As we end off the summer of 2023, I wanted to first write something more personal. It was a great summer. The highlight for me was a trip to Colorado, where my longtime friend, Mike Scott, and I hiked South Arapaho Peak, a near 13,400 foot mountain about an hour west of Boulder, right on top of the Continental Divide. God’s Creation is pretty awesome. Standing at near 13,400 feet and looking across the Rockies is amazing!

I had not done a hike like this in seven years, yet we had a total blast! As I am getting older, I am not sure if I have any more “14’ners” left in me, but I sure hope I still do! Behind us is North Arapaho Peak:

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Cambridge House at the College of William and Mary

This Labor Day weekend inaugurates the THIRD year for the Cambridge House at the College of William and Mary, a ministry that I am fully excited about, which continues to grow. As a staff member at the College, it is great to have a place where followers of Jesus, from a wide cross-section of Christian traditions, can come together as students, faculty, staff, and friends in the community, to share in stimulating conversation about the beauty of historical orthodox Christian faith.

Cambridge House has brought on a full-time intern to help staff the study center this year, and has a “Fellows” program, where about a dozen students participate in growing deeper both spiritually and intellectually in their journey with Christ. This is our director, Jon Thompson’s, second year and I could not be more thrilled to see how God is moving on the campus.  Small beginnings, for sure, but very encouraging for me to be a part of this on a secular college campus.

If you do not know much about Cambridge House, you should explore the website.

The Cambridge House, at the Crossroads, at 930 Jamestown Road, in Williamsburg, Virginia. With close proximity to the campus of the College of William and Mary, the Cambridge House is one of the newest Christian study centers.

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Some Fun History…..

I also have something fun in mind that has to do with history. After all, my interests here on the Veracity blog are mainly Christian apologetics, and Christian history. But this little bit of history is broader in scope, as it has to do with Colonial Williamsburg.

Years ago, I worked as an usher for showing The Story of a Patriot, the famous Colonial Williamsburg 1957 Paramount film production recalling the events of Williamsburg’s roll in the American Revolution of 1776. Here is the film, starring a young Jack Lord, of the old TV series, Hawaii Five-O. Then after that is a “Quest Capsule” video comparing the filming locations of the movie in 2023, a “Then & Now” trip through history:

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The Death of Pat Robertson

One of the events this summer that has had an impact on the Christian world was the death of television evangelist, Pat Robertson.

Pat Roberston was definitely a controversial figure in evangelical Christianity, and the culture at large. In the New York Times story remembering his life, I got a strong whiff of negative comments about him. Here is just a sample:

“I will not mourn his passing. He was a mean-spirited man whose objective was the fouling of democracy. He is one of many high-profile preachers who give Christianity a bad name.”

“Pat Robertson was truly one of the most destructive and divisive religious leaders this country has ever known and there have been many. When one passes another crops up with the same message of personal intolerance packaged for sale as the word of God. Like most pestilence, there is no getting rid of them.”

“Robertson was on the leading edge of the Christian alt-right political machine which has wreaked so much damage on the nation over the last thirty years.”

Yikes! Pat Robertson’s reputation did not fair very well in the national media. Robertson’s campaign for President amplified the vitriol levied against him. These attitudes towards him should give Christians pause whenever we try to mix the Gospel with an overtly political message. As Christians, we are called to pray for our political leaders, act as good citizens, and participate in the political process for the common good of our neighbors. But if our involvement in political matters overshadows our efforts to share the Gospel with a lost and hurting world, we might end up alienating the very people around us who so desperately need to hear a word of hope and comfort that the Good News of Jesus Christ came to bring.

As an aside…. I have known of misguided fans of Pat Robertson who would do well to heed this warning: There is a lot of talk about “Christian Nationalism” these days, placing the importance of certain political alignments ahead of Jesus’ call to evangelize and make disciples of all of the nations.

As YouTuber Inspiring Philosophy argues, many of the most active adherents to so-called “Christian Nationalism” are people who profess a form of Christian belief, but who are ironically little involved in the life of healthy Christian communities. Such advocates of “Christian Nationalism” are pursuing something other than a genuine devotion to Christ, a growing knowledge of Scripture, and a sense of accountability within a local church…. assuming that such people even participate in a local Christian church at all!

You might be thinking that I am targeting certain people on the political “right,” and to a certain extent, that would be true. But there is just about as much mischief, if not more-so, on the political “left.” For everyone I know who is enamored by Q-Anon-type conspiracies on the right, there are plenty of supposedly Christian people who repeat worn-out tropes of the “woke” movement, and supposed champions of “social justice,” which is just as bad, and just as self-righteous, in my view.

I am looking forward to the 2024 political season just as much as I am looking forward to having a tooth-ache….

Now, back to Pat Robertson…..   I do recall a news story back in 1985 when Hurricane Gloria was approaching Virginia Beach, and Pat Robertson publicly prayed that God would steer that hurricane away from Virginia. When that hurricane did veer off from Virginia, to slam into New England instead, many Americans were annoyed by that kind of prayer.  Furthermore, Pat Robertson’s association with extreme elements of the Charismatic Movement, some radical political figures in other parts of the world, and certain other shady television evangelists did him no favors among more mainstream evangelical Christians.

However, there was another side to Pat Robertson that has been overlooked by all of that negative publicity. Robertson grew up in Lexington, Virginia and went to college at Washington and Lee University, where I obtained my undergraduate degree decades later. As the son of a well-known Democratic United States congressman and senator, Absalom Willis Robertson, and coming from a family of Baptist preachers, young Pat was known to be a renegade and a “black sheep” within his family.

There is a well-worn anecdote about Pat Robertson in college. Who knows how much truth there is to the story, but it sure fits. One night, his fraternity at Washington and Lee University was getting ready to have a big party, and bring in a lot of girls from the surrounding women’s colleges. Suddenly, a fire broke out in the fraternity house. Several of Robertson’s fellow frat brothers escaped the burning building, including Roger Mudd, who later on became a well-respected television journalist, and John Warner, who later became a multi-term Virginia senator and husband to the famed movie star, Elizabeth Taylor.

But after the fire was put out by the local fire squad, and thankfully sparing much of the building, Pat Robertson was nowhere to be found!! Had he perished inside the frat house during the fire?

Frantic fraternity brothers looked for him high and low. There was no sign of him. A sense of despair rippled through the despondent party goers.

Then just a few minutes later, a fancy convertible with its top down drove up in front of the house. Pat Robertson hopped out of the car safe and sound. He had gone off to get another beer keg for the party and missed the fire altogether!!

That story chimes in well with what we know of Robertson after college. Though he had joined the Marines, he avoided combat in the Korean War, rumored to have been because of the influence of his senator father. He married his wife in 1954, but years later, when Robertson ran for President, it was discovered that the birth certificate for his first son was dated just 10 weeks after the wedding.

It was after those early years of being a young father and married that Pat Robertson’s life changed dramatically, when depression settled in and he considered suicide. He met a Christian evangelist and soon gave his life to Christ.

By 1960, Pat Robertson sensed a calling to start a Christian television station, which became the Christian Broadcasting Network, in Virginia Beach, Virginia. I remember watching Channel 27 on the television every now and then, mostly out of curiosity, as Robertson made an effort in the 1960s and 1970s to make something out of television evangelism. Most famously known as the host of the “700 Club,” Pat Robertson became not only a talented religious broadcaster, he developed into becoming a very capable businessman.

Pat Robertson gave a substantial gift to the Christian fellowship group I was involved with in college at Washington and Lee. He founded Operation Blessing, a worldwide charitable organization, and established Regent University, an institution of Christian higher learning known for its excellence.  Robertson was not a Young Earth Creationist, believing that Young Earth Creationism invited ridicule of the Bible. He even joined the controversial liberal black preacher, Al Sharpton, in a 2008 television ad urging people to take global climate change seriously, on both sides of the political spectrum.

Despite a lot of the negative controversies surrounding Pat Robertson, I actually grew to appreciate a lot of the good things he had done over the years. I even took several classes at Regent University in order to obtain my seminary degree, so I can say I am a direct recipient of the notable vision that Pat Robertson had within the Christian church.

Other Notable Deaths

There have been other notable deaths from the summer of 2023. Daniel Fuller, son of radio evangelist Charles E. Fuller, died at the age of 97. Daniel Fuller taught biblical interpretation at Fuller Theological Seminary, for forty years: 1953-1993. This was where I did graduate work, but unfortunately I never had a class with him. Daniel Fuller was the most influential intellectual figure in the life of evangelical preacher John Piper.

Speaking of big theological influencers, I missed the death earlier this year of the Anglican New Testament scholar, Anthony Thiselton. Thiselton was one of the leading scholars of hermeneutical theory, exploring the relationship between philosophy and biblical interpretation. His classic 1980 tome, The Two Horizons: New Testament Hermeneutics and Philosophical Description, is as about as nerdy as you can get, but it helped me get through the negative stereotype I had about philosophy.

I recently picked up a Kindle copy on sale of Thiselton’s Puzzling Passages in Paul, Forty Conundrums Calmly Considered. I thought about writing a separate blog review, but I have to confess that while the book is illuminating, it is also terribly infuriating. Thiselton goes to great lengths explaining the controversies surrounding various passages from the Apostle Paul, but he tends to be gun-shy about making conclusive judgments of his own. Unless you are a hopeless Bible geek, you would be better off with a good study Bible.

Then there was the death of popular singer/songwriter Sinéad O’Connor….. you know, the musician who ripped up a photo of pope on live television on Saturday Night Live, in 1992.  Sinéad O’Connor was protesting sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic Church, but she did not articulate why she was protesting Pope John Paul II in her Saturday Night Live appearance. Therefore, many viewers simply took her unexpected action to be an anti-Catholic, if not, anti-Christian expression of speech. It is hard to believe that some 30 years later, Sinéad O’Connor’s expression of speech would pale in comparison to what people often view almost everyday on social media.

What I never learned about, until after her recent death, is that Sinéad O’Connor in 2018 had converted, or “reverted,” as she put it, to becoming a Muslim.  Like from something reminiscent to our Veracity “head coverings” series this summer, she took up a head covering and describes her move into the Sufi tradition of Islam like this:  “The word ‘revert,’ it refers to the idea that if you were to study the Koran, you would realize that you had all – you were a Muslim all your life, and you didn’t realize it.”  It fascinates and puzzles me how a woman like Sinéad O’Connor would grow up with such an intense Roman Catholic upbringing, only to completely dispense with it all and become a head-covering Sufi Muslim.

Nordic Bishops Letter on Human Sexuality

Speaking of Roman Catholicism……. , a pastoral letter was crafted by a group of Scandinavian bishops affirming a Scriptural view of human sexuality, addressing particular concerns about same-sex marriage and the transgender movement today. Though I am not Roman Catholic, I was encouraged by the measured, pastoral tone of the letter, which while upholding the idea of marriage between one man and one woman, encourages compassion and empathy towards those who wrestle with questions of sexual identity and marriage, a kind of sensitivity which the 2017 Nashville Statement crafted by some North American conservative evangelical Protestant leaders sorely lacked.

This story just fell under the wire of much of the international news media this year, but I am hoping that there might be greater attention drawn to it in the coming years.

On the Other Side, the “Sparkle Creed?”

Compare what the Nordic Bishops said, with a video clip from a worship service at a mainline Lutheran Church in Minnesota, that went viral this past summer.The female celebrant led the congregation to recite what is known as the “Sparkle Creed.”  It goes like this:

• I believe in the non-binary God whose pronouns are plural.
• I believe in Jesus Christ, their child, who wore a fabulous tunic and had two dads and saw everyone as a sibling-child of God.
• I believe in the rainbow Spirit, who shatters our image of one white light and refracts it into a rainbow of gorgeous diversity.
• I believe in the church of everyday saints as numerous, creative, and resilient as patches on the AIDS quilt, whose feet are grounded in mud and whose eyes gaze at the stars in wonder.
• I believe in the call to each of us that love is love is love, so beloved, let us love.
• I believe, glorious God.  Help my unbelief.  Amen.

There have been numerous critiques of the “Sparkle Creed,” coming from evangelical Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, and Roman Catholic alike.  I have no desire to “pile on” with additional criticism, as it should be plainly evident that this progressive Christian creed departs radically from any historically orthodox Christian creed, across the widest diversity of Christendom.

A secular creed, from sign displayed on a suburban front yard in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, October 3, 2020. …. But now we have the Sparkle Creed.

However, the “Sparkle Creed” does present a challenge for historically orthodox-minded Christians: We need to do a better job of articulating an imaginative, beautiful vision of God’s intention and purposes for human gender and sexuality, which is both winsome and Scripturally grounded. We need to extend compassion towards others, particularly young people, who wrestle with complex questions regarding gender and sexual identity. It is a lot easier to poke fun at something like the “Sparkle Creed,” and ridiculing those who support it, than it is think through how our churches can more effectively reach out to those with genuine questions and confusions, building relational bridges instead of blowing up those bridges and needlessly alienating those who desperately need to hear Good News.

If you are looking for a very practical way to implement a kind of positive ministry focus in your church, I would suggest checking out The Center for Faith, Sexuality, & Gender.  They sponsor webinars, online courses, and events, grounded in supporting a traditional sexual ethic, that helps people work through questions about gender and sexual identity, as well as parents and other friends looking for resources to help them better love their LGBTQ family members and friends. With endorsements by various Christians leaders, like Francis Chan, Matt Chandler, and Karen Swallow Prior, The Center for Faith, Sexuality, & Gender can offer a lifeline for folks who find themselves wrapped up in confusion and doubt regarding such sensitive, personal issues.

Veracity in the Fall of 2023

I read several books over the summer that I am excited to review here on Veracity, that I hope will be helpful to readers. I am almost finished reading another Bart Ehrman book, and I am planning on offering an extended critique over a series of blog posts over the fall. Bart Ehrman is one of the most prolific writers and influential New Testament scholars, who rejected Christianity several decades ago, but who continues to draw in a lot of media attention…… In the meantime, there is one more blog post in the 1 Corinthians head covering series left, to come out in September. Look for it in a few weeks.