The Bible--with all its strangeness, weirdness, and contradictions; its metaphors, ironies and stupidities, its untidiness, its sprawling nature, its boisterousness--is well suited to this a more democratic definition of 'authority.'
Dealing with Conservative Parishioners and Congregations
If I'm myself sceptical about being an energiser, it will be abundantly clear to all of you that I am most certainly not a New Englander. It has been one of the real pluses of my involvement with TCPC over almost ten years now that I have had the opportunity to get to know progressive Christians from many different parts of the US; but in particular people from New England. I am not a total stranger here. But in a sense part of what that has done is to make me very aware of how our territories are each distinct; and of how different church, Christianity, and religion more widely are in North America, when compared with Britain.
For all of us, I suspect, the world feels a different place this Christmas from the way it did this time last year.