Killing Jesus Again
In his new book <http://lists.thenation.com/t?ctl=4092:5447F> , The
Hijacking of Jesus, Wakefield turns his sharp analytic eye on the
religious right. Through careful research and interviews with religious
leaders across the country, Wakefield has developed a unique
understanding of the rise of this new political juggernaut and
thoughtful insights into what can be done about it.
...............................
I have to agree fully with this assessment of the obscene defilement of Christianity by the religious right in this country. I am not a believer now. However, on the basis that my grandfather had been the leading U.S. Biblical Theologian of his era and that I had been shaped in my own values by a number of his students (I had been born after his relatively early death), I studied theology for 3 years in this country (Union Theological Seminary) and Oxford with some of the leading Protestant theologians of that day, e.g. Reinhold Niebuhr for whom I wrote one of those all nighters.
Needless to say, so far as we can know him through the veil of oral accounts only written out decades after his death with obvious elaborations debunked by the demythologization efforts last century, Jesus of Nazareth was most likely both a genius and an extraordinarily compassionate man living in brutal times (the Roman Empire on the march) which led to his execution as a suspect terrorist ("zealot") of his times for his defenses of those in need -- the poor. Needless to say one of his sayings was that it would easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle (perhaps a narrow gate in Jerusalem) than for a rich man to get into heaven.
What we see in the current Republican Party is an unholy alliance between such rich men (the tax cuts for them) and the haters of the religious right -- anti-Semitic, anti-gay, racist, anti-women (abortion rights, poverty, etc.) and marching (others) off to war. I suspect that the American public is waking up and that there are not so many of these perverters of Christianity as they claim to be. Note who associates with them among the pols from now on.
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net
Hijacking of Jesus, Wakefield turns his sharp analytic eye on the
religious right. Through careful research and interviews with religious
leaders across the country, Wakefield has developed a unique
understanding of the rise of this new political juggernaut and
thoughtful insights into what can be done about it.
...............................
I have to agree fully with this assessment of the obscene defilement of Christianity by the religious right in this country. I am not a believer now. However, on the basis that my grandfather had been the leading U.S. Biblical Theologian of his era and that I had been shaped in my own values by a number of his students (I had been born after his relatively early death), I studied theology for 3 years in this country (Union Theological Seminary) and Oxford with some of the leading Protestant theologians of that day, e.g. Reinhold Niebuhr for whom I wrote one of those all nighters.
Needless to say, so far as we can know him through the veil of oral accounts only written out decades after his death with obvious elaborations debunked by the demythologization efforts last century, Jesus of Nazareth was most likely both a genius and an extraordinarily compassionate man living in brutal times (the Roman Empire on the march) which led to his execution as a suspect terrorist ("zealot") of his times for his defenses of those in need -- the poor. Needless to say one of his sayings was that it would easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle (perhaps a narrow gate in Jerusalem) than for a rich man to get into heaven.
What we see in the current Republican Party is an unholy alliance between such rich men (the tax cuts for them) and the haters of the religious right -- anti-Semitic, anti-gay, racist, anti-women (abortion rights, poverty, etc.) and marching (others) off to war. I suspect that the American public is waking up and that there are not so many of these perverters of Christianity as they claim to be. Note who associates with them among the pols from now on.
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net
posted by Ed Kent at 9:39 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home