A new day at GU - Gospel Union - A blog about Christian faith and unity

Welcome to the new Gospel Union, which was moved from my family website onto its own site here at kevinmharper.com. After abandoning the Blogger platform years ago and moving my posts to the family site, I stopped adding new articles for quite a long time. Partly due to the busy-ness of life and partly due to a long period of reflection on where I’d come from spiritually and where I was going, that break now represents a pretty important chapter in my thinking.

The content up to that point had been mostly about recording my own ascent out of a legalistic mindset; one that valued strict adherence to my opinions about the Bible over adherence to the Bible itself. There is a subtle difference. The hiatus from writing about these subjects served to solidify some of the ideas in my mind, submitting them to the useful refinery of practical experience. There is no better way to mature a set of ideas than to try them.

I think this old content may have some value to some people, so I’ll leave it relatively untouched as a memento of those days; but I think the mission of Gospel Union – promoting peace and unity among believers for the furthering of the Kingdom – is worth carrying on, with some new themes as well as (hopefully) some matured perspectives on older ones.

With that, I’ll leave you wondering where I’ll be going next with the subject matter. I’m not sure I have it all figured out; but I hope you’ll subscribe and come along for the ride.

1 Comment to “A new day at GU”

Santha Kumar says :

August 15, 2012 at 9:17 pm

Very good site

Barton Stone - "I blush for my fellows who hold up the Bible as the bond of union, yet make their opinions of it a test of fellowship; who plead for union of all Christians, yet refuse to fellowship with such as dissent from their notions. Vain men! Their zeal is not according to knowledge, nor is their spirit that of Christ. Such antisectarian-sectarians are doing more mischief to the cause and advancement of truth, the unity of Christians, and the salvation of the world, than all the skeptics in the world. In fact, they create skeptics."

Alexander Campbell - "We will not hearken to those questions which gender strife, nor discuss them at all. If a person says such is his private opinion, let him have it as his private opinion; but lay no stress upon it; and if it be a wrong private opinion, it will die a natural death much sooner than if you attempt to kill it."

Alexander Campbell - "But men cannot give up their opinions, and therefore, they can never unite, says one. We do not ask them to give up their opinions--we ask them only not to impose them upon others. Let them hold their opinions, but let them hold them as private property. The faith is public property; opinions are, and always have been private property. Men have foolishly attempted to make the deductions of some great minds the common measure of all Christians. Hence the deductions of a Luther, and a Calvin, and a Wesley, have been the rule and measure of all who coalesce under the names of these leaders. It is cruel to excommunicate a man because of the imbecility of his intellect."

Alexander Campbell - "Dear sir, this plan of making our own nest, and fluttering over our own brood; of building our own tent, and of confining all goodness and grace to our noble selves and the "elect few" who are like us, is the quintessence of sublimated pharisaism. The old Pharisees were but babes in comparison to the modern: and the longer I live, and the more I reflect upon God and man--heaven and earth--the Bible and the world--the Redeemer and his church--the more I am assured that all sectarianism is the offspring of hell; and that all differences about words, and names, and opinions, hatched in Egypt, or Rome, or Edinburgh, are like the frolics of drunken men; and that where there is a new creature, or a society of them, with all their imperfections and frailties, and errors in sentiment, in views, and opinions, they ought to receive one another, and the strong to support the weak, and not to please themselves. To lock ourselves up in the bandbox of our own little circle; to associate with a few units, tens, or hundreds, as the pure church, as the elect, is real Protestant monkery, it is evangelical pharisaism."

Alexander Campbell - "I have tried the pharisaic plan, and the monastic. I was once so straight, that, like the Indian's tree, I leaned a little the other way. And however much I may be slandered now as seeking "popularity" or a popular course, I have to rejoice that to my own satisfaction, as well as to others, I proved that truth, and not popularity, was my object; for I was once so strict a Separatist that I would neither pray nor sing praises with any one who was not as perfect as I supposed myself. In this most unpopular course I persisted until I discovered the mistake, and saw that on the principle embraced in my conduct, there never could be a congregation or church upon the earth."

Alexander Campbell - "I have no idea of adding to the catalogue of new sects. I labor to see sectarianism abolished and all Christians of every name united upon the one foundation upon which the apostolic church was founded."

1 Comment to “A new day at GU”

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