The Anti-Manichaeist

Courtesy of Steve K., Ted Olsen has an insightful commentary on the Time’s 25 most influential evangelicals that us bloggers were raving about not long ago. The main points are that our influentials are based on their media exposure, not their service in ministry or knowledge of Scripture. And we are ourselves driven very much by a media that sacrifices understanding for hype. Sounds to me like a recipe for disaster or a prescription for making sure that the control of the media in the US does not get too concentrated.

Ron Sider, in his book “The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience“, decries the lack of accountability for parachurch organizations, like his own Evangelicals for Social Action(ESA). All it takes is enough start-up money and one can set up a parachurch organization and broadside a wide audience with one’s own idiosyncratic message of how we should let our lights shine. Sider expresses a wish that USEvangelical Protestants had a central organization, somewhat similar to the papacy, that would provide biblical/theological accountability to the many organizations that claim to do God’s work, but who may subvert it through their concern with their bottom lines and, thus, fail to call us to be counter-cultural in our lives and ministry.
dlw