GAY TRUTH

Conservative Christians have acquired the label literalists because they accept the record of supernatural events in the Bible as literally true, whereas liberal Christians tend to see those events merely as representations of theological principles. In a different sense, however, both conservatives and liberals could be labeled literalists when they fail to recognize certain expressions in the Bible as figures of speech and instead interpret them literally. Mishandling figures of speech in this and other ways is a common source of faulty interpretations. In his latest book, The Sins of Scripture , 1 liberal theologian and critic of historic Christianity Bishop John Shelby Spong is guilty of such errors, which result in distorted interpretations. Using Spong’s interpretations as examples, this article will examine three common figures of speech and how to understand them correctly. Hyperbole. The first type of expression we’ll look at is called hyperbole , which is an exaggeration

Wading through the entire emerging church milieu is incredibly complicated. In this article I seek to provide a simple but accurate means of navigating the emerging church highway by focusing on its four lanes and their leaders. For the purposes of this article I will define them as Emerging Evangelicals, House Church Evangelicals, Emerging Reformers, and Emergent Liberals. What the first three lanes have in common is theological orthodoxy. Churches in these lanes are not interested in reconsidering major Christian doctrines such as those that view the Bible as God’s Word, God as triune, Jesus as God and the only means of salvation, humanity as sinful, all sex outside of heterosexual marriage (including homosexuality) as sin, and heaven and hell as literal, conscious, and eternal. In the fourth lane are the Emergent Liberals, who are most controversial and are not theologically evangelical. The three main leaders of this lane are Brian McLaren, Doug Pagitt, and Rob Bell. The Emergent L