{"id":6364,"date":"2006-08-22T10:26:14","date_gmt":"2006-08-22T10:26:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/and-the-pagans-preach-to-the-christians.html"},"modified":"2006-08-22T10:26:14","modified_gmt":"2006-08-22T10:26:14","slug":"and-the-pagans-preach-to-the-christians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/and-the-pagans-preach-to-the-christians.html","title":{"rendered":"And the Pagans preach to the Christians:"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>They have two points to make, which they do, consistently and repeatedly:<\/p>\n<p>1) You are inconsisten hypocrites, bleating words in worship and unfailingly failing to live them out. Yours is a Sunday-only kind of faith, window-dressing at best, and you are really no different than the rest of us. <\/p>\n<p>2) Please. Keep your faith to yourself. Don&#8217;t impose, preach, proselytize or even give me a hint that you&#8217;re a Christian. It&#8217;s rude and intolerant.<\/p>\n<p>I have never quite worked out how we&#8217;re supposed be living up to both of those expectations at the same time&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><u>Update:<\/u><\/p>\n<p>Tired of blogging with the slavishly literal and their scoldings constantly in mind, but we&#8217;ll forge on.&nbsp; The point is:<\/p>\n<p>The point is that we&#8217;re living in a culture in which simply trying to *live* one&#8217;s faith and raise one&#8217;s family consistently with it is being&nbsp; rapidly defined as imposing one&#8217;s beliefs on others.&nbsp; It&#8217;s put up with the dominant culture or shut up.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, and I suppose I should have added #3:<\/p>\n<p>3) You Christians are fearful and unwilling to engage with the culture, retreating to your own ghettos&#8230;for shame!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>They have two points to make, which they do, consistently and repeatedly: 1) You are inconsisten hypocrites, bleating words in worship and unfailingly failing to live them out. Yours is a Sunday-only kind of faith, window-dressing at best, and you are really no different than the rest of us. 2) Please. Keep your faith to&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>And the Pagans preach to the Christians: - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/and-the-pagans-preach-to-the-christians.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"And the Pagans preach to the Christians: - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"They have two points to make, which they do, consistently and repeatedly: 1) You are inconsisten hypocrites, bleating words in worship and unfailingly failing to live them out. Yours is a Sunday-only kind of faith, window-dressing at best, and you are really no different than the rest of us. 2) Please. Keep your faith to&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/and-the-pagans-preach-to-the-christians.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-08-22T10:26:14+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"And the Pagans preach to the Christians: - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/and-the-pagans-preach-to-the-christians.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"And the Pagans preach to the Christians: - Via Media","og_description":"They have two points to make, which they do, consistently and repeatedly: 1) You are inconsisten hypocrites, bleating words in worship and unfailingly failing to live them out. Yours is a Sunday-only kind of faith, window-dressing at best, and you are really no different than the rest of us. 2) Please. Keep your faith to&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/and-the-pagans-preach-to-the-christians.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2006-08-22T10:26:14+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/and-the-pagans-preach-to-the-christians.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/and-the-pagans-preach-to-the-christians.html","name":"And the Pagans preach to the Christians: - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-08-22T10:26:14+00:00","dateModified":"2006-08-22T10:26:14+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/and-the-pagans-preach-to-the-christians.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/and-the-pagans-preach-to-the-christians.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/and-the-pagans-preach-to-the-christians.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"And the Pagans preach to the Christians:"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6364\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}