From: nyikos@math.scarolina.edu (Peter Nyikos)
Subject: J'ACCUSE JOAN CAMPBELL (and dozens of others)
Keywords: blasphemy
Organization: USC  Department of Computer Science
Date: 12 Sep 92 23:21:43 GMT

NBC news last night carried a brief account of a letter, accompanied by
a short statement by Joan Campbell, of the National Council of Churches.
It did not say what sort of position she held in the NCC.

Of the letter, the announcer said:

"Dozens of Church leaders, including the head of the President's own
denomination, wrote to Bush, calling his partisan use of religion 
blasphemy."
 
The screen showed a letter, with the word BLASPHEMY `magnified' in an insert
(it was in capital letters, so maybe it was not an actual magnification
of what the letter contained).

The screen then cut to Joan Campbell, saying "We dare not ever use God to
favor one group over another.  Down that road is the road of intolerance
and injustice."

Now, I have not heard everything Bush has said on the subject of religion,
but none of what I heard is even remotely describable by Ms. Campbell's 
first sentence.  Based on what I have heard Bush say, Ms. Campbell is 
failing to distinguish between what is known as "hating the sin" and
"hating the sinner."  Bush certainly comes down strongly in favor of
traditional Christian values, but in interviews about how he would react
if a grandson were gay, or a granddaughter having an abortion, he has
shown again and again that he loves the sinner while hating the sin.

I should add that one thing I have not heard, but have read on USENET,
is an account of Bush saying that he did not think atheists made good
citizens.  While this can easily be taken to be an exception to what
I have said, I would like to hear more about what he understands by
"a good citizen" and also whether he was making a blanket statement 
about atheists in general.   

I think he is badly misguided on this, but (1) he is not making a judgment
about whether they are good people in other respects and (2) I do not see
any indication that he favors other people over them except in the matter
of political appointments, and the Republicans have no monopoly on 
favoring one group over another as regards political appointments.

At any rate, all this pales in comparison with the use of "BLASPHEMY"
as a means of using `God' to favor Bill Clinton over George Bush.

1. I accuse Joan Campbell, and most of the dozens of Church leaders who
wrote the letter, of having long ago given up whatever belief they
may have had in a Creator of our physical universe.

2. I accuse Joan Campbell, and most of the dozens of Church leaders who
wrote the letter, of having long ago given up whatever belief they
may have had in personal survival after death.

3. I accuse Joan Campbell, and most of the dozens of Church leaders who
wrote the letter, of having long ago given up whatever belief they
may have had in a personal deity capable of directly intervening in
human history.

Before going on to my fourth and final accusation, let me assure 
readers that I am making no value judgments as to the disbelief
of these people.  I have no doubt that they are sincere in their
disbelief, and because of the way they privately redefine the words "God", 
"life after death", and a host of other concepts that seem perfectly
straightforward to simpler people, they also do not see how very
far they are from the Christianity of the Apostolic period.

I base these first three accusations on the history of
Protestantism over most of our century.  In the 1960's Bishop J.A.T.
Robinson came out with a book, _Honest to God_ which created
quite a stir in our churches because it laid out in language understan-
dable to laymen the reigning orthodoxy (mis-named "liberal Protestantism"
for the most part, although it also encompassed the "neo-orthodoxy" of Karl
Barth and other schools) in the higher echelons of most denominations.
The average churchgoer up to that time had no inkling of how atheistic
(yes, atheistic!) Union Theological Seminary and other institutions in
the constant eye of the media had become.

If that word "atheistic" sounds incredible to you, read _Honest to God_
or any of a number of books of Paul Tillich.  They do a marvelous job
of redefining "God" to the point where it is obvious that if, say, 
someone had "pushed the nuclear button" in the days before the fall of
"The Evil Empire" [a term of derision in the National Council of Churches,
until that empire fell] there is, according to Tillich and Robinson, no
higher power that could have intervened miraculously to save us from 
nuclear annihilation.

To spare readers a bit of trouble, I will now relate an anecdote which
illustrates what I mean by this atheism.  It took place when I was
a postdoctoral student at the University of Chicago  [talk.abortion 
networker E. Elizabeth Bartley, take note!] in 1974.

I had been going to a place called "The Blue Gargoyle", right on campus,
for various kinds of activities, including a weekly discussion led by
two Methodist ministers, a man and a woman, about many topics of interest
to me.  I had little inkling of where they stood on the traditional
Christian beliefs until one evening, an older participant asked the male
minister the following question.  

"If a member of your congregation is dying and asking you what the
future holds for him, what would you tell him?"

The answer:

"I'd tell him more or less what I told my congregation on Easter Sunday:
`when you die, you die'."

Not wishing to disrupt the meeting, I waited until I could speak to
the minister about this privately.  How could he say with such brazen
certainty that there is no life after death?  

He took some pains to say that, in the case of the dying parishioner, he
would do the best to soften the blow, and would not put it as starkly as
he had put it at the meeting.  But he stuck by his ironclad faith in 
oblivion after death and even asked me how I could think it could be
otherwise.

Realizing by now that the traditional Judeo-Christian-Islamic belief in
a resurrection was a dead letter with him, I pointed out the Hindu belief
in reincarnation.  To that he simply responded that he believed the Hindus
were mistaken.

Still I pressed him: how could he so flatly state that his belief
corresponded to the truth?  Finally, he reluctantly admitted that of
course no one could PROVE that there is no life after death, but if there
is one "it will not be life as we know it."

Again, I do not say there is anything reprehensible about the BELIEFS
of Tillich, Robinson, or this Methodist minister.
  I have entertained similar beliefs, on and off,
over the past 27 years.  Only I am honest enough to call them by their proper
names, atheism and agnosticism. 

And I was never so arrogant as to say that these beliefs correspond to the 
truth, let alone that they deserve to go by the name of "Christianity."

At any rate, the National Council of Churches has long led the way in 
not only promoting this atheism and agnosticism under the name of
"Protestantism" or "Christianity" or "religion" or "theology", but has
gone a step further in promoting secular values (including the values of
the Evil Empire) at the expense of traditional Christian values.  

Their advocacy of untrammeled access to abortion is one such instance.
There are many others, too numerous to go into here.

4. Finally, I accuse Joan Campbell, and most of the dozens of 
Church leaders who wrote the letter, of using the word
"blasphemy," which long ago ceased to have any non-secular meaning
to them, to indirectly promote their own social and political 
agenda by calling into question that of Bush in terms sure to
mislead the average churchgoer into thinking there is something religious,
in the traditional Christian sense, in their condemnation.

In the thread, "Is it Christian values or chauvinism", which originated
in talk.abortion, I explain at some length how transparently phony one
instance of the word `blasphemous' was.  The use to which these Church
leaders put the word `blasphemy' 
is not quite so transparent, but it is all the more reprehensible
because of the authority behind it and the very public and political way
it is used.

Ms. Campbell's words are doubly misleading because they give the
impression that Bush is trying to "harness" God in pursuit of traditional
family values, rather than acknowledging that, at least in this, he is
making a sincere effort to follow what he sincerely sees as divine values.

The difference is brought out by the title of a popular prayer book of
the 1960's, Malcolm Boyd's _Are You Running With Me, Jesus?_  By the
standards of Ms. Campbell and the un-named dozens of church leaders,
the title of this book is blasphemy.  (However, since it was not written
by a politician whom they are out to undermine, I'd be very surprised
if they saw anything wrong with the title.)  Malcolm Boyd acknowledges
himself that, were he a better man, he would have titled the book,
_Am I Running With You, Jesus?_ but as it is, the book more closely
resembles his mind-set.   

Today, looking back on this statement, I see how very far Malcolm Boyd
was from the biblical standard of humility.  But his kind of arrogance
is cheerfully tolerated in liberal theological circles, while the 
efforts of Christians to follow their Redeemer and walk humbly with
their God is an object of condescension, and even of smear tactics.

Peter Nyikos



 

Xref: sparky talk.abortion:36124 alt.abortion.inequity:3682