The Boyd Man of St. Paul

Rev. Gregory Boyd of St. Paul, MN, has been featured in a NYT article that has been sitting at the top of their Most E-mailed List for the last day. We need more Christians like him. He is an evangelical Christian who founded a "megachurch" in 1992. Up until 2004, his church had roughly 5,000 members.

But then:

Before the last presidential election, he preached six sermons called “The Cross and the Sword” in which he said the church should steer clear of politics, give up moralizing on sexual issues, stop claiming the United States as a “Christian nation” and stop glorifying American military campaigns.

And later:

In his six sermons, Mr. Boyd laid out a broad argument that the role of Christians was not to seek “power over” others — by controlling governments, passing legislation or fighting wars. Christians should instead seek to have “power under” others — “winning people’s hearts” by sacrificing for those in need, as Jesus did, Mr. Boyd said.

“America wasn’t founded as a theocracy,” he said. “America was founded by people trying to escape theocracies. Never in history have we had a Christian theocracy where it wasn’t bloody and barbaric. That’s why our Constitution wisely put in a separation of church and state.

“I am sorry to tell you,” he continued, “that America is not the light of the world and the hope of the world. The light of the world and the hope of the world is Jesus Christ.”

I'm not saying that I agree with everything the man stands for. But at least his take on Christianity comes from, you know, the gospels. The political wing of Christianity right now is so far from my understanding of Christianity that I am speechless. Read the article. It's a good one.

(As an aside, I'd like to add that Rev. Boyd is also protecting his non-profit status from the IRS. Technically, a church cannot lobby for anything. It can denounce gay marriage but it cannot collect signatures for an initiative. And it certainly cannot hold a "Justice Sunday" to lobby Congress to stop the filabuster against Bush's judicial nominees.)