From the July/August, 2003 issue of *Touchstone*

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Gillis J. Harp on Seeker Sensitivity & Cultural Captivity

Recently, I came across a booklet produced by a nearby congregation popular with some of my students. Inside the back cover are printed its “Founding Principles”:

First, every person deserves the right to hear the true story about Jesus Christ.

It’s a sin to bore people with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

You have to earn the right to be heard.

The logic behind the principles, and the “seeker sensitive” movement of which this church is a part, is persuasive on one level. If the unchurched are put off by the trappings . . .

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Gillis J. Harp is Professor of History at Grove City College in Pennsylvania and the author of Brahmin Prophet: Phillips Brooks & the Path of Liberal Protestantism (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003). He and his family worship at Grace Anglican Church in Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania.

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