Change in an Evangelical Church

For folks who didn't see this in the Times or on AOL last weekend, its well worth the read.

Most members of Woodland Hills Church near St. Paul stayed
after the Rev. Gregory A. Boyd urged an end to sexual
moralizing and military glorification and said America should
not be proclaimed a "Christian nation."

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

New York Times
July 30, 2006

MAPLEWOOD, Minn. — Like most pastors who lead thriving
evangelical megachurches, the Rev. Gregory A. Boyd was
asked frequently to give his blessing — and the church's — to
conservative political candidates and causes.

The Rev. Gregory A. Boyd leads a congregation outside
St. Paul.

The requests came from church members and visitors alike:
Would he please announce a rally against gay marriage
during services? Would he introduce a politician from the
pulpit? Could members set up a table in the lobby promoting
their anti-abortion work? Would the church distribute "voters'
guides" that all but endorsed Republican candidates? And
with the country at war, please couldn’t the church hang an
American flag in the sanctuary?

After refusing each time, Mr. Boyd finally became fed up, he
said. Before the last presidential election, he preached six
sermons called "The Cross and the Sword" in which he said
the church should steer clear of politics, give up moralizing
on sexual issues, stop claiming the United States as a
"Christian nation" and stop glorifying American military
campaigns.

"When the church wins the culture wars, it inevitably loses,"
Mr. Boyd preached. "When it conquers the world, it becomes
the world. When you put your trust in the sword, you lose
the cross."

Mr. Boyd says he is no liberal. He is opposed to abortion and
thinks homosexuality is not God's ideal. The response from
his congregation at Woodland Hills Church here in suburban
St. Paul — packed mostly with politically and theologically
conservative, middle-class evangelicals — was passionate.
Some members walked out of a sermon and never returned.
By the time the dust had settled, Woodland Hills, which
Mr. Boyd founded in 1992, had lost about 1,000 of its 5,000
members.

But there were also congregants who thanked Mr. Boyd,
telling him they were moved to tears to hear him voice
concerns they had been too afraid to share.

"Most of my friends are believers," said Shannon Staiger, a
psychotherapist and church member, "and they think if
you're a believer, you’ll vote for Bush. And it's scary to go
against that."

Sermons like Mr. Boyd's are hardly typical in today's
evangelical churches. But the upheaval at Woodland Hills is
an example of the internal debates now going on in some
evangelical colleges, magazines and churches. A common
concern is that the Christian message is being compromised
by the tendency to tie evangelical Christianity to the
Republican Party and American nationalism, especially
through the war in Iraq.

At least six books on this theme have been published
recently, some by Christian publishing houses. Randall
Balmer, a religion professor at Barnard College and an
evangelical, has written "Thy Kingdom Come: How the
Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America —
an Evangelical's Lament."

And Mr. Boyd has a new book out, "The Myth of a Christian
Nation: How the Quest for Political Power Is Destroying the
Church," which is based on his sermons.

"There is a lot of discontent brewing," said Brian D. McLaren,
the founding pastor at Cedar Ridge Community Church in
Gaithersburg, Md., and a leader in the evangelical movement
known as the "emerging church," which is at the forefront of
challenging the more politicized evangelical establishment.

"More and more people are saying this has gone too far —
the dominance of the evangelical identity by the religious
right," Mr. McLaren said. "You cannot say the word Jesus’ in
2006 without having an awful lot of baggage going along
with it. You can't say the word Christian," and you certainly
can't say the word evangelical’ without it now raising
connotations and a certain cringe factor in people.

"Because people think, Oh no, what is going to come next is
homosexual bashing, or pro-war rhetoric, or complaining
about activist judges."

Mr. Boyd said he had cleared his sermons with the church's
board, but his words left some in his congregation stunned.
Some said that he was disrespecting President Bush and the
military, that he was soft on abortion or telling them not to
vote.

"When we joined years ago, Greg was a conservative
speaker," said William Berggren, a lawyer who joined the
church with his wife six years ago. “But we totally disagreed
with him on this. You can't be a Christian and ignore actions
that you feel are wrong. A case in point is the abortion issue.
If the church were awake when abortion was passed in the
70's, it wouldn't have happened. But the church was
asleep."

Mr. Boyd, 49, who preaches in blue jeans and rumpled plaid
shirts, leads a church that occupies a squat block-long
building that was once a home improvement chain store.

The church grew from 40 members in 12 years, based in no
small part on Mr. Boyd’s draw as an electrifying preacher who
stuck closely to Scripture. He has degrees from Yale Divinity
School and Princeton Theological Seminary, and he taught
theology at Bethel College in St. Paul, where he created a
controversy a few years ago by questioning whether God
fully knew the future. Some pastors in his own denomination,
the Baptist General Conference, mounted an effort to evict
Mr. Boyd from the denomination and his teaching post, but
he won that battle.