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Empty Religion
BASIC CHRISTIANITY, and rector emeritus of London's All Souls Church. ================================= Today, August 1, is my first official day in my new job at Southern Seminary in Louisville. The search for my replacement at the Chapel Hill Bible Church has begun. For details of that opening, please go to < ================================= EMPTY RELIGION We need to listen again to the biblical criticism of religion. No book, even by Marx and his followers, is more scathing of empty religion than the Bible. The prophets of the eighth and seventh centuries BC were outspoken in their denunciation of the formalism and hypocrisy of Israelite worship. Jesus then applied their critique to the Pharisees of his day: "These people . . . . honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me" (Is. 29:13; Mk. 7:6). And this indictment of religion by the Old Testament prophets and by Jesus is uncomfortably applicable to us and our churches today. Too much of our worship is ritual without reality, form without power, fun without fear, religion without God. - John Stott, THE CONTEMPORARY CHRISTIAN, InterVarsity Press, 1992, p. 228. [Lord, direct our individual and corporate worship. As we sing and pray and open our hearts and minds to the power and truth of your holy Word, may we find you and respond to you. Amen!] Have a great week, Chip Stam Director, Institute for Christian Worship School of Church Music and Worship Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Louisville, Kentucky |