Radical Rhetoric, Siege Warfare, and Christian Population Density

I had almost forgotten about the provocative articles written by Anthony Bradley and Matthew Lee Anderson about legalism, “radical” rhetoric, and the pitfalls of telling Christians that our Kingdom work just isn’t “edgy” enough. Matt and I tussled over what he wrote then, after many comments I just let it be. At the end of the year, though, they got re-upped as some of the most read and linked posts for their respective sites in 2013. So my “totally committed” friends and I revisited them and found them just as frustratingly incomplete as before. After all (we said to ourselves), aren’t David Platt and Francis Chan simply exegeting Scripture and calling people to obedience? Clearly, however, these posts struck a nerve with many Christians. I now think that Matt and Anthony are more right than I thought at the time—but also more wrong.