Stan Moody-Christian Atheism. Speech in Cloumbia South Carolina
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“The Rise of Christian Atheism in America” Stan Moody January 8, 2010 Re: Address to the Forum at the UU Church in Columbia, SC Let me say, first of all, that I treasure the opportunity to touch base with you folks as we struggle together to bring reason and responsibility to a suffering world regardless of what our different agendas might be. This opportunity to meet and talk with you was an email-inspired occasion that was thrown together within the past week. As such, I want to be quick to express my appreciation to you for your willingness to listen to this Yankee who was laboring under the illusion that the Civil War had ended. I’m not a sloganeer, but I suppose that the fulfillment of the prediction that “The South will rise again” can give me hope that “As Maine goes, so goes the nation.” We have far too little time to explore this topic, “The Rise of Christian Atheism in America.” Let’s just say that it’s a teaser. I will make the commitment to you, however, that if you wish to explore this topic in more depth, I will work with you to put on a conference here. In the meantime, I would be delighted to communicate with you. You can reach me through my web site. Let’s cut to the chase. Who am I; why am I here, and what is my mission. My son, Kirt, the 1st Dr. Moody in our family, managed this week to synthesize for me who I am. I am an Evangelical whose life has been committed to trying to get Evangelicals to be Christian. Kirt’s perspective is that, while Evangelicals want to talk people into becoming Christian, my position is that people will truly become Christian only if the lives of professing Christians reflect service for the glory of God alone. Kirt reminded me that every act of service to others has an agenda higher or larger than ourselves. When the agenda becomes one of trapping
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people into repeating the Sinner’s Prayer, however, the agenda for service becomes very self-serving. In that respect, my hat goes off to those of you who lay claim to being humanists, agnostics and atheists. The fact that you have evaluated and synthesized and come to a conclusion indicates to me that you are far more intellectually honest than my colleagues in the evangelical community, if, in fact, I still have any colleagues left in the evangelical community. I will begin by giving you my definition of an Evangelical. I have broken the word Evangelical into 4 broad beliefs: 1. Belief in the sovereignty of God…If you believe in a Creator God, then it seems to me that this God in whom you profess to believe has to be sovereign…The first stage of Christian Atheism, therefore, is to act as though God cannot move hearts, cannot change behaviors and cannot act in human history unless we change the laws…America, in the same sense as was ancient Israel, then, becomes God’s agent of change… 2. Belief in the Lordship of Jesus Christ…By definition, belief in the Lordship of Christ is the foundation of the Christian faith…What we experience with Evangelicals, however, is that Jesus is in two places – in your heart by means of repeating the Sinner’s Prayer under duress, and somehow in the Ether, somewhere, and we need to do a rain dance to get Him to come back…Evangelicals give Jesus a Kingdom, but they make themselves lords of that Kingdom by insisting that He can’t do anything until we get the place ready… Then, all Hell breaks loose… 3. Belief in the authority of Scripture: Evangelicals are supposed to believe that Scripture is the inspired Word of God – word, by word, by word, by word…What they practice, however, is that Scripture is a compilation of the WORDS of God to be applied in our time out of historical and spiritual context in which it was written…The best definition of Scripture that I have ever seen was one crafted by the Reformed Church of America some 40 years ago: 2
“The Bible is inerrant in everything it intends to say…That places us above the words and into the Word, you see… 4. The doctrine of the Kingdom of God: That is a doctrine that was the core of the person and work of Jesus Christ, gave rise to the Sermon on the Mount and was taught and practiced by the 1st Century Church…This doctrine was about the presence of God living with His people NOW…Evangelicals, as the most self-conscious wing of the Christian Church, have rejected the doctrine of the Kingdom of God…They have sent Jesus and the Kingdom, considered by most theologians as being interchangeable terms, into the ether somewhere to be brought here when God finally notices our rain dance…That excuses Evangelicals from living under the mandate of the Sermon on the Mount… National and cultural maps are simply irrelevant in Kingdom thinking. Jesus made it clear that the old system of insiders and outsiders was about to be erased. Where you worship, and how you worship God was to become irrelevant. Social and religious boundaries were to be extinguished. Christian Atheists who have philosophically and spiritually moved Jesus and the Kingdom of God into the ether somewhere wish to be Christians, but they have chosen not to live under God’s terms. That is the basis for the racism, nationalism and elitism that pervades the Christian Right for whom God’s Kingdom is away. Until it returns we are under no obligation to act and react any differently from Old Covenant tradition – an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. The next question is, “What is my mission?” My mission is 3-fold. First, it is to those who have been exiled by the Christian community. In that respect, I have been learning everything I can about the plight of Christians on the West Bank in Palestine who have been hurt by Christian Zionists in America…I speak on that subject and on American Prison Reform whenever I get the chance to do so… Now, Evangelical do not respond favorably to this mission of mine. They hanged me in effigy, for example, when I was publicly instrumental a couple of years ago to defeat a referendum initiative in Maine to overturn the 3
gay rights law that I helped enact in the State Legislature…You might say that I occupy the interesting space of being a voice calling, “In the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord!” If you Google “Stan Moody,” you will find near the top of the first page, “A response to Stan Moody” by the Christian Civic League of Maine. Anytime I want to inflict emotional pain on myself, I go there… Secondly, my mission is a strange variation on apologetics – to come to people like yourselves who have been kicked around by these fundamentalists with their lack of faith in God and to apologize for failing to listen to your hearts and your mission and to learn from both…Evangelicals, you see, will dismiss your good works as mere liberalism, and we know how that plays in the heartland of America… My third mission, after I have evangelized Evangelicals by reaching out to the people they have eased out the door and have apologized for our behavior and lack of trust in the God in whom we profess to believe, is to get the Hell out of town before I get lynched! I have written a chapter on Christian Atheism in my book, “McChurched: 300M Served and Still Hungry.” The best way to synthesize what I have said there is in the words of Francis Shaeffer: It is not enough merely to say, “I am a Christian,” and then in practice to live as if present contact with the supernatural were something far off and strange. Many Christians I know seem to act as though they come in contact with the supernatural just twice – once then they are justified and become a Christian and once when they die. The rest of the time they act as though they were sitting in the materialist’s chair. The train of faith is roaring away from the Gospel as defined by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. While Christian atheists are committed to driving the train, they have become mere passengers in an escape from God. Peel away the layers, and the Christian identity culture has its roots in the white supremacist movement very familiar in American history as a backdrop for fear and conspiratorial beliefs. Christianity steeped in symbolism but without the sovereign grace of God is a mockery of the faith, the purpose of which was to overcome our failure to be righteous through
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symbolism and obedience to a bunch of codes and laws that nobody can keep anyway. I believe that, rather than making progress in the flight from ignorance of what we believe, we have institutionalized ignorance of the Gospel to the extent that we can now point to some 30% of the America public – some 100M people – who adhere to the populism of the Christian Right, whether they are professing Christians or not…This movement is no longer loosely organized and structured; it has coalesced around the Republican Party and has, I believe, given voice to a marginalized public that is becoming larger and more diverse… The inherent distrust that the Christian Right has for any organization, any nation, any political party and any church other than its own dysfunctional ghetto, resonates with the marginalized in our society… I’ll open this up for questions in a minute, but I want to close with a few last thoughts: With the rise of the Bush era “neocons,” I have been horrified by how much pain and suffering can be meted out in the name of Jesus. Those decidedly pro-birth have shown themselves to be anti-life. Those called by their Founder to turn the other cheek have taken up arms to pummel the world into submission. Those who are called to suffer for the sake of Christ drive to their churches in luxury cars and fancy clothes. I cannot reconcile hate spewing from the lips of a professing Christian, including my own. I cannot reconcile the litmus test for Christianity being abortion and gay marriage rather than the fruits of the regenerated life. I cannot reconcile global power as a tool of strength with God’s people. I cannot reconcile a Christian public insisting on Dominion over the earth through politics, war and wealth, applauding the rape, pillage and desecration of the earth and its other-than-us inhabitants. I coined the phrase, “Christian Atheism,” as a term to describe a Christian depending on the Sinner’s Prayer for hope and the American Dream for security. Somewhere along the way, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jesus has lost His sovereign power. Somewhere along the way, people who believe in Jesus no longer believe in nor trust God. Their trust is in their 5
money, their political affiliation, their nation and their theology, however warped are any of the four. The desert wanderers of our day will have to face the fact that God’s judgment against these Christian Atheists will spill over into all of our lives…
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people into repeating the Sinner’s Prayer, however, the agenda for service becomes very self-serving. In that respect, my hat goes off to those of you who lay claim to being humanists, agnostics and atheists. The fact that you have evaluated and synthesized and come to a conclusion indicates to me that you are far more intellectually honest than my colleagues in the evangelical community, if, in fact, I still have any colleagues left in the evangelical community. I will begin by giving you my definition of an Evangelical. I have broken the word Evangelical into 4 broad beliefs: 1. Belief in the sovereignty of God…If you believe in a Creator God, then it seems to me that this God in whom you profess to believe has to be sovereign…The first stage of Christian Atheism, therefore, is to act as though God cannot move hearts, cannot change behaviors and cannot act in human history unless we change the laws…America, in the same sense as was ancient Israel, then, becomes God’s agent of change… 2. Belief in the Lordship of Jesus Christ…By definition, belief in the Lordship of Christ is the foundation of the Christian faith…What we experience with Evangelicals, however, is that Jesus is in two places – in your heart by means of repeating the Sinner’s Prayer under duress, and somehow in the Ether, somewhere, and we need to do a rain dance to get Him to come back…Evangelicals give Jesus a Kingdom, but they make themselves lords of that Kingdom by insisting that He can’t do anything until we get the place ready… Then, all Hell breaks loose… 3. Belief in the authority of Scripture: Evangelicals are supposed to believe that Scripture is the inspired Word of God – word, by word, by word, by word…What they practice, however, is that Scripture is a compilation of the WORDS of God to be applied in our time out of historical and spiritual context in which it was written…The best definition of Scripture that I have ever seen was one crafted by the Reformed Church of America some 40 years ago: 2
“The Bible is inerrant in everything it intends to say…That places us above the words and into the Word, you see… 4. The doctrine of the Kingdom of God: That is a doctrine that was the core of the person and work of Jesus Christ, gave rise to the Sermon on the Mount and was taught and practiced by the 1st Century Church…This doctrine was about the presence of God living with His people NOW…Evangelicals, as the most self-conscious wing of the Christian Church, have rejected the doctrine of the Kingdom of God…They have sent Jesus and the Kingdom, considered by most theologians as being interchangeable terms, into the ether somewhere to be brought here when God finally notices our rain dance…That excuses Evangelicals from living under the mandate of the Sermon on the Mount… National and cultural maps are simply irrelevant in Kingdom thinking. Jesus made it clear that the old system of insiders and outsiders was about to be erased. Where you worship, and how you worship God was to become irrelevant. Social and religious boundaries were to be extinguished. Christian Atheists who have philosophically and spiritually moved Jesus and the Kingdom of God into the ether somewhere wish to be Christians, but they have chosen not to live under God’s terms. That is the basis for the racism, nationalism and elitism that pervades the Christian Right for whom God’s Kingdom is away. Until it returns we are under no obligation to act and react any differently from Old Covenant tradition – an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. The next question is, “What is my mission?” My mission is 3-fold. First, it is to those who have been exiled by the Christian community. In that respect, I have been learning everything I can about the plight of Christians on the West Bank in Palestine who have been hurt by Christian Zionists in America…I speak on that subject and on American Prison Reform whenever I get the chance to do so… Now, Evangelical do not respond favorably to this mission of mine. They hanged me in effigy, for example, when I was publicly instrumental a couple of years ago to defeat a referendum initiative in Maine to overturn the 3
gay rights law that I helped enact in the State Legislature…You might say that I occupy the interesting space of being a voice calling, “In the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord!” If you Google “Stan Moody,” you will find near the top of the first page, “A response to Stan Moody” by the Christian Civic League of Maine. Anytime I want to inflict emotional pain on myself, I go there… Secondly, my mission is a strange variation on apologetics – to come to people like yourselves who have been kicked around by these fundamentalists with their lack of faith in God and to apologize for failing to listen to your hearts and your mission and to learn from both…Evangelicals, you see, will dismiss your good works as mere liberalism, and we know how that plays in the heartland of America… My third mission, after I have evangelized Evangelicals by reaching out to the people they have eased out the door and have apologized for our behavior and lack of trust in the God in whom we profess to believe, is to get the Hell out of town before I get lynched! I have written a chapter on Christian Atheism in my book, “McChurched: 300M Served and Still Hungry.” The best way to synthesize what I have said there is in the words of Francis Shaeffer: It is not enough merely to say, “I am a Christian,” and then in practice to live as if present contact with the supernatural were something far off and strange. Many Christians I know seem to act as though they come in contact with the supernatural just twice – once then they are justified and become a Christian and once when they die. The rest of the time they act as though they were sitting in the materialist’s chair. The train of faith is roaring away from the Gospel as defined by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. While Christian atheists are committed to driving the train, they have become mere passengers in an escape from God. Peel away the layers, and the Christian identity culture has its roots in the white supremacist movement very familiar in American history as a backdrop for fear and conspiratorial beliefs. Christianity steeped in symbolism but without the sovereign grace of God is a mockery of the faith, the purpose of which was to overcome our failure to be righteous through
4
symbolism and obedience to a bunch of codes and laws that nobody can keep anyway. I believe that, rather than making progress in the flight from ignorance of what we believe, we have institutionalized ignorance of the Gospel to the extent that we can now point to some 30% of the America public – some 100M people – who adhere to the populism of the Christian Right, whether they are professing Christians or not…This movement is no longer loosely organized and structured; it has coalesced around the Republican Party and has, I believe, given voice to a marginalized public that is becoming larger and more diverse… The inherent distrust that the Christian Right has for any organization, any nation, any political party and any church other than its own dysfunctional ghetto, resonates with the marginalized in our society… I’ll open this up for questions in a minute, but I want to close with a few last thoughts: With the rise of the Bush era “neocons,” I have been horrified by how much pain and suffering can be meted out in the name of Jesus. Those decidedly pro-birth have shown themselves to be anti-life. Those called by their Founder to turn the other cheek have taken up arms to pummel the world into submission. Those who are called to suffer for the sake of Christ drive to their churches in luxury cars and fancy clothes. I cannot reconcile hate spewing from the lips of a professing Christian, including my own. I cannot reconcile the litmus test for Christianity being abortion and gay marriage rather than the fruits of the regenerated life. I cannot reconcile global power as a tool of strength with God’s people. I cannot reconcile a Christian public insisting on Dominion over the earth through politics, war and wealth, applauding the rape, pillage and desecration of the earth and its other-than-us inhabitants. I coined the phrase, “Christian Atheism,” as a term to describe a Christian depending on the Sinner’s Prayer for hope and the American Dream for security. Somewhere along the way, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jesus has lost His sovereign power. Somewhere along the way, people who believe in Jesus no longer believe in nor trust God. Their trust is in their 5
money, their political affiliation, their nation and their theology, however warped are any of the four. The desert wanderers of our day will have to face the fact that God’s judgment against these Christian Atheists will spill over into all of our lives…
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