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The Many Faces of Christianity

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What follows is a chapter from my upcoming book “It’s Complicated, Isn’t It?”

“You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”                            — Anne Lamott

I had a discussion with a Catholic family member. I made an observation: isn’t it odd that we have Catholics with such wildly disparate doctrinal views, all under the same roof? On issues like abortion, gun control, the need for a social safety net — same banner of Christianity, opposite ends of the spectrum.  His reply to me, in a nutshell, was “that’s expected.” I completely understand his point because after all, we’re dealing with human beings at the end of the day.

But I can’t help wanting to dig deeper, because the gap has widened significantly just within the decades of my own life. And in keeping with the theme of this book, I don’t think the issue is that simple. First, the what. I’m going to use Catholicism as the example in this case because that seems to be the easiest example to work from. But the issue isn’t unique to Catholicism, which I will address in the paragraphs that follow.

Catholics today draw their sense of what it means to be a good Catholic from a variety of sources. There’s the parish priest, the messages from Rome — but there’s also a plethora of high-profile political and media figures who wear the Catholic label and shape the thinking of the faithful in their own image. Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and Stephen Colbert are Catholics, for example, and by all accounts, faithful ones — regular at weekly Mass, and sincere about living out Jesus’ message to support the downtrodden. I wouldn’t call them social justice warriors, but they lean that direction. And they seem far less concerned with Church doctrine — its stance on abortion, on LGBTQ rights — than with simply trying to live by the golden rule.

Then there’s the far-right wing of Catholicism, which includes media figures like Laura Ingraham, Bill O’Reilly, and Newt Gingrich, and Vice President JD Vance. Under the same umbrella we have people with enormous influence who are more aligned with the hardline doctrinal positions coming out of Rome — the more hardline the better.  Then there’s Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, who also has ties to the Heritage Foundation. Donohue holds no official Church position, yet he’s become a vocal media presence for the hard right of Catholicism — staunchly pro-life, a critic of same-sex marriage and LGBTQ visibility in public and civic life, and reliably first in line to minimize clergy sex-abuse accusations.  

Where the first group reaches for mercy, this group reaches for order.  

All of these people claim the Catholic label, and all of them are presumably sincere, yet their worldviews are from different planets. So what does it mean if “Catholic” contains both the cable-news culture warrior and the humble servant, and they agree on almost nothing that the faith supposedly implies? On Sunday they all check the same box. Monday through Friday they broadcast opposing gospels.

In trying to figure out the why, I have come up with the following. First, the way we consume news has changed radically since when I grew up. In the 1960s and ’70s, most of us got our news from three networks — ABC, CBS, and NBC — and they weren’t that different in their messaging; there was a good faith attempt at even-handedness. There was no internet or social media to contend with. Today, people get their news from a wide variety of sources, very few of which try to stay above the fray. Consequently, the voting populace gets a steady diet of one-sided news with little counterbalance. Watch MSNBC and you get Stephanie Ruhle’s left-wing view of world events; watch Fox News and you get Laura Ingraham’s. Both professed Catholics, complete with ashes on their foreheads on Ash Wednesday, delivering opposite messages. And these aren’t just policy differences over big government versus small government. We’re talking about foundational moral questions — school lunch programs, gun laws, immigration, the death penalty — where each camp is utterly certain the same Gospel is squarely on its side.

The second reason I have come up with has to do with the fact that the parish priest is now competing with 24/7 news outlets and a barrage of social media that facilitates a constant discussion about what social policy should and shouldn’t be. The priest gets one Mass a week, of which only about fifteen minutes is a sermon for messaging. There’s no way his message can compete with the other sources, which are ingrained into our daily lives like water and air.


My third and final root-cause explanation is outlined best by biblical scholar Dan McClellan, when he explains that Bible texts have no inherent meaning and no consistent message. Scripture is a mirror, not a map. Readers find in it whatever they carried to it. One group of Catholics can focus on the texts that speak of order, borders, tradition, and authority, and find their “be a good person, and don’t tread on me” message there. The other group can focus on welcome the stranger, feed the poor, blessed are the peacemakers, and find their message there. Both groups are drawing from the same well, and each is sure it got the pure water. Religion ends up being a tool to bless a conclusion you’ve already reached. It gets used as a blunt instrument for tribal and political ends.

And it cuts both ways, which is the part that keeps me honest. The conservative Catholic subscribes to Rome on abortion but wants little to do with its teaching on immigration, refugees, or the death penalty. The progressive Catholic does the reverse — devoted to the social gospel, but happy to part ways with Rome on sexual ethics. Nobody is actually obedient. Everyone keeps the doctrines that fit and quietly sets down the ones that don’t, and then calls the other side the bad Catholics.


Lest I spend my days critiquing Catholicism with a list of grievances, there’s more to the story. Catholics are just a small subset of a much wider ecosystem that weaponizes biblical teachings to advance an agenda — and in many ways they’re far less guilty of it, because Catholicism was never built on biblical literalism to begin with. Where many Protestant sects treat scripture as the sole, self-interpreting authority, Catholicism has always run on a different paradigm entirely: Church tradition, the authority of the Pope and bishops to say what a verse actually means, and centuries of treating the Bible more like a book of symbolic stories rather than an owner’s manual. The Bible is authoritative, but it isn’t read like a legal document — and that alone should complicate any claim that “the Bible says so.”

In 1998, the Southern Baptist Convention passed a “Resolution on the Moral Character of Public Officials.” It affirmed that a leader’s private morality matters to God and should matter to voters, warned that “tolerance of serious wrong by leaders sears the conscience of the culture,” and urged Americans to “elect those officials and candidates who, although imperfect, demonstrate consistent honesty, moral purity and the highest character.” It passed overwhelmingly. Everyone understood the target: Bill Clinton, mid–Lewinsky scandal. Character counted, the Convention said, and it mattered to God.

In 2011, the Public Religion Research Institute asked whether a public official who commits an immoral act in private life can still behave ethically in office. Thirty percent of white evangelicals said yes. By 2016 — same question — seventy-two percent said yes. A 42-point swing, the largest of any religious group, arriving precisely when it was their own side’s candidate whose character was in question. Nobody repealed the 1998 resolution. Nobody announced a change of heart. The principle just quietly evaporated the moment it became inconvenient.

I can’t think of a better example to support McClellan’s claim that religion is used as a tool, not a compass, than this one.

If someone walks up to me today and says “I’m a Christian,” it doesn’t tell me much. I have to use my best restraint to hold back my snarkiest response: “Traditional or Republican Jesus?” All of which is to say — no, Christianity isn’t simply explained. It’s quite complicated.

Should We Let Fear or Conscience Motivate Us?

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On January 7th, Renee Nicole Good’s life was taken by ICE officer Jonathan Ross. She was shot in the face while driving her Ford Explorer, trying to exit a hostile scene in Minnesota. Republicans couldn’t wait to get booked on news channels so they could spread the “Obey in Advance” message that aligns with their keeping people in fear strategy. The problem is, fear doesn’t work. It never has. The event sparked protests across the country, rivaling those of George Floyd and Trayvon Martin.

The citizens of the United States, in general, can protest without too much fear, but there are exceptions. That could change, though, depending on how far Republicans and the Supreme Court are willing to allow the Trump administration wage their war on people of color. As ICE raids more cities and our friends and neighbors are kidnapped from their schools and homes, there will be more and bigger protests. Bank on it.

The people of Iran, however, do live in fear. In the past month, it’s estimated that between 2,400 and 3,400 people have been killed in the Iranian regime’s crackdown on protests. Yet we see women throwing their hijabs in bonfires and dancing in the streets. That is courage. Everything to lose and no fucks left to give. My hat is off to them.

The thing is, fear works until it doesn’t. I have a nasty habit of relating everything back to religion, but it’s relevant in this case. Growing up, we’re taught to fear hell. The message is behave, or else! Youth are exposed to the idea of a fiery place where they’re being burned alive for eternity with no cookies and no Xbox. If that’s not an incentive, then I don’t know what is. But it only works as long as you believe the threat. Once the idea of a place like hell seems a little fishy, then fear of it no longer applies. It’s the same thing with protests in the United States and Iran. At some point, enough people get out in the streets and say, “We dare you to come get all of us.” The reward of gaining what you’re protesting for makes the risk of joining others in the protest worth it.

My siblings and I were raised in the Catholic tradition. For me, this included five years in parochial school. It was the full enchilada—Church, School, and Parish life, all reinforced at home. In grades 1-3, the message was more aligned with fear. In no uncertain terms, there was this omnipotent God out there, who could get mad and destroy things, even entire civilizations, if he didn’t like how things were going. And if you dared break any of the 10 Commandments, it’ll be eternity in hell for you. In retrospect, it was only a reflection of the fear and pestilence narrative from the Old Testament, but we didn’t know that at the time. We chose to obey in advance, if for no other reason, to keep the peace. The problem is that as kids get closer to the age of reason, many say, “Wait a minute! I’m not sure I buy into this eternity in hell narrative,” and the fear-factor strategy loses its effectiveness.

Catholicism has a well-deserved reputation as a religion heavily steeped in the guilt factor. I experienced this firsthand. It comes into play when the education system begins to focus on matters of conscience. So instead of talking about hell to get you to behave the way they want, they might ask, “How is your conscience doing following your nasty behavior towards John on the playground?” Of course, we would drop our heads and say, “Not so good.”

But here’s the thing. Instilling a conscience in students can be an effective tool for a person for an entire lifetime. Maybe Catholicism went a little overboard with it, but I’m glad they finally shifted away from the fear factor and onto another message I could actually relate to. Be considerate. Other people’s feelings matter. Don’t be a pig. And if you don’t, you should feel guilty! Not because God is going to send you to a fiery place, but because you want to be a good human being, don’t you? Don’t you?

When I used to interview candidates for jobs at a former employer, we tried to look for people who weren’t job hoppers. We were about to make an investment in a new hire, and the investment doesn’t pay off unless the person can actually use the training we’ve invested in them and move the ball forward for the company. If I liked a candidate enough, I’d probe a little into their background to see whether they had more long-term interests and might stay a while. Of course, they can lie, and the company would have no recourse, but I played this one straight up. I would just make a statement to appeal to their conscience, but in a humorous way. “We really like it when candidates work out and stay a few years, and that’s what we would hope from you. Of course, every employer is at-will, and you can do whatever you need to, but if you were to leave, we would want you to feel guilty [usually laughs].” Nothing threatening about it, just appealing to your good sense of a fair deal.

Sadly, the conscience strategy has no chance with the Trump administration because they don’t have one, so we have to fight their egregious, racist, greedy policies with activism and resistance, and then vote people in at all levels who have a conscience.

How Are We to View the Books of the Bible?

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What should be our mindset when we open the Bible?  How did these books come into being?  This is a core question that isn’t often addressed. What other essential questions must we ask ourselves about our belief in Biblical texts?  

Most folks don’t think very hard about using the phrase “the Bible.”  We often assume we’re communicating with people who already agree with us about what “the Bible” is, but that’s not always the case.  Scholars hold that there is no single Bible because the Bible as we know it today is a collection of texts written by more than one hundred authors and as many or more editors who wrote, edited, and compiled the Bible in three different languages across two continents over the course of eleven centuries.  The Bible is the result of a compilation process — and there have been many compilations.  

In the 21st Century, the most popular translations include, but are not limited to, the King James Version (KJV), the New International Version (NIV), the English Standard Version (ESV), the New Living Translation (NLT), and the New American Standard Bible (NASB).  These versions trade off readability and fidelity to the original texts to appeal to different audiences with varying goals when reading the Bible. 

Inspiration, Inerrancy, and Univocality

My starting point is to ask three relevant questions. 1) Is the Bible the inspired word of God?  2) Are biblical texts inerrant?   3)  Do Biblical texts speak with one single, unified, and consistent voice and from one single, unified, and consistent perspective?

Since no supporting data exists for any of these beliefs, they can only be asserted. In a discussion about what the Bible says, those assertions can mean anything only if the participants agree to grant them that authority.  

While the Bible can occasionally be used as a historical document, it contains many gaps.  Some suggest that this is where many biblical innovations have been carefully curated to fill gaps in stories lacking critical details.  Dan McClellan, a modern-day biblical scholar, strongly advocates interpreting the books of the Bible literarily rather than literally, considering the author’s rhetorical goals.  He offers the following explanation:

“Every last word of the bible is a piece of literature, meaning a human author wrote it down with a specific literary genre or combination of genres or innovations on literary genres in mind using conventions and idioms and allusions to try to draw out their rhetorical goals which usually had more to do with the structure of power, values, or boundaries than with just reporting on an event.  And so we don’t do justice to what the authors were trying to convey with their texts when we ignore all that and just imagine how these things would have happened historically.  In addition to the fact that that’s not what the authors want you to do with the text. Most of what we have in the Bible has no historical reality behind it.  The stories in the bible are overwhelmingly literary creations, so they never existed on anything other than a literary level.  So, when we try to create a historical background for what is going on, we are merely making things up, which will not lead us to a better understanding of what the author was trying to convey; it will lead us to a worse understanding.  The authors had several objectives in mind when creating the texts, and if we overlook these, we will not have a good chance of understanding what made those texts meaningful and valuable to them.  Instead, we will overwhelmingly subordinate the texts to our own rhetorical goals — what we want the text to do for us.”  — Dan McClellan

Though not his primary goal, McClellan undermines the foundation of the Church’s basic tenets. Adam, Eve, Abraham, and Isaac are post-biblical innovations, along with the Trinity, Original Sin, the Virgin Birth, and Biblical Inerrancy.  McClellan is an educator and, thankfully, an honest voice sharing his knowledge with anyone who will listen without regard to whose feathers might get ruffled.  

His opinion appears to be in the minority regarding the views of church leadership, but is he wrong?  Or is he a trailblazer?  He’s got an enormous following on social media over 1 million followers, and those who challenge him on an intellectual level usually lose badly.  Facts matter.  

Inspiration

Many Christians believe that Biblical texts were divinely inspired.  To quote The Moody Bible Institute: 

“We believe that the Bible is God’s Word. Moody Bible Institute’s doctrinal statement affirms, “The Bible, including both the Old and New Testaments, is a divine revelation, the original autographs of which were verbally inspired by the Holy Spirit.”

What are the criteria by which we determine whether any given statement in the Bible is the inspired word of God or not the inspired word of God?  Does the Bible claim to be the inspired word of God? 

Many point to 2 Timothy 3:16, which says, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness,” as definitive proof of biblical inspiration.  But can a biblical text point to itself as scripture?  Scholars point out that the author was writing in the late first or early second century CE, but they wanted us to believe they were Paul writing in the 50s or 60s CE.  They also point out that 2 Timothy 3:16 wasn’t itself understood as scripture by its author.   The most likely interpretation is that the author was asserting the life-giving qualities of the scriptures and their utility as rhetorical instruments.  

When I think of the term ‘divinely inspired,’ I envision God hovering over an author, dictating exactly what to say.  Or maybe he doesn’t hover over the person.  Since he’s God, perhaps he simply inserts the exact thoughts into the author’s head before they begin writing, and that takes care of it.  Physical presence would not be necessary because with God, all things are possible.  In any case, the claim divinely inspired implies with certainty that a text is the word of God.  This asserts that “The Bible is divinely inspired” all the more difficult to accept as a true statement.  The Bible contains between 66 and 73 books, depending on one’s religious affiliation.  This translates to approximately 31,000 verses or roughly 800,000 words.  God said all of this through scores of prophets penning scripture for him?  Really?  That’s seems far-fetched. 

The problem for apologists is that the phrase “The Bible is divinely inspired” is binary.  It’s either the case that every single text is something God said indirectly, or it’s not.  They can’t have it both ways.  

Psalm 137 presents a challenge in this regard.  The story recounts the Israelites’ sorrow and exile in Babylon.  Scholars describe the story as a Revenge Fantasy.  Verse 9 is an example of how the Israelites’ bloodlust feelings about being mistreated:  “Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.”  Apologists claim that, in this case, it’s NOT God speaking.  But… I thought you said ….   

Numbers 31 and Samuel 15 are also examples where it is indisputable that the God of Israel repeatedly commands the slaughtering of innocents.  But… I thought you said … 

On the issue of slavery being condoned by the Bible, the books of Leviticus and Exodus condone the practice of slavery.  So this is God speaking?  

It’s interesting that Church pastors who wrestle with these issues when confronted by their parishioners — their interpretations of the Bible get more nuanced.  Of course it does. 

Inerrancy

Many of the faithful refer to the Bible as “The single source of truth”, yet it doesn’t take a Rhodes Scholar to find discrepancies that easily squash that assertion.  The genealogies of Jesus in Matthew 1 and Luke 3 differ significantly, leading to different chronologies and ancestral lines.  The differing resurrection reports in the Gospels (e.g., who arrived first at Jesus’ tomb, what they saw and heard) contain discrepancies.  The Biblical age of the earth (6,000 to 10,000 years) conflicts with the consensus scientific view of ~4.5 billion years.   There are issues with census counts, timelines, and scientific descriptions (e.g., flat earth) that do not align with modern knowledge.  

Biblical texts have been copied and edited over centuries.  Variations and errors have been introduced due to the human factor.  Cultural biases and perspectives influenced the text.  For this to be true, one would have to assert that not only was the original author’s work inspired by God, but God would have also shielded all of the editors and translators from making a single error.  Asserting that the Bible is inerrant is a “sweeping statement”, tough to conceive of as being accurate.  

Univocality

The Bible encompasses a diverse range of literary genres, cultural contexts, and perspectives, rendering its message complex rather than having a single, definitive interpretation.  Since the data points to separate books, written by roughly 40 authors over 1,500 years, from different continents, in languages such as Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, along with the thousands of discrepancies contained within the texts, the case for univocality is a significant stretch—hard no on this one.   

Ever-changing Biblical Law

At a high level, we began with biblical laws from the Old Testament.  The rules of Moses were set in stone until they weren’t.  In Acts 15, the Jerusalem council, after they determined that gentile converts to following Jesus didn’t have to obey the law of Moses, they changed it to: 1) Abstaining from sexual immorality, 2) Abstaining from eating things sacrificed to idols, 3) Abstain from the meat of strangled animals, and 4) Abstain from blood.  They eliminated the entire law of Moses, except for four things, and three of them were dietary restrictions.  Christians today have overwhelmingly rejected any kind of dietary restrictions because it doesn’t matter what the Bible says.  It only matters what we say.  We negotiated with the texts to get out of that one.  

Every single existing law was abolished with the New Covenant, which completely replaced the Mosaic law and focused on loving God and Neighbor, Embracing grace and living righteous lives with humility, compassion, and forgiveness.  If this were the endpoint, it would have been nice just to start here and not have to pay attention to all the other confusing laws.  I’ve always wondered why the Ten Commandments are posted in the classroom.  They no longer apply.  If we must have some religious moral guidance, why wouldn’t Christians want to insist on the laws from the New Covenant instead? 

Conclusion

Regardless of your beliefs on these questions, a healthy dose of skepticism is warranted regarding how people have interpreted biblical texts to suit their own goals.  Those who assert that “God’s word never changes” fail to acknowledge that the Bible has changed over the past 2,000 years.  Books were added, removed, rewritten, and mistranslated.  If the Bible never changed, then which version are we talking about?  The Bible also contains a variety of contradictory laws and laws that were later superseded or altered.  Trying to make sense out of which commandments are relevant today, we have no choice but to rely on whatever religious hierarchical system we belong to to make a final interpretation, and then impose that interpretation on biblical texts.  This is to help us identify which commandments we will prioritize, which we will reinterpret, and which we will declare no longer relevant.  

The big question is, are these books holy and divinely inspired, containing a mandate of obedience, or not?  Or are they man-made books, a simple accumulation of fragments and myths?  If they are divine, how are we to escape their injunctions, such as “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”  What are we to do?  God is saying Kill all witches.  

We collectively overrule the Bible’s approval of slavery.  There’s not a single syllable of the Bible that identifies the practice of buying, selling, and owning other human beings as a sin, but we identify slavery as wrong today.  Why?  Because we decided to overrule the Bible on that.  The Bible was the authority on slavery until we decided that what we learned from Greek philosophy, the renaissance, the reformation, and the enlightenment were important lessons.  

Similar shifts have taken place to different degrees over the centuries related to things like polygamy and celibacy.  The Bible only has authority to the degree we grant it authority by way of consensus.  

When we engage with biblical texts (which have no inherent meaning), we negotiate with them, and that determines what meaning they ultimately have for us.  Whether we realize it or not, our opinions heavily influence the outcome. The unfortunate part of this is that some appeal to the Bible to baptize their opinion to endow it with God’s authority.  

I am more comfortable being in alignment with those who seek to understand the Bible as its authors, editors, and earliest audiences understood it.  Wouldn’t it be refreshing to be intellectually honest and acknowledge that the Bible condones and even endorses actions and behaviors that are widely agreed today to be harmful, hateful, or otherwise just wrong?  Doing so doesn’t undermine or otherwise disparage or take away from the profoundness of the Sermon on the Mount, or Matthew 7:12, or 1 Peter 4:8, or Ephesians 4:32 which address love, compassion, and doing unto others. 

Not if the Bible is viewed for what it truly is — a collection of texts written by over 40 authors with different agendas for different target audiences.  

As a general rule, once we separate from the notion of a divinely inspired, inerrant book that speaks with univocality, we can realize that the Bible doesn’t tell us what to do; we tell the Bible what to do.  We grant it authority based on our social and historical circumstances, as well as our identity politics, needs, and goals.  

Dan McClellan’s Book Tour Stop in Portland

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On Thursday, I attended Dan McClellan’s book signing event at the Duniway Hotel in Portland. If you are unfamiliar with McClellan, he is a biblical scholar with a Ph.D. from the University of Exeter in Theology and Religion and a robust social media following (Twitter, Instagram, et al.). He also co-hosts a podcast called “Data over Dogma” with Dan Beecher.

McClellan is a somewhat controversial figure in religious circles because he frequently and unapologetically discredits religious myths and dogma posited by the far right. He does this very unemotionally and intelligently, presenting irrefutable facts and scholarly research to the conversation. Watching him in action has been both educational and entertaining.

Dan’s new book is titled “The Bible Says So — What We Get Right (and Wrong) about The Bible’s Most Controversial Issues,” The book delves into provocative subjects such as whether or not the Bible is the inspired word of God, its inerrancy, Creation, Slavery, the Trinity, the Virgin Birth, and whether or not the Bible says women need to cover up. True biblical scholars like McClellan add historical, cultural, literary, linguistic, and theological context to the conversation. In doing so, he tries to understand Biblical Texts as their authors, editors, and earliest audiences understood them. From McClellan’s introduction:

Many people approach the Bible as authoritative, maintaining boundaries regarding what it is and isn’t allowed to say. Allowing the Bible to transgress those boundaries can raise doubts regarding deeply held beliefs people don’t want to see subjected to scrutiny. They are not beliefs that people adopt because they’ve been convinced by data or evidence. They’re beliefs that people choose to accept because doing so is required or incentivized within the social identities that are important to them. Sometimes these beliefs are supported by data and sometimes they are not, but what is true of all of them is that they’re not negotiable. I call this type of belief dogma.

McClellan’s presence on social media frequently intersects with people who assert dogmas such as biblical texts as divinely inspired, inerrancy, and univocality. You’d have to read the book to get all the details, but in a nutshell, McClellan rejects these assertions. He asserts that these beliefs arose over time as people contemplated the implications of different approaches to the Bible and constructed perspectives that made the scripture most useful to their structuring of power, values, and boundaries.

Perhaps the most eye-opening takeaway from McClellan’s message is from a linguistics perspective — that the Bible is a collection of texts without inherent meaning. Meaning comes into play when we attempt to interpret the text, so at the end of the day, it’s whatever you make of it based on your own experiences. We are never just extracting pure and unadulterated meaning. We’re continually constructing it ourselves. We end up guessing the original authors’ needs, circumstances, values, and goals. Why? Because the needs, circumstances, values, and goals of authors and editors two thousand years ago are wildly different than those of today.

My interest in these topics stems from the fact that I am writing a book myself, “It’s Complicated, Isn’t It?” For most of my adult life, I’ve been interested in engaging in discussions with others (if it can be done intelligently and unemotionally). It’s a frustrating endeavor because, in the age of social media, you’re more likely to run into people so steeped in misinformation that they instantly refute your point with lies and propaganda. There’s no moment to pause and stop to actually think things over. They just immediately pull out some parrotted talking points as a rebuttal (usually half way through your sentence). I’ve taken on Republicans in debate forums where Biblical quotes are weaponized in many different ways. In the twenty first century social media landscape, I appreciate guys like McClellan who are out there pushing back on misinformation in an educated way.

I briefly met Dr. McClellan at the book signing and later followed up with a question about the origins of ethics and morals. I was delighted to have him confirm one of the basic hypotheses of my book—believing that ethics and morals originated from the Bible is a fallacy. Ancient philosophers contributed more to framing ethics and morals than the Bible. Most early Christian ethics writing was based on Greek philosophy anyway when the Bible was translated from Aramaic to Greek in 200 – 250 BCE.

It feels good to get validated once in a while.