{"id":1042,"date":"2008-09-26T14:19:44","date_gmt":"2008-09-26T14:19:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/?p=1042"},"modified":"2008-09-26T14:19:44","modified_gmt":"2008-09-26T14:19:44","slug":"are-we-seeing-more-christians-or-better-christians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/?p=1042","title":{"rendered":"Are We Seeing More Christians or Better Christians?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nA good article by Read Mercer Schuchardt in ChristianityToday<\/a> brought my attention to Tyler Wigg Stevenson's book, "Brand Jesus<\/strong>", with a few excerpts that I've been waiting for others to say.\n<\/p>\n

\n"What would you think if you were in a modern auditorium and heard the
\npresenter make "The wild claim that the messiah had arrived sometime in
\nthe mid-seventies; that he had been an undocumented Filipino migrant
\nworker who spoke about the inbreaking kingdom of God; that, while
\nworking in Guam, he had been brought in by the local ecclesiastical
\nauthorities on trumped up civil charges; that the local governor had
\ncaved to their demands and executed him for treason; and that his life
\nand death changed <\/em>everything we thought we knew about God, the world, and ourselves"?" - Schuchardt<\/em>\n<\/p>\n

\nAt the same time, Stevenson also emphasized that one should not tell American churchgoers to shun Brand Jesus for that would only be a superficial solution:\n<\/p>\n

\n"Consumerism is bad. It is very, very bad, indeed. But it is no worse
\nthan humans are, and we are no worse than we have always been. If we
\nare to deal genuinely with the problem of consumerism, we need to
\nanswer the question of how its evil influences our world and our lives." - Stevenson (excerpt from Brand Jesus<\/a>)<\/em>\n<\/p>\n

\nIn conclusion, I couldn't have put it better than Schuchardt:\n<\/p>\n

\n"Stevenson's book confirms that this de-Christianization is now all but
\ncomplete in American culture. Hopefully a remnant will read Stevenson's
\nbook, take a break from eating, and start praying."<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A good article by Read Mercer Schuchardt in ChristianityToday brought my attention to Tyler Wigg Stevenson's book, "Brand Jesus", with a few excerpts that I've been waiting for others to say. "What would you think if you were in a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1042\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}