We’ve seen the rise of militant Islam and on the heels of that hardening of outlook, are we seeing a similar move toward militant atheism? David Aikman reviewed Sam Harris’s book “The End of Faith” this month in an article entitled “Atheist Apostle” (Christianity Today, Mar. 2007)
In the tradition of Voltaire, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Bertrand Russell, Sam Harris, a graduate in philosophy from Stanford University, has been battering at the walls of religious faith, especially Christianity and Islam. His first book, The End of Faith (2004), was a New York Times bestseller. Predictably, he received a torrent of argumentative mail from Christians and promptly decided to write another book, Letter to a Christian Nation (2006). The aim of this second volume, he says, is quite simply “to demolish the moral and intellectual pretensions of Christianity in its most committed forms.”
This has been tried before, of course. After Voltaire predicted that Christianity would be extinct within 100 years of his death, his estate became a Bible Society headquarters.
This review follows last month’s editorial (”The New Intolerance” - Christianity Today, Feb. 2007) which said:
Take, for example, the reviews of Richard Dawkins’s book The God Delusion that appeared in The New York Times, the London Review of Books, and Harper’s. No one would mistake those journals for members of the Evangelical Press Association, but the Times reviewer, science and philosophy writer Jim Holt, upbraided Dawkins for not fully appreciating the intellectual force of classical arguments for God, especially in light of the more sophisticated versions presented by today’s theistic philosophers: “Shirking the intellectual hard work,” Holt wrote, “Dawkins prefers to move on to parodic ‘proofs’ that he has found on the internet.”
“Those books really haven’t dealt with compelling evidence for the existence of God,” says Craig Hazen of Dawkins’s God Delusion and its close cousin, Sam Harris’s Letter to a Christian Nation. Hazen, who directs Biola University’s M.A. program in Christian apologetics, told CT, “It’s a stronger form of fundamentalism than you can find anywhere.”
Is it any wonder people have a negative attitude to faith when there are people claiming to be “God’s servant” and painting barely coherent graffiti all over their own house and car:
A San Mateo woman is getting messages from God and painting them in five-foot-tall letters on the roof of her house.
The city wants her to stop doing it. Her neighbors want her to stop doing it. But Estrella Benavides says she can’t do that.
“I am going to keep going, because it is all I can do,” she said. “God chose me to be His servant. There is such a thing as freedom of speech.”
Benavides, a 48-year-old woman who lives alone in her yellow house on Cottage Grove Avenue, began painting the giant messages about a year ago, about the time her husband moved out and she lost custody of her son. Last month, she had two large pins inserted through her lips, to keep her from eating as part of a religious fast. God told her to do that, too.
I detect a touch of sarcasm in the journalist’s tone, “God told her to do that, too.” We live on a street with a guy who has covered his minivan in similar scrawling. It’s barely legible and when you do manage to read it, it doesnt make a lot of sense. What kind of “witness” is this? I dont know which “god” these people are hearing from, but it’s certainly not the one the bible describes when it says
The spirits of prophets are subject to the control of prophets. For God is not a God of disorder but of peace.
If these people claim to be “hearing from god” then they’d certainly classify as “prophets”, and therefore under control of their faculties. If they feel compelled to do these ridiculous things, please have the integrity to stand up and admit that it’s mental illness that’s motivating / compelling their behaviour! Is it any wonder people like Dawkins and Harris are writing to dismiss Christians as out of their minds?
It also doesnt help that highly visible churches are in the process of tearing themselves apart. Yahoo news reports:
Episcopal head seeks gay compromise
Anglican leaders emerged from a closed-door meeting in Tanzania last week with an ultimatum for the U.S. denomination: They gave Episcopalians until Sept. 30 to unequivocally pledge not to consecrate another partnered gay bishop or authorize official prayers for same-sex couples. If it doesn’t, the church risks a much-reduced role in the 77 million-member Anglican Communion.
The Episcopal Church, which represents Anglicanism in the United States, caused an uproar in 2003 by consecrating its first openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson. The decision put the liberal Christian focus on social justice directly at odds with the traditional biblical view of sexuality.
On Tuesday, Robinson made his first public comments on Anglican demands, saying the church should reject the ultimatum and instead “get on with the work of the Gospel” no matter how communion leaders react. Several other Episcopal bishops have issued similar statements.
And the much more conservative Calvary Chapel is airing dirty laundry in secular court-rooms over who will control the ‘Calvary satellite network’ radio stations (as reported in the LA Times)
God’s word, plus static, on Calvary Satellite Network
Amid accusations over sex, money and control, Pastor Chuck Smith is about to surrender much of the evangelical radio empire to a man he calls morally unfit for ministry.
Christianity Today also reported on the Calvary Chapel issues this month:
Day of Reckoning
Chuck Smith and Calvary Chapel face an uncertain future.
“We’re a fast-moving movement,” says Mark Foreman, pastor of North Coast Calvary Chapel in Carlsbad, California. “There is little decision-making red tape.” That’s what makes Calvary Chapel so dynamic, he says. And, he adds, “That’s our Achilles’ heel.”
Still, he says, the typical Calvary Chapel model may be “an old wineskin that is cracking.” What made Calvary Chapel dynamic was its ability to reach the unchurched in culturally relevant ways. It’s still Calvary Chapel’s strength, he says.
But the association is now at a crossroads, Foreman says. “Will Calvary Chapel go on to the next generation, or will we defeat ourselves?” Its current problems are a test of the network’s ability to institutionalize in a way that corrects problems yet still maintains the dynamism it had during the Jesus movement.
All of this public wrangling makes me sad. It makes me mad. I makes me question what it is that lead these people to the current crisis, and prompts me to wonder whether I could design a church that avoids pitfalls like those? If I could mold a church body, what would make us distinct, what would we hold to? Feedback (comments and email) invited - what characterizes a solid, healthy, reputable church? What makes it appealing?
