I'm encouraged to see that Soul Survivor are encouraging their cohorts to get into a bit of theology in this article in their I-mag- (for all you Methodists spot the reference to the Wesleyan Quadrilateral). I am also pleased that John Maiden, who wrote the article has managed to sneak a bit of politics in there;
"in the late nineteenth century in America a certain (and most would say, very wrong) theology of the end-times, known as 'dispensationalism', became very popular with Evangelical theologians, and then with many Christians. This theology often argued that Christ will return when the modern State of Israel possessed a certain amount of territory. What started as an idea has arguably had a huge effect on the attitude of the Church and even on American foreign policy. A huge 25% of the Republican electorate are Evangelical Christians, and many of these are biased in favour of the state of Israel due to their theology. Thus, US presidents are often obliged to support Israel, even when she is acting aggressively or illegally against other people groups.
In the past I've been quite sceptical of Soul Survivor, but this is encouraging. It'll be interesting to see how this series on theology develops, but if it equips young people to think theologically for themselves that can't be a bad thing... perhaps they might then spot some of the issues related to a gathering of 10,000 young people, where one man calls the shots and everyone else obeys
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