Welcome to Sodom

Nick Kristof's column this morning is a good one. Here's an excerpt:

A growing number of conservative Christians are explicitly and self-critically acknowledging that to be “pro-life” must mean more than opposing abortion. The head of World Vision in the United States, Richard Stearns, begins his fascinating book, “The Hole in Our Gospel,” with an account of a visit a decade ago to Uganda, where he met a 13-year-old AIDS orphan who was raising his younger brothers by himself.

“What sickened me most was this question: where was the Church?” he writes. “Where were the followers of Jesus Christ in the midst of perhaps the greatest humanitarian crisis of our time? Surely the Church should have been caring for these ‘orphans and widows in their distress.’ (James 1:27). Shouldn’t the pulpits across America have flamed with exhortations to rush to the front lines of compassion?

“How have we missed it so tragically, when even rock stars and Hollywood actors seem to understand?”

Mr. Stearns argues that evangelicals were often so focused on sexual morality and a personal relationship with God that they ignored the needy. He writes laceratingly about “a Church that had the wealth to build great sanctuaries but lacked the will to build schools, hospitals, and clinics.”

In one striking passage, Mr. Stearns quotes the prophet Ezekiel as saying that the great sin of the people of Sodom wasn’t so much that they were promiscuous or gay as that they were “arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.” (Ezekiel 16:49.)

Hmm. Imagine if sodomy laws could be used to punish the stingy, unconcerned rich!

Read the rest of Learning From the Sin of Sodom

Comments

[kate]

"If secular liberals can give up some of their snootiness, and if evangelicals can retire some of their sanctimony, then we all might succeed together in making greater progress"
So, liberal evangelicals are due to give up the most here. :) Fantastic column.

[idelette]

Love that Kristof picked up this book. Sigh. Still so far to go. Wondering if the global church, rather than the American church, might have a better understanding. Saw recently that pastors from Thailand whose lives had been affected by the tsunami gave generously to Haiti. Love that.

[Mark Hanson]

A very good article. Thanks for pointing it out.

I hadn't thought of myself as a liberal evangelical before, but I guess I am one. But I hope that I am neither snooty nor sanctimonious. I wonder what I do need to give up.

[Dave]

Mike: The crux of the matter comes out in the question that was posed:WHERE WAS THE CHURCH? WHAT church?? At the risk of being absolutely brutal, the failure here is reflected in comments from your friend Ellul "Christendom has astutely abolished Christianity......abolished by reason of its success": so why be surprised at the failure? Having come out with this macro-indictment, on a personal micro basis I had better look at my own values and see where I am failing. Right?

[Mike]

Absolutely. I was going to title this post "I Am a Sodomite" but thought better of it. We're all complicit.