Don’t miss Tyler William’s groundbreaking revelation of an amazing, recently discovered artifact. And to think he was able to break the story on Saturday, of all days! I’ll let Tyler tell you all about it, but it puts paid to those foolish minimalists!

Update: In case you haven’t figured it out by the reference to “Saturday, of all days” (which was April 1), the reference to “those foolish minimalists” (which longtime readers of this blog will know is an opinion of minimalists that I don’t hold), by Tyler’s “AF’s Day” tag, and the anachronistic spelling and letterforms, Tyler’s post was a well-executed April Fool’s Day joke!<

My good friend Richard Beck has recently started a new blog that he calls Experimental Theology. Richard is an experimental psychologist teaching at our undergraduate alma mater, Abilene Christian University. Some of you who are regular Higgion readers will wonder what on earth a psychologist is doing with a theology blog. It’s true that Richard has relatively little theological training, but he’s deeply interested in the interface between psychology and theology, coming at it mostly from the psychological side. Richard is thoughtful and intelligent, and you can count on thought-provoking posts. His current series on “what makes a sin a sin?” is well worth your attention.

Here is a much more gracious, and I daresay Christlike, response to Nancy Grace than I was able to muster. The follow-up is funny and sad all at the same time.

Duane pointed to Nick who pointed to a 2005 paper by “Intelligent Design” proponent Robert Newman. One of the issues that has long bedeviled (a most appropriate term, as you will see) ID proponents is the presence in nature of biological or anatomical features that seem to be unintelligently designed, or at least not benevolently designed. Useless appendages and disease organisms would be two examples; Newman focuses, for instance, on the famous “panda’s thumb” and HIV. Newman proposes that such phenomena are evidence of malevolent spirits—the devil and evil angels—messing around with biological design, and/or benevolent angels trying to improve or modify existing organisms, but being constrained to work with what was already there (being unable to create new things from scratch).

That this has nothing to do with actual science is so obvious as to need no comment. Oops, I just commented.

What may not be quite so obvious on first reading is that the whole thing is circular logic. “Flawed design” is presupposed, then used as evidence for the machinations of evil spirits, who are then used as evidence for design.

But of course my expertise is in biblical studies and theology, so I’ll focus my closing thought on the biggest theological problem with Newman’s paper: he imputes way too much power to malevolent spirits. In biblical narratives, evil spirits can sure mess things up for people, chiefly in the form of New Testament “demon possession.” However, I don’t see anything in the Bible that would lead us to think that such spirits should be able to affect the very fabric of reality. One could succesfully argue, I think—as an exegetical and narrative matter, not a scientific one—that Genesis 1:26ff. depicts God as enlisting the aid of “the divine council” in creating humanity (hence the plurals). Yet they would still have to work according to God’s “design specifications” (“image of God,” “male and female,” capable of “dominion,” and all that). In the Bible, “the devil and his angels,” to use a phrase from Revelation, are not evil gods with just a twinge less power than God and the good angels. They are, rather, predatory pests, and above all, prisoners.

It’s as if Newman has rediscovered one of the earliest ideas that the Christian church rejected as heresy—creation by a lesser, evil god, the “Demiurge“—and has repackaged it in demonic wrappers that some overly imaginative evangelical “left behind.”

To be fair, I suppose I should cite two sources that might support Newman’s thesis. The first, in chronological order, is of course Time Bandits, whose plot is driven by the resentment that Randall and his crew feel over having been taken off the job of designing the world’s vegetation after they came up with the pink bungadoo. The second is Neil Gaiman’s “Murder Mysteries,” a short story in Smoke and Mirrors which was also dramatized for SciFi.com’s Seeing Ear Theater and is available in a comic book adaptation. In “Murder Mysteries,” the angel responsible for creating love actually experiments with the product, falls in love with another angel, gets jealous, commits the first murder, and sows the seeds for Lucifer’s rebellion.

With his permission, I reprint the following informative and infuriating e-mail from my colleague Richard Hughes, a historian of American religion in general, who is both a member of the Churches of Christ and is extremely well-informed about American religious history.

Interestingly, I had a call yesterday morning from someone at CNN. Randy Balmer, a historian of American religion at Columbia and a good friend of mine, had suggested to this CNN reporter that he call me for information on the CofC. The man told me up front that he was looking for someone to “defend” the Church of Christ. “Defend?” I asked. “What are the charges?” Well, he explained, several people had suggested that the CofC is a cult.

I told him that was an entirely outlandish suggestion, and that I was certain whoever was making those claims was confusing the Churches of Christ with the International Church of Christ. I asked him if he had time for me to give him some information. He said he would love to learn. So I explained our congregational autonomy (hardly something associated with a cult), our emphasis on every Christian searching for truth in Scripture for himself or herself (hardly a characteristic of a cult), and much more. We talked for perhaps 30 minutes. At the end of the interview, he said, “Well, we surely don’t want to pursue the line that the Churches of Christ are a cult.”

Then, when I watched the show last night, the first thing Nancy Grace suggested was that the Churches of Christ are a cult. It’s obvious to me that Nancy Grace and her producers at CNN have no interest in presenting the truth but only in presenting the most salacious and sensational story they can create. What they did is especially shameful since I know for a certainty that they had the facts on the Churches of Christ.

The case of Mary Winkler, who shot her husband Matthew in the back with a shotgun, has now garnered national attention. Since Matthew Winkler was the pulpit minister for the Fourth Street Church of Christ in Selmer, Tennessee, the Churches of Christ have also been vaulted onto the national stage, with quite a bit of misinformation being dumped into the national media.

On CNN Headline News, Nancy Grace’s show focused on the Winkler case on March 27 and March 29. During the March 29 show, according to the transcript, the following exchange took place:

GRACE: A well-respected and much beloved minister in the Church of Christ, Selmer, Tennessee, gunned down in his own home. His wife, according to many reports, has confessed to police. They say whodunnit is not the issue, it’s why she did it. That is the question.

I want to go to pastor Tom Rukala, joining us tonight, a special guest, a Baptist minister. I’ve been researching the Church of Christ. I don’t know that much about it. What can you tell me?

PASTOR TOM RUKALA, BAPTIST PASTOR: Well, the Church of Christ is a relatively new church. It was started about 150 years ago by Alexander Campbell (ph). And it’s, unfortunately, a very legalistic sect, and they tend to use methods of intimidation and pressure tactics. They claim that they are the only ones going to heaven, and all other people are condemned to hell. So in case…

GRACE: Uh-oh, I’m in trouble. But I already knew that.

(LAUGHTER)

GRACE: Now, wait a minute. What more can you tell me?

RUKALA: Well, they claim that if you’re not baptized by one of their ministers, that you’re doomed to hell, even if you’re a believer in Jesus Christ, which, of course, breaks completely from the traditional Christian view that all those who call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ will be saved because we’re saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, who died for our sins and rose again. For the Church of Christ folks, that’s not enough. You have to be a member of their narrow sect. It’s a very exclusive group. And if you’re not a member of their sect, you’re condemned.

GRACE: You know, Pastor, you keep saying “sect.” “Sect.” You make it sound like a cult.

RUKALA: It kind of is a borderline cult, unfortunately. I don’t want to make it out to be some kind of Hare Krishna group, but it has cult-like characteristics and…

GRACE: In what sense?

RUKALA: Well, in the sense of the exclusivism, the attitude that they are the only ones who know the truth. The tactics that they use are sometimes just — not only un-biblical but unethical, and they can be very ungracious, unfortunately.

As a lifelong member of the Churches of Christ, I find this exchange bizarre and distressing. To begin with, why is a Baptist pastor—not a scholar with a specialty in American church history, but some random Baptist pastor—trotted out as an expert on the Churches of Christ? Surely a well-known Church of Christ minister would have been a better choice than a little-known Baptist pastor. Somebody like, I don’t know, Max Lucado?

In any event, Grace turned to this Rukala character, and he managed to trot out just about every negative stereotype possible. Let’s break it down.

“The Church of Christ is a relatively new church.” So far, so good. The Churches of Christ do in fact trace their immediate heritage to the “Restoration Movement” or, as its earliest leaders preferred to call it, “Reformation” (Jim West must be laughing right now). Among the early leaders of that movement were Alexander Campbell, his father Thomas Campbell, and Barton W. Stone. Alexander Campbell certainly has outshone the others in lasting influence among Churches of Christ. And Rukala is correct to date the beginnings of the Churches of Christ as an American religious movement to the mid-1800s. Of course, Baptists are also “a relatively new church,” existing as an American religious movement only since the early seventeenth century (according to the Baptist History & Heritage Society). Interestingly, some of the early leaders of Churches of Christ were Baptists before joining up with the new movement. And what the Baptist History & Heritage Society says of the 17th-century Baptists perfectly describes the 19th-century Churches of Christ:

Some of these earnest people read the Bible in their own language, believed it, and sought to live by it. They formed separate congregations which accepted only believers into their membership, and they baptized converts upon their profession of faith.

“It’s, unfortunately, a very legalistic sect.” A Baptist calling Churches of Christ legalistic—is this CNN or Comedy Central? The truth is that Churches of Christ do have a strong legalistic streak in our history, but so do Baptists, Catholics, and many other denominations. Legalism in one form or another has been around for millennia as a perennial problem within Christianity, and Churches of Christ have not been immune.

“They tend to use methods of intimidation and pressure tactics.” I suppose this is true, if you happen to find altar calls featuring sixteen iterations of “Just as I am, without one plea …” an instance of “intimidation and pressure tactics.” Some of the evangelistic “tactics” that Churches of Christ have historically used include overseas missionaries, door-to-door solicitation of Bible studies, “revivals” (though we call them “gospel meetings”), tracts, television programs, radio programs, filmstrips and videos, neighborhood Vacation Bible Schools, and the aforementioned altar calls (we call them “invitations”). I seem to recall my Baptist friends doing all of these as well, never mind the Lutherans and the Church of God … well, practically everybody except the Unitarian Universalists (I’ve never heard of a UU VBS, but maybe they happen). On the other hand, maybe Rukala is talking about pressures exerted within Churches of Christ toward internal conformity. That kind of stuff certainly does go on, sometimes degenerating into name-calling, especially among the more dogmatic segments of Churches of Christ. But the same sort of stuff goes on in the Southern Baptist Convention year after year, and nobody calls the SBC a “cult.”

“They claim that they are the only ones going to heaven, and all other people are condemned to hell. … [T]hey claim that if you’re not baptized by one of their ministers, that you’re doomed to hell …” To be fair, there have indeed been a very large number of members of Churches of Christ who have adopted this attitude. This was not the attitude of people like Alexander Campbell and Barton W. Stone in the first generation of the Restoration Movement, and very many Church of Christ members today abhor such an attitude. In fact, if pressed, probably no member of the Church of Christ would actually say that you have to be signed up on the roll sheet of a specific Church of Christ congregation in order to go to heaven. Even those who are most strident on this point would probably put it in terms like “Only those who have been baptized in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit for the remission of sins, and who then live a life consistent with that baptism, will be saved.”

“It kind of is a borderline cult, unfortunately. I don’t want to make it out to be some kind of Hare Krishna group, but it has cult-like characteristics … in the sense of the exclusivism, the attitude that they are the only ones who know the truth.” Oh come on. Rukala is describing arrogance, not cultishness. And the Churches of Christ have absolutely exhibited more than our fair share of arrogance … but no more so than Baptists. Should I even mention that Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell hold Southern Baptist ordination? Arrogance is not the exclusive province of the Churches of Christ.

In fact, the loose structure of the Churches of Christ inherently means that Churches of Christ lack, and can never possibly have, one of the defining marks of a “cult”: a charismatic, authoritarian leader.

Fortunately, Nancy Grace’s March 29 show actually featured a Church of Christ minister talking about Churches of Christ. They tried to get Mike Cope, but couldn’t accomplish this technically from Abilene, where Mike preaches. So they got Rubel Shelly instead. Here’s how it went (please note that the transcript consistently misspells Rubel’s name):

GRACE: Is the Church of Christ a cult? Is it cult-like? Did that play into this murder in any way?

With us, Dr. Ruble Shelly, professor of philosophy and religion at Rochester College. He’s a Church of Christ minister. He knows the Winkler family. Let’s take a look.

Single leader, cult-like qualities, trying to isolate members, members happy and enthusiastic — I don’t think that’s a bad thing — experimental rather than logical, hide what they teach, say they’re the only true group.

Dr. Shelly, response?

DR. RUBLE SHELLY, CHURCH OF CHRIST, PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY: It certainly doesn’t fit the criteria you just gave. We certainly have never created those charismatic personalities. We’re a network of independent, local churches.

And your guests so far, I’m the only one who has to plead guilty to being a member of the Church of Christ. And Churches of Christ certainly are not cultic in any of that classic sense.

We’re a conservative, religious group in the Christian tradition. You’d ask one of our members, and we’d say we jump right off the pages of the New Testament. Historically, we come out of what’s called the American Restoration movement, but the cultic label — I can’t imagine anyone sticking that label.

GRACE: Dr. Shelly, what is the role of women in the Church of Christ?

SHELLY: Well, we believe that God created the human race male and female in his image and that Paul said there is no male or female in Christ. There are some male leadership options, in terms of elders of churches, and most preaching ministries that are reserved to males, but that’s not a cultic fact.

GRACE: Why? Why?

SHELLY: Well, that’s because of a biblical interpretation issue that Southern Baptists and many other groups share in common with Churches of Christ about male leadership in local churches. Churches of Christ are a conservative religious group.

GRACE: OK, wait, wait, wait. Dr. Shelly, no offense, by why, why only male leadership? Does anybody remember Mary Magdalene, ding ding?

SHELLY: Well, Mary Magdalene was not an apostle. All of the apostles were, in fact…

GRACE: Well, Judas was, and that certainly isn’t saying very much.

SHELLY: Well, we don’t want to quarrel with gender issues, with regard to salvation. And probably, I’m more broad-minded and a bit more liberal in terms of things that I would affirm that women have a right to do in church leadership than some of the people in our churches, but generally…

GRACE: OK. Dr. Shelly, let me move on, because I agree with you.

SHELLY: No, you asked the question as to where it came from.

GRACE: Yes, and I’d love an answer.

SHELLY: First, Timothy 2:11 and 2:12 talks about male leadership in churches. And that text has a great deal hung on it by religious conservatives to say that fathers in homes and elders in churches as male leadership, protective leadership, not abusive leadership.

GRACE: Dr. Shelly, do members of the Church of Christ church believe that that is the only way to heaven?

SHELLY: No. Churches of Christ began in an historical movement whose slogan was, “Christians only, not the only Christians”…

(CROSSTALK)

GRACE: No, no, no, wait, wait, wait, wait, don’t need a history lesson, as much as I appreciate it. We’re only an hour long. Do you believe that Jews and Muslims…

SHELLY: Well, you asked the question. The answer is no, because our slogan is…

GRACE: … will also go to heaven?

SHELLY: Christians only, not the only Christians. We don’t believe we’re the only Christians or the only ones going to heaven.

GRACE: OK, now, you know…

SHELLY: There may be individuals who do.

GRACE: You have got a great sense of career as a lawyer.

SHELLY: Churches of Christ are a loose network of independent churches. And I suspect you could find someone who believes most anything on your scale.

GRACE: Reverend, yes, no, do you believes that Jews or Muslims can go to heaven?

SHELLY: I believe that Jews and Muslims are to be shared the gospel of Christ. Now, that’s a much larger issue.

GRACE: Gotcha, OK. All right. I get it.

SHELLY: I do believe that Jesus is the only path to heaven, of course. Conservative Christians believe that.

GRACE: Deepak Chopra, response?

CHOPRA: You know, when I listen to these debates, I can’t help but think that religion has become divisive, quarrelsome, and sometimes even idiotic.

I don’t even know where to begin to express my feelings about this exchange. Nancy Grace didn’t even give Rubel a chance to finish a sentence, and then she gives Deepak Chopra, of all people, the final word on Rubel’s attempts at a levelheaded description of the Churches of Christ! Ridiculous! Compare this to how long she let Bob Jones—yes, that Bob Jones—go on during the same program:

GRACE: OK. I want to go very quickly now to a very special guest, Bob Jones, chancellor of Bob Jones University. Welcome, Reverend. A couple of questions. This case has highlighted a very serious concern, and that is, when you look to your religious leader, in this case the pastor of their church, people look to them and their family for religious guidance. They are somewhat examples to the members of the flock.

How serious is this? How serious a blow is this to this church’s flock? And also, many people have suggested the Church of Christ is a cult. Now, they deny that. What do you think?

BOB JONES, CHANCELLOR, BOB JONES UNIVERSITY: Well, Nancy, it’s obvious that when your Christian leader, be it pastor or whatever he may call himself, falls into sin, it’s a terrible — it’s a terrible blow. And in this case, the pastor’s wife has obviously disappointed her Lord and her congregation. And just like all over the world, there are very disillusioned Catholics whose priests were revealed as pedophiles, and when that all got revealed, it just shattered everybody’s confidence. And so yes, it is very disconcerting.

The Church of Christ is a legitimate national denomination. Their beliefs about salvation, in particular, would be one of the things I would have vast differences with them with personally because I think, you know, it’s very clear from the scripture that we’re redeemed to Christ through the blood of the cross, not by the baptismal waters. But I could not personally call it a cult in any way. It’s just a denomination who has doctrines that I personally don’t subscribe to because they aren’t biblical.

Well, at least Bob Jones recognizes that the Churches of Christ are not a cult. But even Bob Jones seems undereducated about the Churches of Christ. If there is anyone in Churches of Christ who believes that it’s actually the baptismal water that “redeems” a person, they believe that on the basis of 1 Peter 3:18-22, which precisely says “baptism … now saves you.” But honestly, when pressed, I think most members of Churches of Christ would agree with Bob Jones that we are saved by the blood of Christ—and that is in our baptismal participation in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus that we avail ourselves of the gracious gift of that redeeming blood. We sing “Washed in the Blood,” not “Washed in the Baptistry.”

I could rant on, but I’d better not, right at the moment. I’m just so angry at the way Churches of Christ have been bashed as a “cult” on CNN. I appeal to you, dear reader, whoever you may be, not to be taken in by this hooey. The Churches of Christ are, as Rubel Shelly said, a loosely organized network of autonomous Christian churches who cluster on the conservative end of the American Christian spectrum. We are by no means a “cult.”

In the spirit of a public service announcement, I’m posting the following e-mail that I received today regarding the publication of The Old Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures by Michael D. Coogan. I believe that I and the other Religion 101 professors at Pepperdine received examination copies of this title recently, but I haven’t really had a chance to review it yet. Watch Higgaion in the coming days for a preliminary review. And now for the announcement:

Oxford University Press is pleased to announce the publication of The Old Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures by Michael D. Coogan. Please e-mail to reserve your examination copy today!

Lucidly written by a leading biblical scholar, this balanced, engaging, and up-to-date introduction to the Hebrew scriptures distills the best of current scholarship. Employing the narrative chronology of the Bible itself and the history of the ancient Near East as a framework, author Michael D. Coogan covers all the books of the Hebrew Bible, along with the deuterocanonical books included in the Bible used by many Christians. He treats every book of the canon with careful attention to its historical context, its particular genre, and its distinctive features. Dealing in detail with ancient Near Eastern sources and archaeological data, Coogan works from a primarily historical and critical methodology but also introduces readers to literary analysis and other interpretive strategies, especially current ones.

The Old Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures is enhanced by a glossary, timelines, photos, illustrations, maps, and a four-color insert on Jerusalem in biblical times. Strategically placed boxes address issues that often puzzle readers of the Bible, provide models of interpretation of particular texts, and discuss their significance for Judaism and Christianity. Each chapter includes key terms, questions for review and discussion, and suggestions for further reading. Providing a non-denominational and non-doctrinal treatment, The Old Testament is accessible to students of all backgrounds. It offers a unique and captivating introduction to the Hebrew scriptures themselves and to how they have been — and can be — interpreted.

This is a bit outside my own area of interest, but I happily post it here at the request of my friend Andrei Orlov, who co-chairs the seminar with April DeConick.

The New Testament Mysticism Project Seminar (NTMPS) was organized under the auspices of the Society of Biblical Literature to facilitate the study of early Jewish and Christian mystical traditions in the New Testament writings. The Seminar will progress systematically through each New Testament text. 2006 SBL sessions of the NTMPS will deal with the Gospel of Matthew. The Seminar members plan to collectively write a commentary covering mysticism in the New Testament.

I usually keep my Higgaion posts a bit more academic and newsy, less personal, but a national news story today is hitting too close to home. CNN has been following the story of Matthew Winkler, minister for the Fourth Street Church of Christ in Selmer, Tennessee, who was recently shot to death. His wife and children, considered missing when the body was discovered, have since been found in southern Alabama. Any such event would be disturbing to me; when it involves a minister in Churches of Christ, it makes it even more distressing. But even more than that, Matthew Winkler’s grandfather Wendell was a friend of my in-laws, and in fact baptized my mother-in-law (they may even have known Matthew when he was a child; I have never personally met any members of that extended family, as far as I can remember). Now there are probably hundred of people who can say that, and of course the members of the Fourth Street Church of Christ and the citizens of Selmer are much closer to the events and much more traumatized by them, but it still ratchets up the emotional factor a notch or three as I follow this news.

On Sunday afternoon at WECSOR I attended a session at which I was not presiding. It’s been so long since then that my memories of the papers are fading, and my notes on some of them are a bit sketchy. Please forgive, then, the scantiness of these and any subsequent WECSOR reports.

Pentateuch (4:30-6:15 Sunday)

Michael Oblath, “Genesis 38: The Birth of Perez and the Traditions of Judah”

Michael’s thesis was, essentially, that Genesis 38 is a northern Israelite composition that seeks to make Judah, eponymous ancestor of the kingdom of Judah, look bad as a lawbreaker. Michael led us through a number of different issues in the interpretation of Genesis 38, and I didn’t get them all written down. One that stood out was his assertion that “Tamar has solved nothing” by getting herself impregnated with Judah’s sons Perez and Zerah. In Michael’s view, she “has not solved the problem,” because the father-in-law is nowhere in the sequence of appropriate levirs. On my note pad, I wrote: “Maybe she doesn’t give a fig about the ‘levirate marriage’ custom and just wants kids.” In the Q&A session afterward, someone—I think it was either Risa Levitt-Kohn or Tammi Schneider—proposed something similar, aloud.

James Findlay, “The Contribution of Textual Criticism to Questions of Redaction: The Case of the Golden Calf”

James wanted to show that textual criticism can help us understand the redactional history of the golden calf episode as narrated in Exodus 32 and Deuteronomy 9. By paying careful attention to the various witnesses, including the Samaritan and old Greek text-types, James argues that no single extant text tradition represents the original form of the “urtext” (my term, not his), that Exodus 32 and Deuteronomy 9 were still undergoing independent development in the Hellenistic era, and that they are both dependent on an earlier form of the story, but not one on the other. James opined that Psalm 106 may actually preserve the kernel of the oldest golden calf story. It seemed to me that most of James’s claims were well-reasoned, though, at the risk of being rude, I must say that I found it difficult to follow such a data-intensive text-critical paper delivered orally. I also found that James’s handout was not organized in the most user-friendly possible fashion.

Tammi Schneider, “Leah: Underrated Matriarch”

I’m afraid—no, pleased actually—that I was so engrossed in this presentation that I failed to take good notes. Tammi’s paper was a really wonderful survey of the characterization of Leah in Genesis, arguing that Leah, not Rachel, is a “model matriarch.” For Tammi, Leah is the legitimate wife of David, the one wife who recognizes and praises the Deity, and the mother of Jacob’s “success stories.” I would like to comment more, but I simply didn’t write enough down to engage in a substantial dialogue with Tammi’s paper.

Terry Terman, “Moses & Aaron: Brothers or Brethren?”

This is probably a good candidate for the “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all” department. I don’t have any special desire to be insulting, but this paper was a poorly-presented, poorly-reasoned hodgepodge of fanciful speculation loosely spun from three books by Richard Elliott Friedman. To cite but one example: according to Terman, Leviticus was written by Jehoiada (or maybe Jehoiada was “P”), who condemned only Molech by name among the pagan gods, because Athaliah, who was ruling Judah at the time, wouldn’t let him say bad things about the other gods because she worshiped them. I can’t go on. Well, I could, but it would be more uncharitable than I’ve already been.

I’ll tell you more about the Monday papers at my first reasonable opportunity.