I don't know what got into Michael Bird's haggis, but this post of his, "Evangelicals and the Reformed," mirrored many things I've said before about the difficulty many U. S. evangelicals have in separating cultural aspects of the American evangelical tradition from the gospel.
I might add this piece now by John Stackhouse on his blog. I wonder if these posts are in reaction to the forced resignation of Richard Cizik from leadership in the National Association of Evangelicals over an NPR interview in which he suggested that while he believed marriage was between a man and a woman from a Christian point of view, he apparently opposed Proposition 8 in California. Jim Wallis discusses his resignation here.
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D'hear about Cizik and the NPR interview?
I saw something briefly online somewhere and Drury sent me a link. He's changed his mind on the gay marriage issue and been forced to resign, right?
I should perhaps mention that Bird is Australian rather than Scottish, if I remember correctly.
But,if Christian faith is rooted in Judiasm, it is about ETICS, not spcecial revelation, in text, tradition or experience. It is ethical commitment to values. Those values define where one commits. Therefore, because it is a personal issue of understanding of one's values, then personal commitment cannot be from social construction alone, only in helping along to develop those values in being defined or in being trained.
Bird's view is calling for a specific traditional Christian evangelical view, which is different (at least I think).
Faith is about life in general, not about understanding of heaven, hell, text, tradition, the afterlife, etc....It CAN be secular, then, but can also be defined in any other way, as well...spiritually, I mean...So, Augustine was partly right"Love God and do what you want". He persupposed that God was a necessary element of ethical development, but this is not so. It obviously will affect how you understand your values, and perhaps infulence what values are of most importance.
Therefore, "faith" is much more than limiting one's life to speicified understandings within cultural terms (although they will be influenced and perhaps totally defined by those terms).
Maybe I should qualify what I said about "doing what you like", as it could be interpreted as doing anything that you like..No, Laws, are what define a certain country, organization or tradition's views of what behavior is appropriate. Ethics means that those laws are universal enough to include everyone, that is, if one does not want to limit freedom and justice for all. But, if one wants to define their organization or tradition according to certain rules or standards, then that is their prorogative, which does define their identification factors and values. I think that personal identity does not have to be defined by these limited views, but these views can/might define them.
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