Pre-Order Mere Churchianity & Help Fight Cancer

I’d like to introduce you to the one and only Internet Monk, Michael Spencer who has mastered the rare art of civil online religious discussions. Michael is a Christian and isn’t afraid to uplift Jesus and stand firm in his beliefs. But he has the rare gift of being able to do that without demeaning opposing views. He goes one step further and makes sure that is audience does the same.

He openly invites Atheists, agnostics, Catholics, and others to dialog with him and his audience over a number of issues with the goal of better understanding each other, not proselytizing or tearing down the opposition. For example, read his interview with Dr. Valerie Tarico and A Letter from an Agnostic. Its important to read the comments on the above as well to understand what I’m getting it in terms of his gift.

Last year Michael rocketed out of the Christian Blogosphere and into the mainstream (at least briefly) with his essay The Coming Evangelical Collapse. This essay got him every where from the The Christian Science Monitor, the BCC, CNN, The Drudge Report, Daily Kos, countless others.

Michael writes:

I believe that we are on the verge- within 10 years- of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity; a collapse that will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and that will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West. I believe this evangelical collapse will happen with astonishing statistical speed; that within two generations of where we are now evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its current occupants, leaving in its wake nothing that can revitalize evangelicals to their former “glory.”

This essay is not your typical blog rant. Its a thoughtful exploration of what western Christianity has done wrong over the past several decades. His basic premise is that Evangelics are about uplifting a cultural agenda instead of Jesus.

Evangelicals have identified their movement with the culture war and with political conservatism. This was a mistake that will have brutal consequences. They are not only going to suffer in losing causes, they will be blamed as the primary movers of those causes.

The setup for the entire series, in my opinion, his Michael’s call to return to a Jesus focused Christianity instead of engaging in political and cultural wars. In short, the more Jesus matters to you, the less important the culture wars will be to you. Currently mainstream Evangelics measure your allegiance to Jesus by your adherence to their cultural war mandates.

Over the past year Michael wrote a book. Its called Mere Churchianity, Find Jesus Shaped Spirituality.

Tragically, last year Michael also got cancer. Fortunately it looks like Michael will recover. Unfortunately he lost his job as a result of the cancer which also means his health care will run out this month.

Regardless of your religious beliefs you want to support someone like Michael. Civility on the internet around critical topics such as belief and non-belief is virtually non-existent. His voice enables real discussion between reasonable people of differing beliefs. Please take a look at Internet Monk and if anything interests you consider pre-ordering a copy of Michael’s book.

I’ll buy a copy for the first 5 people to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) with an address that Amazon.com US will ship to.