How much does Christian triumphalism play into bigotry?

[Tim Bonney]

How much does Christian triumphalism in US culture and even US Christian pop music play into religious bigotry?

It seems to me that simplistic lyrics like, "Our God is greater, our God is stronger, our God is higher than any other..." shares a poor theology that we believe in more than one God. That God is mine ours and that gives me some ownership of God. And that, since our God is higher, our religion is better than yours, we are better than you and now I can value you less.

We've seen it in Christian history when the Church acted in ways that are anti-semitic blaming the Jews for crucifying Jesus, etc. We've even seen it in denominational history when we Protestants told people Roman Catholics were not Christians and even down to Methodists and Baptists composing hymns against each other.

[Dave Roberts]

In any place that humility is not present, we open the door to all sorts of things.

[Haruo]

[Sandy]

It's been interesting to see what is appearing in the works of Baptist and other evangelical writers to defend some hard-core doctrinal stances and to justify the lack of unity in the body of Christ. There is a lot of turf protecting going on. These days, I see and hear a lot of things explained away because God is sovereign and that's his will. Evangelical churches are not growing because God is not convicting as many people with the Holy Spirit. But if growth in number was once a sign of God's blessing, then why is the decline not seen as the opposite of that?

I don't know if it falls into the category of "triumphalism," but there is a megachurch in our area that has filed a lawsuit against some detractors who called them out on financial practices. The justification for the church moving ahead with the lawsuit is one of the more classic twistings of scripture that I've seen in a long time. This is a church that legally "branded" its ministry, from the order and style of its worship to the music used in its services, to the sermons preached by the pastor. The law suit looks like turf protecting and there's an attempt to shift the blame for the lawsuit to the detractors. Disunity is justified on the grounds that there are those who are the chosen and those who are not. If there is disunity and some detractors get sued rather than having the church pursue a Biblical solution, then it is the will of a sovereign God.

[Jon Estes]

[Haruo]