A reader writes:
I just read your description of your book - how it differs from Derb's description of the second part of it - and was struck by how your hope for a church free from "excessive doctrinal obsession, minute moral regulation, and constant guilt," squares beautifully with today's Gospel reading from Mark:
So the Pharisees and scribes questioned him, "Why do your disciples not follow the tradition of the elders but instead eat a meal with unclean hands?" He responded, "Well did Isaiah prophesy about you hypocrites, as it is written:
This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines human precepts.
You disregard God's commandment but cling to human tradition."Wonderful.
Today's Christianists have one major problem in their recasting of Christianity as a partisan politics and a set of inviolable laws and moral regulations. That problem is the message of Jesus.