I Survived the Christian Right: Ten Lessons I Learned on My Journey Home

Lesson 9
Embrace Universal Life

Before I went to Malawi and early on in my evangelical walk in 1982 I got one major thing right. Faith in Jesus includes emulating his concern for the poor. I packed my bags, joined an evangelical relief agency and headed off to the “ends of the earth,” in this case Somalia, to aid refugees devastated by war.

I also wanted to share my faith with Muslims. My evangelical theology taught me they were lost without someone like me converting them. It didn’t take long to see the logical conclusion of that doctrine. The overwhelming majority of Muslims, steeped in their own fundamentalist religion since birth, were not coming to Jesus. They were toast. Burnt toast and destined for an eternity in hell according to evangelical theology. Problem was, I didn’t buy it. Since I experienced God’s love personally and felt divine love for my Muslim friends, I surmised God’s character demands Henot destine people to eternal separation and torment. I adopted, and kept secret for the most part, the very minority position of inclusivism…that salvation is possible outside of Christendom.

Fast forward to my seventeenth (I lost count) crisis of faith in 2007. Having changed my view on scriptural inerrancy and authority, the church, tithing, the return of Jesus, sexuality, and gay rights, why not go for broke? I had become an open-minded seeker desperately trying to prevent my brains from leaking out. After reading three thoughtful, progressive evangelical authors⁶¹ and another former Pentecostal minister,⁶² a long-time puzzle was solved. Through a combination of Bible abuse and upholding man-made tradition, the evangelical church had squelched a view of salvation that had been espoused by several church fathers including Origen and Gregory of Nyasa.⁶³ It was universal reconciliation…that all would eventually be reconciled to God, thus more in line with God’s character of unconditional love. “Even while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”⁶⁴

Turns out that pesky word “eternal” used in conjunction with “punishment” and supposedly talking about hell doesn’t really mean forever. A better translation is “punishment of the age to come,” for the Greek word aionios is more accurately rendered “pertaining to an age.”⁶⁵ Also, the Greek word for “punishment” always refers to the remedial variety.⁶⁶ So, universal reconciliation doesn’t mean God doesn’t punish evil, just that it’s temporary. I concluded that Paul was right all along: “As in Adam, all will die, in Christ, all will be made alive.”⁶⁷

If you’re going to believe, believe in the really good news.⁶⁸

Certain and Uncertain

As much as I defend these nine lessons, I’m not insisting I’ve suddenly arrived at absolute certain truth. What I am saying is that we must be willing to go where the evidence leads even if it goes against out long-standing tradition or personal bias. Although I believe Christians can be certain of many things (the historical Jesus, his practical and spiritual wisdom, a transcendent meaning and power in the world…God…and a new way of relating to God found in the good news of Jesus), we should hold many views lightly because most of us don’t have a clue what really was happening culturally when Jesus spoke about his coming again, or the aionios punishment of the age, or when Paul spoke of porneia or arsenokoitai, or how the Bible was compiled, copied, and made into a canon of scripture by an editorial committee in the fourth century. There will always be an element of mystery and uncertainty.⁶⁹ If we are to come to sound conclusions about the Christian faith, we must ensure we humbly attempt to follow a reasoned course and not swallow whole what others before us have said…be they conservative or liberal…without careful evaluation.

[61] Talbot, Thomas, The Inescapable Love of God, MacDonald, Gregory, The Evangelical Universalist, and Keith DeRose, http://pantheon.yale.edu/%7Ekd47/univ.htm

[62] Pearson, Carlton, The Gospel of Inclusion

[63] MacDonald, Gregory, The Evangelical Universalist, page 173

[64] Romans 5:8

[65] MacDonald, George, Op. cit. page 147

[66] Talbot, Thomas, The Inescapable Love of God

[67] I Corinthians 15:22

[68] Luke 2:10 – “I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all people.”

[69] Schaeffer, Frank, Patience with God: Faith for People Who Don’t Like Religion (or Atheism)

I Survived the Christian Right: Ten Lessons I Learned on My Journey Home

Lesson 8
Science vs. Religion – Go Where the Evidence Leads

Us vs. them attitudes are in the science vs. religion and creation vs. evolution debates. Typically, the people debating are the extremists, who only see things in black and white. There can be no mixing of their cherished positions. Fundamentalist young-earth creationists who believe in a 10,000 year-old earth based on a literal interpretation of the Bible are pitted against fundamentalist evolutionists, like the New Atheists (Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris as opposed to reasonable atheists like Michael Ruse), who mock all theists for believing in the myth of God and the fairytale of religion. Yet 67 percent of Americans say it is possible to believe in both God and evolution.⁴⁸ The media often reinforces these polarities by distorting any moderate views. For example, they rarely differentiate non-literalist old-earth creationists (who include reputable scientists and technically, theistic evolutionists who believe God created the first life forms) and lump them together with the antiquated ideas of the Dark Ages. Given these realities, here are the lessons I learned:

Evolution is not the enemy. First, it’s possible to reconcile evolution with a biblical worldview. Francis Collins does it persuasively.⁴⁹ Don’t let staunch atheists who have an axe to grind tell you evolution proves there is no God. They delude themselves.⁵⁰ Nor should you allow staunch creationists to argue evolution is incompatible with the Bible. They hold to a rigid literalism.

Evolution is not immune to criticism. Evolution is usually portrayed as one specific unified theory held by all reputable scientists. There are in fact several competing theories and many ways to look at the scientific data. Stephen J. Gould and Niles Eldridge proposed the theory of punctuated equilibrium that critiqued the Darwinian view of continuous gradual evolution. Gould said the absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions of biological design was a nagging problem for gradualistic evolution.⁵¹ Eldredge said the fossil record screams loudly that what Darwin theorized…slow, steady, evolution…is not the case.⁵² Molecular Biologist Michael Denton critiqued orthodox Darwinism in his landmark book⁵³ and subsequently made the case for a form of guided evolution.⁵⁴ Biologist Dean Kenyon, who pioneered evolutionary self-organizational theory, later repudiated it and embraced a design hypothesis.⁵⁵

Intelligent design is neither the enemy nor immune to criticism. Intelligent Design (ID) theory is commonly represented as a fundamentalist wolf in sheep’s clothing. The facts don’t warrant this. ID theory is misused by the Christian Right to bolster their exclusivism⁵⁶ and therefore deemed guilty by association. It should be examined critically, but remarkably diverse intellectuals support the idea. These include agnostic mathematician and Darwinism-critic David Berlinski⁵⁷ and the former most renowned atheist in the world, Antony Flew, who announced to a shocked world that intelligent design must have been involved in the origin of the coded chemistry in DNA.⁵⁸ Moreover, ID is not incompatible with evolution. Tenured professor of microbiology Michael Behe, a leading ID proponent, holds to the evolutionary tenet of common descent.⁵⁹ Finally, critics who claim ID is not a real scientific theory probably have not carefully evaluated the case.⁶⁰

Question the rhetoric of the extremists and look carefully at the evidence for both theistic evolution and intelligent design. Go where the evidence leads.

[48] CBS News poll, October 23, 2005

[49] Collins, Francis, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief

[50] Berlinski, David, The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions

[51] Gould, Stephen J., Is a New and General Theory of Evolution Emerging? Paleobiology, vol 6 (1), p. 119-130 (1980)

[52] Eldredge, Niles, Confessions of a Darwinist, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Spring 2006

[53] Denton, Michael, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis

[54] Denton, Michael, Nature’s Destiny: How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe

[55] I heard Kenyon speak at a Discovery Institute event in Seattle, WA in the summer of 2007

[56] The Christian Right-influenced Dover, PA school board forced teachers to make a pro intelligent-design statement in classrooms, despite the advice of the Discovery Institute not to do so.

[57] Berlinski, David, The Deniable Darwin

[58] Flew, Antony, There is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind, page 95 and 123

[59] Behe, Michael, The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism, page 182.

[60] Meyer, Stephen C., Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design, pages 403-415

I Survived the Christian Right: Ten Lessons I Learned on My Journey Home

Lesson 7
Support Gay Rights Not Wrongs

Most of my evangelical friends thought I went off the deep end when I changed my view on this issue. I have to admit, for years I had wondered how anyone could defend homosexuality in light of certain passages of the Bible. But that was before 2004, when I did an honest study of those passages and discovered misinterpretations andbefore I learned that several words in those passages are almost certainly mistranslated.

It started when I began hearing stories from Christian gay people on how they had pleaded for God’s help to overcome their “sin” of homosexuality. They were saying it didn’t work. A personal friend told me a similar story. Despite seeking help in “ex-gay” ministries, God wasn’t changing them into heterosexuals nor taking away their sex drives.⁴⁰ I read a Philip Yancey book⁴¹ where he recommended people read Mel White’s story (without endorsing his conclusions).⁴² White was a former ghostwriter for evangelical heavy weights and had come out declaring his homosexuality and the futility of trying to change. It was then that I clearly saw there was a pastoral problem with homosexuality. But was there a scriptural problem? Was there evidence evangelicals were misreading the Bible on this issue?

Turns out there is. For instance, one word in the Greek New Testament commonly translated “homosexual,” is the word, arsenokoitai, which is rarely found in ancient literature and whose meaning is uncertain.⁴³ It must be a condemned sexual behavior but does not denote homosexuality across the board. To translate it “homosexual” without at least including a footnote about its ambiguity is irresponsible. To understand what the New Testament teaches on homosexuality, one must understand the landscape of sexual practices in the first century.⁴⁴

For instance, when Paul talks of homosexuality in Romans, he’s speaking in the context of idolatry. Historical and literary context leads many scholars to conclude that when the Bible alludes to homosexuality it is talking about common forms of it in the ancient world, namely pederasty,⁴⁵ cultic prostitution,⁴⁶ and homosexual rape (e.g. implied in the story of Sodom), and not committed, loving homosexual relationships, which are supported by Christian movements like Metropolitan Community Church, SoulForce, and even the late Lewis Smedes,⁴⁷ an evangelical author who taught at Fuller Seminary.

Don’t misread the Bible on homosexuality. Open your heart to the plight of gay people who can’t change their orientation despite well-intentioned efforts.

[40] Stossel, John, Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity: Get Out the Shovel…Why Everything You Know is Wrong, page 185.

[41] Yancey, Philip, What’s So Amazing About Grace

[42] White, Mel, Stranger at the Gate: To Be Gay and Christian in America.

[43] See Campolo, Tony, Speaking my Mind, page 67 and Rogers, Jack, Jesus, the Bible, and Homosexuality, pages 73-74

[44] Helminiak, Daniel, What the Bible Really Says About Homosexuality and Cannon, Justin R., The Bible, Christianity, and Homosexuality

[45] The oppressive male-initiation practice in the Greco-Roman world of men having sex with boys

[46] For example, Cybelene worship in Corinth, Athens, Ephesus, and Rome, which included castrated male priests, and the temple of Aphrodite in Corinth, which had 1000 sacred female prostitutes. See Stark, Rodney, Cities of God, pages 50 and 92.

[47] http://www.soulforce.org/article/748

I Survived the Christian Right: Ten Lessons I Learned on My Journey Home

Lesson 6
Have Sensible Sex

By now, I’m sure some have declared me a full-fledged heretic. Brace yourself, there’s more. Now for something totally uncomfortable…the subject of religion and sex. In my experience, with some noble exceptions (there are some excellent evangelical marriage manuals on sex), the evangelical church has largely been sex-negative, in other words, either it has suppressed open discussion or portrayal of sex for fear of promoting immorality, or it has condemned certain sexual behaviors, from nudity to masturbation to oral sex to all pre-marital sex, based on misinterpretations of the Bible.³¹

My historical studies reveal today’s church views on sex have more to do with Greco-Roman Platonism and Augustine’s warped perspective…despite his wisdom on other topics…than a rational reading of scripture. For instance, the Jewish tradition from which Christianity arose was sex affirming. Correspondingly, contrary to popular belief, the Greco-Roman world, in which the early church grew, was not wholly a debauched sexual culture. The sex-negating Platonists and Stoics, who had fearful attitudes toward “irrational” sexual pleasure, influenced much of it.³² This had impact on early church fathers like Augustine.

One specific is how these sex-negative Greco-Roman values influenced the English translation of the Greek New Testament word porneia. Raymond Lawrence calls it “perhaps the most deliberately mistranslated word in the biblical literature,”³³ when it is rendered “fornication,” and I would argue when it is also translated “sexual immorality” (as in ‘flee sexual immorality’³⁴). Conservative Biblicists have condemned a host of sexual behaviors under that one word, commonly summing it up as perverted sex or all sex outside of monogamous marriage, without understanding what it meant to the original audience. One scholar believes a better translation is “harlotry,”³⁵ for the connotation of porneia is selling oneself to break covenant. Moreover, it is not always about sex, as is evidenced by the times it or its Hebrew equivalent is translated as “idolatry.”

Despite the fact that I would never endorse polygamy as a good idea, the fact is polygamy is never condemned in the Bible nor is monogamy strictly endorsed. In fact, the Torah commands polygamy in the case of the Leverite law³⁶ and supports it at times.³⁷ Polygamy and concubinage were practiced by Old Testament heroes of the faith from Abraham to Jacob to Gideon to David and never censured by God, except excessive polygamy with foreign women outside the faith. The truth is that if Bathsheba had not been married to Uriah, David would not have committed adultery. The biblical literature defines adultery differently than we do in our modern context.³⁸

Likewise with pre-marital sex, the Bible puts limitations on it because of the Jewish concern for pure lineage and because unmarried women were considered property of their fathers. There was no equivalent of today’s single woman, living outside her family’s home. Therefore, the Bible does not specifically condemn all singles sexuality.³⁹

This is not to say that we should emulate the male-dominated society of the Bible or married men have license to run out and grab the first single, pretty woman they see bathing on a rooftop (how David first saw Bathsheba). Promiscuity rooted in selfish, personal gratification cannot be defended. However, it does mean, if we are honest, that we should take the above facts into account when we decide on a sexual ethic for today.

In sex, let the admonitions to love one another, treat each other kindly, and be responsible in our relationships, be the guiding principal, not absolutist rules that were never a part of the Bible’s historical and cultural milieu.

[31] Thelos, Philo, Divine Sex: Liberating Sex from Religious Tradition

[32] Lawrence, Raymond, The Poisoning of Eros

[33] Lawrence, Raymond, Op. cit., page 2

[34] I Corinthians 6:18

[35] Countryman, William, Dirt, Greed, and Sex

[36] Deuteronomy 25:5-10

[37] Deuteronomy 21:15-17

[38] Countryman, Op. cit., page 159

[39] Countryman, Op. cit., page 264.

I Survived the Christian Right: Ten Lessons I Learned on My Journey Home

Lesson 5
Don’t Be Seduced by Political Power

I learned one of the warped mindsets of heavily financed political activism is an us vs. them mentality. Today, this attitude continues to fuel the Christian Right in their quest to save America from moral depravity and reclaim it for Christ. Us vs. them mindsets can also be present in left-wing politics, but that is another story.

Within evangelicalism, black-and-white, us vs. them, groupthink is pervasive. I saw that clearly when I was involved in the pro-life movement and Operation Rescue in the late 1980s. The attitude is one of drawing lines: Republican over Democrat, pro-life over pro-abortion, religious America over secular America, etc. But “power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.”²⁶ Evangelicalism within the Christian Right has always been about taking control, getting the right candidates in, overcoming the enemy (abortion, homosexuals, liberals), legislating the right laws, forcing an abortion clinic to close, and reclaiming America for Christ, all by manipulating the masses through fear and demonization of opponents. If you don’t vote Republican or for this candidate, hell will break loose. If we pass Obama’s health care bill, the government will take over your life and God will judge us for funding abortion and disobeying the Ten Commandments.²⁷

But these are lies, or if you’re inclined to be more gracious, false dichotomies. We live in a pluralistic society. Good politics is about compromise, not taking control. Real influence comes through open-minded persuasion and loving others, not by winning at the polls or banning abortion or suppressing gay rights. Democrats, as much as Republicans, care about decency and values. God works through more than one political party, outside of evangelicalism,²⁸ and in people of other faiths. As comprehensively argued by evangelical author Mark Noll, the historical record is clear that America is not a Christian nation the roots to which we must return.²⁹ Christianity has had both positive (abolition and civil rights movements) and negative (intolerant, legalistic Puritans and endorsement of slavery) influence on our country.

Do not lust for political power and cultural influence.³⁰

[26] Thomas, Cal, Blinded by Might: Why the Religious Right Can’t Save America, page 54

[27] In a prayer cast organized by the Family Research Council on December 16, 2009, Pastor Jim Garlow claimed the health care reform legislation currently being deliberated in the Senate, violated just about every one of the Ten Commandments.

[28] Cox, Harvey, When Jesus Came to Harvard

[29] Noll, Mark, In Search for Christian America

[30] Ballmer, Randall, Thy Kingdom Come: An Evangelical’s Lament

I Survived the Christian Right: Ten Lessons I Learned on My Journey Home

Lesson 4
Don’t Be Deluded by the Last Days

As a brand-new believer in 1979 I tended to accept the pre-tribulation Rapture view that the Bible predicts Jesus would return a second time before a period of tribulation, to whisk believers up to heaven and leave unbelievers behind to face seven years of apocalyptic trials. After reading several critiques of this view, I realized it was farcical and unbiblical¹⁸, not to mention highly manipulative the way preachers or authors…Hal Lindsey in the 70s and 80s and Tim LaHaye (Left Behind) today…use it to “persuade” people to come to Christ, or else. Despite this, like the majority of evangelicals, I still believed the return of Christ was in the future and possibly eminent, given the state of the world.

Then around 1999, the preterists¹⁹ entered my life; the likes of R.C. Sproul, Gary DeMar, and Kenneth Gentry, ironically conservative evangelicals who introduced the notion that everything that Jesus predicted in the Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21) was fulfilled between 64 and 70 AD.²⁰ They also viewed the speculation around the return of Christ as madness²¹ and the book of Revelation as written prior to 70 AD;²² hence its predictions were not speaking about thousands of years in the future.

Their reasoning was refreshing. They cried Bible abuse by dispensationalists and the bulk of evangelicals in the widespread unreasonable belief that Jesus spoke of two events in the Olivet Discourse: a coming calamity on Jerusalem within a generation, and then in the next breath about his return to earth 2000 years in the future. After reading the preterists, I reread all those prophetic verses and suddenly they made perfect sense.²³

What I didn’t expect was to come to believe these preterists weren’t going far enough. Considered “partial preterists,” they still believe in a future return of Christ at the time of the resurrection. But for this position to stand, there must be two second comings of Christ, one in 70 AD in judgment on Jewish Temple worship and one at a future resurrection. But this view is problematic because the New Testament does not speak of two second comings at all, or more accurately, a third coming. I found myself agreeing with the “consistent preterists,”²⁴ who say that all the prophecies about Jesus returning occurred at or before 70 AD based on a rational reading of the New Testament and first century historical evidence.²⁵

Imagine that for a moment. Jesus has already returned. The drama is over. There is no need to unmask the mystery or fear the Antichrist, let alone shape American foreign policy around the return of Christ and the end of the world.

Get on with the business of saving the planet and promoting social justice in the world without secretly believing it will all be for naught in the end.

[18] DeMar, Gary, Last Days Madness: The Obsession of the Modern Church

[19] Preterists believe biblical events were fulfilled in the past as opposed to futurists, who believe they will be fulfilled in the future.

[20] Sproul, R.C., The Last Days According to Jesus, and Josephus, The Jewish Wars

[21] DeMar, Gary, Op. cit.

[22] Gentry, Kenneth, Jr., Before Jerusalem Fell: Dating the Book of Revelation

[23] e.g. Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, this generation shall certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.” Matthew 24:34 and “The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place.” Revelation 1:1

[24] J. Stuart Russell, The Parousia, and www.preterist.org

[25] Josephus, Tacitus, and Eusebius. They cite occurrences of false prophets, famines, earthquakes, wars, and astronomical signs leading up to 70 AD that match what Jesus predicted.