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January 8, 2 010

To: United Methodist Church, Columbia, SC

Let me begin by saying that I appreciate your mission as the Grace


Class…Some of you may know my next-door neighbor, Dr. Peter Misner, who
has been very active at the national level in pushing for the reconciling
community within the United Methodist Church…My problem is that I don’t
understand it because I am an American Baptist, and American Baptists
don’t believe in institutions. So, no matter how much Dr. Misner wants to
educate me on this subject, I just can’t wrap my mind around how the
proclamation of any institution can be sacred.
However, in the interest of multiculturalism, I thought I would begin by
giving you a little encouragement from the year 1633:
We say, pronounce, sentence, and declare that you, the said Galileo,
by reason of the matters adduced in trial, and by you confessed as above,
have rendered yourself in the judgment of this Holy Office vehemently
suspected of heresy, namely, of having believed and held the doctrine—
which is false and contrary to the sacred and divine Scriptures—that the Sun
is the center of the world and does not move from east to west and that the
Earth moves and is not the center of the world; and that an opinion may be
held and defended as probable after it has been declared and defined to be
contrary to the Holy Scripture...

You will be pleased to know that Galileo was more-or-less pardoned by


a process initiated by the Catholic Church in 1992 and completed, I believe,
in 2000. I hope that this offers you encouragement in your own cause this
morning.
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 first 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 would be 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
people into repeating the Sinner’s Prayer, however, the agenda for service
becomes very self-serving.
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:
“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, regional 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…As a former
chaplain at the maximum security Maine State Prison, I have become an
activist for prison reform. I preach at a church in Maine that, if you wanted
to be seen going to church, you would never go there. It is surrounded by
900 acres of dedicated forestland, and nothing else.
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
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
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:
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
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…
Finally, here are words very familiar to you as Methodists:
Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can…

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