'Resort to Biblical authority is the worst kind of fundamentalism'
On Tuesday I blogged on Lisa Miller's massively dishonest article in the current Newsweek attempting to make the "religious" case for gay "marriage." Well, Mark Hemingway of the National Review- who initially reacted to that piece of intellectual garbage last Sunday- has a few more thoughts on the subject.
It seems that Newsweek has actually come out against biblical authority per se, pronouncing it "the worst kind of fundamentalism." Moreover, it points out that the Bible has been used to justify slavery (even while, as Hemingway points out, ignoring the fact that it was biblical authority which provided the ammunition which ultimately ended slavery in the Western world). In frankly trashing Holy Scripture, Newsweek is certainly a great deal more honest than my former colleges in the ELCA ministerium, who attempt the same sort of rhetorical sleight-of-hand Miller half-heartedly pursues in her piece: pretending that at some level there's any real sense in which the case for gay "marriage," the acceptance of homosexual behavior in the Church, or sexual revisionism in general can be squared with any kind of real authority for either Scripture or the Christian ethical tradition.
Now that Newsweek has editorially declared itself hostile to biblical Christianity- as Hemingway observes, it's been clear for a very long time that the magazine habitually refracts the news through a socially left wing filter- two questions arise. The first is whether Newsweek can any longer claim objectivity in reporting on issues that are even vaguely religious or ethical in nature. The second is why in the world anybody who takes the Christian tradition seriously would bother reading it, much less subscribing to it.
ADDENDUM: Mollie Ziegler Hemingway, Mark's wife- a member of Immanuel in Alexandria, Virginia (where I belonged when I lived in the D.C. area), a professional journalist and author, and one of the bloggers at GetReligion- gives her take on Miller's piece of nonsense here.
It seems that Newsweek has actually come out against biblical authority per se, pronouncing it "the worst kind of fundamentalism." Moreover, it points out that the Bible has been used to justify slavery (even while, as Hemingway points out, ignoring the fact that it was biblical authority which provided the ammunition which ultimately ended slavery in the Western world). In frankly trashing Holy Scripture, Newsweek is certainly a great deal more honest than my former colleges in the ELCA ministerium, who attempt the same sort of rhetorical sleight-of-hand Miller half-heartedly pursues in her piece: pretending that at some level there's any real sense in which the case for gay "marriage," the acceptance of homosexual behavior in the Church, or sexual revisionism in general can be squared with any kind of real authority for either Scripture or the Christian ethical tradition.
Now that Newsweek has editorially declared itself hostile to biblical Christianity- as Hemingway observes, it's been clear for a very long time that the magazine habitually refracts the news through a socially left wing filter- two questions arise. The first is whether Newsweek can any longer claim objectivity in reporting on issues that are even vaguely religious or ethical in nature. The second is why in the world anybody who takes the Christian tradition seriously would bother reading it, much less subscribing to it.
ADDENDUM: Mollie Ziegler Hemingway, Mark's wife- a member of Immanuel in Alexandria, Virginia (where I belonged when I lived in the D.C. area), a professional journalist and author, and one of the bloggers at GetReligion- gives her take on Miller's piece of nonsense here.
Comments