Pastor M Gets Heckled

BACKGROUND: What follows is inspired by recent events in the world of mega-church evangelical preachers and their more progressive Christian critics. For those unfamiliar with these events, here's the lightning speed recap: Mark Driscoll, founding pastor of of the enormous Mars Hill Church (not to be confused with Rob Bell, founding pastor of the enormous Mars Hill BIBLE Church, which is entirely unrelated) posted a Facebook status update inviting people to recall the most effeminate "anatomically male" worship leader they know. Rachel Held Evans, an articulate Christian writer (author of Evolving in Monkey Town), posted on her blog a forceful indictment of what she saw to be Driscoll's pattern of bullying behavior. She also encouraged her readers to write letters to the Mars Hill deacons, expressing concern over this pattern of behavior. Apparently the strength of the response prompted a meeting between the deacons and Driscoll. Driscoll has since issued a nuanced statement which, while not exactly an apology, acknowledges the complexity of the Christian debate concerning gender, and promises more sensitive engagement with these issues in the future.

DISCLAIMER: What follows is a fantasy and a satire. "Pastor M" should not be construed as a fair portrayal of the real, complex person who is being caricatured. Among other things, Mark Driscoll's actual reaction to the critical response was far less pompous and far more thoughtful than "Pastor M's" reaction. Nevertheless, there can be value in caricature. And these events give me a chance to share in a less dry way some ideas about the Bible and gender hierarchies. 

A strange hush fell over the people in the pews as Pastor M--founding pastor of an enormous complex of churches that have absolutely nothing to do, thank you very much, with a similarly-named enormous church founded by a heretic who hates God so much he is prepared to insist that God is radically and extravagantly loving to the point of, maybe, but probably not, bringing all humanity into His eternal embrace--as I was saying, a hush fell over the gathered congregants as their leader (his chest almost popping the buttons of his flannel shirt) walked onto the enormous TV screen (with only an abbreviated electric guitar intro) and prepared to deliver the message which was about to be broadcast into church campuses all across Washington State (and one in the deserts of the southwest for reasons nobody is quite sure of--but absolutely NOT one anywhere in Michigan).

(Yes, that was all one sentence. Sort of.)

Although Pastor M still looked manly (how could he not, given his testosterone levels?), it became immediately clear to those who loved him best (namely Mary Little and her BFF Sarah Iverson, who were sixteen and had birthdays one week apart and practically swooned every time they caught sight of Pastor M from a distance) that something had changed. There was, it seemed, an air of humility about him. 

This caused a collective gasp. While the fine folks of the mega-church were used to seeing feigned humility in their beloved celebrity pastor, the slight bow of his head on this day--and the even slighter frown, the softness in his downcast eyes, the extra-scruffiness of his five o'clock shadow--all of these things suggested either real humility or an even better pretense than usual.

The last time they'd seen anything like this on his face was when he publicly apologized for suggesting that a televangelist's dalliances with gay prostitutes were to be blamed (in part) on the man's wife for letting herself go and not putting out (in other words, for her failure to be a sufficiently godly wife). But all speculation ended abruptly as Pastor M began to speak.

"Not long ago," he began, "I posted the following words on Facebook: 'So, what story do you have about the most effeminate anatomically male worship leader you've ever personally witnessed?' This seemed a great idea. After all, I've built my ministry on reaching out to manly-men, showing them that there is a place for cage fighters and would-be professional wrestlers in God's family. And to be a manly-man means ridiculing those men who aren't. You can't be a manly-man if you think it's okay not to be one. And so, for my ministry to really draw in manly-men and teach them that there is a place for them at the Lord's table, I had to make it clear that there is a place at the Lord's table for those who want to kick effeminate men out on their wimpy a##es."

At this point Pastor M paused. He turned away, swallowing back emotion. When he could finally speak again, his expression was pained. "But now...now I've been singled out for abuse BY A WOMAN, who's likened me to a high school bully. Can you believe it? She is calling me a bully just because I will not tolerate girly-men! Just because I do what every God-fearing man ought to do: ridicule those who are anatomically male but behave like the inferior sex.

"And yes, there are clear gender-specific behavioral guidelines that you must follow if you want to honor the gift of masculinity that God has bestowed on you--or, if you're a woman, honor the masculinity that God has bestowed on your husband. The rule book is RIGHT HERE!" He paused to dramatically pull forth a book. It was quickly plain he was holding up an old home economics textbook. "Right here, in verse--" Pausing, he began to leaf through the pages of the book. His expression went from puzzled to exasperated. He sighed. "Okay, who's the joker?"

A sudden snort of laughter came from off to the left. "Sorry! Little joke." A man in an oxford shirt dashed up to the podium, smiling sheepishly as he traded out the old textbook for a Bible.

Shaking his head, Pastor M went on: "As I was saying, it says here in God's word...hang on here, I've got it bookmarked...Yes, here in... First Timothy 2:12... it says, 'There is neither Jew nor--'" This time he was interrupted by a explosive guffaw from off to the left. Pastor M looked off in the direction of the practical joker. "Wait. This is Galatians. You moved the bookmark, didn't you?"

"Sorry! Couldn't resist!"

"Oh, never mind. Just trust me. The Bible says women should shut up and let men be in charge. But this woman has started a movement against me. As if a woman has the right to chastise me, not just a ROCK STAR mega-church preacher with thousands of loyal followers, but a man!" He almost roared the last, as if all the dignity of being human resided in the possession of his maleness; as if all those men who weren't sufficiently male were failing to affirm this fact; as if all the women who failed to bow and scrape to their husbands were failing to acknowledge the rock-bottom principle upon which Pastor M had made his self worth hinge, as if...sorry. Launched into thinly-disguised progressive philosophizing for a moment there.  Returning you to Pastor M's sermon, now.

"I mean, who does she think she is?" he bellowed. " I've got theme music! What does she have to compare to that? Some little memoir? I bet you she's--excuse my language--a FEMINIST! And if there's anything that's clear as punch in the Bible, it's that God hates feminism."

"Punch is cloudy!" shouted the voice off to the left.

"If you don't shut up, you'll see how clear a punch can be!"

"Yeah. Sure. You're no bully."

Pastor M paused, quirked a lopsided smile, and shook his head. "Don't let anyone tell you we don't have a sense of humor here at Mars Hill."

"Hey, I'm being serious!" said the voice from the left. "I mean, what do you do with Galatians 3:28?"

"How about I give my next sermon on that?"

"Do it! I'd love to see you flail about with that text. I mean, let's be serious. If it's right that in Christ there's neither male nor female, doesn't that mean that within the church, the body of Christ, gender divisions and hierarchies are erased? How do you reconcile that with all your emphasis on masculine and feminine gender roles, with your idea that God wants men to fit some 1950's era masculinity template and avoid at all costs any girly traits? If God wanted THAT, would he inspire Paul to say that in Christ--in the community united by Christ, the BODY of Christ--gender becomes meaningless?"

 As Pastor M stared, dumbstruck, his heckler (another minister, perhaps?) leapt into the silence: "I mean, let's think about this for a moment. Sure, the Bible's full of traditional patriarchal stuff, stories and messages that put all this importance on gender and traditional gender-based hierarchies. But then you also find this luminous passage that says gender and other divisions don't matter for those who belong to Christ." 

"Paul isn't talking about this life," Pastor M cut in, finally finding his voice. "He isn't saying that people in the church should act as if there weren't any difference between men and women, let alone that women shouldn't submit to their husbands. Women submitting to their husbands in Christian marriage is the very definition of there being neither male nor female in Christ!"

"Um...huh?"

"Oh, come on. You really expect us not to pay attention to gender?  That would be nutty! Men are men and women are women!"

"Yeah. But then there's that little verse about God choosing what is foolish in the world to shame the wise." 

"Oh, come on. The Bible's full of stuff that makes it clear that women are subordinate to men, that men are supposed to be one way and women another, and on and on. And there are at least half a dozen ways to interpret the Galatians verse to make it fit with all of that."

"Of course. But don't all those interpretations just sort of, well, do violence to that shining passage in Galatians? It's like you come across this brilliant flower growing out of the dirt and you just crush it underfoot so that it becomes indistinguishable from the dirt.

"Think about it this way." And at this point the interlocutor rose to his feet and stepped onto the raised platform from which Pastor M was used to holding forth alone. "Of course the Bible's going to be full of patriarchal stuff. Every single freaking biblical writer lived in a patriarchal culture. They sucked in patriarchy with their mother's milk. It wouldn't take a divine revelation to inspire them to endorse patriarchy. They'd be writing patriarchal stuff whether or not God had anything to do with the Bible. What would take a divine revelation is getting some biblical writer to BUCK the patriarchal norm. If you have to choose between them--the patriarchal stuff and the Galatians passage--it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one is more likely to spring from an encounter with the transcendent God, and which is more likely to be nothing more than a regurgitation of the dominant mores of the time."

"Are you suggesting it isn't all inspired by God?" 

"Well, if you're going to insist on that doctrine of plenary verbal inspiration--which, by the way, wasn't invented until after the Protestant Reformation; or, better yet, if you're going to insist on the adulterated version of that doctrine, born out of the fundamentalist movement--well, to put it bluntly, it seems to me that insisting on that doctrine will force you to crush the flowers of divine revelation underfoot in order to make them fit with all the other stuff that's in the Bible.

"But suppose I'm wrong about that. Maybe I'm right, maybe I'm wrong. Either way, you can't pretend that it's only those who challenge the doctrine of literal inerrancy who risk missing out on God's self-disclosure, while those who insist on inerrancy face no risk of distorting or dismissing divine revelation. If, in one way or another, God has communicated to us through the Bible, then whatever your theory of the Bible you're taking a risk of getting the Bible--and God--wrong.

"If you don't like the flower metaphor, take the one that Martin Luther used. You know Martin Luther, the guy who came up with 'sola scriptura'? He likened the Bible to the manger in which the baby Jesus lay: It contains the gospel, but it also contains straw.

"At one point Luther called the entire epistle of James 'an epistle of straw.' Sure, if inerrantists are right then those who agree with Luther might dismiss as straw things that aren't straw. They might throw out the baby with the bathwater. Maybe they mistakenly think there is bathwater when it's really all baby. (Sorry, shifted metaphors again there.) But if inerrantists are wrong, they risk putting the bathwater in bed with the baby! And they risk not noticing the baby at all amidst all that water. They risk thinking the bathwater is the baby, and so getting everything all confused.

"So here's my challenge to you, Pastor M: Are you prepared to admit that you're taking a risk with your theory of the Bible--that you might just be wrong about the Bible and God, about men and women, about those who don't fit into our gender boxes? Or are you going to live up to the rock star theme music at the start of all your video-taped sermons?"

At this point it became clear to everyone present that what they were witnessing was entirely fictitious, since Pastor M would never have permitted this heckler to go on for so long. And so everyone stopped listening and went home.

Talkin' 'Bout Hell...and Rob Bell, and Osama bin Laden

My "blogginheads.tv" conversation with Princeton professor Kathryn Gin--about hell, the controversy generated by Rob Bell's book Love Wins, and the eternal fate of Osama bin Laden--is now available. Enjoy!

Hell, Bell, and Christian Sales Tactics

As most people interested in the Christian universalism-vs-hellism controversy already know, Rob Bell's recent book (and the conservative backlash to it) sparked Time Magazine to do this week's cover article, "Is Hell Dead?", on the topic. As I was reading the article, I was particularly struck by journalist Jon Meacham's account of what lies behind the "traditionalist" resistance to questioning the doctrine of eternal damnation:

If heaven, however defined, is everyone's ultimate destination in any event, then what's the incentive to confess Jesus as Lord in this life? If, in other words, Gandhi is in heaven, then why bother with accepting Christ? If you say the Bible doesn't really say what a lot of people have said it says, then where does that stop? If the verses about hell and judgment aren't literal, what about the ones on adultery, say, or homosexuality? Taken to their logical conclusions, such questions could undermine much of conservative Christianity.

Now the second part of this account covers issues I've discussed before. I've talked quite a bit about biblical inerrancy and literalism on this blog, and my recent RD article about the conservative backlash to Bell focuses mostly on the motivations that spring from a failure to distinguish one's own beliefs about God from the truth about God--a confusion (or deliberate blurring of distinctions) that seems to underlie much of the impetus for treating critical questions as anathema.

But what struck me first when reading this passage was the first part--the part which asks why anyone should bother to accept Christ, to confess Jesus as Lord, if it isn't true that all non-Christians roast for eternity in fiery torment of the most horrific imaginable kind. I mean, why should I bother to tuck my kids in at bedtime if failing to do so doesn't mean eternal anguish in the pits of hell? Why eat breakfast if I could skip breakfast and yet still avoid unremitting agony? Clearly, everything I choose to do would be pointless if the alternative to doing it weren't damnation.

Of course I'm being sarcastic. The point is that we do all kinds of things without being threatened with damnation if we don't do them. I tuck my kids in because I love them and because I enjoy tucking them in, not because I'm trying to avoid some bad result (let alone one of eternal duration and ultimate horror). And while this shows that the rhetorical question Meacham poses is only marginally coherent, it doesn't mean that Meacham is wrong to pose it as part of what lies behind traditionalist resistance to universalism. I've heard rhetorical questions of precisely this sort often enough from Christian conservatives to know that there is something in the vicinity of these questions that truly worries them.

Of course, part of what may really worry them is that Christ is being rendered inessential for salvation--which they think undermines Christ's life and sacrifice, trivializing the Incarnation and Atonement. But this worry is clearly misguided, since Christ is hardly made inessential by supposing that the scope of His success in achieving the salvation of humanity is universal. Christian universalists do not hold that all are saved apart from Christ's saving work, but that all are saved because of it.

Perhaps, then, what is made inessential is our subjective response to Christ--what evangelicals have in mind when they speak about "accepting Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior." But this doesn't follow from universalism either. The universalist could believe (and many Christian universalists do believe) that eventually everyone comes to make this subjective response--if not in this life, then at the moment of death or in a future state when the truth becomes clear to them in all its joyous glory (and the universalist might very well hold that this realization occurs only after a period of denial and rejection, during which they arguably suffer the natural consequences of living in alienation from God--a finite hell--and so come to see the intrinsic undesirability of such a condition).

(I won't pursue the free will arguments for eternal rejection here--if you're interested in why I find them unconvincing, buy John's and my book when it comes out, or look at a briefer version of the argument in my article in Universal Salvation? The Current Debate).

In any event, the point is this: Universalism neither entails that Christ is unnecessary for salvation nor that a subjective response of acceptance is unnecessary. It does, however, seem to entail that conversion to Christianity in this life, participation in Christian life, church attendance, etc., are unnecessary for avoiding eternal hell. If Gandhi--who had nice things to say about Jesus but remained a Hindu all his life--is not in hell, then being a Christian in this life is not necessary for avoiding hell.

But this brings me back to my original sarcastically-expressed point about the rhetorical question, "Why bother becoming a Christian if non-Christians are saved?" This question assumes that the only good reason to convert to Christianity in this life is what happens in the next, and more specifically that becoming a Christian in this life is the only way to avoid damnation in the next. But do Christians really believe that? Do they believe that there is nothing positive to be gained in this life from participation in Church life, nothing worthwhile that is gained during our earthly tenure by being a part of a Christian communion, by living with a sense of God's presence, by meditating on the gospel narrative, etc.?

Do any Christians seriously want to say that? If not, then the rhetorical question collapses on itself--because there are all sorts of reasons why someone might "bother" to embrace a Christian life even if the ultimate destiny of those who embrace a secular life, or a Hindu life, or a Buddhist life, is the same in the end.

For all these reasons, the only sense I can make of the rhetorical question so many conservatives ask is this: What they are really worried about (although they may not be fully conscious of this) is that they will be deprived of a tried-and-true sales gimmick that many Christians have been using for centuries in their efforts to swell the ranks of Christian churches. Specifically, the gimmick of making people scared of the consequences of not participating in Christian communities.

This is not a new conclusion for me--and I think I may have made the same basic point more eloquently in a post from a couple of years back, Selling Christianity. Nevertheless, it is a point worth making again. And if this is what is really going on, then Bell may have realized something that conservative evangelicals like John Piper haven't quite caught onto yet: This sales gimmick isn't working anymore.

Rather than being a selling point for participation in Christian life, the doctrine of eternal damnation is increasingly becoming a liability. In our pluralistic world, to cleave to a religion that says everyone else is going to roast is to cleave to something that is hard to see as anything but ugly. And the old theological arguments that try to paint it as something other than ugly, and that try to represent our uneasiness with the doctrine of hell as nothing more than a suspect side-effect of a demonized "enlightenment philosophy" (as if enlightenment philosophy were entirely divorced from the ethical ideas of the Christian culture in which it was born)--well, those arguments are sounding increasingly implausible.

I'm not suggesting that Rob Bell is just a salesman with a better marketing campaign. Rather, I am suggesting that Bell may better represent the values of the emerging generation of evangelicals--a point that finds support in a great recent essay by Rachel Held Evans. If so, then when the conservative establishment rails against Bell with cries of heresy and excommunications by Tweet, what we may be witnessing is a once-privileged group scrambling desperately to cling to a position of authority that is steadily slipping from their grasp.

I don't know if that is true, but I really think it might be.

Robin Parry's Concise Reflection on Christian Universalism

Robin Parry uses the controversy surrounding Rob Bell's new book as a springboard for offering a nice (and concise) overview of Christian Universalism, in the form of debunking seven "myths" about it. If you haven't seen it (and if this controversy interests you), check out his essay, Bell's Hells, in the Baptist Times. Parry is the author of The Evangelical Universalist (under the pseudonym "Gregory McDonald) and co-editor of Universal Slavation? The Current Debate (in which I have an essay). Both books are well worth checking out.

Some Thoughts of Universalism: Recognizing the Inadequacy of Pat Responses

I’ve decided that one of the more recent comments on my RD article about the conservative backlash to Rob Bell is worth reflecting on here, simply because it helps to highlight some of the unconvincing lines of thought that are too often unreflectively thrown out there in response to universalism. If Christians (and other theists) are to converse thoughtfully about issues such as universalism, we need to take our thinking deeper than the pat responses allow. And for that to happen, the weaknesses of the pat responses need to be clear. So here is the text of the comment, in which at least some of the pat responses to universalism are put forward:

In reference to the part of your article that discusses "when all means some," one must look at the entire context of a passage in the bible. If you only look at one verse, it is easy to pull things out of context and assume things. When these passages refer to "all," they are talking about all who trust in Him. If everyone on this earth is automatically saved and we can do whatever the heck we want with no consequences, then God would not be a loving God. Just like a parent who disciplines his or her children out of love, so does our Father in heaven. Doesn't it seem like a huge waste of time for those who have a relationship with God to continue if they are going to heaven regardless? Never underestimate the power of God's grace but ever take it for granted either.

There are three points made here. The first has to do with biblical interpretation. On this issue the commenter stresses the importance of reading the Bible holistically and interpreting isolated passages in the light of such holistic reading.

I couldn’t agree more. If the Bible is to be seen as authoritative at all, then I think it must be in these terms, where the plain sense of isolated passages is subordinated to the core messages that emerge through a holistic reading. Such an approach fits well with seeing the Bible as the product of diverse voices writing at many times and places in history, reflecting on their understanding of and experience of the divine in terms of their own cultural lenses. It is by reflecting carefully and critically (in conversation with others) on a cloud of such fallible witnesses that we can begin to see the common themes that lie behind their limited perspectives, and thereby transcend those limitations.

My point in picking out the “universalist texts” in my article about Bell was precisely to highlight the fact that an approach to the Bible that prioritizes a narrow reading of the literal sense of isolated texts is not as such consistent with a confident endorsement of the doctrine of eternal hell—because there are isolated texts whose literal reading seems universalist. Given the complexity of the text—given that there are isolated passages that in their most straightforward sense support universalism, while others support damnation and a few support annihilationism—reaching theological conclusions based on what the text says requires critical thinking in light of the whole, something which is most effectively done in open conversation with those who have a different reading. It is only by respectfully considering the reasons and arguments of those who read the holistic message in different ways that we can reach responsible conclusions about what the whole tells us (if anything) about the eternal fates of human beings. And the fanaticism of “hellists” such as Piper and Taylor impedes just this sort of critical dialogue.

The second and third points raised by this commenter go beyond the matter of biblical interpretation to more philosophical reasoning about universalism and “hellism” in the light of core Christian teachings. The commenter offers, in effect, two arguments. The first is stated as follows: “If everyone on this earth is automatically saved and we can do whatever the heck we want with no consequences, then God would not be a loving God. Just like a parent who disciplines his or her children out of love, so does our Father in heaven.”

The argument here, in brief, tries to spell out the implications of the traditional Christian notion that God is essentially loving in something like the way that good parents are loving (“our Father in heaven”). If God is loving in this way, God would not let us do “whatever the heck we want with no consequences,” because good parents do not let their kids do whatever the heck they want with no consequences. Apparently, however, the alternative to letting your kids do whatever the heck they want with no consequences is to reject them utterly and completely, decisively casting them away from you and into an endless torture chamber.

Excuse the sarcasm—but it is helpful in calling attention to the false dilemma at work in this particular argument. Universalism is in part premised on the recognition that there are alternatives to coddling or “enabling” those you love (protecting them from all the negative consequences of their poor choices) and utterly rejecting those you love. Good parents do neither. As such, if God is like a good parent, God would do neither. So what would God do, given the extraordinary resources that God has available (assuming traditional theological assumptions)? That, of course, is one of the key questions that Christian debates about universalism and hellism need to grapple with. One cannot rule out the various universalist answers with nothing but a bizarre false dilemma (“bizarre” because the options presented are both ones that seem to be things a God conceived in the Christian sense would avoid). And there are various universalist answers, since, of the different ways God might respond to beloved but frequently misguided and willful creatures, it seems that more than one might be thought to culminate in the salvation of all.

Finally, the commenter asks, “Doesn't it seem like a huge waste of time for those who have a relationship with God to continue if they are going to heaven regardless?” The reasoning here seems to be pragmatic: If all are saved, then no one has any reason to have a relationship with God (because the only reason to have a relationship with God is in order to get into heaven). Hence, we must reject universalism if we want anyone to be motivated to cultivate a relationship with God.

Presented in these terms, the weaknesses of this argument essentially speak for themselves. But just in case it isn’t obvious, let me enumerate the problems here. First, there is the assumption that “getting into heaven” is the only reason anyone could have for continuing a relationship with God. This suggests that there is nothing intrinsically rewarding about nurturing such a relationship in this life, that those who pursue a relationship with God are doing it wholly for future rewards and get no immediate benefits from it.

Really? I could understand this perspective if God is conceived as a tyrant in the sky who reards the loudest sycophants, or as an unpleasant uncle you might decide to spend time with so you can get written into his will. And there are certainly some people who do conceive of God in something like that way. But those who have had profound experiences of God's presence in their lives don't usually come away with an impression of God as a nasty tyrant or annoying uncle. They are like lovers smitten.

The baffling nature of this perspective really comes out when we begin to reflect on what Christianity has traditionally taken “heaven” to be. It is, simply put, having a relationship with God of the most immediate and powerful kind. Heaven just is intimate loving union with the creator—the beatific vision. And so the commenter’s question really amounts to this: Why should I bother to have a taste of heaven now when I’ll get to enjoy heaven later regardless?

Of course, the most significant challenge to universalism becomes apparent if we restate the question in a different way: Why should I bother to have a relationship with God now when I will eventually come to have the most intimate kind of relationship with God later? Stated in this way, it calls attention to the fact that relationships usually involve the voluntary participation of both parties. But doesn’t this mean that, if heaven consists in having a relationship with God of a particularly intimate and immediate kind, that there can be no guarantee that all will come to experience heaven (since whether this happens depends on the free choices of the creature)?

In the theological debate between universalists and hellists, this question raises the most interesting and thorny philosophical issues—issues pertaining to the nature of freedom. Some think that freedom is such that, if we assume that human beings are really free, universalism has to be rejected (or simply held out as a hopeful possibility). Some people treat this position as uncontroversial—but is it?

I think the controversy here can be highlighted by asking a different but related question. Suppose someone is confronted with a standing offer that is never withdrawn. Suppose, furthermore, that rejecting the offer has natural consequences that are negative (because one has a nature such that accepting the offer is the only way to really be satisfied), and that these negative consequences become progressively worse the longer one rejects the standing offer (in the way that thirst or hunger become progressively worse the longer one rejects water and food). And suppose, finally, that the person has every conceivable reason to accept the offer (the person has come to see that accepting the offer is supremely good in every conceivable way) and absolutely no reason to reject it (the person has come to realize that all supposed reasons to reject the offer are utterly vacuous). On these assumptions, can we imagine that a person who is free to do otherwise would reject this offer forever?

In effect, the latter part of That Damned Book (whose actual working title is God’s Final Victory) aims to answer this question in the negative. But while I may have more to say about this issue in later posts, for now I want to highlight the controversial character of the view that divine respect for freedom is incompatible with a guarantee of universal salvation. This view is hardly beyond dispute—in fact, it there is a powerful intuitive case for thinking that if people have every reason to choose something, no reason not to, and infinite opportunity to choose it (because it is a standing offer), they will eventually choose what they have every reason to choose and no reason not to choose. The choice will be free but inevitable.

Put simply, there is no pat biblical or philosophical/theological basis for dismissing universalism. Those who want to defend the traditional doctrine of hell need to confront some serious issues, and they should ideally refine their arguments in conversation with those who thoughtfully develop an alternative view.

New Religion Dispatches Article on Rob Bell

I decided to reflect a bit more deeply on the conservative Evangelical backlash against Rob Bell--a backlash that strikes me as a case study in "fanaticism," at least under one way of understanding that term. The result, Rob Bell Catches Hell from Conservatives, appears in today's Religion Dispatches.

It is Finished...Well, Almost...Just in Time for an Evangelical Preacher to Steal Our Market Share

A couple of hours ago, I e-mailed the manuscript for That Damned Book to the editors at Continuum...all except the bibliography, which is close to finished but needs some final touches. I now tend my children at home and feel this sense of...almost completeness. Once my co-author puts the last touches on the bibliography and we can both review it for the inevitable infelicities, life will return to one in which I can pay attention to other things.

And, just as John and I are finishing our manuscript offering a detailed philosophical case for the conclusion that the doctrine of universalism fits more coherently with core Christian teachings than does the doctrine of hell, it turns out that a monstrously popular evangelical preacher, Rob Bell (founder of Mars Hill Bible Church), has now come out as a universalist in his newest book, inspiring outrage among some evangelicals, condescending "I'll pray for your poor benighted soul" condemnation among others, and openness among at least a few.

Of course, Bell's position is hardly new. It was taught by such early Church Fathers as Origen and Gregory of Nyssa. He isn't even the first modern evangelical to defend universalism.  A few years back, Robin Parry published The Evangelical Universalist under the pen name Gregory MacDonald--a wonderfully lucid and compelling case for universalism within an evangelical Christian context, which takes a very careful and serious look at the relevant biblical texts (that's right, universalism isn't unbiblical, as we spend a chapter arguing in our book). Bell isn't even the first pastor of a large and popular evangelical church to come out as a universalist. A popular evangelical preacher in Tulsa, Carlton Pearson, saw his huge church virtually evaporate when he had the courage to admit he was a universalist--only to be declared a heretic in 2004.

He may, however, be the first to make gobs of money from a book defending universalism--almost certainly FAR more money than we will.