The Left Foot of Fellowship

Long ago, an old Pentecostal preacher I listened to, Kenneth Hagin, used the phrase "left foot of fellowship" to describe the lack of welcomeness he felt from those Christian ministers who didn't like Hagin's tongue-talking, healing-believing, miracle-performing version of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

In that same vein, I expect Wounded Stones will over time engender the same response, especially among people here in Southwest Missouri, a region replete with born-again, bible-believing, science-doubting Christians. Wounded Stones will offend not just Hagin’s enemies, but also his friends.

But the point is not to cause these mostly sincere believers any lasting pain, but to challenge their rather naive assumptions about the Book they purport to trust in, and to challenge some of their bible-based opinions about politics, science, and other aspects of culture.

As a long-time student of conservative theology and a former member of the charismatic movement, I find it amazing that I escaped the mind-numbing dogma that colored my view of the world. And having escaped, I feel compelled to help others escape, too.

I have argued with fundamentalists and evangelicals around these parts for a few years now. But it was not until I read Sam Harris' book, The End of Faith, that I realized it was necessary to engage these true-believers more formally. Some of these people sit on school boards, city councils, editorial boards of newspapers, and other positions of influence in our communities. It is dangerous to ignore their influence and to write them off as kooks and Neanderthals. They help to choose textbooks for our children, pass ordinances that govern our everyday lives, and control the kinds of information we receive through the various media outlets.

Silent tolerance is not a posture we can afford in this complex century. Wounded Stones will serve as an outlet for me to post various challenges to the Christian Orthodoxy that confronts me where I live, Southwest Missouri, and also to challenge the religious dogma of the wider culture.

Many of the springboards for confronting this religious dogma will come from local newspaper stories, columns, letters-to-the-editor, as well as television and radio news and programming heard here in the Heartland.

As I say, I feel compelled to do something more than talk. But if nothing else, my efforts will serve as a kind of gratitude to God, for creating the world such that an honest seeker can shake off the shackles of dogma and false certainty. The world seems much grander now.