Re: sad and silly Christians for Gareth

Gareth McCaughan (G.J.McCaughan@pmms.cam.ac.uk)
Wed, 04 Dec 1996 13:20:38 +0000

> I think the inerrantists are trying to spread their faiths to your side
> of the Atlantic, too. I haven't read it yet, but I've heard that Pat
> Robinson's last offering "The End of the Age" is ripe. Anything by Hal
> Lindsey was taken very seriously in some quarters up until a few years
> ago. The Oklahoma bombing apparently involved folks involved in "The
> Christian Identity Movement", a bunch of fools who claim I believe the
> Bible is inerrant, but the Jews in the OT and Jesus aren't the same
> people as the modern Jews.

With that particular group, it wouldn't be so bad if they were
just fools. Unfortunately, they are very much worse than fools.

> Gareth, you do know that one of the more
> common full names for a Klan group is such and such Christian Knights of
> the Klu Klux Klan.

Yes. But I don't consider it to be fair to blame Christianity, or some
segment of Christianity, for every ghastly group that likes to attach
the name "Christian" to itself. It's no better than the "Stalin was
an atheist, therefore atheism sucks" argument.

> These are the most vile examples, but there is much
> diseased in the strange world of American inerrant Christianity.

I think you mean "inerrantist". :-)

But the fact that there are all these loony groups who are also
inerrantist is no more exciting than (to repeat myself) the fact
that Stalin and his pals were atheists. If the Ku Klux Klan and
the Christian Identity movement mean that inerrantism is dangerous,
then so do the former communists of the Soviet Union mean that
atheism is dangerous. Is this really an argument you want to follow?

-- 
Gareth McCaughan       Dept. of Pure Mathematics & Mathematical Statistics,
gjm11@dpmms.cam.ac.uk  Cambridge University, England.