The Church Maligned

"Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man's sake. Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy: for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for in the same manner did their fathers unto the prophets" (Luke 6:22-23).If the Gospel is being preached and promoted, we should not be surprised to learn that there are some who will stand in opposition to the truth and the church. The following article represents an example of such opposition:

Christers at the Gate (Jeff Woods, Nashville Scene, 14 June 2007).

The article is written in an alternative Nashville publication regarding certain members of the church who are running for elected office in Nashville. I find the substance of the article fascinating, for it reveals much about how the church is often perceived by those on the outside.

Below are some particularly good "nuggets" from the article:
"both belong to the Church of Christ-that quirky collection of rigid fundamentalists that's a little squirrelly even for much of the rest of the Christian right."

"But in addition to the standard conservative Christian articles of faith, the typical Christer thinks a church piano is the devil's instrument, it's wrong to celebrate Christmas as Jesus' birth-and, oh yes, everyone but members of the Church of Christ is going to spend eternity in hell."

"[The 'fact' that not just members of churches of Christ will be in Heaven is] good, because heaven would be a sparsely populated place if only Church of Christ members went. There aren't many in the world-something less than 2 million. Nashville, though, has been blessed or cursed with a lot, depending on your point of view."

"Dozier is an elder in his congregation, sort of like a chief in an Indian tribe, and Tucker teaches Sunday school class in hers." The bias of the article is clear: we have someone writing who either has no religion or is of the ecumenical sort of Christianity, and this person does not like the ramifications of having members of a church of Christ as mayor and vice-mayor of Nashville.