The United Church of Christ is at it again.
Unsatisfied to rest upon the “Bouncer” ad that garnered so much attention a little over a year ago, they’ve returned with a new ad designed to highlight that church’s “inclusiveness”. The commercial is set in a church. One by one, certain parishioners are ejected, fighter-jet style, from their pews: a black woman, a gay couple, a man of Middle Eastern descent, and a man with a walker. This admittedly humorous sequence is then followed by these words: “God doesn’t reject people. Neither do we.” Of course, the implication is that some churches . . . those mean, nasty, theologically conservative churches . . . will shut you our unless you’re a) white, b) male, c) heterosexual, and d) able-bodied. To accompany the ad, the church has created a new site called RejectionHurts.com as a place for those who have felt like church outcasts to share their stories. Like the “Bouncer” ad of late 2004, the new one has been rejected for air by the Big Four over-the-air networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox), though it will air on some cable networks.
Now, allow me to tip my hand. Anyone who knows me well and/or has had theological conversations with me knows that very little gets under my skin worse than liberal “Christian” theology, of which the UCC (as a whole . . . there are exceptions) is a stalwart. I believe that liberal theology undermines the Word of God and the Gospel of Christ in a myriad of ways, including . . .
- replacing talk of personal sin and responsibility with that of only corporate or national sin and responsibility
- replacing the need for personal belief, repentance, and sanctification with the need for acts of “social justice”
- treating Scripture as if it can be invalidated by some “new thing” that God is supposedly saying
- treating the words of Jesus as if they are more “God’s Word” than the rest of Scripture (thereby accepting His words as the only authoritative ones in the Bible)
- calling evil “good” and good “evil”, as warned against in Isaiah 5.
I truly abhor liberal theology and believe that those who preach it are not only marching slowly towards Hell themselves, but leading hundreds of thousands along that same path. I pray that those who espouse it will repent and return to Him that they claim as their Lord. That said, I think that the UCC’s marketing gurus are brilliant with these advertising campaigns that they know (and likely hope) will be rejected by network TV. The controversy generates free repeated airings for the ad on news broadcasts who report on the story, gets people to visit their website, and subsequently, their churches. Brilliant, I say! I might consider myself an accessory for linking and even talking about this issue (though I’m not “reporting” objectively like CNN would . . . I’m voicing opposition).
Back to the ad’s content . . . I find it dishonest, in that (like last year’s ad) it implicitly attacks other church groups as somehow less “open” or “inclusive”. Sure, the official word from the church is that “[i]t does not mean to suggest that other churches reject people and that we have not”, the connotation is just that, and that’s what people who see the ad will pick up. While there are certainly tragic incidents where churches or denominations sinfully shutter their doors or consciously fail to minister to certain types of people (see the RejectionHurts site for some examples), those cases are fewer and farther between than the ad would like to imply. When it comes down to it, it seems, what the UCC really wants people to know that they strive to include everyone, regardless of their race, gender, class, or biblically condemned lifestyle, in the “full life and participation” of their church. This not only means that they want people of all stripes to come and hear their message, but that they’ll ordain women as pastors* and unabashedly invite unrepentant sinners to partake in church membership, the Lord’s Supper, and ordained leadership. If this is what “inclusion” looks like, I’ll have no part in that. Give me a church that DOES invite sinners and the disenfranchised in the doors and that invites them to be loved, forgiven, and changed by Christ . . . not one that coddles sin and refutes clear Biblical teaching.
So how about the ad’s tagline, which I’ve chosen as the title for this entry: “God doesn’t reject people” . . . I beg to differ. The Bible is replete with God’s rejection of certain people and certain people groups for a number of reasons. The bottom line today is this: He rejects those who reject Him. Turning toward and embracing one’s sin without repentance is a rejection of Christ, and the fact that an apostate church tells you otherwise means very little.
*By the way, so no one freaks out on me and calls me a misogynist or a sexist or whatnot . . . I do not find women to be inferior to men in any way. Quite the opposite, actually. Still, I am a complementarian when it comes to gender, and that includes church life. I believe that scripture limits the church office of pastor/elder to qualified men, according to 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1. I honestly would like to believe otherwise at times, but the witness of scripture and the Church will not allow me to. I’ve heard some arguments from the other side, but none of them have yet been academically, scripturally, or historically compelling enough.
(HT: WesleyDaily and Chuck Currie)
tags: United Church of Christ, UCC, StillSpeaking, media, liberal theology, liberal Christianity
11 comments ↓
give me time to ponder… and I’ll rebuke.
Sweet.
Hey, did you get my e-mail today?
That “rejection hurts” website is HILARIOUS. You know what United Church of Christ reminds me of? That baby steps “philosophy” from What About Bob. That is essentially what UCC is, a bunch of “Christians” taking baby steps, the only thing is their baby steps ain’t really taking them anywhere, they are just in a perpetual state of floundering at this point.
You know, there are some valid concerns there. They need to exercise some better discernment, but we do, too.
We’re called to judge those within the Church; but we need to “judge righteous judgment.” All to often, we judge like the Pharisees do. (Take the heavily-pierced kid at the end of the new ad.) While the UCC’s response is too far in the opposite direction, we ought to sift it for the kernels of God’s truth that are in there, and let God rebuke us through them.
No disagreement there, Travis. I do think that the stories told on the site are tragic and the churches that perpetrated those acts need to repent themselves. My reaction, I suppose, is more against the fact that the people who have similar stories will see these ads, and subsequently end up in congregations where they won’t even get what they need the most: the Gospel.
“the people who have similar stories will see these ads, and subsequently end up in congregations where they won’t even get what they need the most: the Gospel.”
No disagreement there, Rae. =/
Good words, Ray. As usual.
Toppy - I would hesitate to call the RejectionHurts site “hilarious”. I actually find it, and the stories it contains, a rather tragic indictment of some hyper-conservative churches and the impression it gives of evangelicalism as a whole. It should gives us all pause and cause us to constantly evaluate and re-evaluate how we treat those on the “fringes”.
Instead of laughing at these people and their stories, they need to be welcomed into our churches with open arms, relentlessly pointed toward and shown the loving grace of Christ, rejoiced over when he saves them, and then taught to obey everything that he commands.
This reminds me of an interview on Chris Webber that I had read a few years back where he discussed Malcolm X and God.
“Malcolm was worshiping with men of all races, of all ages, and he realized that his God wasn’t a prejudiced God or wasn’t only allowed to communicate with one race — and that was pretty big, especially if you see the movie about Malcolm X.”
As I’ve talked to white friends, it’s interesting because they don’t realize the perspective many blacks have on Christianity because of slavery. When you think about how the Bible was used to promote slavery and how “sunday morning is the most segregated time in America,” then it’s easy to think that God is prejudiced or plays favorites.
As I talk to my family members that go to liberal churches that think that it is truly unloving of me to support fencing the Lord’s Supper, to say that is Scriptural that women should be ministers and that it’s unloving and not compassionate if I believe that women shouldn’t have abortions. My father once told me it’s discouraging to tell other African-Americans that they can’t gain God’s favor and that I should never talk about the doctrine of sin.
Does Paul not say in 2 Tim 4:3 that their will come a time when men want their ears to be tickled? Are we really surprised by this? American society wants a lovey-dovey Happy Valentine’s Day God. Sin, repentance, mortifying flesh, and bearing a cross would not make me come away from church feeling good about myself. Let us forget about a holy God who is separate and totally not like us, but instead let’s make God just feel like us.
Let’s make God in our image, flawed. Let us claim that His Word was written by fallible, jewish, males that can’t be trusted so we can pick and choose what applies to our lives. Let’s make God dependent upon us, so that we don’t have to rest on His cross and the blood of His Son. Let us make God in a way that He changes with the times, so that we can claim because the times have changed, so does God’s standard of sexuality. Now my itching ears have been tickeled.
An interesting comment was made above that said: “Instead of laughing at these people and their stories, they need to be welcomed into our churches with open arms, relentlessly pointed toward and shown the loving grace of Christ, rejoiced over when he saves them, and then taught to obey everything that he commands.” We can’t just welcome them into our churches. That will rarely be the first step. The first step is to welcome that into our lives. If the church is already viewed as rejecting people, how are we going to get them there? As I’ve dialouged with friends about reaching out, I’ve come to the conclusion that one of the most effective things we can do is show our weakness and that we are in need of grace. Way too often Christians come to others with the attitude of, “you are in need of a Savior,” but honestly, I am as much in need of a savior as any other sinner out there.
Yeah, God does reject people, let’s be honest. What is so glorious is that He accepts so many who don’t deserve to be accepted. Although many liberals won’t accept it, it’s glorious to know:
15For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” 16So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. (Romans 9:15-16)
Excellent insights, Lew. Thanks for joining the conversation.
[...] Since then, I’ve written about a few things . . . from my family’s search for a new church after moving last year, to the Southern Baptists’ freak-out over a coffee cup, to my disgust with liberal “Christianity”, and varioius other things. Recently, though, I’ve been asking myself two big questions about my blog . . . [...]
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