DOUG PAGITT POINTS US TO EVOLUTIONARY EVANGELIST MICHAEL DOWD
By Ken Silva pastor-teacher on Sep 22, 2010 in AM Missives, Current Issues, Emergence Christianity, Emergent Church, Features
they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. (Romans 1:25)
Now Look What The Emerging Church Is Trying To Bring In
Apprising Ministries has pointed out that heretical universalist pastor Doug Pagitt, along with his heretical progressive “theologian in residence” Tony Jones and Emerging Church guru Brian McLaren comprise the unholy trinity of the sinfully ecumenical Emergent Church, which has now blossomed into a full-blown neo-liberal cult that’s operating within mainstream evangelicalism.
This upgraded Emerging Church 2.0 is all the more insidious because, through the assistance of apostates like Dr. Philip Clayton of the Transforming Theology network, who continue cobbling together the new postmodern version of Progressive Christian theology—aka “big tent” Emergence Christianity—it’s poison is now being injected into the very heart of the church visible.
With this in mind I point you to a post by Pagitt called Everything is Holy Now where he writes:
I ran across this song today (thanks to a note from Michael Dowd) and really liked it. Seems like something we would hear around Solomon’s Porch. (Online source)
Being that universalism is at the core of this big tent mythical religion, we’re not surprised; Pagitt continues concerning the video in his post:
Lyrics are below the video – I really like this line from the song:
It used to be a world half-there
Heaven’s second rate hand-me-down
But I walk it with a reverent air
‘Cause everything is holy now
As I told you in Exegeting The Theme Song Of The Emerging Church 2.0 With Its New Progressive Theology the chorus for the theme song behind this new progressive pseudo-Christianity is:
C’mon people now, Smile on your brother;
Ev’rybody get together, Try and love one another right now.
Lord willing, I’ll have more on that another time; here however, I want to make you aware of Michael Dowd, whom Doug Pagitt mentions above. I first brought Dowd to your attention in Jesus Died For Our Reptilian Brain when he appeared on TheOoze.TV with the EC’s Spencer Burke, heretical universalist who says he “believes in Hell.” Billing himself as The Evolutionary Evangelist and author of Thank God for Evolution!: How the Marriage of Science and Religion Will Transform Your Life and Our World (TGfE), Dowd takes us far, far into the postmodern Wonderland of Humpty Dumpty language bending and shaping words into whatever Play-Doh shapes he chooses.
It’s only natural that Burke would want to bring Dowd’s work into the larger Emerging Church 2.0 because under the endorsements for TGfE we find:
Those With Integrity Do Not Radically Redefine Words Before The UnSuspecting
Um, “skillfully redefines” is as big an understatement as they come; completely guts them of any real meaning is more apt, as you’ll hear below when Christian apologist Chris Rosebrough, host of the Fighting for the Faith program on Pirate Christian Radio, reviews Dowd’s “Evolutionize Your Life.”
At his Evolutionary Christianity.TheOoze.com website Dowd tells us:
Dowd also says in How and Why I’m a Pentecostal Evangelical:
I refer to myself (and the media often refers to me) as an ‘evangelical minister’ or a ‘Pentecostal preacher’, even though I speak far more often in moderate and liberal churches (and in secular settings) than I do in evangelical and Pentecostal venues. Not surprisingly, both religious liberals and conservatives genuinely ask, “In what sense do you consider yourself a Pentecostal evangelical?” HERE is my response (Online source)
That link then takes us to Dowd’s Thank God for Evolution website and a long, rambling, redefining of virtually everything concerning Pentecostalism and evangelicalism as anyone might know it. However, that’s for another day; right now we note that Dowd declares:
For thirty years I’ve proudly called myself a Pentecostal,…and for the past two decades I’ve tended to say “evolutionary Pentecostal”, for clarification. My experience in Pentecostal and evangelical contexts has been positive—indeed, salvific—and continues to nourish my life and work. I was raised Roman Catholic… Soon after my 20th birthday, I had a born again experience and went on to graduate from an Assemblies of God college and a Baptist seminary.
I pastored three churches in the 1980s and 90s and have been an itinerant evolutionary evangelist for the past seven years. Speaking in tongues (see below for my naturalized interpretation) has been a vital part of my spiritual practice for decades. The primary reason I unabashedly call myself an evolutionary Pentecostal, however, is this: The core tenets of the evangelical-Pentecostal tradition accurately reflect the nature of the Universe and the human condition so long as they are REALized—that is, made real. (Online source, emphasis his)
What Dowd does with Christian terminology borders on the criminal; and any Christian supporting this man should hang their heads in shame, and all of this rather odd in that Dowd boldly boasts: Integrity is my religion. Next time I’ll show you more about how Doug Pagitt, but of course, fits in with this snake. In closing this, for now, I’ll give you a chance to listen for yourself to the vile rubbish spewed by “Rev.” Michael Dowd who refers to himself “as ‘a born again, Spirit-filled Christian’.”
His sermon “Evolutionize Your Life: Heaven Is Coming Home To Reality” was given at a spiritual blackhole called C3 Exchange:
an inclusive spiritual community that offers resources to enrich and empower the lives of all people in body, mind and spirit. We are an open and evolving community… Accepting you for who and where you are… Encouraging you to reflect on your beliefs and values… Inspiring you to be the change you wish to see in the world. (Online source)
And among the skubalon Dowd shares in his demonic diatribe you’ll hear:
[F]rankly, I don’t know of any Christian, Muslim, or Jew, that is genuinely appreciative of their sinful nature; and yet, that’s what an evolutionary understanding gives us. Is we can have appreciation [of it]… And you’ve got these hundreds of differing, competing, contrdictory, stories about what God said or did; that if you interpret God as a Person, you can’t make sense of those.
But when you understand, from an evolutionary perspective, that all cultures have personified Reality; either Reality as a whole—or some significant aspect of Reality. And personification is one of the things that our brains do…when we remember that “God” is a sacred, meaningful, personification—not a person—all of a sudden, not only does that make sense of all the world’s religious traditions—and their differences—but it also allows us to see that there’s no conflict between science and religion… Nothing is driving young people away from God—away from a right relationship with Reality—faster, and further, than the Bible.
I tell you now in the Lord, if you actually think what you just read is even remotely Christian, then you seriously need to have your spiritual head examined.
See also:
DOUG PAGITT, THE EMERGING CHURCH, AND AFFIRMING HOMOSEXUALITY
DOUG PAGITT AND CHRISTIAN UNIVERSALISM
BIG TENT CHRISTIANITY IS A POSTMODERN PROGRESSIVE LIBERALISM