EmergentSoCal Hosts Randall Balmer.

In an effort to keep everyone up on events in the Southland, those fine folks at EmergentSoCal are helping host this event in July. Here's the "official" info on the event...

Around the Table and Student Indaba present Randall Balmer on his latest book Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Rights Distorts the Faith and Threatens America at All Saint Church, Pasadena - Sunday, July 16, 3PM. The event is co-hosted by EmergentSoCal and Progressive Christians Uniting.

Randall Balmer is the Ann Whitney Olin Professor of American Religion at Barnard College, Columbia University, and a visiting professor at Yale University Divinity School. He is editor-at-large for Christianity Today, and his commentaries on religion in America, distributed by the New York Times Syndicate, have appeared in newspapers across the country. His latest book asks the question, "How has evangelical Christianity become so entrenched in partisan politics?" Abortion, gay marriage, intelligent design--the Religious Right is fighting, and winning, some of the most important political battles of the twentyfirst century. The event is FREE.

Comments

[Friar_Tuck]

Once again an emergent event that is as captive to the political left as evangelicalism is the political right.

[Mike DeVries]

Clint, you sound pessimistic. I don't know if it these kinds of "emergent events" are captive to the politcal left as much as willing to voice dissent with the religious right, saying that they are not the only voice in the conversation. I completely see where you are coming from though. I agree that the tone is often one that appears "captured" and even hostile on its own. I wonder if all the "hype" language is to sell books.

On the other side, I think we do need to ask some hard questions about the message of the religious right. I think we have to admit that "moral values", which is often upheld as the cornerstone of the religious right's message, needs to more wide sweeping that the two issues always brought up - abortion and gay marriage. Poverty is moral. AIDS is moral. So are the injustices that are happening in the Congo and Darfur. Why is the religious right's voice limited to only the two?

[Derek Rishmawy]

I would say that as a minor point, the emergents don't help themselves by holding up opposition to conservative opposition to abortion as one of the right's blind spots. I know that this is probably not what they intend to do, but quite frankly, it's kind of foolish to criticize someone who believes that the greatest moral tragedy in the last hundred years is the legal, tax-payer-funded destruction of over 40 million innocents. Just thinking about it makes me want to weep at the staggering loss of life and a culture's callousness towards these voiceless victims.

Just a thought.