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About 10 years ago, I was having lunch alone in the canteen at work. Behind me were four young chaps who worked in the data centre. They seemed to be three unbelievers and one Muslim, who was leading the discussion. He kept saying, ‘But Jesus was a Palestinian, man! He lived in Palestine! He was Palestinian, I’m telling you!’ I wondered what he was getting at. Was it obfuscation to make the other three think Jesus was Muslim? The guy never once said, ‘Jesus was a Jew living in Palestine, which was Jewish at that time.’ I was going to turn around and butt in, but I knew that there might be a ‘complaint’ following along the lines of, ‘This obvious Christian just butted into our conversation and started trying to convert us then and there.’ Honestly, if you are a Christian in the UK you do not dare to open your gob at work for fear of a written warning or disciplinary procedure. You can be anything else and proselytise all you like but not if you believe in Jesus Christ.
So, it was with some interest a few days ago that I happened across this thread at Stand Firm, ‘Soundbites and Little Else — Liberals and Theological Debate’. It’s all about Bible illiteracy: how little we know, how little our children know. In fact, earlier this year I ran across a chart illustrating how knowledge of the Gospel declines with each generation unless we are steadfast in our efforts in passing it along to our children. If I find it, I shall definitely post it. It was quite frightening. It was based on results of the scriptural knowledge churchgoers have through the generations.
On the Stand Firm thread, a few teachers contributed their comments (emphases mine below). People wondered if this bible illiteracy is intentional, especially when you consider women’s and LGBT ordination, which only a small-minded person would dare oppose, unless, of course, they know their Bible:
Looking for Leaders: To me, the real question is whether a theologically illiterate membership is what has been desired by the highest offices of the church since the late 1960’s. Has it been created on purpose? After having taught Church school and the catechesis class in an Ep[iscopal] church, I can tell you the answer is a resounding YES.
In fact, there seemed to be some sense of pride in how little the bible was studied and referenced with the children. My first year, I had to ask the church to buy bibles for the class …
The children that went to the Pres[byterian] Day school, knew a lot about the bible. The children that went to the Ep. Day School knew next to nothing about it. I mean like didn’t know what came first in the bible, the new testament or the old testament. In a class of 18, only half knew that Jesus was a jewish boy. Several thought he was muslim. I couldn’t believe it. It was depressing. We ended up just going over the most basic ideas. I mean VERY basic ideas …
Looking for Leaders later adds:
… if you don’t arm people with some basic knowledge when they are young, it is amazing what they can be told when they are older, and not be able to discern when someone is pulling the rug over their eyes.
As an adult, I have been amazed at the number of people that have just shrugged off major tenets of important Christian beliefs, because they had no real or meaningful thoughts or ideas about it themselves. They weren’t taught anything, so they’re like a blank slate.
Having 12 year olds tell me that they thought Jesus was Muslim was a wake up call to me. It’s bad out there.
Ian Montgomery, another commenter, says:
I believe biblical illiteracy was part of the plan to deconstruct the Church. I first came to the US in 1973. When I would ask for a Bible in the Church the usual response was – “what would you want that for?” One of the great successes of the liberal strategy was to separate the people from the Bible. It worked. The antidote is LOTS of Bible teaching, Bible reading by the people, discussion about what the Bible says and teaches – undergirded by the bed rock belief that the Bible is the authoritative “Word of God written” and that we as Anglicans are under the authority of Scripture.
Other threads at Stand Firm have been discussing Brian McLaren’s Emergent Church and its heresies. Churchmouse Campanologist covered McLaren last year. The man has no love for ‘fundamentalists’ who believe in the Bible. Here’s a guy who doesn’t want people being judgmental but doesn’t hesitate to assign over-the-top labels to those who believe in the truth of God’s Word. McLaren abhors the five fundamentals of faith:
If you don’t know the Bible, you’ll probably say, ‘Okay, so what?’ Yet, if you were raised in the church and know your Scripture, you’ll say, ‘Wow, I believe those things!’ Yes, you do. And McLaren would prefer that you didn’t. He wants you to think that:
- Mysticism is the way to a relationship with God
- Holy Communion should be open to everyone, not just Christians, as it reconciles people of different world religions
- We can create the Kingdom of God here on earth through left-wing political causes
- We possess inner divinity
- His ‘merging’ church should infiltrate orthodox Christianity and become the de facto expression of faith
In short, McLaren is Unitarian Universalist, not a Christian. Anyone believing those things really should sign up to the Unitarians, where they would be happy. But, it seems that he has a larger mission in mind, which it seems is to subvert orthodoxy.
McLaren dismisses original sin, sin itself, hell, redemption through Christ’s death on the cross, that Christ is the only Way, Truth and Life. Kevin DeYoung, co-author of Why We’re Not Emergent, sums up McLaren’s theology as presented in his latest book, A New Kind of Christianity:
But McLarenism, like liberalism, cannot be right. It has its emphases all out of proportion, its right statements thrown out of whack by all that is missing. In McLarenism there is no original sin, no wrath, no hell, no creation-fall-redemption, no definite future, no second coming that I can see, no clear statement on the deity of Christ, no mention of vicarious substitution or God’s holiness or divine sovereignty, no ethical demands except as they relate to being kind to others, no God-offendedness, no doctrine of justification, no unchanging apostolic deposit of truth, no absolute submission to the word of God, nary a mention of faith and worship, no doctrine of regeneration, no evangelistic impulse to save the lost, and nothing about God’s passion for his glory. This is surely a lot to leave out.
McLaren’s Christianity is not new and certainly not improved. I don’t believe you can even call it Christianity. It is liberalism dressed up for the 21st century. We can only hope this wave of liberalism fades as dramatically as did the last.
So, back on topic. We have blokes like McLaren as well as liberal Protestants (and Catholics, too) who are encouraging people to forget about the Bible and catechesis. This enables them to water down worship, sermons and faith. The Bible becomes an historical document, a mere guideline. The Christian life becomes based on progressive and sexual politics. Jesus’s death and resurrection are a mere footnote to His niceness. I can see how appealing this is. For a large part of my adult life, I, too, was a subscriber to the ‘red-letter Bible’ (where only Jesus’s sayings mattered) and, for a time, had friends who believed John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ was Biblical truth. As long as we were nice and gave to the poor, we could do whatever we wanted. Wrong! And, like me, maybe you, too, see these developments for the danger they are.
Of course, McLaren is not a one-man show. We’ll be looking at more from the Emergent Church tomorrow.
