HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR
Dogma and the Perpetuating of a Dead God
By Rev. Mark Sandlin
In 1966 the cover of TIME magazine asked the jarring question, “Is God Dead?” It was the first time TIME used only text on it’s cover and the impact only added to the striking question.
“Is God Dead?”
Three simple words that for a brief time created quite a stir throughout the United States. Many angry sermons were delivered in rebuttal. Even Bob Dylan got in on the action in a Playboy interview saying, “If you were God, how would you like to see that written about yourself.” The National Review even asked the question if perhaps it was TIME that was dead.
The reality was that the article, written by TIME‘s religion editor John Elson, was much more nuanced than the magazine cover suggested, but those three words and what they might mean garnished all the attention. Americans were shocked. They were outraged. Some were dismayed and others were simply worried.
In reality, it wasn’t even a new question. In 1882, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche had already famously (or infamously) put forth the statement that “God is dead.” And before that, another German philosopher, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, had considered the death of God in his book, Phenomenology of Spirit/Mind.
I suppose the question of “God” is really an age old question. As Nietzsche pointed out, before the age of Enlightenment, it was perhaps a much needed concept which helped establish morals, values, the order of the Universe, and even gave legitimacy to governments. But with the rise of science and philosophy, the role of or even need for God was lessened. For Nietzsche, not only was God dead, but humanity was the murderer. Our desire and pursuit to better understand the world had killed God.
Nietzsche didn’t understand the death of God to be an entirely good thing, he realized that for many people the death of God would bring on despair and meaninglessness. He realized that for all practical purposes the understanding of God that humanity once believed in was of little use in an age of Enlightenment, but he also realized that humanity was not likely to let go of God all that easily. As he put it, “God is dead; but given the way of men, there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown.”
He couldn’t have been more correct and the modern understanding of God couldn’t be more damaged because of it.
Nietzsche, while an atheist himself, wasn’t proclaiming the ultimate death of God. He was proclaiming the death of the god that was needed pre-Enlightenment.
Not surprisingly, Christians took quite a bit of offense to the statement and resisted it. What we ended up with was a pre-Enlightenment God in the age of reason and systems designed to protect and support those beliefs. As every year passed, we moved further and further into a more scientific understand of the world and the Church built up more and more dogma to prop up a concept of God that only had true relevance in a pre-scientific age.
For me, “God is dead,” or more precisely, “the understanding of God we once had is dead,” should have pushed believers into a deeper pursuit of the reality of God, a deeper pursuit of the truth of God. Instead, we circled the wagons with God in the middle and clung desperately to what we thought we knew in spite of evidence to the contrary. We created “essential” confessions built upon ancient understandings and demanded unfaltering adherence. At times, the perceived threat of anyone thoughtfully challenging the religious establishment and its dearly held dogma was seen as so dangerous that the “heretics” were burned alive.
Today, we simply chase such “heretics” out of the pulpit or out of the denomination – rather than taking their lives, we simply destroy them. We require full loyalty, full fealty, full submission to the establishment.
In doing so, the modern Church continues to perpetuate belief systems that make little to no sense when placed next to modern advances in science, history, philosophy, literary criticism, and yes, even in theology. Many insist on adherence to a belief in the virgin birth when literary criticism and science suggest otherwise. From the Trinity to the divinity of Jesus to the concept of Hell, the modern Church dogmatically holds onto beliefs that require “blind faith” rather than the engagement of what the very same people might think of as our God given intellect.
As Bishop Spong has said, “Christians must now come to understand that God does not inhabit creeds or theological doctrines shaped with human words.” It is the height of human hubris to believe that we can fully understand God, more or less contain God, in creeds and doctrines. Furthermore, our anthropomorphizing of God is a damaging attempt to package God up in something we can hold onto which further inhibits our ability to perceive the fullness of God and what God may be.
So, yes. In my eyes, God is dead… or at least should be.
That is, the God of most mainline Protestant churches, the God of the Catholic Church, the God of Evangelical churches is dead. It has been since the 1800’s, but yet we continue to insist on worshiping its shadowy vestige on the walls of our lives.
This attachment to a God of ages past also contributes to the continue decline of the Church’s relevance in the eyes of the public, particularly to younger generations. They see the dogmatic adherence to beliefs that can’t stand up to modern discoveries as hypocritical and, frankly, absurd.
The Church certainly shouldn’t ditch it’s historical beliefs simply in an effort to appease these folks in order to gain new members, but equally, it must stop ignoring these outside critiques and stop dismissing them as irrelevant or uninformed. There is a reason that the Spiritual But Not Religious are one of the fastest growing religious movements in the U.S. and, unfortunately, one of the big reasons is the Church itself.
It’s long past time for the Church to shed its futile efforts to cling to a concept of God that was established prior to the scientific age. It’s time to hear the voices outside of the establishment who would like to be part of a religious movement but refuse to check their minds at the door to do so.
Yes, it means there will be the need for quite a bit of deconstruction as we remove the dogma that carefully props up the dead God of the seventeenth century and before. It means that the religiously powerful will have to give up many of the rules and regulations that keep them in power. It means questioning the current human made construct of God which, less than surprisingly, makes God’s main interest that of meeting the needs of those who constructed God. It means letting go of the need to be “correct” or to have “right beliefs” and, instead, to begin valuing more seriously the pursuit of what is true and real – a willingness to not know and, in that not knowing, to be propelled into the quest for the newly revealed realities of God that advances in science, history, philosophy, literary criticism, and theology are offering up to us every day.
The reality is, it is an exciting time to be seeking an understanding of God. It is an exciting time to be considering what your relationship to/toward/with God is. We live in a time when information is available to us in a way and with an immediacy that it never has been before. We can quickly and easily expose ourselves to a multitude of theological perspectives from religions all over the world and throughout history. Scientific discoveries are revealing realities of the Universe that we never could have previously imagined. We are learning more and more about how connected all of Creation is, how much we each impact others and our environment in every action we take, how fragile and surprisingly resilient life is. Technological advances and archeology are helping peal back the layers of many of our religious stories in ways that push us to new understandings of our religious ancestors.
The list could go on and on. The real point is that, yes, God is dead. At least, THAT God is dead. Has been for a long time. But, it turns out, that we are in a perfect day and age to begin rebuilding our understanding of what God is.
The question that remains is will our churches be brave enough to risk this exploration with us? Will they be willing to let go of all the dogma and trust in the community as we work together to reach a more modern understand of an ageless God? Up until this point, the majority of churches haven’t been willing to do so, forcing most spiritual seekers to go at it on their own.
That may be the single most damage the the Church has done in this pursuit of God. I don’t claim to have much hold on the full reality of God, but one of the things I am more certain about is that God is part of what connects us all. Pursuit of spiritual knowledge on our own is certainly rewarding and revealing, but I am left to believe that there are certain realities of God that can only be revealed in the connectedness of community.
It is time – it is well beyond time for the Church to lets this God of yesteryear die, lest it too dies trying to reanimate the dead.
~ Rev Mark Sandlin
Read the essay online here.
About the Author
Mark Sandlin is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) from the South. He currently serves at Presbyterian Church of the Covenant. He is a co-founder of The Christian Left. His blog, RevMarkSandlin, has been named as one of the “Top Ten Christian Blogs.” Mark received The Associated Church Press’ Award of Excellence in 2012. His work has been published on “The Huffington Post,” “Sojourners,” “Time,” “Church World Services,” and even the “Richard Dawkins Foundation.” He’s been featured on PBS’s “Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly” and NPR’s “The Story with Dick Gordon.” Follow Mark on Facebook and Twitter @marksandlin
Question & Answer
A. J. from the Internet, writes:
Question:
“I recently received one of those emails with the sensational subject line: “ALL OF A SUDDEN MESSAGE FROM A CONCERNED CITIZEN.” It started out with the question, "Has everyone lost their ability to see what is happening in the USA?” Then it lists nearly 20 “All of a Suddens” where Muslims are allegedly doing X, Y, or Z to undermine the American way of life. Each “fact” is presented with no attribution or source reference. Some of them are obviously made-up, but others seem like they could be possible. I’m including a couple of them to see if you have any suggestions for a response.”
Answer: By Rev. David Felten
Dear A. J.,
Wow, there’s a lot to cover here – but let me start out by saying that I’ve received that same email (more than once!). Every time it arrives, I flounder between being exasperated, angry, and despondent – and not only because of the contents, but in amazement at the people who forward me this clap-trap. It makes me stop and think, “Do I really know that person so poorly that I could be unaware of the ugly prejudice they harbor (and are now advertising by forwarding me this email)?” It also reminds me of the toxic undercurrent in our culture that my Muslim friends have to deal with every day – and from which my Christian privilege insulates me.
And more importantly, we need to remember that this brand of one-click armchair bigotry is not harmless. It contributes to creating an environment where more and more blatant hate-speech and discrimination are tacitly approved of – all of which has led to a very real surge in anti-Muslim hate-crimes. Despite this demonstrable increase in anti-Muslim violence in the U.S., there has been nothing resembling a collective recoil or revulsion that one would hope to see in a country that claims to stand on principles of religious liberty and diversity.
Suffice it to say, I don’t think there’s much that either of us could convey that would change the minds of the people who forward this email. Sadly, the avalanche of intentionally false stories, propaganda, and fake news has rendered moot whatever capacity many people might have had for critical thought. It shouldn’t be a surprise that when the very nature of reality itself is called into question by the “alternative facts” du jour, that people choose to cling to whatever information bolsters their most primal fears and prejudices – evidence to the contrary be damned.
So, despite the seeming futility of any effort on your or my part to change the minds of most card-carrying Islamophobes, I’m going to wander down what may seem like “In Vain Lane” to offer some observations on a couple of these “All of a Sudden” claims. I’ve got to believe that even the smallest effort to push back against the tide of Islamophobia is not in vain, but an opportunity to light a candle against the darkness, to speak out in defense of genuine American values, and hone our skills in standing with the oppressed.
All of a sudden, Islam is taught in schools.
Oh no! Islam being “taught” in our schools?! The horror! This claim is part of yet another attempt by reactionary Fundamentalist Christians and Conservative politicians to 1) stoke the flames of conspiracy and 2) attempt to discredit the government and public schools as being un-American (Oh yeah, AND raise money). It dramatically over-exaggerates out-of-context information without any references to real world situations. But there’s certainly nothing “all of a sudden” about it. The basics of Islam are indeed already taught in many of our public schools – but not as a religion class. As the Bill of Rights makes clear, that would not be allowed for any religion, including Christianity. Smart schools bring in Muslim speakers from organizations like our local Islamic Speakers Bureau of Arizona to enhance students’ understanding of Islam.
If a public school is doing its job, the history and tenets of Islam absolutely need to be taught right alongside the basics of Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and any number of other traditions. Why? In part because there is hardly a political crisis happening anywhere in the world today that isn’t, in some way, driven by religious sensibilities. How much better off would we all be if every citizen had a basic understanding of world religions? But in our increasingly interconnected world, Americans who are stupid about religion will continue to make stupid decisions (just as we’ve already demonstrated over and over again).
All of a sudden, we must allow prayer rugs everywhere and allow for Islamic prayer in schools and businesses.
Schools may indeed be asked to flex schedules and room use to allow observant Muslim kids a place to pray, but schools are used to that – as they should be. We live in a country of diverse religious traditions. Who among the Jewish and Muslim community complains when the majority Christian culture sways school districts to take Good Friday off? Last year my kids had the day off for Yom Kippur (the Jewish Day of Atonement). Where is the outrage over our public schools accommodating a religious minority and compromising the education of our upstanding Christian children? The bottom line is that it’s not unusual for schools to allow for the practice of Judaism and Christianity – so why not other religions? You’ve got to expect that in a country as diverse as ours, public schools are just one of the institutions for whom accommodating, without favoring (or “establishing”), particular religious traditions is both a daily challenge – and an expectation.
As for businesses being forced to allow space and time for Islamic prayer in general (“we MUST allow prayer rugs everywhere”?), there’s just no evidence out there to support this claim. To the contrary, there have been a number of high profile examples of companies disallowing Muslim prayer during the day. Others make allowances as part of best HR practice or as an accommodation with a union. In a related development, a number of tech giants have stepped up in opposition to the Trump administration’s Muslim ban motivated by pure practical capitalism. If you have top engineers and scientists who are Muslim, it makes sense that businesses that value a particular expertise make allowances for top talent.
All of a sudden, we must stop serving pork in public places and institutions.
Oh good grief. The author of these “all of a suddens” is clearly running on conspiracy theory vapors. Do they not have Google?!? Do they not read? These kinds of broad generalizations are clearly designed to simply upset impressionable people who don’t care or don’t have the capacity to make even the slightest effort at getting the facts.
Keeping conflicts over menus in Europe aside (Google it), let’s look at a recent dust-up in the United States. Back in 2015, it was announced that pork would be taken off the menu in Federal Prisons, but NOT as a concession to Muslims. In a Washington Post article, the head of the prisons reported that there were several non-Muslim reasons. One was: “Pork has been the lowest-rated food by inmates for several years,” AND pork has also become more expensive for the government to buy. SO, the initial rationale to stop serving pork was, in fact, to respond to inmate preference and save taxpayer dollars. But a firestorm erupted when The National Pork Producers Council and what seemed like the whole state of pig-inundated Iowa rose up in protest. The decision was overturned in less than a week – behold the power of the oink! Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley really knows how to bring home the bacon, huh?
Even the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the country’s largest Muslim civil rights advocacy group, wasn’t a big fan of the no-pork menu. Spokesman Ibrahim Hooper predicted that anti-Islam groups would spin the decision into a case of the federal government acting under pressure from Muslims. “This is just the kind of thing that drives [Islamophobes] crazy,” he said. Clearly, this “all of a sudden” entry is exactly the kind of thing CAIR predicted.
So, keep in mind that for tax-payer supported institutions (be they prisons or public schools), even what seems like a simple menu decision needs to keep in mind not only the optics, but a constellation of financial and legal considerations – some of which may include religious issues. On a purely practical level, schools here in the U.S. have demonstrated remarkable commitment to accommodate kids with gluten and peanut allergies. When there are enough kids who are allergic to something (or have a religious mandate to avoid something), it makes sense that institutions would make adjustments – especially when it also means saving money and not wasting food (unless you go up against the pig lobby).
In the end, the motive of someone who first publishes things like this “all of a sudden” list is unclear. Is it simply for fun? To see how many low-information consumers of current events can be stirred up with irrational fear? Is it part of some coordinated effort by racial and religious bigots to stoke Islamophobia? Is it some random self-declared internet patriot seeking to resource “the movement”? The clearly anti-Obama slant on many of the statements suggests a political motivation. Maybe it’s a combination of all of the above (and don’t forget the Russians!).
Whatever the source, these hateful diatribes of misinformation and blatant lies are with us for the foreseeable future. The solution? Keep working in your own circle of influence to promote interfaith understanding and relationships. Where you have time and ability, research some of the claims Islamophobes are making in order to educate yourself. Support your local Muslims: 1) take a group to the local mosque for a tour, 2) bring a Muslim speaker in to your local church or community group, 3) offer financial support to groups like CAIR or your local Islamic Speakers Bureau. Several members of my church have been trained by the Islamic Speakers Bureau of Arizona to go into local schools as part of a three-person “Abrahamic Panel.” A Jew, a Muslim, and a Christian spend all day sharing the particulars and the similarities among the three religions – and leaving a deeply positive impression of unity in diversity.
Lots of people are worked up with fear and misinformation. Sometimes it seems that facts just don’t matter anymore. But don’t give up! Keep paying your dues to the reality club and keep your Islamophobia decoder ring handy. Don’t let people who are taken in by every anti-Muslim snake-oil salesman that comes around derail your commitment to what I think Jesus would want us to do: to treat “the other” with respect and dignity. Practice hospitality. Build genuine relationships with those who are excluded or lied about. And maybe, “all of a sudden,” a whole new world will emerge.
~ Rev. David M. Felten
NOTE: If you’re looking for a curriculum resource to facilitate group discussion about Islam and how to support your Muslim neighbors, check out Living the Questions’ DVD series, “The Jesus Fatwah: Love Your (Muslim) Neighbor as Yourself.”
Read and share online here
About the Author
David Felten is a full-time pastor at The Fountains, a United Methodist Church in Fountain Hills, Arizona. David and fellow United Methodist Pastor, Jeff Procter-Murphy, are the creators of the DVD-based discussion series for Progressive Christians, “Living the Questions”.
A co-founder of the Arizona Foundation for Contemporary Theology and also a founding member of No Longer Silent: Clergy for Justice, David is an outspoken voice for LGBTQ rights both in the church and in the community at large. David is active in the Desert Southwest Conference of the United Methodist Church and tries to stay connected to his roots as a musician. You’ll find him playing saxophones in a variety of settings, including appearances with the Fountain Hills Saxophone Quartet.
David and his wife Laura, an administrator for a large Arizona public school district, live in Phoenix with their three often adorable children.
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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited
Unmasking the Sources of Christian Anti-Semitism - Part 3
When I was a child attending an Evangelical Episcopal (Anglican) Sunday school in North Carolina, I was taught that it was OK to hate Jews. If I questioned this teaching the Bible was quickly quoted to validate that negativity. I was never introduced to a good Jew in any of my prepared Sunday school material. I assumed that there was no such thing. I was told that Jews were those evil people who were always out to get Jesus and get him they did. I grew up never doubting that it was the Jews who were responsible for Jesus' death and, just as many in the early church had done, I exonerated the Roman officials of any guilt in the death of Jesus. I accepted the propaganda that was so deep in our faith tradition that it was even enshrined in the creeds, that it was simply "under" Pontius Pilate, not because of Pontius Pilate, that Jesus suffered, died and was buried. There was only a vague biblical note reminding readers that the Jews did not have the power to perform capital punishment, so all executions, other than those resulting from mob violence, had to be carried out by the Romans.
In the material handed out as part of our Sunday school curriculum, it was easy to identify the Jews. They were sinister, evil, plotting and scheming people who had names like Pharisees, Sadducees, Scribes, Annas, Caiaphas and Judas Iscariot. When these Jews were pictured in these leaflets, it was in dark, negative colors, complete with facial scowls. Jews, I was taught, had no principles and would do anything for money.
No one told me in this Sunday school that Jesus was a Jew. That appeared to escape their notice. When I saw pictures of Jesus, he did not look like a Jew. I thought he was a Swede, or at least an Englishman. He had blonde hair, blue eyes and fair skin. No one told me that all of the disciples were Jews, as were Mary and Joseph, Paul and Magdalene.
The biblical episodes were normally interpreted to portray the Christians as the good guys battling the Jews who were the bad guys. When Paul spoke negatively about the Jews, it again did not occur to me that this was a Jewish man saying these things about another part of his own people. I did not understand that Paul's enemies were not all Jews but the traditionalist Jews, that we today might call the fundamentalist Jews. I did not grasp the fact that Paul represented a contending party within Judaism that believed that they had received a new vision of God in the Jewish Jesus and that this new vision needed to be incorporated into their ongoing faith story. This is how Judaism had always evolved. The gigantic heroes of their past had themselves been visionaries who saw beyond the boundaries of their own tradition. All of them had in their own time used their vision of God to reshape and reform the Jewish story. Abraham left Ur of the Chaldees to form a new people around a new idea. Moses led Abraham's descendents out of slavery stamping on them a radical monotheism. Elijah brought into this developing Judaism the role of prophets. Ezekiel reformed Judaism during the trauma of the Exile. Ezra and Nehemiah led a remnant of Jews out of that exile to pick up the threads of their broken history and to rebuild the dream. One could also count among these heroes that nameless prophet that we call II Isaiah, only because his writings had been added to the scroll of Isaiah. This shadowy, enigmatic figure laid aside Jewish dreams of future grandeur and proposed a vocation of vicarious suffering in which the people of God would absorb human hostility, transforming it through their suffering, and bringing the world thereby to a new wholeness. It was a startling vision that would lie dormant in the Jewish sacred writings until used to interpret the life and death of a first century Jew named Jesus.
So those Jewish followers of Jesus, who saw him as another in this long line of people who had made the faith of the Jews a living tradition, challenged those members of the Jewish community who believed that they already possessed, in their orthodox formulations, the final truth of God that needed no further expansion. What looks to the contemporary reader as a vehement anti-Semitic polemic in the Bible was in fact a typical ecclesiastical dispute between traditionalists and visionaries. However, we must not forget that both parties were Jews. It was not unlike the battle in Christian circles between the fundamentalists and the modernists, in which epithets are hurled back and forth with little sensitivity. Religious battles are always visceral, emotional and exaggerated conflicts, because ultimately they are about our deepest identity, which means that they involve our sense of security and well-being.
The New Testament is the product of these Jewish revisionists, who were determined to open a reformed Judaism to the inclusion of Gentiles. Look at who its authors were. First there are the epistles of the Jewish Paul and some of his Jewish disciples who wrote in his name. Then there are letters attributed to such early revisionist Jewish leaders (or their disciples who wrote in their names) as Peter, John, James and Jude, who had made the transition into the Jesus vision. Next we have gospels written by Mark, Matthew and John who were Jews by birth and a gospel and the book of Acts that were written by a man called Luke, who was a Jew by conversion. The battle between the Orthodox party and the followers of Jesus was originally a battle for the future of Judaism, between two Jewish groups.
Over a period of time, probably less than a century, the revisionist Jews formed common cause with the influx of gentiles into Christianity and, as a consequence, loosened their own ties with Judaism. The barriers that proclaimed that Jews must stay separate and therefore could not eat or intermarry with gentiles faded among the revisionists, while among the orthodox Jews, those very same lines were hardening. A division was inevitable and during the last years of the 9th decade, the split occurred. Traditional Judaism was not flexible enough to contain the new vision, and the revisionists more and more defined themselves outside of Judaism. So a new religion called Christianity came into being.
These Christians called their sacred scriptures 'The New Covenant,' or 'Testament' to contrast it with the original covenant. This New Testament was quite simply the product of the revisionist tradition. Both of these contending sides said terrible things about each other. That always occurs in ecclesiastical fights. It was at that time, however, an intra-Jewish fight. The hostile rhetoric of the Orthodox party was vehement, but since they believed that their scriptures were complete, this rhetoric did not enter their scriptures to echo through the ages. The hostile rhetoric of the revisionists, however, was present in their telling of the story of Jesus and thus it would be read through the centuries as the 'Word of God.' This meant that negativity toward Jews would become a regular feature in Christian worship each Sunday and its hatred would permeate Christian history. Finally it would result in Christians forgetting not only their own Jewish origins, but the Jewishness of Jesus as well.
The legends of his miraculous birth, which suggested that he was he was fathered by the Holy Spirit, served to make him less Jewish. Since the woman at that time was not thought to contribute anything to the fetus except the nurture of her womb, people began to think of Jesus as completely non-Jewish. With the subsequent influx of gentiles into the Christian Church and the simultaneous decline in the influence of Jews, Christians more and more shed their Jewish practices. Many intermarried with gentiles and faded away ethnically. By the first quarter of the 2nd century, Christianity had become a gentile movement and had lost the world of its origins.
>From that day to this, the primary readers and interpreters of the New Testament were Gentiles who had no great sense of Jewish history, of Jewish writing styles or of the original Jewish setting of the Christian story. They identified the Jesus movement about which the scriptures spoke not as revisionist Jews but as Christians with no reference at all to their Jewish background. They identified the orthodox party in the New Testament with all Jews as the enemies of Jesus. The narratives of the Jesus movement, that began to be read in the churches, were no longer heard as negative comments that the revisionist Jews had made to the orthodox Jews; but as things Christians, including Jesus, had said about all Jews. As these "sacred scriptures" were read through the ages, the apparent hostility of all Christians toward all Jews was reinforced in every century. At each Good Friday observance the role of the Jews in the death of Jesus was recounted again and again. The presumed acceptance of the blame for this dark act of "deicide" was articulated in those scriptures by the Jews themselves. "His blood be upon us and upon our children," became the most terrible of all the terrible texts of the Bible. So the children of Abraham, the very people who produced Jesus of Nazareth, were made to suffer in generation after generation wreaking havoc throughout Christian history.
Anti-Semitism, born in this distortion, was and is a gift of the Christians to the world. It is the dark underside of the gospel of Love. It is not a pretty, a noble or an inspiring picture, but Christians need to own this prejudice. We created it.
One more strand of anti-Semitism must be traced, however, before this story is complete. When the Christian Gospel, climaxing as it does with the crucifixion, came to be told, the anti-hero was pictured as a quintessential Jew. His name was Judas, which is nothing but the Greek spelling of Judah, the name of the Jewish nation. He was called "Iscariot," which means political traitor or assassin. In a real sense, anti-Semitism would always focus on this character. He was destined to become the lynchpin, perhaps even the ultimate source of Christianity's darkest chapter. To his story and his part in this dreadful bigotry, we will turn next.
~ John Shelby Spong
Originally published May 26, 2004
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