Two main streams of Christianity
Dan Edelen has written an insightful essay on the differences between externally- and internally motivated Christianity:
When we examine the state of the Church in 2007, we find that EM Christianity predominates in the American Church, while IM Christianity marks most regions of the world undergoing revival. IM Christianity thrives in places like China, India, and South America. Those lands have no institutions or systems that support Christianity, anathema to an EM Christian. In fact, institutions and systems in those countries oppose Christianity. This forces the Church there to internalize the Faith. And so it flourishes.Dan's whole article is worth reading. He's also posted a comparison table.
posted by Milton Stanley at 10:59 AM
2 Comments:
Milton,
Thanks for linking to this most controversial of posts from Cerulean Sanctum. It amazed me how people had so many opinions about it and how defensive some people got. I haven't seen so many links to one of my posts since I posted on the Bible-reading program, many of those links from folks who wanted to refute the post in extensive detail.
Yet I think the one thing about this post that roiled most of the opponents is that they didn't like the definitions and tried to redefine them. The only problem with that is then we're not comparing apples to apples. If someone wants to change the definitions and come up with a different post, that's fine. It surprised me how many chafed against the external and internal motivations definitions. In the end, I don't think some people understood the definitions (or chose not to) and this made the rest of the post hard for them to understand.
Anyway, thanks for the link!
Sorry to hear so many didn't get it. I suppose many folks want to divide things along their favorite doctrinal or denominational lines rather than along the line of cleavage that matters most. Peace.
Post a Comment
<< Home