I found this article in the current copy of Christianity Today.
https://www.christianitytoday.com/
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Is there a better word to describe Christians who hold to the authority of the Bible in all matters of faith and practice?
Perhaps it is time for a new plural to capture the self-understanding of Christians, a different noun that embraces all believers and followers of Jesus, to which all evangelical theologies and denominations would belong comfortably. Can a fresh plural noun free us from negative typecasting in our cultural climate?
May I recommend a word to which evangelicals can’t say no if we are serious as Christians and still want to make sense of (and to) the world in which we live—all while reaching people with Jesus’ eternally saving message? A noun against which it is hard to push back while we press on to consistency in belief and authenticity of behavior?
Having celebrated the 500th season of the Reformation not too long ago, in the tradition of Luther, a man who did not possess the authority but sensed the responsibility to challenge prevalent theological sensibilities, how about a new noun? Place me among the biblicals.
https://www.christianitytoday.…-called-evangelicals.html
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The "Biblicals".....the new name of Evangelicals. I refer to the Civil War a lot because its a pivotal moment for American Christianity. It is the time when the Bible was used to prove that slavery is right and good and necessary. I have read the proofs of this by southern biblical scholars and It was really pretty good. It was the "proof" they put fourth that made me realize that conservative exegesis is bankrupt. I was stuck, I had to believe in slavery or I had to believe that something was very wrong with the Bible. It turned out that it wasn't the Bible at fault, it was the teaching of conservative Christianity. This perverted teaching was hard for even a lot of people in the south to swallow. The Southern Baptist pastors, trying to stem rebellion against the teaching of slavery invented a new term, "the enerrancy of the scriptures".
Biblical inerrancy is the belief that the Bible "is without error or fault in all its teaching";[1] or, at least, that "Scripture in the original manuscripts does not affirm anything that is contrary to fact".[2] Some equate inerrancy with biblical infallibility; others do not.[3][4] The belief is of particular significance within parts of evangelicalism, where it is formulated in the "Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_inerrancy
These pastors told their flock that anyone that tried to convince they that slavery was wrong didn't believe in the "inerrancy of the Bible". "Don't listen to anything they say!"
Those trying to change their name to the Biblicals are cut from the same cloth of those Southern Baptist pastors of the Civil War.
There are a lot of really shocking elements in Evangelicalism. Evangelicals are made up of Roman Catholics and Southern Baptist and some other Protestant groups but mostly they are the RCs and the SBs. Both would except the title Biblicals but for different reasons. The SBs want to take the New Testament and put it in concrete never to be changed while the RCs think the New Testament is still being written by the Pope and the Cardinals. Why would these groups ever become so close? In my opinion its POWER, they both want the power to force people, by law, to behave in accordance to their interpretation of the New Testament. And THAT is the foundation of the belief of the Christian Nationalist movement. Christian Nationalism is, in my opinion, just another white supremacist group.
I could go on forever but I won't. So think about these words.
wayne5
