Right Kind of Christian
Kerby Anderson
More than a decade ago, Vanderbilt University issued an ultimatum to religious student groups that they must affirm the school’s nondiscrimination policy. The Christian group on campus believed that the leader should share the religious beliefs and values of the religious organization.
David French was a religious liberties litigator at the time and wanted to help the organization. But the leader (Tish Harrison Warren) felt that a Christian conservative lawyer, who was an Iraq War veteran, was the wrong person to make the case. Instead, she concluded that she “was an acceptable kind of evangelical.” She wasn’t a fundamentalist and was liberal in many of her views.
She found out how wrong she was. In her article in Christianity Today she realized that inside the church, the territory between conservative Christians and more liberal Christians seems vast. But she found that, “subscribers to broad Christian orthodoxy occupy the same square foot of cultural space.”
Why do I tell this story? I have found that many young Christians think that if they are just liberal enough, the world will accept them. They tell themselves they aren’t like those other Christians, they are the “right kind of Christians.”
As I often say on radio, you can never be “woke” enough. Just consider the plight of so many liberals who are currently being criticized by the left. There is British author J.K. Rowling. There is George Washington Law professor Jonathan Turley. There are comedians like Bill Maher and David Chappell. Leftist critics heap scorn and ridicule upon them and post lots of angry tweets directed at them.
I believe these young people are fooling themselves by thinking they would be accepted for being the “right kind of Christian.”
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