The Best of the Good
by S. M. Hutchens
The Free Republic reports another all-too-typical example of modern Episcopalianism in the Reverend Elizabeth Riley, the author of Rage Prayers and interim rector of St. Dunstan’s Episcopal Church in Shoreline, Washington (“The Church That Feeds People”). In a recent sermon she nourished her congregation by teaching them that Jesus’ treatment of the Syrophoenician woman was wrong-headed and a bad example.
The priestess is not alone in her opinion. She finds a famous progenitor in the distinguished unbeliever Bertrand Russell. In Why I Am Not a Christian, Russell summarizes his reason: Jesus, reputed by Christians to be the best and highest of all moral teachers, was not even a good man by reasonably humane standards. The sensational Reverend Ms. Riley says nothing worse than:
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S. M. Hutchens is a senior editor and longtime writer for Touchstone.
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