07AR12-23

( - previous issue - )

Apologia Report 12:23

June 10, 2007

Subject: "the most important commitment [Atheists] will ever undertake"?

In this issue:

CHRISTOLOGY - on the attack, perhaps Free Inquiry magazine's "most important commitment" ever, questions the historicity of Jesus

ORIGINS - top anti-creationism books identified for academics

POLITICS - new book claims Richard John Neuhaus (First Things magazine) is the most influential mastermind of the Christian Right

-------

CHRISTOLOGY

As the latest monument to groups of humanity that achieve fantastic efforts in talking past each other, the top of Free Inquiry's April/May 2007 cover announces The Jesus Project, launched in January by the magazine's parent organization, the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion (CSER) "pronounced like 'Caesar'." The cover describes the project as "Perhaps the most important commitment we will ever undertake."

Two features in the magazine describe the project in more detail. "Prospective Impact" (pp14-15), an Op Ed piece by FI's editor, Tom Flynn, explains that The Jesus Project was first introduced at the January 2007 "Scripture and Skepticism" conference sponsored by CSER at the University of California, Davis. It was there that "panelists including Paul Kurtz; Hoffmann; prominent religion scholar Van A. Harvey; controversial theologian Gerd Ludemann, author of this issue's cover story; and biblical scholar Robert M. Price gathered at the head table to make [the] momentous announcement."

The Jesus Project appears to style itself somewhat after the Jesus Seminar, but the project intends to take things a bit further. Amazingly, the effort is focused on a question that very few academics are asking any longer: "Did Jesus exist?"

Flynn continues: "Armed with contemporary tools and another century of archeological discoveries, can today's best objective scholarship push past the point where Albert Schweitzer and his contemporaries judged these questions insoluble?

"The Jesus Project will meet twice a year and publish its findings annually....

"At the end of five years, the Project intends to issue a final report. As one hallmark of the objectivity of its mission, that final report 'may or may not' put the vexing questions of Jesus' historicity to rest." The prospect that it *may* do so is clearly the immature dream of this unbelieving congregation.

"What might result from this initiative? If cutting-edge research should yield incontrovertible proof that the founder of Christianity is a mythic construct, don't expect the world to change overnight. For one thing, millions of Christians will simply reject its findings. ...

"[W]e should not expect the Jesus Project's conclusions to sound the death knell for Christianity. Through most of the twentieth century, historically sophisticated Christian clergy and theologians made the choice to maintain their faith commitments despite their new understandings that, by and large, their religion's self-proclaimed founding events never actually occurred. ...

"The Jesus Project may be the single most important commitment that the Center for Inquiry and its affiliated organizations Ñ among them the Council for Secular Humanism, publisher of FREE INQUIRY Ñ will ever make." <http://tinyurl.com/2dxl59>

R. Joseph Hoffmann, chair of the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion, describes The Jesus Project in more detail on pages 50-52 of the same issue. After a long build up (an overview of academic efforts in search of the historical Jesus that takes up fully three-quarters of his article), referring to the UC-Davis conference described above, Hoffmann concludes: "The CSER fellows, invited guests, present and former members of the Jesus Seminar, and a wide variety of interested and engaged attendees applauded roundly after three days of lectures and discussions on the subject Ñ appropriately Ñ "Scripture and Skepticism." The Jesus Project, as CSER has named the new effort, is the first methodologically agnostic approach to the question of Jesus' historical existence. But we are not neutral, let alone willfully ambiguous, about the objectives of the project itself. We believe in assessing the quality of the evidence available for looking at this question before seeing what the evidence has to tell us. We do not believe the task is to produce a "plausible" portrait of Jesus prior to considering the motives and goals of the Gospel writers in telling his story. We think the history and culture of the times provide many significant clues about the character of figures similar to Jesus. We believe the mixing of theological motives and historical inquiry is impermissible. We regard previous attempts to rule the question out of court as vestiges of a time when the Church controlled the boundaries of permissible inquiry into its sacred books. More directly, we regard the question of the historical Jesus as a testable hypothesis, and we are committed to no prior conclusions about the outcome of our inquiry. This is a statement of our principles, and we intend to stick to them.

"The Jesus Project will run for five years, with its first session scheduled for December 2007. It will meet twice a year, and, like its predecessor, the Jesus Seminar, it will hold open meetings. Unlike the Seminar, the Project members will not vote with marbles, and we will not expand membership indefinitely: the Project will be limited to fifty scholars with credentials in biblical studies as well as in the crucial cognate disciplines of ancient history, mythography, archeology, classical studies, anthropology, and social history.

"At the end of its lease, the Jesus Project will publish its findings. Those findings will not be construed as sensational or alarming; like all good history, the project is aiming at a probable reconstruction of the events that explain the beginning of Christianity...."

Hoffmann wraps up with an over-the-top remark that appears characteristic of the enterprise as a whole: "Our aim, like Pilate's (John 18:38), is to find the truth." <http://tinyurl.com/ynqhql>

---

ORIGINS

Not in Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design Is Wrong for Our Schools, Eugenie C. Scott and Glenn Branch, eds. [1] -- the editors are directors for the National Center for Science Education. In this brief review, E.B. Hazard tells us that "The forward and five chapters consider the evolution of intelligent design creationism [IDC], and why IDC is bankrupt scientifically, educationally, logically, philosophically, constitutionally, and theologically (and morally, considering the cited deceptive 'doublespeak' of some of its proponents). The sixth chapter discusses how the teaching of evolution can best be defended. ... Readers will find a more thorough analysis of the flaws of IDC in M. Young and T. Edis's edited volume Why Intelligent Design Fails [2]; both books should be supplemented by The Counter-Creationism Handbook, by Mark Isaak [3]. ... Highly recommended [for] all levels." Choice, Mar '07, p1186.

---

POLITICS

The Theocons: Secular America under Siege, by Damon Linker [4] -- reviewer Michelle Goldberg explains that this is "the story of the reactionary priest Richard John Neuhaus and the clique surrounding his magazine, First Things. It traces how these men [including "longtime collaborator" Michael Novak], whose politics swung from Far Left to Far Right around the steady axis of Jacobinlike fury, helped craft the intellectual architecture of the religious Right and guide the domestic policy of the Bush administration. A former First Things editor, alarmed by the antidemocratic ambitions of this ex-colleagues, Linker is uniquely positioned to report on the movement, and his book is very valuable for elucidating an underreported aspect of the rise of Christian conservativism. ...

"Linker argues that while the religious Right is usually understood primarily as an evangelical phenomenon, many of the ideas animating the movement came from the group of largely Catholic thinkers clustered around Neuhaus."

Goldberg notes that "Neuhaus's own Protestant background probably helped him in fashioning an interdenominational anti-secular coalition. He began his career as a Lutheran minister, and, even as he embraced Catholic doctrine during the 1980s, he didn't officially convert until 1990." She finds that "Linker convincingly shows that Neuhaus and his comrades had a significant role in bringing these once-antagonistic groups [Protestant Right and Catholic Right] together." Free Inquiry, Apr/May '07, pp61-62.

-------

Sources, Monographs:

1 - Not in Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design Is Wrong for Our Schools, Eugenie C. Scott and Glenn Branch, eds. (Beacon, 2006, paperback, 171 pages) <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0807032786/apologiareport>

2 - Why Intelligent Design Fails: A Scientific critique of the New Creationism, Matt Young and Taner Edis, eds. (Rutgers Univ Prs, 2004, hardcover: 238 pages) <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/081353433X/apologiareport>

3 - The Counter-Creationism Handbook, by Mark Isaak (Univ Calif Prs, 2007, paperback, 362 pages) <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0520249267/apologiareport>

4 - The Theocons: Secular America under Siege, by Damon Linker (Doubleday, 2006, hardcover, 288 pages) <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0385516479/apologiareport>

--------

( - next issue - )