Brendan Kiley profiles Seattle's Mars Hill Church, which has "molded a doctrine based on manliness, sexual purity, and submission to authority: wives to husbands, husbands to pastors, and everyone to God." In a later blog post, Kiley contemplates the extreme disciplinary actions Mars Hill takes against church members who sin:
Lance, one of the sources for this week's story, said he first fell in love with Mars Hill Church when he heard Driscoll preach a sermon on how religion won't save you. He preached that one's relationship with God, not one's relationship with a church, is what will save you. I can roll with that. If there was one thing I liked about those Bible-slinging Southerners, it was their deep understanding that church and faith communities are important, but no earthly power can come between a person and God. That's the principle saints and martyrs died for, wasn't it? It's what Christ (if we are to believe the Bible) died for—to demonstrate that the state (Rome) and the self-anointed religious class (the Pharisees) were not the ultimate arbiters between individuals and the divine.
But Mars Hill's increasingly legalistic practices, which privilege loyalty to the earthly church above all other things, works against that exact message.
The Dish 