When Religion Goes Bad: A Plea for Mainstream Christianity Part II

1. When Religion Goes Bad: A Plea for Mainstream Christianity Part II First Presbyterian Church November 2012

2. The Lost Gospel of Judas

3. In 2006 the National Geographic Society announced the publication of the translation of an ancient document that promised to turn the Easter story on its head. Styled “The Lost Gospel of Judas” in the Society’s publicity materials, the text in question had been uncovered in a Middle Eastern burial cave in 1978.

4. National Geographic’s scholars translated the manuscript which retold the Passion narrative from the perspective of its villain and made a hero of him. Rather than portraying Judas Iscariot as the worst of traitors, the newly translated gospel suggested that he had been Jesus’ most intimate companion.

5. The popular press, this was treated as very big news for Christianity— and very bad news for orthodox belief.

6. The Gospel of Judas made front-page news around the world, the documentary earned some of the highest ratings in the history of National Geographic television, and the Society’s official translation swiftly climbed the bestseller lists.

7. Months after the Judas Gospel was off the front pages Rice University professor April DeConick in a careful re-translation of the document declared that “several of the translation choices made by the society’s scholars fall well outside the commonly accepted practices in the field.”

8. The National Geographic translation had Jesus saying that his betrayer was set apart “for” salvation, when the text actually said that Judas would be separated “from” it.

9. Basically, the Judas Gospel was a late document with no other manuscript support which shed virtually no light at all on Christian origins—a conclusion which came long after the original sensation had left its impression on the general public.

10. At a time of general disillusionment with Christian faith, the Judas Gospel fits into a significant, and misleading conversation about Christian beginnings.

11. The sensationalism surrounding this speculation is an accommodationist effort at seeking a more secular, this-worldly religion. This means a Jesus who was mainly a moralist and social critic, with no real interest in eschatology. These simplifications have usually required telling a somewhat different story about Jesus than the one told across the books of the New Testament.

12. It’s important to notice a larger phenomenon in American religion. Whenever someone wants to start a new faith, they add to the existing canonical scriptures. Simplification by addition. Heresy by addition.

13. Joseph Smith’s writings gave believers a Jesus who was more American and family friendly

14. Ellen Gould White, founder of the Seventh Day Adventists, wrote The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan, which envisioned Christ defending the Adventist faith.

15. Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health with a Key to the Scriptures reimagined Jesus as the original Christian Scientist.

16. Even fundamentalism owes its end-time obsessions to the extracanonical innovations that Cyrus Scofield’s influential Study Bible

17. The various quests for the historical Jesus movements, notably found in today’s Jesus Seminar are scholarly efforts to comb through the gospels and extract “authentic” sayings and traditions of Jesus

19. From the Marcionite Heresy forward the effort to distort the image of Jesus invariably attempts to distort Scriptural canon. Today’s fascination with uncovering hidden or “suppressed” Christianities fits this pattern.

20. Two common sense counter-arguments are available to refute the claim that the early church distorted or suppressed alternative visions of Christianity:

21. The first is to remember that the Apostle Paul was author of the earliest records in the New Testament. His letters make their own independent statement of the nature of Christian faith prior to the gospel records. Most of the efforts to introduce changes in Christian faith are challenges to the canonical gospels

22. The second argument is simply to notice that the newly-recovered information curiously supports progressive, freed-up, liberal Christian faith. All kinds of evidence which purports to revolutionize the faith will surface. Significantly, none of it has nor will support rigid morals or difficult beliefs, like chastity or tithing.

23. Dan Brown’s real Jesus is a thoroughly modern messiah: political and feminist, sexy and worldly, with a wife and kids, a house in the Galilean suburbs, and no delusions about his own divinity. He worships the sacred feminine rather than the patriarchal Hebrew god, and marries the supposedly aristocratic Mary Magdalene. Bluntly, the Jesus of DiVinci Code looks like like a with-it Episcopalian minister.

24. Pray and Get Rich

26. This is the most influencial book of popular religion in the 21st century. It comes from the pastor of the largest church in America who stars in the most watched religious television show in America and has a worldwide audience of 200 million who tune into his broadcasts.

28. Osteen embodies a refashioning of Christianity to suit an age of abundance, in which the old war between monotheism and money seems to have ended, for many believers, in a marriage of God and Mammon.

29. Prosperity theology has helped millions of believers reconcile their religious faith with their nation’s seemingly unbiblical wealth and un-Christian consumer culture.

30. The Prosperity Gospel is a particularly American phenomenon. It was noted by Alexis de Tocqueville in 1831 and has been a continual strain of American Christianity ever since.

31. Russell Conwell (1843-1925), a Baptist minister and the founder of Temple University, wrote the famous sermon: “Acres of Diamonds” which proclaimed that “it is your duty to get rich.”

32. The New Thought movement started in the early 19th century and today consists of a loosely allied group of religious denominations, secular membership organizations,authors, philosophers, and individuals who share a set of beliefs concerning metaphysics, positive thinking, the law of attraction, healing, life force, creative visualization, and personal power. The three major religious denominations within the New Thought movement are Religious Science, Unity Church and the Church of Divine Science.

33. L. Ron Hubbard’s—Scientology Norman Vincent Peale Rhonda Byrne—author, The Secret Mary Baker Eddy—founder of Christian Science E. W. Kenyon Kenneth W. Hagen (“name it and claim it”) Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker Paul Crouch (founder of Trinity Broadcasting) Kenneth and Gloria Copeland Creflo Augustus Dollar Jr., (World Changers Church) Frederick K. C. Price, Benny Hinn Joyce Meyer

34. Immigrant and African American churches have also seen an uptick in the prevalence of the prosperity gospel. According to a 2008 Pew survey, among Hispanics who described themselves as religious, 73 percent agreed that “God will grant financial success to all believers who have enough faith.”

36. Larry Burkett was an American author and radio personality whose work focused on financial counseling from an evangelical Christian point of view.

37. While there are many strengths in the prosperity gospel and many ways that it picks up on biblical principles. Ultimately, it jettisons a counter-balancing element in Christian faith that dwells in the mystery of Christ who became poor that we might become rich. There are a vast number of verses in the Bible that caution against wealth and its dangers. In the end the prosperity gospel falls into a kind of accommodationist mentality that streamlines a full-orbed Christian faith for an easier, more attractive alternative.

38. The God Within

39. Eat, Pray, Love

40. Liz Gilbert (Roberts) had everything a modern woman is supposed to dream of having - a husband, a house, a successful career - yet like so many others, she found herself lost, confused, and searching for what she really wanted in life. Newly divorced and at a crossroads, Gilbert steps out of her comfort zone, risking everything to change her life, embarking on a journey around the world that becomes a quest for self-discovery.

41. In her travels, she discovers the true pleasure of nourishment by eating in Italy; the power of prayer in India, and, finally and unexpectedly, the inner peace and balance of true love in Bali.

42. The book’s section on Elizabeth Gilbert’s spiritual search distinguishes the book. What is described is a frank, earthy, and entirely unembarrassed account of what it feels like for a late-modern, post-feminist, haute-bourgeoise American to search relentlessly for the direct, unmediated, and overwhelming experience of God.

43. Eat, Pray, Love is a winsome summons to precisely what our secular, religion-weary culture craves: “do it yourself” religion. This quest determines at the outset that there is no one religion that has a corner on truth and that people have an earnest duty to launch upon their own spiritual journeys.

45. The message of Eat, Pray, Love is the same gospel preached by every spiritual consultant who graces Oprah Winfrey’s couch: Deepak Chopra, Paulo Coelho, and Marianne Williamson. It’s the theology that Elaine Pagels claims to have rediscovered in the lost gospels of the early Christian Church. It’s the religious message with the most currency in American popular culture— the truth that Kevin Costner discovered when he went dancing with wolves, the metaphysic woven through Disney cartoons and Discovery Channel specials, and the dogma of George Lucas’s Jedi, whose mystical Force, like Gilbert’s God, “surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together.”

47. Actually, SBNR is a distinct religion with its own rather rigid creed.

49. 1. All organized religions have only a partial grasp on spiritual truth. The SBNR seeker must seek truth in his or her own feelings.

50. 2. God is everywhere and within everything, but at the same time the best way to encounter the divine is through the God within, the divinity that resides inside your very self and soul.