Some of you may remember the dialogs between Pastor Tim Harlow of Parkview Christian Church and Hemant Mehta, the ebay atheist, last June.
Yesterday Hemant posted some follow-up comments on his blog. Hemant notes:
Hadyn Shaw, a preaching pastor at the church, wrote this response (PDF) to some of the questions I had raised during that weekend’s sermons.
Hemant then goes on to respond to Haydn’s written response at some length on his blog. You don’t need to have heard the original dialogs to follow Hadyn’s PDF and Hemant’s blog entry. But if you’d like to listen to them you can download them here
Posted in A Cacophony of Posts, Ir (Helen) | Comments OffThis booklet (current version) was written by Pastor Tim Harlow for parents to give to their childrens’ teachers. Here’s an excerpt from the introduction:
as a teacher, you are bound to teach evolution. That is not your fault: it is simply the reality and I do understand that fact. I just want to try to keep you open to the idea that my child, and probably most children in your classroom, do not believe that “theory.” I am asking you to teach (or continue to teach) evolution as just that - a “theory,” and keep your classroom open to other theories of the origin of the world.
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Earlier this year , Hemant Mehta reviewed a service at Willow Creek Community Church, and in early October I attended a small groups conference at Willow. The speaker for one of the sessions was Randy Frazee, the man who was speaking the day Hemant did his survey. His topic was how the church needs to understand people who don’t go to church if we ever want to connect with them and he opened with a ‘man on the street interview’ they had put together with Hemant. I already knew the story, of course, yet found it interesting that Willow would use Hemant, an atheist, to teach Christians at a large conference with church leaders from around the country. Frankly, I was curious how it would be received, and it was received very well. (As a side note, I already had coffee scheduled with Ir that afternoon, so this provided a great ‘get-to-know-you’ topic for us!)
Hemant later did a survey on Parkview Christian Church and consented to a series of interviews with them. I’ve seen the first one, and I found it very, very interesting. Here are some blog entries related to those interviews.
It’s been very helpful to me to see examples like these of how churches have given atheists a voice. In a recent discussion here at eBay atheist, I asked for your help in working with my church to set up opportunities for Christians and atheists to talk to each other.