Barack Obama has challenged Americans to rise above trite cartoonish conceptions of race. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWe7wTVbLUU[/youtube] The full text of Obama's thought-provoking and impassioned speech can be read here. Are Americans ready for a candidate who dares to challenge them? Are they ready for a candidate who speaks comfortably of the complexities…
Who is the holiest candidate, the one most likely to sit at God’s right hand? We need to know this now, of course, because the religious integrity of the White House is at stake!
I beg you. Let me be the one who cross-examines the GOP candidates on the topic of religion. Why? Because I insist on asking simple questions and I demand simple answers. The disturbing information we already know is just the tip of the iceberg. I promise that I will be relentless and aggressive. I’m ready to roll up my sleeves and get started. No crucifix left unturned! Where do I sign up? There are so many religious issues I would like to explore with the GOP candidates . . .
Let’s start with Mitt Romney. Mitt is working nonstop to convince us how incredibly important his religion is to him, but refusing to acknowledge any of his basic beliefs. Why not, Mitt? Are you afraid that the late night talk shows would tack on a laugh track when you explain the Mormon claim that Jesus walked about and taught American natives almost 2,000 years ago? Or does it embarrass you that the great prophet Joseph Smith, who had 48 wives and stuck his face into a hat in order to interpret sacred writings?
Mitt, if you really believe the things most Mormons claim to believe, why not just tell us? Are you hesitant, perhaps, because reputable archaeologists and anthropologists view the entire Book of Mormon as …
Did you ever notice how evocative moments of silence are? I’m always emotionally moved when the PA announcer asks for a moment. The silence of tens of thousands of people is powerful, indeed. American culture is usually out-of-control cacophonous. If we aren’t yapping with each other, there’s a TV or radio blaring. We are pummeled with noise everywhere we go, including waiting rooms, stores and airports. We even bring our yapping and music to “quiet” places, such as national parks. We just can’t help ourselves. It is getting much too hard to find quiet places anymore. That’s why it’s such a joy to be reminded to shut up, even for a moment, even if once in a while. I also appreciated this simple attempt to remind the crowd to be quiet out of respect for Abraham Lincoln’s accomplishments. Not that this sign worked very well. People still talked, almost as much as ever. Children ran around unrestrained by their parents. People shouted things like, “Hey Bill! Isn’t it about time to go get some hot dogs?”
People have all kinds of hobbies. Some people like to knit. Other people like to collect stamps. I like to go to church while playing the role of “anthropologist.”
When I am thinking about visiting a church, my biggest decision is deciding what church to visit. That was my decision three days ago. I had already been to a stern and humorless evangelical church. The thing I remembered about that church was the scriptural quotation featured on the T-shirts of hundreds of the people attending: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” It was a quote from Proverbs 1:7. I remember thinking “Of all the quotes they could’ve chosen from the Bible, this one is strange indeed. Any good teacher knows that the best students are driven by natural curiosity and a good dose of skepticism, not by fear.”
Back to my task of choosing a church. Last week, I just happened to be in the car listening to a fundamentalist A.M. radio station when I heard neocon talk show host Paul McGuire ranting about a new crop of churches designed for young people, churches that allegedly don’t spend enough time on the Bible but, instead, cater to the social needs of the congregation. Maguire’s rant went on for several minutes, long enough for me to conclude that I simply had to go to one of these new hip churches to see for myself.
As it turns out, one of those new “emerging” churches is located about …
How often do we hear people “explaining” religious beliefs by stating “The Bible says so,” as if the Bible fell out of the sky, pre-translated to English by God Himself? It’s not that simple, according to an impressive and clearly-written book that should be required reading for anyone who claims to know “what the Bible says.”
The 2005 bestseller, Misquoting Jesus, was not written by a raving atheist. Rather, it was written by a fellow who had a born-again experience in high school, then went on to attend the ultraconservative Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. Bart Ehrman didn’t stop there, however. He wanted to become an evangelical voice with credentials that would enable him to teach in secular settings. It was for this reason that he continued his education at Wheaton and, eventually, Princeton, picking up the ability to read the New Testament in its original Greek in the process.
As a result of his disciplined study, Ehrman increasingly questioned the fundamentalist approach that the “Bible is the inerrant Word of God. It contains no mistakes.” Through his studies, Ehrman determined that the Bible was not free of mistakes:
We have only error ridden copies, and the vast majority of these are centuries removed from the originals and different from them, evidently, in thousands of ways.
(Page 7). At Princeton, Ehrman learned that mistakes had been made in the copying of the New Testament over the centuries. Upon realizing this, …