Mainstream vs Traditional

Recently, I have spoken several times about Christians who hold to the traditional faith being thought of as outside the “mainstream.”  We are often portrayed as “odd,” “eccentric,” “wrong-headed,” “extreme,” “bigoted,” or “fringe.”  Most often the insults are subtly delivered.

Religious denominations are spoken of by the “mainstream media” as “mainstream” (meaning progressive or liberal) or “outside the mainstream.”  This places those who are “outside the mainstream” into the same general category as the numerous obscure or strange sects and cults. It is an insult and I believe that it is a form of persecution which seeks to force us to “evolve.”  This is another insult which assumes that we are “cavemen” or “neanderthals.”

Persecution is not always of the “throw them to the lions” sort.  It also exists in the sideways snicker, in the assumption that traditional Christians are “simple” or intellectually inferior, or that we are socially backward, or that we are totally outdated dinosaurs not relevant to the modern world.

AND SADLY … this patronizing and insulting (I say heretical) thought often comes from the “mainstream’ churches and from movements such as the Emerging Church.  Listen to what the Bible clearly says.

“Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.” Jude 1:3.  Jude was Jesus’s brother.

“Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.”  Romans 12:2

“But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.”  Galatians 1:8.  The word which the translators have rendered as “accursed” is, in the Greek, ἀνάθεμα (anathema), from ἀνά (ana), meaning "on", and τίθημι (tithēmi), meaning "I put."  Originally this referred to a gift to God or to the pagan gods.  Echoes of the  Hebrew word "herem" (חרם) referred to something forbidden or off-limits, because it was dedicated for religious use and not useable in the common world. (Numbers 18:14; Leviticus 27:28-29); and hence the idea of “exterminating” or “dead” was connected with the word.  Various translations of the words anathema and herem have included "cursed," "disliked," "loathed," "banned," "excommunicated," "excluded," "denounced," "vehemently rejected," "off limits," and "devoted to evil."

Deuteronomy 7:26 calls a pagan idol a herem. Here it is: “Neither shalt thou bring an abomination into thine house, lest thou be a cursed thing like it: but thou shalt utterly detest it, and thou shalt utterly abhor it; for it is a cursed thing.”