Anthea Butler is an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Religious Studies. She holds Ph. D and M.A. degrees in Religion from Vanderbilt University, as well as an M.A. in Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary. As such, the average person would probably expect her to say things which correspond with what the Bible teaches.
Well, if that is what you think, you simply do not understand liberal theology. In the aftermath of the Trayvon Martin verdict, here are some of the comments she wrote in a recent blog.
“God ain’t good all of the time. In fact, sometimes, God is not for us.”
“I know that this American god ain’t my god. As a matter of fact, I think he’s a white racist god with a problem. More importantly, he is carrying a gun and stalking young black men.”
“As a historian of American and African-American religion, I know that the Trayvon Martin moment is just one moment in a history of racism in America that, in large part, has its underpinnings in Christianity and its history.”
Beyond the overtly racist nature of her statements, her assertions about the nature of God are simply not based on biblical Christianity. In spite of the fact that she has graduate degrees in theology and religious studies, she has chosen to adhere to a religious form which has a veneer of Christianity, but which is anything but.
And that is the nature of so called liberal Christian theology. It begins with a premise which comes from outside the Bible, then tries to baptize it using Christian vocabulary. This non-Christian theology, then, is taken into churches as a Trojan Horse and spread to unsuspecting people who believe their leaders are teaching them the Bible, when what they are really getting is training which leads them away from God. It is a horrible tragedy, but the teaching of this kind of theology is not that uncommon in many American institutions of higher learning, including many theological schools. This is the reason it is so important for genuine biblical Christians to be knowledgeable of their faith and about the principles of worldview.
Unfortunately, it is this kind of travesty that is leading our nation in a direction which is, literally, ripping us from the moorings of freedom and justice. It is biblical theology which holds the only key to getting us back on track. The ones who hold the key to this are ordinary Christians who, up until now, have refrained from entering the fray. The time for sitting back and letting others do the work is past. Every believer must now actively stand up and be counted. That means speaking the truth out loud to friends and co-workers, as well as our elected representatives. If not, we are headed down a road where true freedom and justice will become a distant memory.