"The Future of Christianity: Will It Survive in the Third Millennium? is divided into four sections: God, The Bible, Jesus, and Myth. I argue that (1) the Christian concept of God as a personal deity is obsolete and needs to be challenged and replaced with something more philosophical and less personal, perhaps something like the concept of the Tao in Chinese Taoism; that (2) many Christians are guilty of bibliolatry, the worship of the Bible, and that Christians need to take a critical look at their scriptures and read them as a human record of man's encounter with what he dares to call God, that (3) the divinity of Jesus must go; it is a concept rooted in ancient Greek philosophy and is no longer meaningful or relevant, and that (4) Christian mythology of a three-decker universe made up of heaven above, earth in the middle, and the underworld (hell) beneath is obsolete; in its place Christian theology needs to understand that man, not God is the subject matter of Christianity, and that the focus of Christianity should be not on God, but on man, or more accurately on the meaning of human existence.

 

My conclusion is that barring such dramatic shifts in the focus of Christianity, it will not survive its third millennium and will, like many ancient religions, become a relic of past history.” AB

 

 I believe classmates will be interested, as I was, to read his “2001 Alumnae College Keynote Address: The Integration of Life” that I found on the Wells’ website at http://www.wells.edu/whatsnew/wnspch35.htm, as well as his speech, “One Man’s Journey,” at http://www.wells.edu/whatsnew/wnspch27.htm, delivered in June, 2000, in Main Building’s Chapel on the Wells College campus. Arthur’s learning experience at Princeton, particularly in its Religion department, and his 38-year teaching career at Wells College, following his Harvard Ph.D., are recounted in this revealing “look back” over his own life and the college’s history. His address and speech also offer inspirational advice to the young women graduates of Wells. Arthur is a world traveler, much of it for the benefit of Wells College, for which he has raised significant funds. [GJM] _________________________________________________________________________ Moyar to Bellinzoni, April 26, 2005: Dear Arthur: I was much interested to read the good summary you provided Turhan of your forthcoming book on Christianity’s future. You mince no words, and ‘call it as you see it’ in a very understandable way. I look forward to reading the book. Your Wells College students were lucky to have you as a teacher.

 

Before I get into the subject of your book, I’d like to ‘converse’ a bit about the religious and ethical commitments you revealed in the Wells College address in 2001 relating your educational and professional career. Let’s start with the “fateful decision” you made at Princeton when you initially chose a course in religion. You write that this “first course at Princeton shook the foundation of my own personal faith.” My own recollection of the reaction to my first religion course in 1955 was a sense of excitement and liberation. More recently, I understand some Princeton students refer to one of Professor Elaine Pagels’ introductory religion courses as “Faith-busters 101.” I suppose a great deal depends on where one starts. Please tell me more about your experience in the Religion Department at Princeton – some of the topics, issues and professors you especially may recall. It might help a forgetful old student like me remember those moments of challenge and joy. Jerry Moyar‘57 ________________________________________________________________________ Bellinzoni to Moyar, April 27, 8:29 PM CST Dear Jerry, Thank you for your kind words and your thoughtful question. It brought back happy memories of our undergraduate days at Princeton. My first religion course at Princeton was Christian Ethics with Paul Ramsey, a course I elected to fulfill a distribution requirement in either history, philosophy, or religion. This course raised questions and doubts in my young and impressionable mind. I thought just one more religion course might answer those questions and allay those doubts, so I enrolled in George Thomas’s Major Problems of Religious Thought. That was the “faith-buster” for me. From there I headed to the Bible: The Old Testament with R. B. Y. Scott and The New Testament with W. D. Davies. Although I remained a pre-med student throughout my four years at Princeton, I majored in religion on the recommendation of Professor Edward Sullivan, who was my faculty advisor and a Professor of French with whom I had taken a French literature course as a freshman. When I told him I intended to major in biology he asked me why. I told him I was pre-med and that pre-med students majored in either biology or chemistry. He told me I had done well in all of my pre-med courses, that I would learn my medicine in med-school, and that this was my last opportunity to study something I really enjoyed. The decision to major in religion, even as I fulfilled my pre-med studies, transformed not only my professional career but my life, and I am forever grateful to the good advice I received from Professor Sullivan.

 

The religion professors who most influenced me at Princeton were Malcolm Diamond, then a young instructor, and W. D. Davies, who interested me in the New Testament, who directed my senior essay on the Gospel of Mark, and who recommended me to Harvard for graduate studies. I remained friends with both men until they died. At Princeton I learned the value of the liberal arts, which taught me how to think clearly, reason wisely, and act humanely. Princeton first taught me to look objectively and critically at religion, including my own religion. I suspect that Princeton transformed most of our lives. I know that it certainly transformed mine. Arthur __________________________________________________________________ Moyar to Bellinzoni, May 2, 2005, 3:13 PM CST Dear Arthur: Sorry to be tardy in answering your good e-mail. Ruth and I spent part of the end of last week in Urbana, Illinois, attending some graduate department alumni affairs. The recounting of your Religion Department experiences and professors brought some good memories to me too. Looking back over my religion courses with Thomas, Ashby, Scott, and Davies (outstanding scholars all), I think my best memories are the precept hours spent with Malcolm Diamond. I envy your continuing friendship with him over the years. I wonder if he might have planted the seeds of what you describe in your 2001 Address as your late blooming understanding and activism in the "prophetic dimension of religion?" As I recall, Prof. Diamond was himself quite a bold political activist, participating in the Selma, Alabama, civil rights march, for instance. Jerry _________________________________________________________________________ Moyar to Bellinzoni, May 22, 2005, 5:58 AM CST Dear Arthur: I thought our classmates would enjoy a story you told in your Wells College Keynote Address, "One Man's Journey," in 2000 (www.wells.edu/whatsnew/wnspch27.htm). You and your friend, Attilio, had recently arrived at this women's college in Aurora, NY: "Let me share with you just one more early memory of the fall of 1962. The ladies of Lake Apartments decided that there should be a get-together to introduce their two male "intruders" to Aurora society. Our much beloved Director of Admissions Alice Burgess Hinchcliff '25, Professor of Mathematics May Kelly, and Assistant Professor of English June Sprague accompanied Attilio and me to the home of then Director of Public Relations Velma Van Buskirk. Velma greeted us at the door with a tablecloth wrapped around her waist (we obviously should not have been surprised - after all it was a formal occasion) and proceeded to serve us a dinner that consisted of nothing but baked Boston beans. These curiosities might by themselves have given us cause to consider the sanity of the community, but our concern grew even more when, following dinner, the four ladies pulled out cigars and smoked their way through coffee. The sophisticated gentlemen from New York and Lugano, Switzerland, wondered whether it wasn't truly time to pack and leave town while we were still ahead. "I tell you these stories to let you know something of both the charm and curiosity of Aurora in the fall of 1962. Being liberally educated, I was already at least a closet liberal, but Aurora and Wells College posed challenges I had not anticipated. I knew, however, that I loved my classes and was impressed with the quality of my students."

 

I gather that this initial impression may not have been entirely misrepresentative of the free-spirited liberal environment you came to love and, indeed, foster yourself at Wells. It seems that a spirit of inclusion and humor was an important component in that environment too. How did your students in this early 60's period respond to what I would guess was your rather non-traditional approach to religion and Christianity in particular? Was this one of the challenges posed? Or was your own journey to the understanding reflected in your new book a more gradual development? Jerry

_______________________________________________________________________ Bellinzoni to Moyar, May 22, 2005, 7:22 AM Dear Jerry, Thanks for your email, and thanks for reminding me of those comments about that memorable evening just days after I had arrived in Aurora in the fall of 1962. Indeed, I have an opportunity see former students from every period of my career as part of my travels for the college and at annual Wells College reunions. Invariably several approach me to tell me how one or more of my courses changed their lives -- generally either one or both of my introductory Bible courses: Hebrew Beginnings and the Old Testament, and The New Testament and Early Christianity, or perhaps my own favorite course, The Quest for the Historical Jesus, a course that focused largely on issue involving applications of the historical-critical method to the life of Jesus. Their comments take me back to my own Princeton experience. My religion courses at Princeton back in the 1950s were both unsettling and liberating. They taught me how to think clearly and to reason wisely about issues of religion. Frankly my own experience as an undergraduate and my experience of teaching students at Wells College for 38 years were probably the motivating factors in my decision to write THE FUTURE OF CHRISTIANITY. I thought it important to try to reach a wider audience of people who ask questions about their own religious beliefs but who don't quite know how to put the pieces together. Until now, I have written articles and books directed to a very narrow audience of specialists. Following my retirement from teaching in 2000, I wanted to share my thoughts and my insights with people like myself as a Princeton undergraduate and like my students at Wells, people who, perhaps unknowingly, were seeking liberation from what they thought they were supposed to believe, but couldn't figure it out themselves or couldn't quite articulate it. I hope these thoughts help to connect some of the dots and draw together some of the reasons for my writing this book. Just two or three days ago, I sent my author's questionnaire back to Prometheus Books and included your name and address among the people to whom I asked them to send copies for possible review. Arthur ________________________________________________________________________ Moyar to Bellinzoni, May 23, 2005, 7:24 AM CST Thanks for connecting the dots, Arthur. I look forward to the honor of having a preview of your book. I'm sure I'll have more questions and comments after it arrives later this year. Jerry ________________________________________________________________________ Moyar to Bellinzoni, June 1, 2005, 10:04 AM CST Dear Arthur: As you know, your book's subject, the future of Christianity, is a popular topic nowadays. I particularly have in mind the books by Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong, Why Christianity Must Change or Die, and A New Christianity for a New World. My focus had been primarily on U.S. or North American trends until our classmate Bart Reitz introduced me to Penn State's Professor Philip Jenkins' book, The Next Christendom - The Coming of Global Christianity. In it, Jenkins argues that by the year 2050 only one Christian in five will be non-Latino and white, and the center of gravity of Christianity will have shifted to the Southern Hemisphere - Africa, South America, and Asia. And that Christianity will be a mixture of morally conservative orthodoxy, apocalyptic expectation, and syncretistic native beliefs.

 

With this sort of background I attended a special Westar ("Jesus Seminar") conference on "The Future of the Judeo-Christian Tradition in the Second Axial Age" in New York City last year. It featured a dozen well-known religious writers like Spong, Marcus Borg, Karen Armstrong, James Carroll, and Princeton's own, Elaine Pagels. There were many insightful presentations and exchanges between scholars, but I'll only lift up one comment from that conference which I think is provocative and pertinent to our subject. It came from a member of the audience - a guy from NYC named Chuck Jones - following Spong's talk. Chuck said he thought Spong's book, Why Christianity Must Change or Die, was very good, but that he thought liberal Christianity was the one in the hospital. Chuck suggested that if he were titling a book he might write, it would be something like, "Why Christianity Must Change or Become Distasteful to a Handful of People in Northern California and the North Eastern United States." Chuck drew a good laugh, of course, but he raised an important issue. Spong replied that he didn't believe that statistical success means you're in touch with truth, or that "inane fundamentalism" or "vapid liberalism" are the only choices. He said he has found a wide appreciative and hungry audience for his talks throughout the country - even in Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia. Further, he forecast that fundamentalist or right-wing Christianity would experience a spectacular flame out, while mainline Christianity would die with the "sound a cow makes when lifting its [hoof] out of the mud."

 

I believe you and Spong may share some similar conclusions, so I would be particularly interested in your comments on these matters. It appears your book is aimed at "seekers" and the "church alumni" too. Do you share Bishop Spong's crystal ball gaze into the future, either nationally or globally? Jerry ___________________________________________________________________ Bellinzoni to Moyar, June 1, 2005, 2:22 PM CST Dear Jerry, I suppose I share Spong's vision. Evangelical Christianity, where the action is currently, has no long term viability. It is not only irrational, but anti-rational. It is pre-Enlightenment, and eventually the entire world will catch up with Enlightenment thinking -- I hope sooner rather than later. I agree that Europe and North America are currently not the areas in which Christianity is growing. Quite the contrary! Mainstream and liberal Christianity are in serious trouble, with declining numbers in most mainstream churches. But mainstream Christianity is not addressing seriously the issues that Spong and I both believe are relevant to our time. Interesting, I had begun work on my book before I ever heard of John Shelby Spong. There is much of the same thinking in our books. He brings the authority of an Episcopal Bishop. I like to believe that I bring a different perspective, that of a New Testament scholar with a religious past, but with no special religious credentials. Arthur