By Viola Larson, Naming His Grace blog
The Presbyterian Church (USA) through the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy and their journal Unbound: An Interactive Journal of Christian Social Justice, has stepped beyond the boundaries of Scripture and confession. The being of God and the person of Jesus are deeply effected in their November edition, “Gender Justice 2014: “Hearing the Voices of Peoples Long Silenced,” which in the first part focuses mainly on women’s issues.
The articles have all been published elsewhere but they come together in the journal to form a stew of twisted Scripture and bad theology. Marci Auld Glass’ “The Cry of Tamar” adds words to the biblical text in several places, yet her thesis that women are more than their sexuality could have been wonderfully bolstered by leaving the biblical story intact. But the major problem with all of the articles is their disregard for the first commandment of the Decalogue: “You shall have no other gods before me.”
No they are not advocating as some have for “the Queen of Heaven,” referred to in Jeremiah nor do they lift up the supposedly ancient goddesses. And while the words are deceptively beautiful and the stories sad and needy, their tenor and words deface the holy God of Scripture. For instance, Rita Nakashima Brock’s article, “Re-Imagining God: Reflections on Mirrors, Motheroot, and Memory” is filled with her bent toward panentheism which tends to destroy the majesty and beauty of God while diffusing the Incarnation into a simple idea of God’s being evolving through creation.
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