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Bibles and Evangelicals.

adroitly I’ve written recently about the need to destroy Biblical literalism; and here is an obituary of one minister who worked on precisely this.  The reporting appears to be unaware of the actual issues involved, but Gomes’ words themselves are salutary:

how to buy gabapentin online “The Bible alone is the most dangerous thing I can think of,” he told The Los Angeles Times. “You need an ongoing context and a community of interpretation to keep the Bible current and to keep yourself honest. Forget the thought that the Bible is an absolute pronouncement.”

But Mr. Gomes also defended the Bible from critics on the left who called it corrupt because passages had been used to oppress people. “The Bible isn’t a single book, it isn’t a single historical or philosophical or theological treatise,” he told The Seattle Gay News in 1996. “It has 66 books in it. It is a library.”

Catholics would note that there were 73 books in it for a good thousand years until Protestants started whittling the number down a bit, but that’s just another example of its mutability.

On a related note, Sullivan notes a study of Evangelical Christians’ budget-cut priorities.  As usual with budgets, there is little consensus: only one item in the budget could so much as half of Evangelicals agree to cut.  That was “aid to the world’s poor.”  The general principle is to stand the Magnificat on its head.  “The rich he hath filled with good things, the poor he hath sent empty away.”  Sullivan’s summary:

Christianists favor the biggest cuts in spending on the poor and unemployed and the smallest cuts in the military-industrial complex. Now you know a little why I find using the term “Christian” to describe this political ideology a little difficult.

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