Don’t Cast the First Stone!
We often forget that our rich tradition as evangelical Protestants has some “dirty laundry” and blind spots. For example: Martin Luther’s intensely disliked Jews and wrote essays against them that were resurrected and used by the Nazis. He also advised the German nobles to slaughter the rebelling peasants without mercy. Ulrich Zwingli condoned the torture and drowning of Anabaptists—some of them his own former students—because they believed in baptism by immersion. Jonathan Edwards and George Whitfield were slaveholders. African-American believers in our church have questioned me if they were really Christian! The great outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Asuza Street (1906) in Los Angeles split terribly over race, resulting in black and white churches throughout America for decades. Many leaders of the Protestant Missionary Movement, along with a number of contemporary Evangelical leaders, failed in their marriage and family life. John Wesley, for example, couldn’t live with his wife; his marriage was, by. Read more.