Lisa Miller, writing in Newsweek, seems pleased with Adam Hamilton and uses him as an example of how evangelicals are getting over their hangup with abortion. Miller, in fact, calls Hamilton an evangelical and, as far as I know, it may be a term the Reverend uses himself.
The reporter links Hamilton to Oral Roberts University and the politically-correct social causes that have captured the interests of such clergymen as Rick Warren. But she doesn't bother to mention that the "evangelical megachurch in Kanas" that Hamilton pastors is United Methodist, perhaps the most extreme of liberal mainline denominations.
When you so stretch the term "evangelical" to include ministers who deny the authority of Scripture and the miracles of Jesus while condoning abortion, homosexuality, embryonic stem cell research, indiscriminate sex education, and so on...well, then the term is absolutely worthless in meaning.
But yet very useful in helping realign the cultural and political landscape.
Hamilton, not surprisingly, has written a book to promote this enlightened approach to...uh, apostasy. And, unaware of the irony, he has titled it Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White. The irony, of course, is that God has revealed His will in black and white; that is, His laws are absolute, immutable, eternal and authoritative to the max. Yet arrogant clergymen like Hamilton reject these laws and instead invent their own. They "see" what isn't there.
They do so, as the Bible clearly and repeatedly warns, at the peril of their soul. And because they have used the cover of religion to publicly proclaim their perfidy, their judgment is heavier still.
Lisa Miller quotes Hamilton as saying that his job as a Christian minister is "to support people no matter what decision they make."
What a tragic example of the blind leading the blind.
