I would certainly agree with the statement that we can not and should not judge anyone in terms of the validity of their Christian conversion. God will do that in the Final Judgement.
However, pastors and Christians alike need to form an opinion about another person's relationship with the Lord in order to evangelize. If someone comes out and says "I don't believe that Jesus Christ was divive and I don't believe that He died for my sins" I believe most of us would form the opinion that this person is not saved and needs for us to witness to him about the Good News.
This is a section on politics. Politics and religion have become so intertwined that is is almost impossible to make a sound decision about who to vote for without asking about the genuineness of their religious experience. That is certainly true about tyhe Religious Right who made no bones about their support of George Bush as the Christian candidate in the last two Presidential elections.
We don't have the final word on whether George Bush is a genuine Christian. The Lord does. But we did have the final say on whether he would become President (with the help of the Supreme Court). Therefore, what we're really asking is whether those who voted for Bush and support him have been misled by his claim to be a genuine Christian.
Here is what happened to a pastor who made a statement that was not as radical as the one George Bush made when he asserted that Moslems and Christians pray to the same God and have separate but equal paths to eternal life. (See my earlier post.)
This comes from the great state of Kentucky, my home state.
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Tuesday, March 1, 2005
Baptists withdraw invitation
McLaren can't speak at local conference By Peter Smith
The Courier-Journal
http://www.beliefnet.com/frame_offsite.asp?pageLoc=http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050301/NEWS01/503010397
The Kentucky Baptist Convention withdrew a speaking invitation to a well-known pastor and author after his latest book raised the possibility that people could be saved without becoming Christians.
The convention had heavily promoted the planned speech by Brian McLaren of Maryland at a two-day evangelism conference, which concludes today at Valley View Baptist Church in Louisville.
But church leaders withdrew the invitation late last month.
"I respect Dr. McLaren greatly and have appreciated his insights on reaching people in today's culture," the convention's executive director, Bill Mackey, said in a statement. But he said McLaren's "position diverges too greatly to be appropriate for this conference."
McLaren, pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church in Maryland, was listed in a recent Time magazine article as one of America's 25 most influential evangelicals.
He is a leader of what is known as the "emergent church" movement. In a book published last year, "A Generous Orthodoxy," he described this as an effort to go beyond traditional labels of liberal and conservative and find new methods to reach people who aren't being reached by churches.
He wrote that that not all people may need to be Christians to be followers of Jesus. Some people, he suggested, may be able to be "Buddhist … (or) Jewish or Hindu followers of Jesus."
That statement was "clearly out of line," said Kentucky Baptist Convention President Hershael York, a professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. "The one thing Kentucky Baptists agree about is the exclusivity of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That means Jesus Christ is the only way of salvation."
York also criticized McLaren's response when asked for his opinion on gay marriage. According to Time, he said that it "breaks my heart … that there's no way I can answer it without hurting someone on either side."
"O that life were so tidy that we could avoid the tough questions," York said. He said Kentucky Baptist staff members began reviewing McLaren's writings after receiving complaints from some pastors.
Seminary President R. Albert Mohler Jr. criticized McLaren in an entry in his blog, or Internet journal, which is influential among Southern Baptists. "Orthodoxy must be generous, but it cannot be so generous that it ceases to be orthodox," he wrote.
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The key statement here is from a professor at the Southern Baptist Seminary:
"The one thing Kentucky Baptists agree about is the exclusivity of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That means Jesus Christ is the only way of salvation."