{"id":7089,"date":"2006-04-08T09:53:05","date_gmt":"2006-04-08T13:53:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7089"},"modified":"2006-04-08T09:53:05","modified_gmt":"2006-04-08T13:53:05","slug":"this-week-in-god-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/this-week-in-god-13\/","title":{"rendered":"This Week in God"},"content":{"rendered":"

First up from the [tag]God [\/tag]machine this week is a follow-up from last week<\/a>, about a progressive Christian denomination that’s not only having a little trouble reaching<\/a> the public airwaves, but also staking out ground in trying to reclaim [tag]Christianity[\/tag]<\/a> from far-right conservatives.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n

In addition to the examples mentioned above, the UCC is also pushing back against the IRS<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

Next up is the fascinating story of Bart Ehrman<\/a> (thanks to reader E.J. for the tip).
\n<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I saw Ehrman on The Daily Show<\/a> 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<\/a>: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why,” is a surprise best-seller. But this look at Ehrman’s personal approach<\/a> to religion, scholarship, and history, is almost as engaging as his successful book.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> of Phelps earlier this week.<\/p>\n

It’s worth reading, if for no other reason, than to see that Phelps wants<\/i> us to hate him right back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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], […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7089\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}