Two books ...

I got these two books on Friday. Both kept me up late. The author of Myth of a Christian Nation is a pastor of an evangelical "mega-church" and when he preached a series of sermons on the title of the book, about 20% of his 5000 members "voted with their feet". But those who remained were grateful to him and the church now is much more heterogeneous racially and economically than it was before (viz., those who left tended to be -- duh -- white, upper class "conservatives"). The church is part of a Baptist denomination that is closer to the Anabaptist, Free church ideals and the author's points of view on issues of church and state reflect that. It was refreshing to me to read someone once again who a) takes the Bible seriously, and b) does not ignore those parts of it that make the evangelical mainstream squirm were they to be read. He says something with which I completely agree (or at least this is what I think I remember him saying), that is that what passes for and uses terminology of evangelical Christianity in the United States today is by and large not Christianity, but a civil religion that has little if any biblical basis, that is not self critical when it comes to the bible, and since it is a civil religion is manipulated easily by the government, the powers of this world. It is this non-Christian religion that permeates our air waves and most of our "evangelical" churches.


The second book, Thy Kingdom Come, I haven't completed yet, but so far I am as excited about it as I was the other. The author has been, among other things, an author for Christianity Today, but he has not allowed himself to be bowled over by the "religious right". Indeed he deliberately calls the "religious right" that rather than the "Christian Right" because, in agreement with the author of the Myth, he sees so much of what passes for evangelical "Christianity" being nothing of the sort. Whereas the Myth book is written in a dialogic or argumentative style -- there are whole paragraphs where the author poses cascading questions to the religious right that can lead the reader to see the inconsistency of that movement with the Bible and the ideals of Jesus -- Thy Kingdom Come seems to be written more from a historical and personal anecdotal point of view. In the first chapter for example the author both tells of his own experiences as a religious correspondent covering the religious right, and gives an enlightening summary of the history of the movement. The "myth" of the founding of the religious right is that it coalesced around Roe v. Wade. This is untrue, the author says, and it is understandable why the leaders of the religious right would not be completely pleased with the truth, which is (documented by the author) that the leaders of the religious right first came together defending the prerogative of Bob Jones University to maintain its segregationist policies (I support today, and I supported it then [decades ago -- I'm an old guy now], the right of Bob Jones U. to pursue this policy, by the way, given its refusal at the time to take federal money. This support was political, however. I think that from a Christian point of view this policy was and is absolutely despicable. Proper Christians should treat the Bob Jones's of this world like Paul said the Corinthians should treat the unrepentant adulterer in their midst -- ban them from the congregation. There should be no question about where the evangelical church stands on issues such as this. Unfortunately there is much question about where the evangelical movement is on this [note G. W. Bush spoke at Bob Jones during his first campaign without hardly a peep from evangelicals] and the evangelical movement is a modern day whore of Babylon). He then shows that abortion only came up as an issue when the religious right leaders had wound down on the Bob Jones issue and were looking for something else to keep their movement going. He has some fascinating early citations from Christianity Today, Bill Graham, and W. A. Criswell, all of whom had very favorable things to say about the Roe V. Wade decision. The point is that these things were said before the religious right and its state handlers managed to make abortion into a political football. My only disappointment was that he doesn't get into the Bible case against the view that the unborn fetus is a full fledged person (yes, this sentence says exactly what I meant it to say), or at least he doesn't do it before page 60 or so which is where I am in the book as I write this.