Greg Boyd to speak at Luther

Tomorrow and Wednesday, February 11th, Greg Boyd will deliver the Aus lectures at Luther. I have to admit to not being all that excited (past history with Piper and Macdonald as lecturers has kind of turned me off), but Chris Scharen renewed my interest with his invite to our shared discipleship group:

... the speaker this year, Dr. Greg Boyd, is worth some interest on all of our parts so we’d like to encourage you to go. Dr. Boyd preached a dynamic and brave sermon series in the early part of this decade making the case for the separation of evangelical Christianity and the Republican party’s policies. As a result of his sermons he lost nearly thousands of members from his large congregation but he stuck by his position and dealt with the losses. He has a PhD in theology from Princeton and has lead the large St. Paul church, Woodland Hills.

Here is an excerpt from his Wikipedia article:

In a New York Times profile in July 2006, Boyd said he had lost 20% of his congregation because he refused to lend his support publicly to conservative political causes. In his view, the 'Kingdom of God' always looks like Jesus Christ, and therefore cannot be associated with any particular political or nationalistic ideology. The congregational loss, as well as his view, stem from a 2003 sermon series that he spoke called "The Cross and the Sword." In the same vein, he authored the book The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power Is Destroying the Church (2006). Among other things, in this book he argues that a commitment to non-violence and to loving one's enemies lies at the heart of the teachings of Jesus. This was recently re-echoed in a June 2008 sermon titled "Rich Towards God."

For more on his views, read this.

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