A
prominent Southern Baptist Convention leader has denounced a front page Newsweek
piece calling evangelical and fundamentalist Christians "God's frauds."
Dr.
Albert Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, posted an
entry on his website Monday taking issue with Kurt Eichenwald's lengthy essay on
the Bible.
Titled
"The Bible: So Misunderstood It's a Sin," the Eichenwald piece set to be in
print later this week argued that the Bible of today is not the original Bible
and that groups like fundamentalists and evangelicals are "God's frauds."
"They
wave their Bibles at passersby, screaming their condemnations of homosexuals.
They fall on their knees, worshipping at the base of granite monuments to the
Ten Commandments while demanding prayer in school," wrote Eichenwald.
"They
appeal to God to save America from their political opponents, mostly Democrats.
They gather in football stadiums by the thousands to pray for the country's
salvation."
Mohler
denounced the piece, contrasting it with past articles from mainstream media
outlets like Time
Magazine and evenNewsweek.
"When
written by journalists like Newsweek's former editor Jon Meacham or TIME
reporters such as David Van Biema, the articles were often balanced and
genuinely insightful," wrote Mohler.
"But
Newsweek's cover story is nothing of the sort. It is an irresponsible screed of
post-Christian invective leveled against the Bible and, even more to the point,
against evangelical Christianity. It is one of the most irresponsible articles
ever to appear in a journalistic guise."
Mohler
dubbed the work a "hit-piece" wherein Eichenwald's "only sources cited within
the article are from severe critics of evangelical Christianity, and he does not
even represent some of them accurately." Christian
Post.
