For now I see in a glass darkly

Kermit the Blog points up an intriguing essay about American "self-certainty" and the real message of Christianity. It is a good call to self-re-examination, particularly for people of faith (and even more particularly for Christians)...

When the Bible is viewed primarily as a collection of devotional thoughts, its status as the most devastating work of social criticism in history is forgotten. Once we've taken it off its pedestal long enough to actually read what it says, how does the principality called America interpret the gospel? In an age when many churchgoing Americans appear to view the purposes of the coming kingdom of God and the perceived self-interests of the United States as indistinguishable, what does faithful witness look like?

I recommend the original essay (which is a longish exerpt from a book called The Gospel of America) to anybody who wrestles with these issues. It has a kind of rhetorical earnestness that will probably put off those with no background in the pews, but it's the voice of the liberal church trying to be heard in the storm.

As Karl Barth noted, applying the gospel to our vision of the worlds unfolding before us will involve a yes and a no. Yes to the hope of a new day coming and the watchfulness required to see it. No to the suggestion, sometimes only dimly hinted at even to ourselves, that our own good intentions or pure hearts will hasten its coming or that we are knowers (rather than learners) of the Creator's good purposes.

(via the Daou Report)