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:
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
S. M. Hutchens is a senior editor and longtime writer for Touchstone.
subscription options
Order
Print/Online Subscription
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Order
Online Only
Subscription
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more from the online archives
14.6—July/August 2001
Three Bad Ideas for Women & What to Do About Them by Frederica Mathewes-Green
31.2—March/April 2018
How Best to Face the Total War of the Anti-Culture by R. J. Snell
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
Support Touchstone
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
