Today’s Philadelphia Inquirer features an op-ed piece entitled “Conservative Christianity wanes in a shift to center” by Adam Hamilton, senior pastor of the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas.  Read it in its entirety here.

Hamilton is interested primarily in what he regards as a decline in political influence by conservative Christianity.  However, the lead example in his argument certainly took me by surprise:

One of the most obvious signs of this is the change in political fortunes for conservatives, but I see it anecdotally in many other places as well. At one of the leading conservative seminaries in the United States, students question the doctrine of inerrancy (while the school continues to officially embrace it).

This sound bite characterizing the division at Westminster isn’t precisely accurate, but his application of the seminary’s crisis to his thesis is a stunning reminder of the ripple effect.  It’s already being interpreted in ways that the participants would hardly recognize.  It’s ironic that for all the theological richness housed within the walls of today’s Westminster, its relevance to the secular world is not about the way in which it drives the gospel forward, but its utility as a harbinger of changes to the American political scene.