In the last chapter of the book, Boyd’s pacifism comes out in full force, and he argues for it by answering the most common questions he receives whenever he addresses the themes of this book. Although many things could be said about all this, I want to limit myself to two. First, the way Boyd …
The Dry Hole of Secular Leftism
As we continue our way through Greg Boyd’s The Myth of a Christian Nation, the internal tensions and incoherencies continue to mount. The longer he goes, the more specific he must become, and as he becomes more specific he sees contradictions where there are none, and suggests contradictory sentiments to us, even in the same …
Judgmental Non-Judgmentalism
In the next chapter, Boyd’s tendency to hydroplane on various evangelical cliches catches up with him. His central argument is that evangelical Christians have the beam in their eye, and hence are in no position to be “moral guardians” for the rest of the country. There’s a lot to that argument, actually, but the problem …
Knocking Down Walls for No Reason
I do not mean this as a backhanded slap at all. In his next chapter, “The Myth of a Christian Nation,” Boyd says many worthwhile and important things. He talks about the importance of prayer as social activism, and he emphasizes rightly that a power under approach can be used by God to accomplish great …
The Bronzed Nerve
Chapter Five is “Taking America Back for God,” and Boyd begins by describing a worship service that he attended around the time of the First Gulf War, one that sounds every bit as appalling as Boyd describes. “The video closed with a scene of a silhouette of three crosses on a hill with an American …
Smiting the Saracen
My engagement with Boyd’s next chapter — “From Resident Aliens to Conquering Warlords” — rests on the criticisms offered thus far, and consists of two basic points. In this chapter, Boyd’s commitment to “Christianity” in Leithart’s sense becomes highly visible. His criticism of the compromise the Church has fallen into consists of his rejection of …
Whacking the Nations With Nerf Rods
Boyd’s third chapter is on “Keeping the Kingdom Holy.” The wrong note is struck right at the beginning with a quotation from Bonhoeffer, who says “Jesus concerns Himself hardly at all with the solution to worldly problems . . .” (p. 51). Hardly at all? How could a mission to save the world not involve …
Still Shunning the Centurions
In his second chapter, Boyd discusses the Kingdom of the Cross, setting it in stark contrast to the Kingdom of the Sword, which he addressed in the first chapter. If I were to critique his argument in a phrase, it would be with the phrase false alternatives. Quoting Rosser and Yoder, Boyd says that the …
Leaving Out Normandy
Boyd’s first chapter, “The Kingdom of the Sword,” actually had quite a few good observations in it. He was very good in describing the way vengeance escalates, and how a particular civil order can confuse itself with the kingdom of God, and how Jesus told His followers that they were not supposed to function the …
Decorating Camels
I have begun to work my way through Gregory Boyd’s book, The Myth of a Christian Nation. This is not something I would ordinarily do unless I had some higher, selfless, and altruistic reason for it, that reason being an opportunity to fisk it here. So, here we go. The Introduction tells how the book …