Campbell the Christophobe

I've run across several books by Christians presenting their "evidence that deserves a verdict". Josh MacDowell is the most notorious (I'll grant that he does instill a love for the scholarship); others include David Limbaugh, and Lee Stroebel. W. Mark Lanier recently stuck his oar in.

In capsule I gather Limbaugh acted ethically as a defence-attorney. MacDowell presented his case as a prosecutor: convicting the kerygma as being true. Stroebel best I can tell presented himself as the prosecuting-attorney who eventually must abandon his case although I admit, I just watched his movie. This showed the earlier conversion of his wife, which would dismiss him from the case immediately for conflict-of-interest, so if you read his book - well, as Barnum calculated, births-per-minute = one. I know nothing of Lanier.

Today I found John Campbell's Cross Examined. This promises such a prosecution as actually prosecutes. This alone elevates Campbell's ethics over those of Stroebel. We'll get to Campbell's own biases, anon.

For Campbell, Christianity is not a mere "religion" but a "social organism": a political-religious system. To interject: if you have attended at all to Byzantine-era theology you know this to be true. Everything in the Monothelete debate hinges upon what a "church" even is, when the whole Empire be Christian. Campbell argues that, as such, the whole system must be interrogated; if it is not true, then Christianity must, er.

Campbell professes no hostility to Christians. But Christianitas stands athwart action on climate. Christianity blocks gay marriage (sic) and stem cell research, as well. Christianity is "patriarchal" which, I gather, Campbell is not. Campbell stands instead for the poor, the underprivileged, and the marginalized.

As with Muslims, it is difficult to comprehend how the believer can remain What He Is if his belief is wrong. A new-atheist stance would have suited Campbell better.

Campbell and I likely agree upon what "poor" means. By contrast "underprivileged" and "marginalized" depend upon what Campbell believes belong under legal-protection and in the social-centre. In sociology these words are terms of power. In short they are Newspeak. Campbell would push Christianity into the margin(s) and remove privilege - state protection - from the Christian church(es). As El Guapo would say.

I could counter Campbell that philosophic arguments exist to demand State privilege to the heterosexual definition of marriage, to the preservation of human life (on the margins, we might say), and to medical-ethics in research. I will go further: unless these philosophic tenets are affirmed, with the power of the State, the religion - any religion - is pointless at best and evil at worst. From the humanist perspective.

Christianity may or may not be strong enough, anymore, to affirm Life against "Science". I'll consider a book which argues against Christianity from this standpoint; it can then get down into the biblical-scholarship and the contradictions against what we know from the natural world.

But there is no point in considering any book from Campbell on good-and-evil as long as Campbell is not on the side of the good.