On Jan. 1st, 1923, the first modern megachurch opened its doors, complete with skits, and toe-tapping tunes. But what have been the effects of this century-long confusion between church and theatre?
It was actually Augustine who was the first notable mega-church leader to convert Christianity into a naturalistic religion by whittling away the supernatural. He had no interest in the basic Christian teachings of divine beings having sex with human women resulting in a cursed race of half breeds. He convinced his followers to do away with such “fables” and adapt a more natural interpretation instead. The “Sons of God” of Genesis 6 would become merely a lineage of the human,Seth, instead of a Divine race of non-humans as the earliest followers of Christ would have known them to be.
The idea of demons having sex with women is not a "basic Christian teaching" but one interpretation of a couple of passages. I think it's considered a minority view today, certainly not a "basic" Christian teaching.
You seem to have missed the point I was making, which is that the orthodox view of the earliest church definitely was the view that divine beings had sexual relations with human women. This point is well attested to by academic resources on the teachings of the early church “fathers.”
The fact that a view was held by the majority for the first 300 years of church history and that same view is now considered to be a bizarre minority view is something that should indeed cause you to dig a little deeper.
Well, the point of this article was to suggest that drawing crowds by means of vaudeville acts might not actually be healthy in the long-term. Sure, Augustine had his faults (he was fallen like the rest of us), but this clearly wasn't one of them. I've read quite a lot of his sermons and theological writings, and I can confidently that he does not fall under Blamires' critique. On every page there are references to grace, regeneration, atonement, baptism, redemption, etc. He does NOT focus our attention on "having our best life now," nor does he follow the more liberal approach of attempting to create "our best world now." That was the point I was making in this article.
It seems to me that at least one point of your article was to denounce the relatively more recent tactics of people like Sister Aimee,who draw large gatherings and appeal to modern cultural concerns at the expense of theological accuracy. I agree with your argument, but only added that this is not a new phenomenon found only in the last century and I have supplied supporting evidence.
Of course the cultural concerns were different in the days of Augustine. So were the means of drawing a seeking crowd. Augustine’s crowd wasn’t full of people who wanted a rock show or to save the planet. His crowd were philosophers in search of a more compelling philosophical system. He wasn’t competing with rock stars. Augustine was competing with Manichaeism. Augustine didn't speak Hebrew, he wasn't a Jew, and he struggled so mightily with his own sexual sins that he simply read himself into Genesis 6:1-4. He imposed his own prejudices and personal sin context onto an ancient text that not only he was opposed to, but was also irrelevant to his crowd. The fact that Augustine was able to reinterpret an ancient text into a more relevant use to the modern masses made him just as popular as Joel Osteen is today. Joel’s “Best Life Now” was Augustine’s “City of God” in the sense that both have reinterpreted the original biblical origins of sin to be less about the supernatural and more about man’s own “best life.” Blamires own version of the Christian message had already been emasculated / de-mythologized to be more palatable to a wider audience long before Sister Aimee and Joel became modern mega church leaders.
For even better evidence that supports the argument that Augustine did indeed de-mythologize the original mainstream Christian doctrine on the origins of sin, check out journal databases, a good sample article is: D. R. Schultze, " The Origin of Sin in Irenaeus and Jewish Pseudepigraphical Literature," Vigiliae Christianae32:3 (1978):161–190.
It was actually Augustine who was the first notable mega-church leader to convert Christianity into a naturalistic religion by whittling away the supernatural. He had no interest in the basic Christian teachings of divine beings having sex with human women resulting in a cursed race of half breeds. He convinced his followers to do away with such “fables” and adapt a more natural interpretation instead. The “Sons of God” of Genesis 6 would become merely a lineage of the human,Seth, instead of a Divine race of non-humans as the earliest followers of Christ would have known them to be.
The idea of demons having sex with women is not a "basic Christian teaching" but one interpretation of a couple of passages. I think it's considered a minority view today, certainly not a "basic" Christian teaching.
You seem to have missed the point I was making, which is that the orthodox view of the earliest church definitely was the view that divine beings had sexual relations with human women. This point is well attested to by academic resources on the teachings of the early church “fathers.”
The fact that a view was held by the majority for the first 300 years of church history and that same view is now considered to be a bizarre minority view is something that should indeed cause you to dig a little deeper.
Well, the point of this article was to suggest that drawing crowds by means of vaudeville acts might not actually be healthy in the long-term. Sure, Augustine had his faults (he was fallen like the rest of us), but this clearly wasn't one of them. I've read quite a lot of his sermons and theological writings, and I can confidently that he does not fall under Blamires' critique. On every page there are references to grace, regeneration, atonement, baptism, redemption, etc. He does NOT focus our attention on "having our best life now," nor does he follow the more liberal approach of attempting to create "our best world now." That was the point I was making in this article.
It seems to me that at least one point of your article was to denounce the relatively more recent tactics of people like Sister Aimee,who draw large gatherings and appeal to modern cultural concerns at the expense of theological accuracy. I agree with your argument, but only added that this is not a new phenomenon found only in the last century and I have supplied supporting evidence.
Of course the cultural concerns were different in the days of Augustine. So were the means of drawing a seeking crowd. Augustine’s crowd wasn’t full of people who wanted a rock show or to save the planet. His crowd were philosophers in search of a more compelling philosophical system. He wasn’t competing with rock stars. Augustine was competing with Manichaeism. Augustine didn't speak Hebrew, he wasn't a Jew, and he struggled so mightily with his own sexual sins that he simply read himself into Genesis 6:1-4. He imposed his own prejudices and personal sin context onto an ancient text that not only he was opposed to, but was also irrelevant to his crowd. The fact that Augustine was able to reinterpret an ancient text into a more relevant use to the modern masses made him just as popular as Joel Osteen is today. Joel’s “Best Life Now” was Augustine’s “City of God” in the sense that both have reinterpreted the original biblical origins of sin to be less about the supernatural and more about man’s own “best life.” Blamires own version of the Christian message had already been emasculated / de-mythologized to be more palatable to a wider audience long before Sister Aimee and Joel became modern mega church leaders.
For even better evidence that supports the argument that Augustine did indeed de-mythologize the original mainstream Christian doctrine on the origins of sin, check out journal databases, a good sample article is: D. R. Schultze, " The Origin of Sin in Irenaeus and Jewish Pseudepigraphical Literature," Vigiliae Christianae32:3 (1978):161–190.