The "Great Commission" :

In Mark's Gospel { 16:14-16}   we read that Jesus said   "Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation.  the one who believes and is baptized will be saved; but the one who does not believe will be condemned."
        There are many "Christians" who think they are obeying the Great Commission when all they are doing is promoting their misinformed version of Christianity.  The sad fact is that , despite what they imagine, many so-called promoters of "Christianity" don't even know or believe what Jesus actually taught themselves, and so are in no position to teach it to anyone else!  When Jesus spoke of "believing", he didn't mean a mere wag of the tongue, nor a profession of faith in a number of doctrines.  He meant a complete reorganization of one's scale of values in life to better match HIS scale of values, and a daily life that reflects that change all day, every day:

{ Matthew 7: 29 } 

"Everyone then who hears these words of mine (i.e. believes them) and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock .  . .  And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand."

{ Matthew 7: 20-23 }  

"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my father in heaven.  On that day many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?'
        Then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.'

{ John 3 : 11-22 }  

"Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?  "Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony.  If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? .  .  .  Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.  And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.  For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed.  But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God."

{Matthew 25:31-46 }  

"When I, the Messiah, shall come in glory, and all the angels with me, then I shall sit upon my throne of glory.  And all the nations shall be gathered before me.  And I will separate the people as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and place the sheep at my right hand, and the goats at my left.
      Then I, the King, shall say to those at my right, "Come, blessed of my Father, into the Kingdom prepared for you from the founding of the world.   For I was hungry and you fed me;  I was thirsty and you gave me water;   I was a stranger and you invited me into your homes;   naked and you clothed me;   sick and in prison, and you visited me."
      Then these righteous ones will reply,  "Sir, when did we ever see you hungry and feed you?  Or thirsty and give you anything to drink?  Or a stranger, and help you?  Or naked, and clothe you?  When did we ever see you sick or in prison, and visit you?"  And I, the King, will tell them,  "When you did it to these my brothers you were doing it to me!"
      Then I will turn to those on my left and say,   "Away with you, you cursed ones, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his demons.  For I was hungry and you wouldn't feed me;   thirsty, and you wouldn't give me anything to drink;   a stranger, and you refused me hospitality;   naked, and you wouldn't clothe me;   sick, and in prison,  and you didn't visit me."
      Then they will reply,  "Lord, when did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison,  and not help you?"
      And I will answer,  "When you refused to help the least of these my brothers, you were refusing help to me."  And they shall go away into eternal punishment;   but the righteous into everlasting life."

Here's the way some "compassionate Conservatives"       twist the life out of these words of Jesus : "That is a terrific passage, but if we are to deal with it fairly we need to understand that today's poor in the United States are the victims and perpetrators of illegitimacy and abandonment, family non-formation and malformation, alienation and loneliness and much else – but they are not suffering thirst, hunger, or nakedness, except by choice, insanity, or parental abuse.         When we lack discernment, we give money to panhandlers that most often go for drugs or alcohol. Christ does not include in his list of commended charitable acts, 'When I was strung out you gave me dope.' What are we truly doing to homeless men when we enable them (through governmental programs, undiscerning nonprofits, or tender-hearted but weak-minded personal charity) to stay in addiction?         Here's the reality: When I was an addict you gave me money for drugs; when I abandoned the woman and children who depended on me you gave me a place to stay and helped me to justify my action; when I was in prison you helped me get out quickly so I could commit more crimes.         If we take seriously Christ's words, 'When you did it to the least of these my brethren, you did it to me,' then giving money that goes for drugs is akin to sticking heroin into Jesus' veins."         (Some debatable words emphasized by R. D.          This excerpt was emailed to me with an incomplete reference (i.e. p. 272-273,) "Compassionate Conservatism", by Marvin Olasky is only a guess on my part. So, if anyone knows better, please advise R. D, )

{ Matthew 10:32-39 }  

"Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.  "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.  For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one's foes will be members of one's own household.  Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me.  Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it."

If this is an accurate representation of what Jesus actually said, it is puzzling why he spoke of dissension within the basic family unit, because there is not a single example or illustration of such dissension anywhere in the Gospels.  On the other hand, there are many examples of dissension within the "religious community" of his day.  In fact, the Gospels are largely the story of the constant battle Jesus waged with the religious and/or political leaders of his day, beginning with Herod's plans kill him as soon as his birth was announced and ending with the successful campaign to kill him just three years after his public ministry began.  And Jesus told his followers that they should expect similar treatment themselves.  (If they don't receive it, they should wonder why not.  Maybe they aren't following Jesus closely enough.)
        Many Christians imagine that this Scripture is realized when the non-Christian "world" resents their attempts to invoke secular power to impose their view of Christianity on others.  But the "world" which hated Jesus was not the secular world at all.  In fact, when the leading representative of the secular world, the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate, was urged to hate and prosecute Jesus, he wanted no part of it, declaring in 

{ John 19:4,6 } :  

"Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no case against him. . "When the chief priests and the (temple) police saw him, they shouted,  "Crucify him!  Crucify him!"  Pilate said to them,  "Take him yourselves and crucify him; I find no case against him."

It's obvious from passages such as this that the real enemies of Jesus, were neither the Roman authorities, nor the Jewish people, but the priests and bible scholars and Pharisees, (the "Religious Right" of that time and place).
        When Jesus was preparing those who would take up his work for the persecution they were going to encounter,  it wasn't for persecution at the hands of the secular "world", but at the hands of the religious world.         Those who have blamed the Jews, as a race, for the persecution of Jesus display their ignorance of the Gospels, which make it clear that it was not the race or nationality, but the profession of the enemies of Jesus, that caused them to hate and mistreat him, as Jesus spelled out in:

{ Luke 9:22 -26 }  

"The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised."  Then he said to them all, "if any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.  For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.  What does it profit them if they gain the whole world, but lose or forfeit themselves?  Those (preachers and followers) who are ashamed of me and of my words, of them the Son of Man will be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels."

For years I imagined that I was "carrying my cross daily" by accepting the little aches, pains and annoyances that plague every human being.  But after reading the words of Jesus for the hundredth time or so, I came to realize that I had never actually understood or taught those words faithfully at all.
        When, on the other hand, I started telling people that Jesus was serious about it being impossible for the rich man to be saved, suddenly rich and even middle class people didn't think very highly about me any more.   They didn't want to hear that Jesus warned that it is impossible to love both God and Mammon. They cringed at the thought that God wouldn't let them enjoy their multitude of shirts (and a multitude of other things) in peace and tranquility.  They much preferred the kind of preachers who tell them that their wealth is "a blessing" from a loving god.  ( The other side of that coin is that God doesn't love the billions of people who have to spend the entirety of their earthly lives in desperate misery! )  See much more on the important matter of "Blessings from God".
       When, like Jesus, I identified with the downtrodden multitudes around the world, instead of with my "successful" fellow Americans,  I came to know first hand why Jesus predicted:

{ in Matthew 10:25-28 }  

"If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more will they malign those of his household!  "So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known.  What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops.  Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell."
. . . and why Jesus said : in John, ch. 7, v. 7: "The world . . . hates me because I testify against it that its works are evil."

I've never quite been called "Beelzebub" (or "Satan").  But, ever since I have identified with Jesus' teaching about the obligation of the haves to help the have-nots, I've often been called something just as bad in America today: "socialist", "Marxist" or "communist".  (Since writing the above, I have actually been called "Son of Satan".)  I've never tried preaching the Gospel in a synagogue, so I've never been cast out of one, but I've literally been cast out of a church building (and that is what I believe Jesus had in mind) for trying to preach Jesus' true teaching there, and I have been banned from several so-called "Christian" forums on the internet for the same reason.
        If Jesus of Nazareth preached what his so-called followers do today, then why on earth would people react as { Luke 4: 29 } says they did :  "When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage.  They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff."  Thursday, February 23, 2012( Eventually, of course, they did corner and kill him.)
        If the vast majority of paid clergy continue to ignore the challenge of this message, I am going to be forced to conclude that paying the living expenses of a professional clergy has evolved into a means of bribing them to be quiet about the heart and soul of Christ's teaching – which is what the rest of my web site is all about –.
        If you have the courage to face the kind of fury that the teaching of Jesus generated in the religious establishment of his day, and which Jesus predicted that his followers would experience in our day, then you are I invited to explore and teaching at greater depth at :

Then, I hope that you will want to join us in promoting what we believe to be the most authentic internet presentation of Christ's teaching in America today.

Have you ever wondered what has happened to Christianity since the first generations of those who had known Christ best, when those who believed in Christ's teaching were willing to die horrible deaths rather than deny that teaching?  Why have so few felt the need to pay that price since?  Historians tell us that one of the crucial turning points in Christian history was "the conversion" of the emperor Constantine to Christianity.   before that conversion, those who wanted to follow Christ couldn't work with secular rulers, because such rulers wanted to force them to worship false gods.  after that conversion, Christians were made to believe that the ruler was "one of them", and there was no longer any need to choose between the true God and Caesar's false gods.

Instead of being a thorn in the side of the secular authorities, i.e. the voice of conscience, the leaders of the church now gave their blessing to those authorities, without requiring obedience to Christ's teaching as the condition of that blessing.  Far from being a counterforce to secular rulers, the church's leaders crowned those secular leaders in their houses of worship, which the authorities now helped them build.  They themselves became "princes of the church", and they did everything in their considerable power to make sure that their Christian followers behaved as dutiful subjects of their earthly rulers.  There was no longer any need to suffer or die for one's faith at the hands of secular authorities, because those authorities now enjoyed God's blessing, thanks to the "princes of the church".
        Later, when there were splits among the churches, those churches that cooperated with the secular authorities – whether at the state or the local level – and gave them God's blessing  were themselves blessed with power and wealth by the secular authorities, and those churches which didn't were suppressed or persecuted.  Though often seemingly good for the churches as institutions, such cooperation has led to countless moral and spiritual disasters, for individuals, for churches, and for the world as a whole, not just centuries ago but in our times.

        "All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need." – Acts 2:44-45.

"'What should we do then?' the crowd asked. John answered, 'The man with two tunics should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same.'" – Luke 3:10-11

"No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money. Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?" – Matthew 6:25

"But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs." – 1 Timothy 6:6-10

"Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming upon you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter." – James 5:1-5

The quotes of the early church fathers are mainly from Justo L. Gonzalez's invaluable book, Faith & Wealth: A history of early Christian ideas on the origin, significance and use of money :

"Thou shalt not turn away from him that is in want, but thou shalt share all things with thy brother, and shalt not say that they are thine own." – The Didache

"Therefore all things are common; and let not the rich claim more than the rest. To say therefore 'I have more than I need, why not enjoy?' is neither human nor proper." – St. Clement of Alexandria

"From those things that God gave you, take that which you need, but the rest, which to you are superfluous, are necessary to others. The superfluous goods of the rich are necessary to the poor, and when you possess the superfluous you possess what is not yours." – St. Augustine

"If one who takes the clothing off another is a thief, why give any other name to one who can clothe the naked and refuses to do so? The bread that you withhold belongs to the poor; the cape that you hide in your chest belongs to the naked; the shoes rotting in your house belong to those who must go unshod." – St. Basil

"The rich have that which belongs to the poor, even though they may have received it as an inheritance, no matter whence their money comes." – St. John Chrysostom

"When you give to the poor, you give not of your own, but simply return what is his, for you have usurped that which is common and has been given for the common use of all. The land belongs to all, not to the rich; and yet those who are deprived of its use are many more than those who enjoy it." – St. Ambrose

In the eyes of Pastor Ted Haggard, the founder of "New Life", one of America's most powerful megachurches, and the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, as quoted by Jeff Sharlet in "Inside America's most powerful megachurch," in the May 2005 Harper's (speaking of emerging evangelicals in the Ukraine) :
"They're pro-free markets, they're pro-private property. ... That's what evangelical stands for."
"I teach a strong ideology of the use of power," he says, "of military might, as a public service." He is for preemptive war, because he believes the Bible's exhortations against sin set for us a preemptive paradigm, and he is for ferocious war, because "the Bible's bloody. There's a lot about blood." [ from http://www.harpers.org/SoldiersOfChrist.html ]

The fundamentally flawed "Virgin Birth" :

• The first problem with the miraculous birth story is that the Christians of the first three centuries didn't even celebrate Jesus' birth. The first mention of a Nativity feast appears in a Roman document from 354 A.D., and that document is the first to list December 25 as his official birthday. It appears that after a great debate over how human Jesus had really been, some scholars believe that the church began celebrating Jesus' birth as a way of emphasizing his humanity.
• While Christmas pageants weave Gospel stories together seamlessly, the stories of Luke and Matthew go together like oil and water. 
          Bible scholars now believe that Mark was the first to publish the story of Jesus' life, some 20 years after Jesus' death, and he (like the evangelist, John) wrote nothing whatever about Jesus' birth or childhood.  Apparently unhappy with Mark's Gospel, Matthew, Luke and John each decided to try to improve on Mark by writing their own versions of Jesus' life and teaching.
          Although Matthew and Luke wrote as though they were both witnesses of Jesus birth, you have to wonder if they were writing about the same person.  Luke appears to know nothing about any kings coming from the East, or King Herod becoming involved, or a multitude of Jewish male children being butchered, or the holy family fleeing to Egypt, where Jesus supposedly spent the first years of his life.  Wouldn't you think that events as dramatic as these would be included in any story of the first chapter of Jesus' life?  Matthew, on the other hand, shows no knowledge of the shepherds, or the appearance of a multitude of angels to announce and celebrate the birth of Jesus.  And directly contradicting Matthew's claim that immediately after his birth Jesus was carried off in panic to the foreign country of Egypt to the south where he stayed for several years, Luke writes all about the public ritual appearances at the temple, and says that  "When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth (North of Bethlehem, and far from Egypt to the South, and from which)  "every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover."   (Luke 2:39-41)
• There are also problems with the "virgin birth" accounts of both Matthew and Luke.  For one, Matt. 1:22-23 claims that Isaiah 7:14 is a profecy about Jesus' birth:  "Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel." (KJV)
          Sadly, Christian versions of the Hebrew bible which use the word "virgin" in this verse may be intentionally mistranslating the Hebrew word "almah", which is not the word for "virgin", but the word for "young girl" or "recently married young woman", because the accurate translation would expose Matthew's erroneous assertion that "All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet (Isaiah) : "Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel," which means, "God is with us."   ( An additional problem with this text, which Matthew claims is a profecy about Jesus, is that there is no evidence of anyone ever calling Jesus 'Emmanuel'.)
• Far from being an earth-shattering event, the story of the virgin birth of Jesus follows a long-standing tradition in the Middle East of great men or gods having such an origin.  A thousand years before Jesus, "Zoroaster, the Persian prophet and patriarch who lived and preached in ancient Babylon, was said to have been God-begotten and virgin-born."  and Christianity's principal rival religion in the Middle-East at the time was centered on Mithras, who "was said to have been sent by a father-god to vanquish darkness and evil in the world.  Born of a virgin (a birth witnessed only by shepherds), Mithras was described variously as 'the Way', 'the Truth', 'the Light', 'the Word', 'the Son of God', and 'the Good Shepherd' and was often depicted carrying a lamb upon his shoulders.  Followers of Mithras celebrated December 25th (the winter solstice) by ringing bells, singing hymns, lighting candles, giving gifts, and administering a sacrament of bread and water." [ from infidels.org/library/modern/james_still/virgin_birth.html ]

The Historical Roots of America's Christian Fundamentalism

Adherents to America's Christian fundamentalism are concentrated in the Bible-belt which encompasses what was once known as the lands below the Mason-Dixon line along with the border states.  In other words, America's Bible-belt encompasses those areas where slavery was deeply entrenched in the years before the American Civil War and the surrounding areas.  Many slave states seceded from the Union and engaged in a bloody civil war against their fellow Americans to maintain the institution of slavery.
        Let me repeat that last idea in a slightly different fashion: slave holders who dominated the governments of the slave states preferred to destroy the United States, to devastate the lives of millions of Americans, slave and non-slave, combatants and non-combatants, alike, and to kill, maim,and cripple their fellow Americans rather than to give up their institution of slavery.  These same slave-owning men who attempted to dissolve the Union were considered by many of their contemporaries to be good, God-fearing men and leaders of the community.
        In those slave states, the Christian religion took on a very unique character.  None of the slave states were formed as beacons of religious freedom.  Maryland was given to Lord Baltimore as a haven for Britain's Catholic population and was as religiously intolerant of non-Catholics as the mother country was intolerant of Catholics.  Virginia and the Carolinas were populated by for-profit corporations engaged in the business of transporting people from the Old World to the New.  Georgia was a penal colony.  Florida was a Spanish colony, while Louisiana was a French colony.  Money ruled and the clergy adapted to the rule of gold.
        Slave owners and other profiteers from human misery did not want a religion that made them feel guilty about the source of their riches.  So the rich, who were mostly rich because they owned slaves and profited from the misery of others, choose not to hire ministers and preachers who taught a message which made them feel guilty.  The ministers who were hired were the ministers who preached the message which the rich were willing to hear – a message which justified the rights of the slave owner to manage his property the way he saw fit, a message which demanded obedience from the slaves, and a message which promoted the subjugation of women, Native Americans, and other peoples.
        As the institution of slavery spread, so did this new American religion.  As the institution of slavery deepened, so did the church's insistence on the justice of the rich to the fruits of their slaves' labor.  America's Christian fundamentalism, then, is descended from the religion of slave owners, slave traders, and slaves.
        Long before the American Civil War, an ostensibly Christian religion arose which completely neglected the hundreds of biblical injunctions for social justice.  In place of a message of social justice, this new Christian religion demanded only one thing: from the elite, money; from the rest of society, obedience to the established order.  To assist the church in supporting the established power, the church demanded two things from the faithful.  First, the true believer must have an unquestioning faith in the religious teachings of their church, usually expressed as an unquestioning adherence to the Bible as most helpfully interpreted by that Christian church, even if that unquestioning faith required one to suspend his willingness to reason and his ability to accept reality and facts.  Second, morality was solely defined as (women's) sexual fidelity, augmented at times with an injunction for men to support their wives and children, in return, of course, for their unconditional obedience.  As always, the rich and powerful were exempt from both of these rules.
        Gone were the strictures against greed.  Gone were the obligations of the elites to ameliorate the plight of the least fortunate among them.  Gone were God's demands that humanity be wise stewards of God's creation.  Gone were the biblical injunctions to bring justice into the world, to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to tend to the sick, to assist the widow, to protect the orphan, and to shelter the homeless.  Gone were the stories of God's wrath at Pharaoh for his refusal to let God's people go.  Gone were the stories of God liberating the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt.  Gone were the stories of God's mercy and God's love for all of her creation.
        Using a theology of Social Darwinism in which it was claimed that the rich and powerful are rich and powerful as a sign of God's blessing, the rich and powerful were seen as virtuous and deserving the riches which were showered upon them by a just God.  In reality, nineteenth-century slave owners and robber barons became rich because they were corrupt and ruthless.  They had the money to silence their critics, as well as, to reward their flatterers.
        The defeat of southern troops in the Civil War was not enough to convince those who rebelled against both the Union and God that God did not smile on their theology.  Rather, the system was updated to find legal and quasi-legal methods of subjugating the former slaves.  The Ku Klux Klan terrorized the Black community.  Black men and women, particularly those who became relatively successful, financially, or who became leaders in the Black community, were lynched with impunity.  No white man in the former Confederacy was convicted of raping a black woman for the next hundred years.  Well into the 1960s, white social activists working on behalf of people of color, as well as Black people, were murdered in the deep South.  When northerners came south to work on behalf of people of color, doing simple things like registering them to vote, southerners, including those good God-fearing, Bible-believing Christians, virulently denounced the interlopers as "outside agitators."
        Yet, in the 1960s, under the administration of Lyndon B. Johnson, a true friend to people of color and to women, a series of laws were passed and new social programs were instituted which helped to bring women of all colors and people of color into the mainstream of American life.  White men, especially rich, white men saw their privileges eroding and struck back, first against civil rights activists and feminists, then against the broader social justice / social responsibility movement.
        The rich and powerful found allies in only a few sections of the American people among racists, male chauvinists, the religiously intolerant, the xenophobic, and, of course, the Bible-belt Christians who had long been conditioned to respond to the influence of money, to ignore issues of social justice, and to define morality in terms of sexuality.
        Contrary to all of the teachings of their ostensible spiritual leader, Jesus of Nazareth, in their lust for temporal power, fundamentalist Christians allied themselves with the rich and powerful.  In doing so, they forfeited every legitimate claim they ever possessed to moral authority."

The History of Fundamentalism

Needless to say, the changes proposed by Christocentric Liberals and proponents of the Social Gospel were deeply disturbing to many Protestant evangelicals.  There was a strong sense that in trying to accomodate Christianity to the changed situation, something important was being lost.  In attempting to define those essentials of the faith that should not be compromised, a reactionary movement was launched that would alter the religious landscape.  That movement was fundamentalism.
        The term "fundamentalism" came into existence at the Niagara Falls Bible Conference which was convened in an effort to define those things that were fundamental to belief.  The term was also used to describe "The Fundamentals," a collection of twelve books on five subjects published in 1910 by Milton and Lyman Steward.  These two wealthy brothers were concerned with the [so-called] moral and spiritual decline they believed was infecting Protestantism, and sought to restore the historic faith with a 12 volume call to arms that dealt with five subjects that latter became known as the five fundamentals of the faith: (1) Literal inerrancy of the autographs (the originals of each scriptural book); (2) the virgin birth and deity of Christ; (3) the substitutionary view of the atonement; (4) the bodily resurrection of Christ; (5) The imminent return of Christ.  These twelve volumes were sent to "every pastor, evangelist, missionary, theological student, Sunday School Superintendent, YMCA and YWCA secretary."  In all, some 3 million copies were mailed out.
        These ideas had been circulating for some time.  The first, verbal inerrancy, had been finely honed by A. A. Hodge, a professor of theology at Princeton Seminary, and B.B. Warfield, a professor at Western Theological Seminary.  They had argued that the scriptures were inerrant, but limited that inerrancy to the original, and   – might we add –  now lost manuscripts of the Bible.  These autographs, it was held, were "absolutely errorless" as they originally came from God, but Hodge and Warfield allowed that some "apparent inconsistencies and collisions with other sources of information are to be expected in imperfect copies of ancient writings. . .  ".
        Obviously, the idea of revelation is basic to Christianity, and particularly for Protestants for whom Scripture is the sole source of authority.  But this insistence on inerrancy did not take the measure of the problem.  In arguing the point as did Hodge and Warfield, one could claim inerrancy without any fear of empirical refutation since these original autographs do not exist.  More importantly, such a claim is of no practical value for the Christian because if the manuscripts of Scripture we do have are corrupt, then it matters little whether the originals were pure.  We must make do with an text that may not be fully trustworthy.  This illustrates a problem that appeared time and again in fundamentalism: the tendency to draw a line on an important point of Christian doctrine, but to draw that line in the wrong place.

"Christian thinking on wealth and property has "evolved" over the last 1,500 years. It is rather rare, these days, to hear a Christian assert or even defend the idea that "superfluity is theft" – yet that was the consistent and universal teaching of the church during the first four centuries of Christianity. This evolution or sophistication of Christian teaching is, likely, a concession – the gradual, frog-in-a-kettle process of accommodation to this world. Yet despite that, again, I'm willing to entertain the idea that this evolution is also in some ways reasonable and justifiable. But it is hypocrisy and nonsense when contemporary Christians who have sold off and abandoned every vestige of the traditional Christian understanding of wealth turn around and insist that the Christian understanding of sexuality is fixed, immutable and eternal. These people strain at the gnat of same-sex love while swallowing the camel of credit card usury. They are so obsessed with their mistaken belief that they live in the most promiscuous society of all time that they have failed to notice they live in the most affluent, the haughtiest, proudest and least concerned with the poor."