Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Born Twice #1: Born to be an Easy target

CHRIST CHURCH NYC Sermon (From 18th of May 2008)
John 3:1-21 (Sermon is from the NRSV)

It’s extraordinary, for me, that the text set for this particular Sunday is: 'You must be born from above'. So for more than one reason I have been thinking about birth and new birth all week! :)

I received an email this week reminding me of what I already knew: That the phrase ‘born-again-Christian’ has an enormous cultural cringe factor, especially here in the US.

Jimmy Carter made much of being 'born again' in his 1976 bid for presidency. Born-Again Christians have recently been cast into what appears to be a ‘voting-block’ called ‘evangelicals’. But no one is really sure what the word means anymore! Which is a pity to my mind.

And so 'Born-Again’s' have become easy targets: American Writer -- PJ O’Rourke:

Making fun of born-again Christians is like hunting dairy cows with a high powered rifle and scope.

English Journalist -- Katherine Whitehorn:

Why do born-again people so often make you wish they'd never been born the first time?

But more needs to be said..

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Photo by Peter Kim.

2 comments:

Benjamin Ady said...

It makes sense to me that it's kind of too bad that what was, perhaps, formerly a useful term has become enormously less useful.

nevertheless, it has. I don't see any workable way of rescuing it. Some evangelicals, for instance, have recently made a ... somewhat limp attempt to rescue "evangelical". They mostly failed, due, if to nothing else, to amazingly poor writing skills. "Evangelical" is a *lot* easier to rescue than "born again", or so it seems to me. It seems to me distinctly possible that your sermons, the rest of which I suspect you shall soon be posting, is going to at least partially make such a rescue attempt. I look forward to it, and I predict that it will fail =)

Justin said...

You assume too much, Benjamin...

:)