USA Today compromises it's integrity as a reliable and trustworthy news source when it publishes opinion writing filled with Christian nationalist myths demonstrated to be based on historical, misquotes, distortions, and sometimes outright lies, and USA Today therefore has the responsibility to publish an op-ed by an historian who rebuts those historical myths.

Who could make such a rebuttal ?  Stephen Mansfield's invests his claims with such an apparent air of authority...

Ah yes, Talk To Action boasts someone who specializes in rebuttal such abuses of the historical record. Paging Chris Rodda, white courtesy telephone please....


by Bruce Wilson on Fri Aug 10, 2007 at 10:30:06 AM EST

Although you didn't mention it specifically, I feel that my atheism has a huge target on its back. So much so, there is tingling between my shoulder blades.

If Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims are unacceptable, can atheism be tolerated? Not likely.

Even if his moves were to kill the odious Scientolgy, I still couldn't support it. His agenda is likely to give his personal faith "ultimate primacy". You can bet on that!

I'm glad he mentioned Jefferson's unitarianism and provided the links.  I was thumbing through his book at Barnes & Noble and he makes a big deal out of the fact that while Jefferson was probably a "Deist" early on, he converted to "Unitarian Christianity," after reading the writings of Joseph Priestly.  He's trying to find a way to put Jefferson in the "Christian" box so he can argue Jefferson was really like us religious conservatives not like those secularists (which, if Jefferson were a strict Deist, he would be).

The problem is even if Jefferson understood himself to be a "Christian" if you look at what Christian doctrines he specifically rejected, it's really not possible to call him a "Christian" in any traditional sense of the term.

In his letter to William Short Jefferson rejects the following:

"The immaculate conception of Jesus, his deification, the creation of the world by him, his miraculous powers, his resurrection and visible ascension, his corporeal presence in the Eucharist, the Trinity; original sin, atonement, regeneration, election, orders of Hierarchy, &c."

http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/jefferson_short.html

When he says the Founders got it "right," I wonder if he means Jefferson got it "right" by rejecting these doctrines central to orthodox Trinitarian Christianity.  

BTW, my research shows Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams all believed exactly the same on these matters, and so detailed their creed explicitly.  Washington and Madison too, though they weren't as explicit, their words on the nature of God are almost perfectly consistent with Jefferson's, Franklin's, and Adams'.  

by Jonathan Rowe on Sat Aug 11, 2007 at 01:05:04 PM EST

Except yours, Dr. Mansfield?

For those who aren't aware, Stephen Mansfield (I use the "Dr." title loosely as his doctorate is from a non-accredited institution) is a prominent member of Every Nation Churches and Ministries, which is directly descended from one of the most notorious campus based cults of the 1970s and 1980s, Maranatha Campus Ministries (see Richard Bartholomew's blogs on this topic, where Mansfield himself reveals that MCM's former top evangelist and current EN leader, Rice Broocks, is one of his best buds).  Former EN members, including myself, have reported on the FACTNet discussion forum that EN teaches and practices many of the same abusive "shepherding" tactics that got MCM labeled as a cult 25 years ago.  Despite its recent public retractions, EN also still promotes a fairly strident and elitist form of "dominion theology" or the "dominion mandate" where EN specifically is called to plant churches in every nation in order to infiltrate and eventually rule and reign over every nation... this is what EN's motto, "every nation in our generation" really refers to.

While EN is not a totally homogenous group theologically, the basis of its working theology is a synthesis between Christian Reconstruction and Latter Rain charismatism.  Some EN leaders skew more toward one end of that spectrum or another... Mansfield skews more toward Christian Reconstruction, befitting his friends and collaborators like George Grant.

One other piece of revisionism that has always puzzled me... why is it that revisionists like Mansfield insist on characterizing deists, freemasons and the like as exemplifying "Christian values"?

by ulyankee on Fri Aug 17, 2007 at 08:28:34 AM EST