Carl Hitchens - tracking the self …
Carl Hitchens - tracking the self …
2011
I wonder at “rapture” time if J.C., himself, weighs-in on this latest "Christian nation” percolation running through evangelical politics. You know the one in which we are a nation of religious freedom for all but
non-Christians and “cults” claiming to be Christian. I am referring to Robert Jeffress, senior pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, who introduced Gov. Rick Perry at a conservative gathering Friday. Speaking, no doubt, as the indisputable voice of God, Jeffress told reporters after the event, "Rick Perry's a Christian. He's an evangelical Christian, a follower of Jesus Christ. . . Mitt Romney's a good moral person, but he's not a Christian. Mormonism is not Christianity. It has always been considered a cult by the mainstream of Christianity."
Hmm. . . Once there was the Catholic Church, predominant authority on all things God, being the "one true church" founded by Jesus Christ. And then came those "cults," birthed from the seminal, seismic event know as the "East-West Schism" of 1054, resulting in the Eastern Orthodox churches and further future dissipation of the Pope's universal authority. Can we say, the 16th Century Protestant Reformation: Lutheranism, the Church of England, on to the Scottish Reformation of 1560 and the Church of Scotland and the Presbyterian diffusion of faith, on to eventually the Thirty Years' War of 1618-1648. Fast forward to the Puritans in the Americas and the 20th Century fragmentation of Protestantism in the U.S.: Pentecostalism, Christian fundamentalism and Evangelicalism.
Separating the word of God from the word of man, separating cult from religion, the apocryphal from true belief—emphasis on belief. Good luck on that, Skippy!
Wouldn't it be a trip if Jesus has reincarnated as a black Mormon, living somewhere in Salt Lake City, Utah with twenty wives. I'm just saying. . .
True Believers
10/8/11