In Reply to: Re: His Dark Materials posted by MG on November 04, 2007 at 01:42:21:
I tend to agree with what one person commented on the Night Line show. In the purest sense of the term I don't see the COG as have been fundamentalist evangelicals, which at this time I could proably be put into that mold.
"This is not an EVANGELICAL Christian group as the newscaster wrongly stated. EVANGELICAL as Defined in Contemporary Times per Wheaton University (school where Billy Graham attended)There are three senses in which the term "evangelical" is used today. The first is to see as "evangelical" all Christians who affirm a few key doctrines and practical emphases. Four specific hallmarks of evangelical religion: conversionism, the belief that lives need to be changed; activism, the expression of the gospel in effort; biblicism, a particular regard for the Bible; and crucicentrism, a stress on the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. A second sense is to look at evangelicalism as an organic group of movements and religious tradition. Within this context "evangelical" denotes a style as much as a set of beliefs. As a result, groups as disparate as black Baptists and Dutch Reformed Churches, Mennonites and Pentecostals, Catholic charismatics and Southern Baptists all come under the evangelical umbrella-demonstrating just how diverse the movement really is. A third sense of the term is as the self-ascribed label for a coalition that arose during the Second World War. This group came into being as a reaction against the perceived anti-intellectual, separatist, belligerent nature of the fundamentalist movement in the 1920s and 1930s. Importantly, its core personalities (like Harold John Ockenga and Billy Graham), institutions (for instance, Moody Bible Institute and Wheaton College), and organizations (such as the National Association of Evangelicals and Youth for Christ) have played a pivotal role in giving the wider movement a sense of cohesion that extends beyond these "card-carrying" evangelicals. This group was not EVANGELICAL. Neither were they Christ followers. They were followers of David Berg (the founder of their movement)"