Reading notes

Real-life belief, especially these days, is mobile, elusive and flexible. Falwell doesn’t represent evangelicals today. The old culture war organizations like the Moral Majority or the Christian Coalition are either dead or husks of their former selves. …

These days political parties grow more orthodox, while religions grow more fluid. In the political sphere, there is conflict and rigid partisanship. In the religious sphere, there is mobility, ecumenical understanding and blurry boundaries.

If George Bush and Howard Dean met each other on a political platform, they would fight and feud. If they met in a Bible study group and talked about their eternal souls, they’d probably embrace.

Oh, God, can this be true? Am I just stuck in an inflexibly conservative evangelical backwater — either real or of my own imagining — that keeps me from seeing this larger reality of acceptance?

I long for ecumenical understanding as I struggle to not be part of the problem. I always accepted the blurry boundaries until this Bush Debacle crossed the Utterly Unacceptable line with me. I long for those days of blurry acceptance in which we can actually come together and worship.

Alas, I’m not yet able to be as hopeful as Allen from whom this link comes.

[via The Right Christians]