It's Their Way or No Way, in Religion and Education
 

April 9 2006
Counterbias.com
MEL SEESHOLTZ
 

The essence of the article by Douglas Groothuis was that “Jesus” is the only “true Lord” and that Christianity – specifically the type of Christianity advocated by Mr. Groothius – is the only true religion: “Jesus Christ was God Incarnate and the only way to abundant and eternal life.”

Not surprisingly his “proof” was a selective, literal reading of the Bible:

Jesus never suggested that He was another prophet or that He was merely one of many mystics who tapped into spiritual power and knowledge. When Jesus was involved in a dispute about the Sabbath, He exclaimed that He was “Lord of the Sabbath” (Mark 2:23-27). Genesis 2:3 teaches us that God created and instituted the Sabbath; it was not invented by any mere human. Jesus is, therefore, claiming to have divine authority over the Sabbath as God. [italics added]

Apparently Mr. Groothius also takes Genesis 2:22-23 literally and believes women owe their existence to Adam’s rib and that all the creatures of the earth – including the dinosaurs – were passengers on Noah’s ark. And if Jesus claimed “to have divine authority over the Sabbath as God,” then there were two “Gods,” hence the required, man-made dogma of “The Trinity” and other fabrications necessitated by a literal reading of the Bible.

The “reasoning” of Rev. Mark Creech, another biblical literalist, complements that of Mr. Groothius. Creech claims “to doubt a literal interpretation of the creation account is to undermine everything taught in the Bible,” If that’s so, then aside from scientific dilemmas, Rev. Creech and other biblical literalists have a gender problem. In a March 20, 2006 article titled “The Need for Wisdom in an Age of Intellectual and Spiritual Insanity,” Rev. Creech argued that

Never has there been a day when wisdom, both intellectual and practical, was more needed than today. Yet, we’re not seeing much wisdom. In fact, we’re seeing just the opposite. No verse of Holy Scripture better speaks to our time concerning the need for wisdom than Proverbs 1:20-23: “Wisdom crieth without; she uttereth her voice in the streets: she crieth in the chief place of concourse, in the openings of the gates: in the city she utttereth her words…” [itlics added]

In the Bible, women don’t come off very well. Even in the New Testament, the apostle Paul warned Christians “suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence” because “Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, was in the transgression.” But according to the Proverbs passage Creech cited, “Wisdom” is a “she.” Perhaps that has to do with Eve rejecting “God’s” selfish desire to keep humans ignorant by forbidding them to partake of the Tree of Knowledge. Eve “just said know.”

By the way, in the original Hebrew version, the “serpent” in the Garden of Eden was just that, a serpent. It wasn’t until early Christians needed to concoct a reason for why things went wrong in Eden that the serpent became the Devil. For a fuller explanation, see Peter Stanford’s thoroughly researched (albeit “unauthorized”) The Devil: A Biography.

Creech continued his irrationality and confused sense of history with

Only those who are not thinking straight would believe redefining marriage to allow same-sex couples to marry could ever be in the best interest of the nation. Only those who’ve been brainwashed by the screwy philosophies of our time would defend abortion, pornography, euthanasia, gambling, premarital sex, stem-cell research on embryos, the legalization of drugs and prostitution, removing the influence of prayer, Bible reading, and the Ten Commandments from public life. This is all a form of madness!

A. “Marriage” has been “redefined” throughout history. Such “redefinitions” were always in the best interest of societies and humanity, such as doing away with arranged marriages and awarding wives as trophies to military heroes, treating wives as property and abolishing bans on interracial marriage. Same-sex marriage would also be in society’s, the country’s – and humanity’s – best interest, provided one believes civil equality for all citizens is in society’s, the country’s, and humanity’s best interest. Plus, a new Congressional Budget Office Report confirms that allowing same-sex couples to marry would save the federal government nearly $1 billion per year, and the cost to businesses would be virtually negligible. Moreover, same-sex marriage would have absolutely no effect on heterosexual marriage except, perhaps, in the “minds” of dogmatic, theocratic bigots. Almost two years of legal same-sex marriage in Massachusetts attests to that.

B. “Screwy philosophies of our time”? In the twenty-first century, what could be screwier than taking Genesis literally and believing the earth is 6000 years old, or the “madness” that Mrs. and Mrs. Tyrannosaurs rex were passengers on Noah’s ark, or believing women are inherently inferior to men because the Bible says so, or believing the death-sentence edicts in Leviticus and Deuteronomy should be civil law? Moreover, Rev. Creech seems historically-challenged. Various forms of abortion, premarital sex (as well as biblically sanctioned polygamy), the use of drugs (often for religious purposes), and prostitution have existed throughout human history, not just “in our time,” and they have not always been “illegal” either.

C. “Prayer, Bible reading, and the Ten Commandments” are very prominent in American society today. Indeed, many would say too prominent. Aside from churches and mega-churches, public prayer meetings, Christian clubs and Bible reading sessions are omnipresent, even in the playground of a preschool: “A federal judge has ordered an elementary school in Knoxville, Tennessee, to stop prohibiting a fifth-grade student from reading his Bible with a friend during recess.” Similarly, displays of the Ten Commandments are ubiquitous, even on the Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C. The problem with all that is the American population is increasing diverse and embraces many different religious and spiritual beliefs.

Fear of “other religions,” different “spiritual beliefs” – and the mean-spirited, “wrathful God” of the Old Testament and the promise of “redemption” only for believers in “Jesus” – are what the evangelical Christian Right uses to maintain its death-grip. Fear is the main weapon deployed by evangelical zealots to keep people “believing” in their malevolent dogma. Any variance from that dogma or, worse yet, any free-thinking is what evangelicals fear the most. Perhaps that’s why Thomas Jefferson swore “eternal enmity against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”

In his article, Mr. Groothuis was most distressed – “incensed,” one might say – by the results of a poll conducted in 2000 by the Christian marketing and research firm The Barna Group. It documented “about one out of four born-again Christians believes that it doesn’t matter what faith you follow because they all teach the same lessons. Fifty-six percent of non-Christians agree.”

The radical extremes to which Christian evangelicals will go in order to promote themselves and their religious bigotry were well illustrated by R. Albert Mohler, a member of the board of directors of James Dobson’s Focus on the Family:

Defending recent statements by evangelists Franklin Graham and Pat Robertson regarding Islam, R. Albert Mohler Jr. said on FOX News’ “The O’Reilly Factor” that ideologies which keep people from coming to faith in Christ are manifestations of demonic power. “In the case of the two statements ... from Dr. Graham and Pat Robertson, they were speaking a deeply held Christian truth there that Christians have believed for 2,000 years,” Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said March 17. “[A]ny belief system that keeps persons from coming to Christ we would see as a manifestation of a demonic power.” [links added]

But like other evangelicals, Rev. Mohler doesn’t limit his bigotry to non-Christian religions:

The [Focus on the Family] board member, R. Albert Mohler Jr., said Thursday he stands by the comments he made in March 2000 on the cable news show Larry King Live.

 

“I believe that the Roman church is a false church and it teaches a false gospel,” Mohler said at the time. “And indeed, I believe that the pope himself holds a false and unbiblical office.” [link added]

While Franklin Graham is bad, no one outdoes Pat Robertson for religious bigotry and hate:

A cult is any group that has a form of godliness, but does not recognize Jesus Christ as the unique son of God. … One test of a cult is that it often does not strictly teach that Jesus is the only begotten Son of God who Himself is God manifested in the flesh… Christian-oriented cults include the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or Reorganized Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormons), the Worldwide Church of God, Christian Science, Unity, Unitarianism, The Way International, Rosicrucian Society of America, Bahai, Hare Krishna, Scientology, the Unification Church, and the Jehovah’s Witnesses.


– Pat Robertson in a 1992 CBN pamphlet entitled “Cults”

As for the feminine “Wisdom” in Proverbs 1:20-23, Robertson had this to say:

The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians.

– Pat Robertson in a 1992 fundraising letter

And as for Islam, the evangelical Christian religious leader who called for the assassination of the Venezuelan president – and blamed Hurricane Katrina on the choice of (lesbian) Ellen Degeneres to host the Emmys – had this to say when asked if Jehovah and Allah are the same:

Question: I heard a “minister” on TV say that Allah and God were the same. What are your thoughts, and what are the distinctions if they are not the same?

 

Robertson: Under no circumstances is Jehovah, the God of the Bible, and Allah, of the Koran, the same. First of all, the God of the Bible is a God of love and redemption, who sent His Son into the world to die for our sins. Allah tells people to die for him in order to get salvation, but there is no understanding of salvation. Allah was the moon god from Mecca. That is why Islam has the crescent moon. The flag of Turkey has a crescent moon with a star in it. Well, the crescent moon is because Allah was the moon god, and that is the deal. But we don’t serve a moon god. We serve the God of creation, the Creator of everything.

 

They are not the same. To translate Allah as God is wrong. When you see something in there and it says Allah, you translate it Allah. Don’t call it God because it is different. God is Elohim. He is the Creator, the Jehovah God, Yahweh. Yahweh of the Old Testament was the Father who brought forth Jesus into the world.

Jehovah, “the God of the Bible is a God of love and redemption”? Then why is there so much misogyny and hate in the Old Testament and in the “revealed word” espoused by early church leaders in the New Testament? A “god” that sends his “son” into the world to suffer a horribly gruesome death does not exactly sound like a god of love, but it does sound a lot like a god who “tells people to die for him in order to get salvation.” 

Genuine spirituality has nothing to do with “organized religion.” Spirituality is personal. It’s an inherent part of being human. For most it’s a personally liberating and uplifting experience, an encouragement to grow and evolve to more conscious perceptions of realities. But when personal spirituality is organized into a religion, an institution is produced and as all institutions it produces a hierarchy who produce dogma that often has little to do with spirituality and everything to do with maintaining social and political control. Nothing made that clearer than the “Christian” our-way-or-no-way “thinking” in Kim Trobee’s March 20, 2006 Focus on the Family article. She was complaining about a study by

The Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA [which] found that 30% of professors in both secular and religious schools believe colleges should facilitate spiritual growth among students. They also found 81% of professors say they are “spiritual” beings.     

“Spirituality” is not good enough for the evangelical Christian Right: “For many working on liberal college campuses, their [spiritual] view of life is anything but Christian.”

Pat Robertson also had something to say about the “81% of professors [who] say they are ‘spiritual’ beings.” According to a report by People for the American Way,

On the 700 Club on Tuesday, March 21, 2006 former Republican Presidential candidate Rev. Pat Robertson displayed characteristic anger and frustration at what right-wingers proclaim is another manifestation of liberalism in this country while reviewing (and hawking for sale on the CBN website) the new book by extremist David Horowitz titled, “The Professors: The 101 most dangerous academics in America.” Robertson waxed glowingly about the book which he says sheds light on the radical academics at American universities claiming, however, that it is just a “short list” of the “thirty to forty thousand” left wing professors who he calls “termites that have worked into the woodwork of our academic society and it’s APPALLING.”

 

Rev. Robertson launched an attack on “radical” liberal professors saying; “They are racists, murderers, sexual deviants and supporters of Al-Qaeda – and they could be teaching your kids!” Later in the program he told his viewers, “These guys are out and out communists, they are radicals, they are, you know, some of them killers, and they are propagandists of the first order…you don’t want your child to be brainwashed by these radicals, you just don’t want it to happen. Not only brainwashed but beat up, they beat these people up, cower them into submission. AGGGHHH!!!!” [bold type was in the original report]

Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition is also calling on the flock to support Rep. John Boehner’s Higher Education Act (H.R. 609), legislation spearheaded by David Horowitz whose real goal is to destroy “academic freedom” and “diversity” by encouraging and enabling ultra-conservatives and religious fundamentalists to strike out – legally and with impunity – at anyone who disagrees with them or challenges their far-right ideology. (Check out the new “Conservative Tees” ad on Horowitz’s FrontPageMag.com website, then look up the word “hypocrite.”)

Pat, Lou and the boys demand total obedience to their dogmatic, political version of “religion,” a word whose etymology speaks for itself:

Religion n, [ME religioun, fr. AF religium, L religion-, religio supernatural constraint, sanction, religious practice, perh. Fr. religare to restrain, tie back]

The oldest definition of the word “religion” included the phrase “scrupulous conformity,” which is precisely what James Dobson, Douglas Groothuis, Mark Creech, R. Albert Mohler, Pat Robertson, and Lou Sheldon want: blind obedience to their definition of “Christianity.”

Monotheistic “organized religions” and the inherently bigoted, hate-filled dogma they create are, without doubt, among the worst ideas humanity ever concocted, especially when married to a political agenda.

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