paradigms

Some who follow Christ make two lists:
“The DO List” and “The DON”T DO List.”
I’ve lived this form of Christianity in the past, but now I’m determining to snuff it out once and for all!

When you live your Christian life with these two lists, your endeavors are entirely obsessed with trying to decipher what is in what list.
“Can I do this?” “Can I do that?”
“Is this a ‘no no’?” “How about that?”

And, oftentimes, this form of Christianity becomes:
“YOU had better not do that.” Even when “that” is not necessarily an absolute sin listed in the Bible. If I have determined that my “DON’T DO List” is a good one, I want to thrust it on everybody else.

And, in my experience, this form of Christianity becomes:
“I feel guilty all the time.” It is the Christianity of “sin management"--constantly scrambling to keep ourselves from doing what is in that “DON’T DO List.”

I’ve determined to no longer live this way. But it would not do to just become one of those “I’ll do whatever I want” Christians. That is even more harmful.

So here’s my TWO NEW LISTS:
The “These are CONSTRUCTIVE List,”
and the “These are DESTRUCTIVE List.”

With these two lists, I can focus on doing the things that are constructive to my Christian walk—especially in the categories of worshipping God, loving and serving people, and engaging and changing the culture.
I can also identify (and confess to God) the things that are destructive to my calling to follow Jesus. I can repent of these and then move on to the more pressing matters of living a constructive life. (I will no longer obsess over the "DON'T DO List". I will instead focus on the CONSTRUCTIVE List).

Yea, I choose to replace the old negative-focused lists with the new positive-focused lists.

Jim Wallis: 'I See Genuine Soul-Searching Among Democrats'

This from Christianity Today:

Jim Wallis: 'I See Genuine Soul-Searching Among Democrats'
Evangelical activist says it's time to find common ground on abortion and other issues.
Interview by Stan Guthrie

Bush Crying Wolf Again?

This seems to be a pattern

Bush has a tendency of "crying wolf." Instead of talking reasonably and in a more balanced fashion about issues, he has a tendency to tell us about boogeymen and making the issue more frightening than it really is.

Iraq:
Crying wolf:
Iraq is connected to Al Qaeda and 9/11! They have WMD that they intend to unleash on Americans! And the next terror attack on Americans will be a mushroom cloud!

The truth that should have been told:
We don't know if they are connected with 9/11. We don't know if they have WMD, though we expect they do. We don't have evidence of nuclear capability nor the procurement of nuclear material, though we think they want to. We think that if we can get Saddam Hussein out of power there, it will start a domino effect that will help US interests in these oil-laden countries. We should have finished the job under Bush #1.

Social Security now:
Crying wolf:
“The system...on its current path, is headed toward bankruptcy. And so we must join together to strengthen and save Social Security…By the year 2042, the entire system would be exhausted and bankrupt. If steps are not taken to avert that outcome, the only solutions would be dramatically higher taxes, massive new borrowing, or sudden and severe cuts in Social Security benefits or other government programs.” –Bush’s State of the Union Address

The truth that should have been told:
This from factcheck.org:
“In fact there are two official projections -- one by the Social Security Administration (SSA) and a somewhat less pessimistic projection by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The President referred to the SSA projection, which calculates that the system's trust fund will be depleted in 2042. After that, the system would have legal authority to pay only 73 percent of currently promised benefits -- and that figure would decline each year after, reaching 68 percent in the year 2075. The CBO doesn't project trust-fund depletion until a decade later, in 2052, and figures that the benefits cuts wouldn't be so severe, a reduction to 78% of promised benefits. But either way, even a ‘bankrupt’ system would continue to provide most of what's promised currently.”
So, maybe a more reasonable and balanced statement might simply be what Bush has also said (without the "Crying Wolf" part): We feel that Social Securuty needs to be updated to ensure its future...and here's my proposal for doing so.

It seems that Bush does not trust that the American public will back his leadership unless he scares the tar out of us first.

More on the Bush 2006 Budget Proposal

I knew I could count on Byron to comment on the Bush Budget Proposal. I look forward to my conservative/libertarian friend's comments on his blog (he's always a good foil to my views!)

I, like Byron, find the "Left" AND the "Right" to be very selective in the facts upon which they focus. I've refused to jump on board the Sojourners' "take action plan" to write congress about the points listed in my previous blog (2.8.2005) because I know that there is a bigger context (with positives and even more negatives not mentioned in those few points Sojourners points out).

Other Negatives:

1. "Bush’s budget forecasts a record deficit of $427 billion for 2005, including war costs. For 2006, he expects a deficit of $390 billion, but that does not include spending in Iraq and Afghanistan. The figures compare to a $236 billion surplus in 2000." -- MSNBC

-Isn't it amazing that a $2.58 trillion budget can be proposed that does not include the cost of running military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan (now running about $5 billion a month), for which the administration is expected to seek an extra $80 billion from Congress later this year? (That just seems odd to me—isn’t it misleading to not include this in what, after all, is called the “national budget"?!)

-Isn't it also amazing that Bush seeks to make permanent the tax cuts of 2001 when the deficit is partly the result of those massive tax cuts during a time of war?

“Colgate University economics Professor Jay R. Mandle criticized the lack of
detail in the budget, saying, ‘Because the Bush budget does not include the
administration's long-term plans with regard to Social Security and taxation,
fails to include projected military expenditures in the Middle East, and
presents implausible assumptions concerning reduced expenditures for housing,
the environment, agriculture and medical care, it fails to do what a budget is
supposed to do: provide an accurate portrayal of government revenue and
expenditures in order to permit a reasoned political discussion of
priorities.’" -- WashingtonTimes

2. ‘The expected increase in the 10-year cost of the Medicare prescription drug benefit has some lawmakers on Capitol Hill accusing the Bush administration of lying about the original estimate given when the bill was passed in 2003…the $400 billion estimate was said to cover the program's costs between 2004 and 2013, with the first two years dedicated to ramping up the program and the last eight for implementation. Two months after the bill passed, the White House revised the costs upward to $534 billion. The new estimate — to pay for the 2006-2015 operational costs — will cost taxpayers $720 billion, the Bush administration said Tuesday…‘While astonishing and disappointing, this news should not come as a surprise. The Bush White House has consistently and deliberately withheld and underestimated numbers when it is politically convenient,’ said House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer D-Md.” – Fox News

-Isn’t it amazing that the President who allegedly won the election on the basis of “moral values” can get away with these kinds of lies all the time?

3. In a clear break from Republican campaigns of the 1990s to downsize government and devolve power to the states, Bush is fostering what amounts to an era of new federalism in which the national government shapes, not shrinks, programs and institutions to comport with various conservative ideals…” --Jim VandeHei, Washington Post

-Isn’t it amazing that the “conservative” Bush is only “conservative” when it comes to certain things, and when it comes to hording power for the neo-cons and for the far-right agenda, all the talk of “eliminating big government” gets swept under the carpet?

Positives:

1. Bush is generally right when he says that we need to eliminate or vastly reduce “programs that aren't meeting needs, aren't meeting priorities and are not getting the job done. It's time to be wise with the people's money.”

-While many will disagree with him on the details of what those programs are, there needs to be some hard decisions made—and the President who sits in office at the time of budgeting is the one responsible for making those decisions. We need to help him make good decisions (and help our representatives as they work through the approval process). Programs like the Advanced Technology Program (ATP), which has given hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies on wealthy Fortune 500 companies should be eliminated.

2. The Centers for Disease Control would receive $306 million, a 4.2 percent increase, for global health activities, including work on AIDS.

-This is hardly as much as Bush had originally promised to fight HIV/AIDS, but, taking into account the war and the deficit, it is a step in the right direction.

3. Farm programs will be cut by $587 million.

This will save the budget between 5 to 8 billion dollars over the next decade. Major cotton and rice growers are the primary recipients of US government subsidies, followed by wheat, corn and soybean farmers. Trade officials in poorer nations have long called for the scrapping of such subsidies, which protect US growers from competition with cheaper foreign commodities.

The Bush Budget Proposal

According to Sojourners the Bush Budget Proposal has some serious question marks:

Making permanent the tax cuts of 2001 - 70% of which benefited the wealthiest 20% of U.S. citizens

The elimination of block grants that aid poor communities

Making it more difficult for working poor families with children to be on Medicaid

A $355 million cut to programs that promote safe and drug-free schools

Cuts to housing and urban development programs

The elimination of 48 educational programs

http://www.sojo.org/

God's Politics

Jim Wallis has been making a rather big splash lately. His new book, God's Politics : Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It is currently number 10 on the Amazon Bestseller List.

He has made appearances all over the TV, reiterating his key idea: He believes that God cannot be pleased with the Right's definition of what "moral values" are, and he cannot be pleased with the Left's total disregard of moral/religious issues.

Read an article excerpted from the book at Sojourners' website (www.sojo.net)

Beginner’s Guide to Worldview Jargon

My friends Byron Harvey and Paul Oyler have been talking a lot about worldview lately.

I recently came across this very nice article from my man Byron Borger at the CCO (Coalition for Christian Outreach). Here is an edited version of it.

Beginner’s Guide to Worldview Jargon

Creation-Fall-Redemption:
I hardly need to mention this—you'll hear it so much. Still, the point is that the biblical view of life includes the profoundly wonderful idea that this is God's world, sin has radically distorted everything and Jesus is big enough to make it all good again. The implications of seeing such a continuous flow to the unfolding biblical drama should chill us to the bone and compel us to praise and worship and unceasing service.

All of Life Redeemed:
Not only a book (out of print) written by former CCO staff, but a slogan calling us to work out the implications of the Lordship of Christ over every area of life. Because God is bringing restoration to the creation, we can with confidence seek His will "on Earth as it is in Heaven."

Creational Ordinances/Law Structures:
God has built into His creation structures and laws which provide norms for the opening up of our lives and culture. In other words, marriage or the state, or the possibilities for art or science are not human inventions but have been put into the fabric of reality; the principles which govern them are not arbitrary or relative. A Christian worldview would consider not just how sin has messed things up, but the abiding laws God upholds in his creation.

Dualism:
…as in "No Dualism!" The unbiblical assumption that life is divided into two parts (the sacred and the secular, the realm of nature and the realm of grace. Hence, the derogatory phrase, "that's nature/grace!"). Dualistic views always lead to an irrelevant super-spirituality applied to only a few areas of life and thereby yielding vast territory to Satan.

Worldviews:
Not just your view of the globe, but your fundamental convictions and assumptions about the meaning of life, the nature of good and evil, your view of humankind, your values and overall life perspective.

Glasses/Lens:
All of life is seen through a grid, a lens, spectacles (to use Calvin's metaphor for Scripture). Worldviews function in life as a pair of glasses coloring how you see things. We need a biblical worldview to see and perceive life as God intends. Nothing is more urgent or practical than polishing our lenses to see properly.

Ground Motif:
The idea that certain worldviews or ideas gain influence and shape the development of society. Worldviews are not just individual; certain ones become the dominant ways societies order themselves. They are rooted in and also give rise to idolatry.

Presuppositions:
That which is pre-supposed, assumed, a priori. Underlying ideas/beliefs which form the foundation of worldviews. Often not spelled out or made explicit.

Pre-theoretical:
The most foundational beliefs are heartfelt (and are therefore religious in nature) and they shape, color and help determine the nature of scholarship, philosophy, science and theology. Theories about things taught in the classroom (or assumed by the media or pop culture) are rooted in a priori religious convictions.

The Myth of Objectivity:
Secular science since the Enlightenment (mid-1700s) has presumed that there are no pre-theoretical, faith-like commitments which shape or color the doing of scholarship or science (and if there are, that then is bad science). This is one of the bastions of the rationalistic worldview.

Rationalism:
A faith (i.e. pre-theoretical) in the ability of human reasoning to objectively reach all Truth. Most Rationalists deny that they have faith in their own starting point, but that it is just an objective truth.

Saere Aude!:
Have the courage to use your own mind without the guidance of another, from Kant's "What is Enlightenment" (1784). In other words, "grow up—reject those old religious (non-scientific) superstitions from the Dark Ages and don't let faith prevent you from doing whatever you want."

Lumen Natural:
The "natural light" of Reason. In the secular Enlightenment worldview, Reason replaces God's revelation. Who needs Scripture (or even God) when reasonable people can think up their own ideas? In the French Revolution, a ceremony was held after taking over the cathedral in Paris where "goddess Reason" was crowned.

"We will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest" (a popular slogan of the French Revolution). That seems to sum it up quite nicely, huh?

"We hold these truths to be self evident…" Self evident? The natural light of Reason is all you need. Although there are considerable differences between the American Revolution and the French, we should not underestimate the similar intellectual roots.

"Smash the infamous!" Voltaire, a philosopher/statesman of the French Revolution, used to correspond with his friend and soul mate, Ben Franklin. They would often jokingly call each other "anti-Christ" and sign letters with this call to destroy the Catholic Church (and, presumably, all constraints of the Christian God).

A Common Faith:
A very influential book by the father of the America public school system, John Dewey. A scientific-minded pragmatist, Dewey said in this book (and in his travels throughout, among other places, western Pennsylvania) that schools should propagate a faith in Reason to unite all Americans, away from the divisive sectarian fights. Dewey didn't oppose Christianity, as long as it was secondary to a unifying, reasonable, pragmatic, American faith in the public square.

Secularization:
The process whereby God's Word and norms are increasingly seen as irrelevant to a society's corporate life. Personal faith tends to be private and inadequate to relate to public affairs.

"I believe in God, family and McDonalds, but when I go to work, I reverse the order." —Ray Kroc, founder of McDonalds, Inc. Secularism at its finest.

"A Better World Through Westinghouse." —famous ad slogan, circa 1968.

"Greed is good." —Gordon Geko, in the movie, Wall Street. A brief paraphrase of the famous Enlightenment rationalist, Adam Smith, father of capitalism.

Romanticism:
A philosophic movement which arose (out of the non-rational half of Imannual Kant's dualism) in reaction to the reductionism and over-reliance on Reason, science and greed on the part of Enlightenment secularists. Influenced by the imaginative and mystical poetry of Coleridge, Wordsworth and, later, Ralph Waldo Emerson, et. al., anti-rationalistic romanticism is a major influence on the hippie counter-culture, gays, greens and grunges. (Check out recordings of Van Morrison who gives it a Christian slant.)

"And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden…" —Joni Mitchell (Woodstock). Immortalized by Crosby, Stills and Nash. And they weren't talking about CFR, either.

Julia Roberts teaching Richard Gere (in Pretty Woman) how to throw away his car phone and walk barefoot in the grass may be better than him walking on concrete in wingtips, but it is still a far cry from the Kingdom of God.

Paraphrase of author John Alexander in The Secular Squeeze, where he shows how counter-cultural Romanticism arose as a response to rationalism and how it may seem attractive to Christians seeking an alternative to the dominant worldview.

Third Way:
A shorthand slogan suggesting that Christians should be uniquely and distinctively biblical and therefore radically different from the traditional cultural and religious life options. A biblical worldview is neither conservative nor liberal, progressive nor traditionalist, rationalist nor romanticist, left nor right, but an entirely alternative community: a third way.

Reformational:
A word coined to describe a new brand of Calvinists who take the ideas of the Protestant Reformation beyond theology and abstract debates about the nature of the atonement and church life and rather seek to bring about Christian cultural change and social transformation. Serious, lasting change, however, can only come about after serious and radical re-formation of the philosophical assumptions currently deforming each sphere of culture. Reformational folk realize that to be "light in the darkness," we need to re-think the inner structures of each academic discipline which shape each area of life.

Abraham Kuyper:
A journalist-statesman-theologian-organizer-pastor of a great period of reformation in the Netherlands in the late 1800s and early 1900s who emphasized the need for Christian renewal in each sphere of cultural life. (The phrase "sphere sovereignty" comes from Kuyper, which means that God has given norms for each area of life which Christians can open up and obey without the church itself running everything.) His famous Stone Lectures at Princeton (1898) argued for a Calvinist perspective in the arts, business, science, etc. The great-grandfather of the Jubilee conference. Also the founder of the first Protestant University, a Christian daily newspaper, a Christian farmers association and a major Christian political party (through which he became the Prime Minister in 1901). Strong emphasis on the "cultural mandate" of Genesis 1:26-28.

Herman Dooyeweerd:
A heavyweight Dutch philosopher who taught law at the Free University of Amsterdam (founded by Kuyper) in the mid-1900s (he died in the late 1970s). Dooyeweerd was a forerunner of the whole idea of a uniquely and distinctively Christian philosophy and a major influence on Francis Schaeffer and other young evangelicals of the past 50 years. He critiqued the myth of objectivity and exposed the self-contradictory dualisms in humanist thought. Described the multi-dimensionality of humans and showed how the convictions of the heart shape and give life direction and worldview.

Whole-Life Discipleship:
The official CCO phrase which suggests that you are professionally obliged to do evangelism (calling people into the Kingdom) and disciple-making (equipping them to serve in the Kingdom) in a way which emphasizes Christ's sovereign and royal claim over the totality of life, particularly in the development of a Christian view of academic work and career preparation. A Kingdom vision of multi-faceted, "whole-life discipleship" influences how we share the gospel, how we mentor young disciples, how we view our cooperative relations and how we pursue our own faith development. It intentionally and consciously reflects a reformational worldview and underscores the CCO's uniqueness of vision and expectations for ministry within the context of higher education.

Byron Borger is an associate staff member of the CCO who first came on staff in 1976. He and his wife, Beth, own and operate Heart & Minds Bookstore in Dallastown, Pennsylvania, and Byron writes a monthly column for our staff newsletter, the Ministry Exchange. This guide to worldview jargon was originally presented to new CCO staff when Byron taught the New Staff Training Worldviews course. © Coalition for Christian Outreach 2001

Time Magazine's "The 25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America"

Wow. The list is surprising in some ways. I like how they identified some who are relative unknowns but are still very influential on the evangelical population in America. Very insightful.

1. Rick Warren
2. Howard and Roberta Ahmanson
3. David Barton
4. Douglas Coe
5. Charles Colson
6. Luis Cortes
7. James Dobson
8. Stuart Epperson
9. Michael Gerson
10. Billy and Franklin Graham
11. Ted Haggard
12. Bill Hybels
13. T.D. Jakes
14. Diane Knippers
15. Tim and Beverly LaHaye
16. Richard Land
17. Brian McLaren

18. Joyce Meyer
19. Richard John Neuhaus
20. Mark Noll
21. J.I. Packer
22. Rick Santorum
23. Jay Sekulow
24. Stephen Strang
25. Ralph Winter

I must admit, there's 8 names that I would not have identified on this list...
...But the person who has most influenced me in the last few years is listed at number 17.

TIme Magazine