First up from the [tag]God [/tag]machine this week is a follow-up from last week, about a progressive Christian denomination that’s not only having a little trouble reaching the public airwaves, but also staking out ground in trying to reclaim [tag]Christianity[/tag] from far-right conservatives.
After years of turning the other cheek, the [tag]United Church of Christ[/tag], among the most liberal of the mainline Protestant denominations, has recently staked out a more pugnacious stance toward the Christian right.
The Rev. John H. Thomas, the denomination’s president, has sharply criticized the Institute for Religion and Democracy, a conservative religious watchdog and advocacy group, for supporting groups within mainline denominations that would further a conservative theological and political perspective. And the church has undertaken new advertising and e-mail campaigns to combat more conservative forces.
I was going to say that the UCC sounds incensed by politically conservative, religious-right-style Christians, but I think a better word is “impatient.” The UCC has seen their faith misused for partisan and ideological ends; the church’s leaders saw a subtle effort to change this dynamic; but discovered things weren’t improving quickly enough. Now, they’re making an assertive effort to take on their rivals and help make a change.
In addition to the examples mentioned above, the UCC is also pushing back against the IRS for what church officials see as a slanted law-enforcement effort in which liberal churches are threatened for alleged political intervention, while conservative churches are not. Good for the UCC.
Next up is the fascinating story of Bart Ehrman (thanks to reader E.J. for the tip).
Bart Ehrman is a sermon, a parable, but of what? He’s a best-selling author, a New Testament expert and perhaps a cautionary tale: the fundamentalist scholar who peered so hard into the origins of Christianity that he lost his faith altogether.
Once he was a seminarian and graduate of the Moody Bible Institute, a pillar of conservative Christianity. Its doctrine states that the Bible “is a divine revelation, the original autographs of which were verbally inspired by the Holy Spirit.”
But after three decades of research into that divine revelation, [tag]Ehrman[/tag] became an agnostic. What he found in the ancient papyri of the scriptorium was not the greatest story ever told, but the crumbling dust of his own faith.
I saw Ehrman on The Daily Show a few weeks ago and found his perspective to be fascinating, but that was before I started reading about his transformation from Biblical literalist/fundamentalist to scholar to agnostic. His book “Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why,” is a surprise best-seller. But this look at Ehrman’s personal approach to religion, scholarship, and history, is almost as engaging as his successful book.
And, finally, I’ll close This Week in God on a down note: funeral protestor Fred Phelps. If you’ve ever wanted to get a better sense of what drives a man to hate gays so much that he’d take pleasure in the deaths of American troops, Knight Ridder ran a thorough and insightful profile of Phelps earlier this week.
It’s worth reading, if for no other reason, than to see that Phelps wants us to hate him right back.