Monday, February 01, 2010

Who Knows?

I just read an interesting conversation between a Unitarian “minister” (Sewell) and America’s leading atheist (Christopher Hitchens). This was recorded by the Portland Monthly magazine. The entire interview can be found here.


One of these two has an understanding of Christianity. Is it the alleged minister or is it the atheist?


Sewell: The religion you cite in your book is a generally fundamentalist faith of various kinds. I’m a liberal Christian, and I don’t take the stories from the scripture literally. I don’t believe in the doctrine of atonement (that Jesus died for our sins, for example). Do you make any distinction between fundamentalist faith and liberal religion?


Hitchens: I would say that if you don’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and Messiah, and that he rose again from the dead and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you’re really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.

What think ye, imbibers of Coffee with Curt?

Is there any such thing as a "liberal Christian"? For your reading assignment today, allow me to refer you to an old classic: Christianity and Liberalism, by J. Greshem Machen.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It seems clear that the atheist knows how to become a Christian and the "liberl" minister doesn't know he isnot one.

Anonymous said...

On your previous post, someone left a "comment" that links to a PORN site in Asia.
Just FYI: you might not want to have something like that on your site that could send mixed messages to your readers.

Curt said...

Thanks, Anon. I don't read any Asian languages so I did not know what that said. It has been removed.