Disgusting how the PI coddles hate mongers like Driscoll. Disgusting.

how can they let anti-feminism run unchecked like that?

Dunno, Dan. Anybody seen Larry Craig in town this week?

Ugh.

I used to think "Seattle's Only Newspaper" was a Stranger-Brand™ joke--but it looks to me now like unqualified understatement.

Did the P-I just print recycled Mars Hill press releases? I kept waiting for the writer to question the assertions he repeated, but no luck.

BTW, when Saul goes to Mars Hill to debate the Athenians, he gets his butt kicked. Hard. Even the Bible admits the Greek philosphers laughed at his incoherent theology.

As you know Dan I am a Christian, much to the horror of many sloggies around here. You also know I LOVE " YOU" TO PIECES!

The PI is nuts and I have never understood why people think Driscoll is so cool and contemporary. He is anything but that. He makes my hair stand on end and he's probably more conservative than the most conservative Christian I have ever come into contact with.
He has an erroneous teaching about women and believes they should just stay home and have babies. He wrote a whole book about it that I have used in our schools to show why he misses it so completely. He’s a complete jerk!
He is complexly backwards and there is NOTHING COOL about him. I just don’t get why young people like him so much.
In my opinion the guy is a male chauvinist nut job.
Everything he says Paul wrote in the new testament about women is completely misinterpreted by him. He is totally wrong.
I'm on a rant and none of you care much about this guy or what Paul said so I will shut up but Come On why does the PI act like he’s some cool contemporary, progressive guy? He is complexly backwards. Oh... and did I mention he really pisses me off.... : )

Ya, Mr. Poe I know you hate ALL CHRISTIANS!

It really just is a recycled press release. Yikes.

"It seems that it is what many are looking for, even in Seattle"

Really? Says who?

(mj- I wish more Christians were like you. I have good friends in MN that are Lutherans aned awesome people, too, but all the Calvanist "I'm not o.k., you're not o.k." churches seem pretty unpleasant)

I'm going to say this preemptively:

Rejection of intolerance does not equal intolerance

Thank you Big Sven and...

I meant to say completely backwards not complexly backwards... Sorry Di, Duh, Doy Dummy Me : )

Quit being such a prissy fag and write your own Mars Hill hit piece. Why should you expect someone else to do your dirty work?

Couple of years ago I actually went to a Mars Hill service with my then-gf (who incidently is no longer religious) just to give her company. I was pretty surprised by what I heard there, I mean this was supposed to be a progressive church? I'd never heard so much hateful,militant, right-wing bullshit in my life. I couldn't believe how packed the place was, it just made me sick to think that people were eating it up.

The dude is a straight up Calvinist. That is so weird. If it's all predestined then why give a fuck?

Also: microbrews are fighting against the tide of feminism! Really:

http://www.marshillchurch.org/content/alcohol

Religion is not for morons. When you try to take something as complex as the Bible and dumb it down into a 'simple message' that everyone can get immediately, one of two things happens. You either get inoffensive, milquetoast theology (see: every failing liberal-mainline church on the West Coast) or you get fascism (see: Mars Hill, City Church, Generation Church, etc.) Sorry, kids, but Jesus is not going to spoon-feed you.

Religion in the 21st Century is, in fact, *only* for morons. If you "believe", great, go ahead, but organized religion has been and continues to be the source of many of this planet's great conflicts.

Churches like Mars Hill are dangerous and predatory.

I'm looking forward to when the UW Young Republicans have Christian facism awareness week so this will brought to light. They're having that, right? Cause they're fair and balanced?

Voodoo for the Vulnerable.

@ 14 Wow, what an original slog thought!
Christians are morons but it's great if you believe....
Never seen that here at Slog.

@12 - LOL. Nice discovery there.

The marriage of Christianity and feminism helped to create a dry nation that put out of business all but the largest brewers who were able to survive on near beer and root beer which explains why today American beer is largely mass produced, watered down, light on calories, and feminine in comparison to rich and dark European beers.

Aw, man. Now I won't be able to enjoy a good Fat Tire without thinking about the Marc fucking Driscoll's ugly mug looking over my shoulder and nodding. Sigh. (And Bud Light is crappy, sure, but "feminine"?)

wait a sec,

staying out all night, poverty, loudness and laughter are sins?
uh, right you are, no talent ass clown.

wait a sec,

staying out all night, poverty, loudness and laughter are sins?
uh, right you are, no talent ass clown.

@12, Did that really say that feminism is responsible for Bud Light's existence? And female preachers are responsible for prohibition?

I'm in awe of their spin job. And the person who wrote that loves alcohol a little too much (so do I, it takes one to know one).

I guess I thought we didn't get female preachers until the 70s, and prohibition was long gone by then. I could do some research on history, but I'm not going to.

"For a generation or more, young women in America have received overdue social support for their ambitions and achievements. The same cannot be said for young men." Really. Well, I'd trade this so-called outpouring of "social support" for EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK anyday. What a bunch of crap.

There's quite a living to be made in telling people who are failures who they can blame for their failures.

MJ @6: Not all of us Sloggers, even newbies like me, hate Christians. I can't speak for Mr Poe or anyone else, but there are a lot of us out there who understand Christianity in a completely different way from the evangelical flock at Mars Hill and similar churches.

It seems to me that the message of Christianity is to love your neighbor as yourself. If boiling down the message of the Law and the Prophets to that one simple truth makes me a milquetoast main line liberal (Greg @ 13), then fine, I am proud of that label. I belong to a Capitol Hill congregation that excludes no one, stands for peace and helps our homeless and other marginalized neighbors without asking anything from them in return. Members are not spoon fed easy answers but encouraged to ask questions and think for ourselves about what being a follower of Jesus actually means. That will mean, of course, different things to different people, and that's completely OK. What Jesus taught about how we should treat others is more important than believing certain things about who he was and where he came from.

I have been disturbed for many years by the substitution of right wing politics for Christianity by the evangelicals. I know where I speak; I graduated from a well known evangelical seminary in 1988 after having done my undergraduate work at a small red state Bible college. Two decades later I work in a completely unrelated field. The fact that I have not completely abandoned the church is a miracle on the order of loaves and fishes and is only possible because I have found churches like my present one and the one I belonged to back in my pre-Seattle home. Evangelicals may dismiss me as a moral degenerate because I vote for Democrats. That is their right. But they have turned more people off to religion than a busload full of ACLU lawyers.

Finally MJ, I echo Big Sven's post @ 7. You appear enthusiastic about your faith but bright enough to ask the right questions. I encourage you to continue and genuinely wish you the best.

Good for them. The bigger Mars Hill gets, the more chances for public humiliation due to corruption and fraud from within the ranks. Bring on the bloat!

Religion is for the week minded folk out there who have the same tendancy that children have to believe in the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus.

I am sorry to say that but as Carl Sagan said of god "Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof" and that is something that the religous folk have failed to provide. And a step further, the arugument they use for the existance of god is the lack of any proof of god's existance. (See Thomas Aquinas)

@26 Just Me.... It's weak minded...
I'm nobody to correct spelling but if you're going to call somebody like me weak minded I thought I would take a weak jab at you.
Next week I will be nicer darling ; )

BTY Good job organizing that protest. I was proud of you, for reals no sarcasm involved : ) You did a good job!
Oh, and you're not invisible!

Driscoll is simply a standard Calvinist (with all the horrors that implies). I recently read an article where he describes his conversion(?) to that theology (which is getting more popular among younger evangelicals, believe it or not). Don't be surprised, it offers the sort of dogmatic certainty so many young folks long for.
As to Driscoll not really being "cool", it's the inherent danger of all these youth-oriented churches. They put on an appearance (rock music, tatooes, Doc Martens, etc.) but what's under the surface can be stuff that would gladden the heart of Jim Dobson. Ya gotta look under the window dressing.

Do not think Mark Driscoll is a passing phase. I was out running near his church in Wedgewood on 95th and 35th this morning and the place looked packed with a crowd of 25-35 year old people (oddly, the majority were all white).

This Mars Hill just be the real life version of "Mars Attacks!" except no Jack Nicholson.

For the anti-christian movement: Actions speak louder than words, there would not be so much hate for christians if so many of them did not commit such atrocities. Every action like that fuels even more of us to fight against them. It was not bad enough that their leaders started the Inquisition, Holocaust, Witch Trials, KKK, etc. but that they also shove their beliefs, not their existance but their belief system, in our faces every chance they get. Hallow's Eve is the closest to a national holiday that is NOT completely bastardized by christians, and the only one which businesses do anything for. Then, to add insult to injury, when they try to talk about it and we politely (at first) say we are not interested they push it, asking why and how they can change our minds. If the few who are good want to stop us from hating them, then stop the majority from doing so much evil.

As for the beer thing, alcohol is bad, and most people who drink drive. Most hit and runs are caused by this. So ... if they are using beer as an argument it just proves how evil they are.

@30: This may surprise you, but Christianity isn't the source of all evil in the world. Humans are.

Religious movements such as the one featured in this article, whether they are Christian or not, have for thousands of years been the root of misguided attempts to make the world conform to their own misguided beliefs; this might not be so bad except for the unfortunate tendency of adherents to believe in a life after death, which effectively cheapens life and imposes a false morality upon the hordes who are so desparate to believe in something rather than figure it out for themselves.