stunned.

i just received my weekly e-mail from sojourners, and am appalled to read the news shared by eugene cho:

This is hard to read.  Hard to swallow.  Hard to understand … especially when it happens at a Christian university such as George Fox University in Newberg, Oregon (20 miles southwest of Portland).  From numerous respected accounts, I have only heard good things about the university, so I share this news not in any way to condemn the institution, the faculty, or the students.

Early Tuesday morning (September 23), an effigy in the likeness of Senator Barack Obama was found hanging from a tree in front of one of the school buildings.  Truly disturbing.

While we ought to genuinely celebrate the historic elements of this presidential election year which includes Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Sarah Palin, this horrible news is another reminder that we have a long way to go. Is it simply because they are not like“me” and thus, they must be different … and thus, the other – leading to the “otherizing”, in this case, of Obama?

Rural or urban, Christian or secular, male or female, young or old, Republican or Democrat … we still have a long way to go.  We have work ahead.

you can read the rest of the story here.

it’s incredible to me that christians behave like this. it reminds me of a video i saw recently, created by granger’s executive pastor, tim stevens. the video’s goal is to illustrate how tim can “so easily find jesus in pop culture.” in the 5-minute film, tim tries to help his assistant, adam, see & hear jesus – for example, adam plugs into a ipod which is playing the song, “i kissed a girl and i liked it.” adam, stupid as he is, only hears “i kissed a girl and i liked it,” while tim is clearly keen to the spirit’s promptings and here’s the exact same song played as “i kissed jesus and i liked it.” yep. that’s one blessed guy.

anyway, that’s not even the bad theology i take issue with; my main problem with the video is when tim and adam sit down to “find jesus at the republican national convention.” adam shares with tim that he’s hasn’t watched any of it, but he did watch the DNC and didn’t see jesus. tim’s reply?

“that makes sense. he wasn’t actually there, but he’ll be at the republican convention.”

okay, so maybe the guy is joking. i mean, maybe he’s just poking fun at democrats. ha ha ha. and then i visited his website today.

ah, there it is. big deal pastor from indiana expressing his thoughts against the democratic nominees. ugh. what’s worse? him praising mccain. and on the basis of so little that’s actually fact.

i’m sure god is using granger church in great ways to reach people, but my respect for the leadership has truly plummeted. poor tim stevens. it’s just not right for him to manipulate that church’s respect for him just so he can promote his candidate. it makes me so sick.

i guess the good news for tim stevens is that he may very well get an invitation to teach at george fox university now.