Tall, tattooed and forthright, can Nadia Bolz-Weber save evangelism?

[hrmjustin]

Andrew Brown



A little over six feet tall, well-muscled and extravagantly tattooed, Nadia Bolz-Weber little resembles the Vicar of Dibley. Also, she recognised the ringtone on my phone, an intricate guitar passage cut from the middle of a 20-minute Grateful Dead improvisation. So of course I liked her. She’s a Lutheran pastor from Denver, Colorado and one of the stars of the younger generation of American evangelicals because she seems to have found a way out of the trenches of the culture wars so she can uphold tradition without being homophobic or nasty.

She has in some respects the classical evangelical salvation story: brought up good, went to the bad, found Jesus once again and turned out – not good, she says, but “so so”. She parodies the hymn Amazing Grace: “It’s not like ‘I once was blind, and now can see’: it’s more like, ‘I once was blind and now I have really bad vision’.” She is an enemy of smugness.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/06/tattooed-nadia-bolz-weber-save-evangelism-christianity

[cantbeserious]

1. Regrettably - Evangelicals Have So Alienated Much Of The Body Politic That Many Are Forever Wary

eom

[hrmjustin]

2. To some extent yes but there are plenty of progressive evangelicals.

I hope the media covers them more.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

3. I like "I once was blind and now I have really bad vision."

That describes most of us, and certainly me.

[hrmjustin]

5. I know what you mean.

[okasha]

4. She's Dobson's worst nightmare.

I like her sense of humor.

[hrmjustin]

6. Agreed! I hope she gets more coverage.

[AtheistCrusader]

7. Interesting speaker.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

8. A great talk

I think I am going to show this one to my pastor, and perhaps see if she could speak to my parish. God knows we could use her message, and some might even be moved by it.

I used to know a Catholic bishop -- alas, now dead -- who would undoubtedly have asked her to preach to his flock. He would have agreed completely with her on matters such as grace, but she put it better than he did.

[cbayer]

9. She is pretty cool.

I think she will definitely draw a following.