Chris Miliken comments (with some enthusiasm) on a recent post in which I quoted a short excerpt from Tony at theoblogy. I thought the original quote was worth repeating along with Chris' comments... for the sake of dialogue...
Tony said:
"More and more of us are now convinced that something new cannot happen within the existing organizations and institutions. They are irredeemably reified into patterns of institutional conservatism and survival; they are irredeemably sold out to market forces and have thus commodified the radical, liberating message of the gospel."
His complete post can be found here.
Chris replied:
"I mostly disagree with Tony. I appreciate that he can see the problems of the heirachical, man-honoring system of the establishment and its sometimes stifling effect on the Message of Jesus. There are problems. I agree. But his blanket statements using words like "irredeemably" are misguided. His tone is harsh and blinded by his own judgement of his narrow experience. I sense he thinks he is following Jesus in doing something like overturning the money changer's tables in the temple. I've heard a lot of this kind of thing. But to say a group of people are disqualified from God doing anything new among them is base ignorance..."
His complete comment can be found here.
Chris added to his comment here.
Anyone else want to chime in?
