Word Changers

It's that time of year again. The flowers start to bloom, schools close for a week, thunderstorms roll through and the church changes words.

Remember when we were Christians, then we became protestants, then we become evangelicals. We then fought the Catholics for sole control of the term Christian. We even used the phrase "personal relationship with Jesus Christ," to as a self affixed attribute. We were Christians but I had a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. A new movement is growing which is substituting Christian for Christ follower, to be honest they have replaced both Christian and personal relationship with the Christ follower. The movement is driven by some well made and often funny videos like the one here:



No matter how funny the videos are and how well the stereotype of the Christian fits I cringe every time I hear someone proudly exclaim they are a Christ follower. There are a few reasons this phrase and movement bother me.

1) According to Dinesh D'Souza (author of What's So Great About Christianity) non-Christians often point to the sins of Christianity (the crusades, the Inquisition, etc) as a way to discredit Christianity. In a very simple the change from Christian to Christ follower is ceding the point to non-Christians. Part of the name change is an attempt to disconnect from the past shortcomings associated with church history. By separating from the past the Christ followers give up the ability to connect with the hero's of the faith Like Bonhoeffer and St. Teresa. Many Christ followers attempt to stay connected to the positive aspects of history and dismiss the negative aspects, this simple doesn't work and creates imbalance and hypocrisy. More importantly a name change doesn't change anything about the past and creates a cover-up where forgiveness should be sought.

2) Christ followers are another attempt to capture social relevance and like most predecessors are doing so at the expense of It creates social relevance and the expense of Biblical significance. They are saying that they know better than 2000 years of thought and devotion and are attempting to persuade a society with relevance instead of allowing the Holy Spirit to work.

3) The insinuation in the video series is insulting and marginalizing to the stereotyped Christians. The video is easily taken as an insult to those who refer to themselves as Christians since it portrays those who refer to themselves as Christian as insincere, uncaring and hostile. The sum of the connotations calls makes you think that the Christ followers doubts the sincerity of the Christians salvation. That being said it is only a matter of time until the Christ followers begin to question the salvation of the Christians.

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I'm undecided but I think the moniker Christ follower does deeper damage to theology:

4) It is another step away from Trinitarian Theology. In it's essence the moniker is a creed stating a persons dedication to second person of the trinity, while the creed is simple it leaves out the other two persons of the trinity. I don't think this omission is intentional and I do think it is done for the sake of brevity, it is the symptom of a more widespread departure from Trinitarianism.

5) The moniker marginalizes the deity of Christ. I think this is a problem of language and interpretation but the phrase "I'm a Christ follower," brings images of a sports fan to my mind, "I'm an Ohio State Football Follower." When this image comes to mind it drags down the deity of Christ and brings him completely to the human realm. Like the departure from Trinitarian theology this is symptom of a growing belief.