Majestic Protests from a Magisterial Protestant; or, someone needs to harass Don Miller some more, so it might as well be me

Since I wrote that post about Don Miller and his dislike for church, I’ve received messages from several different people asking me to clarify my positions, give them more thoughts on Miller, and even (awesomely) absolve them for skipping church. (I don’t know what to say to that last one, except I’m not His Holiness the Parson.)

Donald Miller Left Me Standing at the Altar, in More Ways Than One

[NOTE: If you’d rather read something less squishy and more concrete, or less Lutheran and more Reformed, my total-BFF-who-I-just-met, Derek Rishmawy, has a great piece over at Christ and Pop Culture.]

In addition to being a blogger, memoirist, and in-demand speaker, Don Miller is also known for being hungry like the wolf.

Oh, Don Miller. You used to be cool.

I admit it. Like pretty much every Christian my age, I had a torrid love affair with Blue Like Jazz (the book, not the movie, but also kind of the movie). What can I say? Jazz is to us post-evangelicals what Atlas Shrugged is to libertarians, or what The Lord of the Rings is to hippies, or what Martha Stewart Living is to really terrible people.

But now I kind of want to take it all back.

Hey Guys, I’m a Young Person and I Have Opinions (Rachel Held Evans, Millennials, Etc.)

→ Why are Millennials leaving the Evangelical Church?

Most bloggers can only wish they were this photogenic.

It’s a question the mainstream press can’t resist because it’s (a) immediate, (b) controversial, and (c) really dumbed-down. In any case, Rachel Held Evans — the de facto voice of post-Evangelicals — has a piece up on CNN about the question as we speak (you’ve probably seen it; at this point every single Facebook friend you have has probably shared it). The basic premise? They’re leaving because Jesus isn’t there.

You can read it if you want; it’s worth the time. Then if you feel like it, you can read this really, really thorough takedown by Alastair Roberts; and I also highly recommend this criticism of its tone from my close, personal friend Jake Meador over at Mere Orthodoxy.

But for me? I just can’t get over the question, let alone the answer.

Open Communion; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Body

My eucharistic preference has always been for an open table, and I maintain that position, even though my current membership is with the Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod, a denomination known for excluding non-Lutherans from its Communion fellowship (though my current congregation actually maintains a mostly-open table).

My reasoning for this is simple. I believe in the universality of the Christian Church, and I will die defending its invisible unity long before I die defending my beloved Augsburg or Westminster Confessions. There’s no shortage of Christian sects in the world claiming to be the “True Church,” but Christ himself sets the bar shockingly low for being a “True Christian”: