Kansas church to feature Jesus Seminar speaker
The Layman Online, January 31, 2003
Marcus Borg, a Jesus Seminar fellow who claims that Christ did not say more than 80 percent of what the Bible records him as saying, is scheduled to speak at one of the largest churches in the Presbyterian Church (USA).
Village Presbyterian Church in Prairie Village, Kan., has announced that Borg will lead a seminar at the church on Feb. 20 and Feb. 21.
Borg is a champion of “progressive theology” – a movement that teaches that the virgin birth, the atoning death, the resurrection and the ascension of Christ never occurred. Borg and the other self-described scholars in the Jesus Seminar say they have expunged the Jesus of the Bible through careful scholarship. Their critics say they followed their presuppositions and bias against miracles.
The seminar’s conclusions came after, literally, counting beads. During their semi-annual meetings, the Jesus Seminar professors cast different colored beads to vote yes, no and don’t-know on New Testament passages. They have eradicated, for instance, all of the Lord’s Prayer except the first two words: “Our Father.”
While it continues to draw the attention of secular media that are skeptical about the veracity of Scripture, the Jesus Seminar is a waning movement. Its initial membership of about 200 has dwindled to about 70.
In an announcement on its Web site, Village Presbyterian refers to Borg as a “best-selling author and noted theologian” and the author of Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, The God We Never Knew and Reading the Bible Again for the First Time. His lecture will be on “Why It Matters for the 21st Century.”
Borg is a professor of religion and culture in the Philosophy Department at Oregon State University, but he spends much of his time traveling and collecting honoraria for seminars and media events.
Village Presbyterian is a 6,000-member congregation that has lost more than 1,700 members since 1991, according to the PCUSA’s data. In 2002, the Rev. Robert Bohl, a harsh critic of the evangelical remnant in the PCUSA, retired as senior pastor under pressure from some of the congregation’s lay leadership.
Bohl, who was moderator of the PCUSA in 1994-95, is one of the architects of the movement against the denomination’s constitutional “fidelity/chastity” ordination standard. He and John Buchanan of Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago were co-founders of the Covenant Network of Presbyterians, an organization whose leaders have publicly announced their commitment to “progressive theology.”
In a speech in New York in November of 2000, Bohl condemned the evangelicals – especially the Presbyterian Lay Committee – by declaring, “Damn them. I wish they would go away.”
The Rev. Dr. Herbert B. Anderson is Prairie Village’s interim senior minister while the congregation’s pastor nominating committee seeks a successor to Bohl.