Christian Converser
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US Theocracy Movement Gets A Boost [2]
Along with the previous post in this series expounding the many problems that the current direction of the SCOTUS is creating, it’s time to take a fresh look at the impetus for theocracy and the divisions between different groups of orthodox / conservative Christians along theological and political lines. This is mostly over dominionism/theocracy and…
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US Theocracy Movement Gets A Boost [1]
Recent decisions by the US Supreme Court intentionally push North America further in the direction of a theocracy. As explained in previous posts in this blog, the current ideal of theocratic government is strongly intertwined with the significant following that dispensationalist theology has gained in the US since the mid-19th century. The USA is an…
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Against Gun Idolatry – David French
David French has written another informed commentary about the gun violence situation in the US, and here we see again the contrast between New Zealand and the American nation, and our different heritages. French sees the key problem as it happens in America today as being one of gun idolatry, and perhaps that is a…
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David French’s Take On Critical Race Theory
Critical Race Theory (CRT) has become the latest conservative evangelical bogeyman in the American church ever since the Trump Administration, whereby a relatively obscure and mostly unknown set of concepts (outside of the legal profession, where it has been taught at academic level for some decades) suddenly attained a very questionable amount of prominence as…
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Megachurch Series [1]
So CCNZ will have a series of posts looking specifically at megachurches, in light of the ongoing controversies. This has included, in NZ where this blog is authored, the leaders of a Wellington based megachurch having stood aside for a period of review in the wake of negative publicity, and subsequently resigning from the church…
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America Stumbles Towards Theocracy
The big news in the USA in the last few weeks has been the possibility of the conservative-dominated Supreme Court repealing current federal abortion law (Roe v Wade). This is far from an open-and-shut case for theologians, despite the widespread support for this direction from conservative evangelicals in the US and worldwide. That’s because the…
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Ecclesiastical Polity: Diversity In Structure & Governance [2] – Episcopal / Presidential / Apostolic Leadership Structure
Carrying on from the first part of this series with a change of title, polity varies a lot between different churches. The early church in the New Testament appears to have had a congregational type of polity. There is not enough detail there to confirm this and there are naturally differing interpretations due to the…
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Recap: Governance and Accountability [3]
So if we take a closer look at megachurch theology it turns out there is, indeed, a specific branch of it as such. That is, there are theologies that are specifically related to megachurches. Much of this comes from a recently deceased gentleman by the name of C Peter Wagner, who was resident for a…
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Recap: Governance and Accountability [2]
Just a short update on this, the issues of church governance and accountability are super relevant at present in the wake of current scandals involving a prominent South Pacific megachurch. Most churches of this type have relatively limited accountability because of their leadership structures, which often place one person at the top as an apostolic…