If You’re Willing to Look . . .

. . . you can find online some funny, penetrating critiques of Christianity from thoughtful atheists and agnostics.  Some of the best blogs include the following:

(Some of these are R-rated.)

• Bruce Droppings— Bruce Gerencser is a former fundamentalist preacher turned agnostic.  His blog features biting commentary of fundamentalist Christianity.  He’s also managed to bring together a lively community of people who comment regularly on his posts.
• Unreasonable Faith— maintained by Daniel Florien, a former evangelical Christian.  Daniel turns a critical eye to Christianity and other religions, and also writes about skepticism and science.  He accepts well-written essays if you’re inclined to contribute.
• Forever in Hell— Anonymous blogger invites readers to think more rationally.  She provides thoughtful posts on politics, being atheist in a very religious society, and Christian doctrine.
• Ex-Minister’s Blog—maintained by four former ministers.  Christian doctrine, the Bible, and conservative ideologies are dissected in a variety of well-written articles.
• Friendly Atheist—Hemant Mehta’s blog is exactly what its title suggests, a friendly place for atheists and believers to better understand each other.  Several authors, including a seminary student, regularly contribute articles.

There are also some good series on YouTube, such as Some Grey Bloke.  The Grey Bloke’s interests go beyond Christianity, but he often delivers some funny observations of Christian doctrine and practice.  Here’s is one of my favorites:

The Thinking Atheist takes a more blunt approach, but he provides a worthwhile perspective.  The Story of Suzie pulls no punches:

Are you like Suzie?

Non Stamp Collector finds little of value in the Bible, and gives us more than a few ideas to chew on.  One of his best contributions is What Would Jesus NOT Do?

For my Christian friends, I hope you recall 1 Peter 3:15.  Peter’s readers were suffering under an abuse of power, and while you’re probably not, his advice is still helpful.  It’s important for Christians to engage our atheists and agnostic friends with gentleness and respect.  It’s equally important to understand their perspective and appreciate their questions and criticisms.  After all, they make very good points.  In each of these sources you’ll find a great deal of challenging material, along with excellent critiques that deserve good responses.  Don’t be afraid to look.

Scary “Christians”

This is scary.  Religious fundamentalism is probably the most serious threat to our republic, because, in the end, the most extreme Fundamentalists simply don’t care about your rights.  To them, the only “right” you have is the right to be trampled by the Special Few who know God better than anyone else, and who know better than all of us how the government should function.

Even though there are many points of disagreement among mainstream Christian groups, the essence of ordinary Christianity is the voluntary, individual commitment to follow the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.  Authentic Christianity, by definition, is never forced on anyone.  Although Christianity has a long history of government entanglement, we’ve learned the hard way that when government and religion are combined our liberty is compromised rather than enhanced.  That’s why we have the establishment clause in the First Amendment.

Perhaps it comforts you to believe the people serving in government share your religious beliefs, and endorse the doctrines of your faith.   Perhaps you believe those are the only people who should serve in government. But true religious liberty allows all faiths, including atheists and agnostics, the opportunity to participate in government. The right to vote, hold office, and make your voice heard should not be dependent on whether you attend church or on what that church teaches.

The kind of Fundamentalism Maddow is exposing seems to be unique.  It’s difficult to tell if it springs from genuine religious conviction or from a thirst for power and a willingness to use religion to get it.  Probably both.  But I don’t believe all Christian fundamentalists are interested in establishing a fascist state in America.  I think the great majority of conservative Christians sincerely believe that eventually they will simply peacefully convince everyone else that their religious and political viewpoints are better for the nation.  But it appears some fundamentalists are pursuing an apocalyptic takeover of the United States, and I think more than a few of them would happily sacrifice constitutional democracy to create the kind of state they envision—which, above all else, is a state they alone can control.

In Matthew 10:16, Jesus says “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.”  He wasn’t talking about political participation in a democratic society, and I suppose his audience could not have easily comprehended such a concept.  Nevertheless, these words have relevance for us today.  We are among the wolves.  Many of those who serve in government do so with their own interests in mind, and work more to secure their position and power than to do any good for the rest of us.  Some of them are interested in wiping America’s religious landscape clean of any dissenting, non-Christian voice (under their definition of Christianity), uniting government and religion in such a way that it secures for them permanent political power.  The challenge for modern Christians is to confront these charlatans in a way that diminishes their power and thwarts their efforts, but not in a such a way that replaces them with ourselves, or that sacrifices the ability of ordinary Christians to serve in government.

Jesus did not come to this world to provide a way for the Elect to take over the governments of this planet.  Their efforts to do so should be combated at every level.  In part, Jesus came to set people free from the tyranny of religious systems that encircle every aspect of their daily lives, controlling how they speak, think, and act from moment to moment.  He came to bring the core principles of the Jewish faith and concept of God to the entire world, and to share with the entire world the salvation God had provided to the Jews at Mount Sinai.  He did not come to make the rich richer and powerful more powerful.  He did not come so the outcasts would be pushed even farther away.  He did not come so that the Special Few could tell the rest of us how to run our lives.  So let us not unwittingly support an effort to recreate the very tryanny he overthrew.

HT: Mainstream Baptist

Seriously, Are You Going to Hell?

Before you answer, consider this.  In the comment stream of a popular Baptist blog, we find this extraordinary assertion:

A faulty view of the atonement equals eternity in hell.

“View of the atonement” refers to your particular theory of how the atonement functions to redeem lost souls.  The dominant model among conservative evangelicals is the penal-substitution model, endorsed by the fundamentalist author of the gracious comment above.

How do you handle a situation like this?  I suggest the following algorithm.

1. If you believe fundamentalist blowhards have the power to alter centuries of Christian tradition and sentence your soul to eternity in hell, then sign on the blogs they frequent and defend yourself.  Your soul depends on it.
2. If, on the other hand, you believe such individuals seek only to suppress dissent by condemning all who disagree with them to eternal damnation, thereby ensuring no one of different opinion will ever sit in the pews of their fundamentalist churches, ignore said individuals.

I recommend option 2.

Science and Faith

I’m often asked by my non-scientist friends about how physics informs my faith.  (Funny, my scientist friends never raise this kind of question.)

Short answer: it doesn’t.  Long answer: it’s complicated.

I see physics a collection of models and concepts used to explain and predict the behavior of well-defined systems.  A good example is the weather.  It’s a fantastically difficult physics problem, but it makes a good illustration.  You start with a model of the Earth’s atmosphere.   The model exists as a set of equations that summarize various physical relationships.  You add in some data: current temperature, barometric pressure, wind velocity, etc.  The model, through a computer program, calculates future values of those parameters.  The forecast is evaluated by comparing it to the real weather.  If the forecast is close to the real weather, the model is good.  If not, something’s wrong with it.

What could be wrong requires a lot of discussion.  Briefly, the input data could be bad, or the model may not be detailed enough.  Or, perhaps the model is based on faulty physical concepts.  For example, when Newton’s law of universal gravitation fails to correctly predict the fine details of Mercury’s orbit, it’s because the model has a built-in conceptual error.  (Physics majors will know the error, maybe.  Let us know in the comments if you think you’ve got it.)

Physical models by their very nature do not address the whole of reality.  The closest thing we have in physics to a comprehensive “theory of everything” is the Standard Model.  As far as I understand it, if we could subsume gravity into the Standard Model, we would have a theory that explains all the fundamental forces in nature.  But the Standard Model will never be used to predict the weather, or even the orbit of a planet.   Different, more specific, models are used for those problems.  All models in physics have a “local” nature.  They treat a specific system under a set of well-defined assumptions.

Considered in its entirety then, what does physics mean?  A recent article outlines four possibilities:

• The universe is utterly pointless.  Physical laws mock our efforts to create meaning for our existence.
• There is a “Platonic” reality beyond the one we occupy.
• Physics is about the material world, but there is a God and reality beyond that realm.  Physics and religion are “intellectual cousins.”
• The universe is somehow becoming aware of its own existence, through our observation of it.
• A fifth possibility: we cannot know whether physics really means anything.

Please don’t ask me which one of these positions I endorse.  In one way or another, each one makes sense to me.

I find physics wonderful and fascinating.  I have no doubt it has influenced the way I think about religion, because I tend to be analytical about everything.  But physics doesn’t make me more or less faithful.  I also don’t find anything in physics that argues for or against God’s existence.  The idea that an orderly universe implies an orderly God doesn’t resonate with me.  Why can’t an orderly universe imply no God?  I also find the idea that modern knowledge renders belief in God irrational to be itself irrational.  What known fact or physical law entails God’s nonexistence?

It’s more difficult to express my thoughts about religion.  There is much I do not understand.  There are many beliefs held by Christians, especially conservative evangelicals, that strike me as ridiculous.

My faith is not something I can explain in any sense that I might use the word “explain” in connection with physics.  I simply find that I believe.  Faith grips me, from some source outside myself.

Sometimes I find it easier to state what my faith is not.

My faith is not my agreement with any particular doctrinal statement.   There aren’t very many doctrinal statements that I agree with anyway.  The Nicene Creed summarizes what I’m willing to commit to, but it is not the object of my faith.  And I suspect I interpret several statements in the Creed differently from my friends in other Christian traditions.

My faith is not me trying really, really hard to believe what the Bible says.  I couldn’t care less if the Bible turns out to be wrong on some point.  My faith is not in the Bible.  I am unimpressed by the assertion that a single error in the Bible renders the entire text worthless, a ridiculous standard applied to no other book.  Besides, whether the Bible has any truth to it has nothing to do with my “trying” to believe it.  And I refuse to ignore my external reality when it contradicts the Bible.

My faith is not my emotional response to a beautiful song or a compelling sermon.  While I don’t often show my emotions, I am emotional, and I can be moved as much as the next guy.  But these moments are not nearly the same thing as faith.

My faith is not an assertion that my way is The Only Way.  I am willing to endorse John 14:6, but if you are a conservative evangelical, I can probably guarantee that I interpret that verse differently from you.

My faith is not the result of a “fork in the road” moment where I chose Jesus over hell.  Growing up, I heard my share of fundamentalist alter calls and preaching, and none of it made any lasting impression on me.  I cannot identify a precise moment when I began to believe.  I simply believed.

So what can I say about my faith?

The best I can do is this: My faith is a response to God. Christianity gives me the best framework to understand what I’m going through.

My response is “Yes!”

My understanding comes from the meaning that faith gives to my life.  I do not always understand my own story, but I think understand where it’s going.

A “Relationship” with Jesus?

Probably the most consistent theme of conservative Christianity is the concept of a personal relationship with Jesus.

I have never understood this.

The emphasis on personal makes sense within the context of traditional Baptist theology.  It’s drawn from our emphasis on piety and responsibility.   But against the larger Christian tradition, it doesn’t resonate so well.  Surely the community matters as much if not more than the individuals within it.  Consider that the Prayer starts with Our Father . . . and the Creed begins We believe. It seems to me the community is more important than the individual.  Why do we place so much emphasis on the personal?

My strongest sense of God’s presence comes in group settings, primarily worship, and particularly at Communion.  The experience of Christianity isn’t about me.  It’s about us.

The relationship part sometimes makes no sense.  I have relationships with several people.  All of these are characterized by two-way interactions.  But I don’t have a two-way interaction with Jesus Christ, at least not in the ordinary sense of the word “interaction.”  I don’t hear voices, and I don’t recognize impulses or emotional reactions as messages from Jesus.  (That’s not to say your experiences are mere impulses.  I’m talking about my experiences.)  I don’t believe an invisible person is walking next to me, guiding me or helping me.  Yet these seem to be characteristics of the relationship emphasized by the conservative Christians I’ve known through the years.

One might say that relationship means simply a connection or an association.  Certainly I have an “association” with Jesus Christ.  It’s partly historical.  Jesus is the focal point of a religious movement that has had a profound effect, for better or worse, on world history.  But even atheists have this same historical connection to Jesus.  I also have a connection to Jesus as an object of study.  Jesus’ words and actions form the basis of our faith.  We study them.  We try to emulate him.  Of course, we fail.  But we also study others.  Consider Thomas Jefferson, for example.  If Thomas Jefferson is the object of my study, and I make an effort to emulate him (a worthy effort, to be sure), then I have a connection with Thomas Jefferson.  One might say I have a relationship with Thomas Jefferson.  In the right context, such a statement could make perfect sense.  But then Jefferson is like Jesus, and this is surely not what my conservative Christian friends mean by a relationship with Jesus.

So, for those who claim to have a personal relationship with Jesus, I have some sincere questions.

1. What characterizes your relationship with Jesus?  If you talk to him (prayer), does he talk back?  In what manner?
2. How do you understand the personal nature of your relationship with Jesus?  How is your relationship with Jesus different from that of the guy sitting next to you?  If your relationship with Jesus is fundamentally identical to his relationship with Jesus, then in what sense is it personal?
3. How you understand your relationship in the context of Trinitarian theology?  Do you also have a relationship with the Holy Spirit?  With God the Father?
4. Because my experience is different from your own, and since I apparently have a different kind of relationship with Jesus compared to your own, do you believe I’m going to hell?

Did Jesus Christ Really Exist?

So I stumble across this link while surfing the news at CNN.com:

http://www.thegodmovie.com/

The blurb on the website says, “Own the taboo-shattering documentary that Newsweek says “irreverently lays out the case that Jesus Christ never existed.” (Emphasis in the original.)

What do you think?  Can a strong case be made that Jesus Christ never existed?

In South Carolina, Standing Up for the Constitution Buys You a Ticket to Hell

From the Americans United Blog:

Things got ugly last night in Greer, S.C.

More than 400 people gathered at People’s Baptist Church to protest a federal district court’s decision to stop the production of a “Christian” license plate that would have featured a cross superimposed on a stained glass window with the words “I Believe.” The DMV will decide by the end of the week whether they will appeal the district court’s decision.

Americans United filed a lawsuit challenging the plates on behalf of four South Carolina clergy — the Rev. Dr. Thomas A. Summers, Rabbi Sanford T. Marcus, the Rev. Dr. Robert M. Knight and the Rev. Dr. Neal Jones — as well as the Hindu American Foundation and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

Attendees at the rally signed petitions and listened to speeches from a wide array of “I Believe” supporters, including Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, Attorney General Henry McMaster and the rally’s organizer, the Rev. Arnold Hiette, who unfortunately made our plaintiffs the targets of his hateful sermon.

According to a report by Spartanburg’s Herald-Journal, “Red-faced and angry, shaking his fist alongside his Bible, Hiette told the congregation that the four complainants — especially the Unitarian — and one judge who took away the people’s right to witness via their vehicle tags ‘along with the ACLU, they’re going to burn in hell.’”

In the United States, both federal and state governments are prohibited from aiding religion by the First Amendment.  Why do sensible Americans, both religious and non-religious, cherish the separation of church and state?  There are several reasons, but here is a simple, powerful reason:

Imagine how dangerous Rev. Arnold Hiette and others like him would be if they were backed up by the power of the state. They would be able to utilize the government’s power to tax and enforce its rules through an armed police force.  In such an environment, who would be safe from the wrath of fundamentalists who cannot abide a society in which people dare disagree with their theological outlook?

In 1947, the Supreme Court took up a case in which public funds in New Jersey were being used to transport children to Catholic schools.  The plaintiffs, who wished to maintain the funding, won the case, proving that the concept of church-state separation is not wholly damaging to churches.  But Justice Hugo Black wrote cautious words reminding us of why we have the separation of church and state in this country:

A large proportion of the early settlers of this country came here from Europe to escape the bondage of laws which compelled them to support and attend government-favored churches. The centuries immediately before and contemporaneous with the colonization of America had been filled with turmoil, civil strife and persecutions, generated in large part by established sects determined to maintain their absolute political and religious supremacy. With the power of government supporting them, at various times and places, Catholics had persecuted Protestants, Protestants had persecuted Catholics, Protestant sects had persecuted other Protestant sects, Catholics of one shade of belief had persecuted Catholics of another shade of belief, and all of these had from time to time persecuted Jews. In efforts to force loyalty to whatever religious group happened to be on top and in league with the government of a particular time and place, men and women had been fined, cast in jail, cruelly tortured, and killed. Among the offenses for which these punishments had been inflicted were such things as speaking disrespectfully of the views of ministers of government-established churches, non-attendance at those churches, expressions of nonbelief in their doctrines, and failure to pay taxes and tithes to support them.

These practices of the old world were transplanted to, and began to thrive in, the soil of the new America. The very charters granted by the English Crown to the individuals and companies designated to make the laws which would control the destinies of the colonials authorized these individuals and companies to erect religious establishments which all, whether believers or nonbelievers, would be required to support and attend. An exercise of  this authority was accompanied by a repetition of many of the old-world practices and persecutions. Catholics found themselves hounded and proscribed because of their faith; Quakers who followed their conscience went to jail; Baptists were peculiarly obnoxious to certain dominant Protestant sects; men and women of varied faiths who happened to be in a minority in a particular locality were persecuted because they steadfastly persisted in worshipping God only as their own consciences dictated.  And all of these dissenters were compelled to pay tithes and taxes to support government-sponsored churches whose ministers preached inflammatory sermons designed to strengthen and consolidate the established faith by generating a burning hatred against dissenters.

These practices became so commonplace as to shock the freedom-loving colonials into a feeling of abhorrence.  The imposition of taxes to pay ministers’ salaries and to build and maintain churches and church property aroused their indignation.  It was these feelings which found expression in the First Amendment. No one locality and no one group throughout the Colonies can rightly be given entire credit for having aroused the sentiment that culminated in adoption of the Bill of Rights’ provisions embracing religious liberty. But Virginia, where the established church had achieved a dominant influence in political affairs and where many excesses attracted wide public attention, provided a great stimulus and able leadership for the movement. The people there, as elsewhere, reached the conviction that individual religious liberty could be achieved best under a government which was stripped of all power to tax, to support, or otherwise to assist any or all religions, or to interfere with the beliefs of any religious individual or group. (Emphasis added.)

Leaving Fundamentalist Christianity Behind

Bruce Gerencser is a retired pastor who spent 30 years in fundamentalist Baptist churches.  At his blog, Bruce Droppings, he writes about why he left this life behind him.  Here are my favorite quotes:

Changing understanding of the Bible. I started out the ministry as a King James Only, every word is inerrant believer. I have come to understand that such a belief is not only unsustainable theologically but absolutely irrational. I no longer use the Bible as a science or history textbook and I no longer need to read any particular systematic theology into the text in order to enjoy reading the Bible. I simply enjoy reading the Biblical narrative for its own sake. It now speaks to me in ways I never thought possible.

* * *

My big breakthrough is  pretty simple……….I have come to the place where I don’t give a shit what others think about me or what I believe. I don’t give a shit that you are upset that I wrote the word shit. :)  I simply don’t care. Things matter to me……….but what someone thinks of me personally or what they think of my beliefs………I don’t care.  It has been liberating to be delivered from the judgments of others.

(Emphasis in the original.)

What Christmas is About

Reposting this from Ben Myers’ Faith & Theology blog:

Today’s Telegraph features a Christmas meditation by Rowan Williams, focusing on Karl Barth’s critique of “principle”:

What [Barth] was warning against was the temptation of unconditional loyalty to a system, a programme, a ‘cause’ which was essentially about ‘me and people like me’…. Christmas is supremely the story of a God who is not interested in telling us about principles…. Christmas doesn’t offer an alternative set of economic theories or even a social programme. It’s a story – the record of an event that began to change the entire framework in which we think about human life, so that the unique value of every life came to be affirmed and assumed…. That’s one reason why we tell this story repeatedly, the story of the ‘unprincipled’ God who values what others don’t notice, who relates to people we’d all rather forget, whose appeal is to everyone because he has made everyone capable of loving response. (Emphasis added.)