Toward a Balanced Message: Biblical Completeness for a Broken World

By Lucien Bracquemont

Bracquemont provides an articulate analysis shaped by his experiences with many different Christian denominations, positive and negative experiences, a struggling working-class life, Aspergers Syndrome (on the autistic spectrum), and a positive faith that believes firmly that Jesus provides not only eternal glory for those who accept him in faith but that Jesus, the gospel, and the Bible can also transform both individuals and the world. Bracquemont believes that God fervently loves all his human creatures, that God cares about the whole of human existence, and that one should not have to choose between the eternal and social elements of the gospel but that both are important. His disability has caused him to appreciate both the social and eternal elements of the gospel. He also feels that the dichotomy between the social and eternal has resulted in an incomplete and imbalanced presentation of the gospel from both sides, to the detriment of both Christianity and the world. Though Jesus lived two-thousand years ago, his teachings, his love, his holiness, and his purity are just as relevant and needed as they ever were in the past. Jesus, in this sense, is indeed timeless and relevant to every generation. This book is about justice and charity alike; about faith (without which no person can please God) and virtue alike.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Aug 17, 2015
• ISBN: 9781490892740

Lucien Bracquemont

Lucien Bracquemont is a working-class, middle-aged New England Christian on the autistic spectrum with theological training, knowledge of Scripture, and a special insight to the unlimited potential of the gospel. His disability has caused him to have a special appreciation for many elements of the gospel. He says, “Without Jesus and the Bible, I would have no hope.” He belongs to a “Continuing,” totally autonomous conservative branch of a mainline church. He is highly committed to a high view of scriptural authority and the doctrines of historical, biblical Christianity, while at the same time appreciating the social elements of the gospel—elements that can change our world.

Book preview

TOWARD

a

BALANCED MESSAGE

BIBLICAL COMPLETENESS FOR A BROKEN WORLD

LUCIEN BRACQUEMONT

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Copyright © 2015 Lucien Bracquemont.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

Scripture taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

Scripture taken from the American Standard Version of the Bible.

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ISBN: 978-1-4908-9275-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-9276-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-9274-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015911169

WestBow Press rev. date: 08/07/2015

Contents

Introduction

1 A Call to Action

2 Doctrines That Must Not Be Compromised

3 A Primer on Liberal Theology

4 An Introduction to Liberal Theological Methodology

5 The Failures of Political Correctness

6 The Social Code of the Bible

Notes

Bibliography

INTRODUCTION

At this time, it is painfully obvious that Christianity in the United States is at a crossroads. Fortunately, until recently, Christianity in the United States has resisted the rapid decline that it has suffered in most of Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, where secularism has become strongly dominant and Christianity is moribund, with the Netherlands and Scandinavia serving as extreme cases.

Nevertheless, signs have increased in recent years that a gradual decline has started, with the specter of a sudden, imminent apostasy. Especially frightening to evangelical Protestant leaders is the fact that in recent years the Southern Baptist Convention, long known for its resistance to liberal theology and secularism, has begun to decline in membership. The so-called mainline Protestant churches, namely the Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ (often still called the Congregational Church by New Englanders), the United Methodist Church, and the Presbyterian Church (USA), have declined sharply since their peaks in the 1960s, while the more conservative, less secularized churches resisted the trend and either continued to grow or at least to hold their own. It is likely that the Catholic Church would have suffered a significant decline had it not been for millions of Catholic immigrants.

As an intense believer in the gospel of Jesus Christ, I believe that despite seventeen hundred years of apparent failure on the part of Christians, the potential of Christianity for good has remained untapped and unrealized. I will explain this later, along with my choice of suggesting seventeen hundred years instead of two thousand.

It has recently become my conviction that most forms of Christianity—no matter how conservative or liberal, evangelical, fundamentalist, progressive, prophetic, or whatever—are to various degrees distorted or at least incomplete. As Richard Stearns in his laudable book The Hole in Our Gospel has stated, we have preached a gospel with a hole in it.¹

I am a theologically conservative Christian. I believe in the authority of Scripture, the divinity and virgin birth of Jesus, His resurrection and ascension and second coming, the Trinity, and—perhaps most offensive to progressives—the atonement: that Jesus’s death on the cross was an atonement for my sins and the sins of all human beings.

Nevertheless, I see that such a faith, while biblically correct and sound, is not the complete gospel. If it were, the New Testament would have only a few pages, not hundreds. In contrast to many, if not most, of my fellow conservative Christians, I believe Christians should be concerned with social justice for the poor, while my understanding about social justice is very different from the politically correct understandings of social justice promoted by the progressives in the mainline churches. It is refreshingly different.

Before progressives dismiss me as an ignorant rube for believing the doctrines enumerated above, I will say—not to boast but in self-defense—that I attended a theological seminary for two years. It was affiliated with a mainline church, was very progressive by the standards of the time, and was very rigidly politically correct. Having had two years of graduate studies (though I did not finish) makes me more educated than more than 90 percent of the population. A study in my childhood revealed an intelligence quotient (IQ) of 132–136.

The Bible persistently orders us to be humble, and I do not state these facts to boast or to exalt myself but rather to rebut the vehement and vicious stereotype among theological liberals that all conservative Christians are anti-intellectual, ignorant, and unscholarly. Such sentiment among liberals is a form of self-righteousness and puffed-up pride and desire to see themselves as superior to others, in direct contradiction to the scriptural command to humility. In fairness, it must be admitted that humility, an important scriptural virtue, is missing from most Christians’ lives, much to our shame.

Before conservatives dismiss me as a leftist, a socialist, or possibly even a Marxist for mentioning social justice, I will state that my views on social justice are scripturally based and are not based on Marxism, radical feminism, or any other form of materialism—and certainly not on political correctness. They are different from what nearly anyone else preaches.

I am well aware that social justice is a dirty phrase to most conservative Christians, and I can sympathize with them. The inadequacies, fallacies, and simplistic analyses and solutions promoted in the name of social justice by many have rightly made social justice suspect to conservatives. But I feel that if conservatives disagree with liberal concepts of social justice, the proper response to such is not to dismiss social justice altogether, as most conservative Christians have done, but to formulate our own biblically based paradigm of social justice.

I also feel that a major reason for the decline of Christianity in many societies has been a widespread indifference to social justice on the part of church leaders. The French Revolution and the revolution against apartheid in South Africa are excellent examples.

In France before the Revolution, the Catholic Church had a powerful, highly privileged position and was supportive of the French Ancien Régime, which ruthlessly oppressed the poor and strongly supported the ruling class. The revolutionaries were vehemently anticlerical and antireligious and rigidly promoted their views to the masses, and Christianity was forever discredited among most of the French.

Far more recently in South Africa, the evangelicals, despite being very much a minority of fewer than 20 percent, had more political power than nearly anywhere else on earth and were largely supportive of apartheid, which made them firmly opposed to social justice for the black majority. Since the fall of apartheid, the evangelicals have become greatly discredited, and anti-Christian secular humanists have gained control. The post-apartheid government, however, deserves credit for abolishing the grossly immoral policy of apartheid.

Currently in the United States of America, Christianity, especially in its more conservative forms, is being blamed for many political and economic failures due to the extreme loyalty of many Christians to a single political party. More on this to come.

I feel that neither major political party is perfect or deserves the blind loyalty of Christians. Though I tend toward the Republican party, I am registered as an Independent. This tendency is because conservatives in the judiciary are far friendlier to religion and moral influences, while judicial liberals have long shown strong hostility to religion and related moral issues, such as efforts to opposing abortion, allowing prayer at public meetings, tuition tax credits for students at private schools, and exemptions for businesses and organizations with moral objections to being required to subsidize abortifacient medications. This preference for conservatives applies to the judiciary, judicial restraint, and religious freedom but not necessarily the views of conservatives on all other political issues.

I ask that all readers of Toward a Balanced Message approach this book with open minds and allow themselves to read most or all of it before making up their minds about it.

As a highly analytical and critical thinker, I encourage the reader to read this material and to think for himself or herself. Independent thinking is an essential