[OBW]

But you all, including aron, are always busy abusing my fondest notions. But I have found that looking headlong into what used to be an abyss has provided much freedom and changed many of my notions. I'm sure that many of them are still fairly fondly held. But the ones that are beginning to be held most fondly are those that provide room for happy disagreement, for more searching, and for significant change in notion.

A recent post elsewhere by the editor of Rob Bell's Love Wins (a book that takes a very interesting position on Hell — and one that I generally do not agree with) has questioned whether tribalism within evangelicalism is worse than the liberalism that almost takes the Bible as a good guide and Jesus as a worthy mentor. Ultimately, anything that does not confess that Jesus is come in the flesh is worse. But tribalism has been the problem ever since the early counsels. Rather than get together and hash things out, even if it takes centuries, there is a rush to take sides, declare the other wrong, heretical, or even apostate, and then shut them out.

Sounds like the LRC. But it is very heavily the history of Protestantism in general. And the EO/RCC split. I honestly see a lowering of this wall in many quarters. There is hope without declaring that one group is it and demanding that everyone join or die. ("Cake or death!")