Campus Crusade for Christ drops 'Christ'

(USAToday) The global evangelical para-church Campus Crusade for Christ is changing it's name to 'Cru."

The main idea -- according to a look at the change at Christianity Today -- is to evade the problematic word "crusade" and the passe term "campus" (which the massive group known for the Jesus Film, books, tracts and more has long outgrown) and face up to the fact that many of its branches already use different names.

But is Christ now "He who cannot be named," so to speak?

Here's what the soon-to-be-Cru site says:

We were not trying to eliminate the word Christ from our name. We were looking for a name that would most effectively serve our mission and help us take the gospel to the world. Our mission has not changed. Cru enables us to have discussions about Christ with people who might initially be turned off by a more overtly Christian name. We believe that our interaction and our communication with the world will be what ultimately honors and glorifies Christ.

Christianity Today spoke to the leader of the re-branding, Steve Sellers, the CCCI vice president and U.S. national director, who explained that "Crusade"

...has become a flash word for a lot of people. It harkens back to other periods of time and has a negative connotation for lots of people across the world, especially in the Middle East.

And it turns out that "Campus" had become passe. The web site touts that the movement launched by Bill and Vonette Bright as a campus ministry in 1951 is now on 1,029 campuses. The group claims 37,900 new souls for Christ over the last five years.(Read more)

Comment: A social/seeker friendly gospel leads to universalism. Its form of liberalism has a goal to act on the part of Fabian Socialism. "Father of the Social Gospel," Walter Rauschenbusch (1861-1918), was a Socialist. The views of the Social Gospel movement were given formal expression in 1908 by the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, now known as the National Council of Churches. Their social gospel is responsible, in part, for the undoing of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Listen to Brannon Howse broadcast and his comments about the recent development.