Message #1609

[AndyHB]

Captain America Jesus?
What type of church are you connected to? What kind of church and what kind of "preacher" are you? Or are you really at all. Do you and your church make a habit of mocking Jesus? I think I've got you figured out. Has things gotten so dark in the UK that your supposed preachers joke around with the name Jesus?

PW, here in the UK we sometimes find ourselves being encouraged to take on apparently evangelical beliefs and understandings of Jesus that simply don't fit traditional understandings - for instance, the Prosperity Gospel or the way in which the Southern Baptists seem to regard themselves as a better form of Christians.

Sadly, there are often grains or even rocks of truth in some of the teaching (ie the Prosperity Gospel is not totally alien to Christ's teaching), but the way it is taught - such as though TV appeals to give the preacher money that you might be blessed in return - is what is so iniquitous.

These are almost invariably beliefs that have developed in America, so we will often lampoon them by making comments such as Captain America Jesus.  At the same time, those of us who are evangelicals here in the UK will often be tarred with this same brush, because of the fact that we share the label of evangelical.