The Censure of Wade Burleson

SWBTS Trustee Meeting…

SBCOutpost already has the press release from the SWBTS trustee meeting, but our hidden cameras captured some raw footage of the meeting. We apologize for the low quality video and poor sound, but our moles were afraid that better equipment would expose them.

Without further ado, we give you scenes from the SWBTS Trustee Meeting.

Wisdom of the Ages…

Mable “Madea” Simmons speaks the truth.

Reinhold Niebuhr circa 1916…

Excerpted from Leaves From the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic:

“Doesn’t this denominational business wear on one’s nerves?  If I were a doctor, people would consult me according to the skill I had and the reputation I could acquire.  But being a minister, I can appeal only to people who are labeled as I am.  Yesterday that I professor I met asked me what denomination I belonged to.  Being told, he promptly pigeonholed me into my proper place and with a superior air assumed that my mind was as definitely set by my denominational background as is that of an African Hottentot by his peculiar environment.

Perhaps if I belonged to a larger denomination this wouldn’t irk me so much.  I suffer from an inferiority complex because of the very numerical weakness of my denomination.  If I belonged to a large one I might strut about claim its glory for myself.  If I give myself to religion as a profession I must find some interdenominational outlet for my activities.  But what?  Secretaries and Y.M.C.A workers are too inarticulate.  They deal too much with machinery and too little with ideas.  I don’t want to be a chauffeur.  Does that mean that I am a minister merely because I am a fairly glib talker?  Who knows?

But let us not be too cynical and too morbidly introspective.  I may find something worth saying in time and escape the fate of being a mere talker.  At any rate I swear that I will never aspire to be a preacher of pretty sermons.  I’ll keep them rough enough just to escape the temptation of degenerating into an elocutionist.  Maybe I had better stop quoting so much poetry.  But that is hardly the point.  Plenty of sermons lack both beauty and meaning.

Homemaker on wheels…

Baptist Blogger has just learned that Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary — under the visionary leadership of the seminary’s First Couple — have launched a mobile homemaking ministry lab. Recognizing that efforts to remove would-be homemakers from their homes in order to teach them the art of homemaking, First Lady Dorothy Patterson determined to make the degree more accessible to young women where they live.

The Southwestern Mobile Homemaking Laboratory is complete with all kitchen appliances, living quarters and a bedroom. As a full service academic setting, the new laboratory will facilitate instruction for women as they learn to cook, clean, decorate, and procreate. Because the homemaking degree is a serious and intensive academic concentration, the mobile laboratory will also be equipped with a Greek New Testament and percale table linens and pillow cases beautifully embroidered with various forms of λύ^̄ω.

Today, Baptist Blogger is pleased to present the first live footage of Southwestern Mobile Homemaking Laboratory, en route to an early assignment.

Woman hired for SWBTS theology school…

More from the archives…

Life after Dilday
School still feels academic, financial aftershocks of firing
By Christine Wicker
The Dallas Morning News
February 11, 1995

Dr. Ken Hemphill visited Midland twice late last year, hat in hand, hoping to salve some raw feelings and snag a $3 million to $4 million gift.

The new president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth wanted oil and ranching millionaires Tom and Evelyn Linebery to help fund a new conference center. But he had a problem. Last March, Southwestern trustees fired the Lineberys’ friend Dr. Russell Dilday from the presidency after years of wrangling over his unwillingness to impose initiatives from the conservative-led Southern Baptist Convention.

Dr. Hemphill’s fence-mending plan was to name the new conference center in honor of Dr. Dilday. He was courteously received at the Linebery Foundation’s Midland office, but he returned home without meeting the couple.

Shortly thereafter, Dr. Dilday was received at the Lineberys’ Frying Pan ranch by the Lineberys themselves.

“You might say Dr. Dilday has a key to the ranch,” said Kelley Brown, president of the Linebery Foundation.

“He’s got a key to a lot of places around Texas,” said Jerry Yowell of Fort Worth, who is still a Southwestern supporter.

In the 11 months since his forced departure from the school he led for 16 years, the name Russell Dilday has become a rallying cry for some Texans, a Baptist version of “Remember the Alamo.” One admirer likened his dismissal to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Another compared the continuing unhappiness of some seminary faculty and staff to grief.

From the outside looking in, the nation’s largest seminary seems beset on all sides.

Enrollment has fallen. Operating money is tight and fund raising is almost at a standstill. The seminary was notified a week ago that the Association of Theological Schools had put it on probation.

The association had three major concerns; all were related to the forced departure of Dr. Dilday and his clash with trustees.

But trustees who ousted Dr. Dilday say that from where they sit the seminary looks better than ever. The school is now in line with the wishes of most Baptist churches and its major funding source, the Southern Baptist Convention, the Rev. Miles Seaborn said.

“There’s a completely different attitude and atmosphere on the campus,” said Mr. Seaborn, pastor at Birchman Baptist in Fort Worth. “It’s very optimistic.”

“People tell me that the spirit at Southwestern is more positive than it’s been in 20 years,” said Ralph Pulley, chairman of the board of trustees. “We’re ready to go into the 21st century.”

There has been no exodus of professors and staff since Dr. Dilday’s termination amid charges that he was insubordinate to trustees who wanted the school to be more practical, evangelistic and fundamentalist.

Students are going on with their lives, said Dr. Bruce Corley, dean of theology.

“There’s a kind of relief that this is over with and we’re moving on,” according to a fourth-year student, who said his position on biblical inerrancy was attacked in class during the Dilday days as dogmatic and unthinking. He asked not to be identified.

“Before, if you had really conservative views, you were looked at as an intellectual peon,” said third-year master of divinity student Robby Bolden. “Dr. Hemphill has brought a new, fresh spirit.”

Because the December graduating class was one of the seminary’s largest ever, some students who were unhappy with the new administration are gone. “People on the negative side have pushed to get their credits and get out,” said Tom Priester, president of the Diploma Fellowship, a group for students without bachelor’s degrees.

But a plethora of problems has surfaced since March 9, 1994.

The number of students at the 3,117-student seminary dipped six percent this spring and fall. Not an alarming or even unusual drop, said the new president. But enrollment at five other Baptist seminaries rose last fall, according to the Associated Baptist Press.

Perhaps more telling, requests for admission to Southwestern’s doctorate program in theology fell by almost half, from a five-year average of about 40 students to 22 students this year.

The seminary’s financial vice president is looking at finding extra money or cutting a combined $1.5 million from the operating budgets of this school year and next.

“We reduced this budget and we reduced the one before. This is not something new to me,” said vice president Hubert Martin. The two-year budgets average $22.8 million.

Outside fund raising is pretty much stalled, say sources inside and outside the school. Some estimate the school lost $15 million in promised donations.

Many of its most loyal and generous patrons have bolted, among them former Cowboys coach Tom Landry, investor Robert Glaze, Aerobics Center founder Ken Cooper and Kathryn Sullivan Bowld, for whom the music library is named.

In response to the dismissal of Dr. Dilday, the executive board of the Baptist General Convention of Texas has appointed a committee to study the need for additional theological education in Texas.

Despite its problems, administrators say the school is moving forward. Administrators said a new music dean has been appointed with unanimous approval from faculty and administration. The theology department hired its first woman professor, an appointment Dr. Dilday favored. Three new academic chairs have been established. Two are named for leaders in the conservative camp, Dr. W.A. Criswell and Dr. Jimmy Draper. The other is named for Dr. Rebekah Naylor, a physician and missionary in India.

Contention between moderates and conservatives continues to simmer at Southwestern. In the music school, for instance, conservatives want to shift emphasis from “high church” music to newer and less formal songs. Conservative trustees care less that a wide variety of theological positions be explored than that future preachers get practical lessons for the little churches where they are likely to start out. “More heart and less head,” trustee T. Bob Davis calls it.

On the surface, little has changed in the past year. The curriculum is the same, said Dr. William Tolar, vice president of academic affairs and provost. No one has been fired or demoted for their views, he said.

But some faculty believe hiring, promotion and other academic perks are based on what one administrator, who asked not to be identified, calls “shadow criteria” - an example often cited has to do with where professors stand on abortion.

Comments made by trustees outside board meetings have led some faculty to believe that they may be required to vigorously support anti-abortion rights positions.

But Dr. Hemphill said, “You’ve always got to distinguish between expressions of opinion on the board and actions.”

Some professors are uncertain where they stand as a result of the change in leadership. “With Dr. Dilday, we felt like we had a buffer between us and the trustees,” said one professor who asked not to be identified. “With Dr. Hemphill we feel like we lost that buffer.”

Suspicion between some students and some faculty remains high. Some Southwestern professors won’t allow tape-recording of lectures for fear that students will use the tapes against them. Rumors of students sent by fundamentalists pastors with instructions to spy on their teachers abound.

Some Texas Baptists say the only way to heal Southwestern is for certain trustees to resign.

“I think you’ve got to get rid of all of them that went against him,” said Midland’s Mr. Brown, who withdrew his support from the seminary after Dr. Dilday was fired.

But trustees aren’t going to resign, Mr. Seaborn said. “I did what I think God wanted me to do,” he said.

And so, the battle for the soul of Southwestern and the pocketbooks of Texas Baptists continues.

The moderate Texas Baptists Committed has sent out a survey asking its 2,700 members if they want money in the Baptist General Convention of Texas budget shifted to support Texas seminaries other than Southwestern. Conservative ministers are rallying their churches, too. “We’ve got a thousand churches who are going be giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to Southwestern,” said Mr. Seaborn, president of Southern Baptists of Texas.

In his short tenure, Dr. Hemphill seems to have made few enemies and a number of friends. Some faculty question whether his background in church growth has prepared him for running a seminary.

Trustees are happy with him, Mr. Seaborn said. “Our hearts are the same as Ken Hemphill’s,” he said.

The new president may even be making progress with the fund raisers.

Mr. Yowell hung on with a lay fund-raising group called the Southwestern Council even though his spirits were low.

But at a recent meeting, Dr. Hemphill and students were able to inspire him again.

“I think with Ken Hemphill’s leadership we’ll rise again,” he said. “I’m going to stay with them until they run me off.”

Gordon Swift, the new chairman of the Southwestern Council, is also intent on putting the past away.

“We’re all there to do one thing and that’s help the students,” he said. “Although I loved Dr. Dilday and I’m beginning to love Dr. Hemphill, the people we really love are the students.”

“A Socratic gadfly on the SBC posterior”

More from our archives:

Patterson reportedly had deadline
Board gave him 6 months, sources say
Helen Parmley, The Dallas Morning News

Published: April 22, 1992

Criswell College president Paige Patterson was given six months to find another ministry after school trustees failed in their attempts to dismiss him in November, sources close to trustees said Tuesday.

Dr. Patterson announced Tuesday during the twice-a-week chapel service at the East Dallas school that he was resigning to become president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C. Although his appointment will not be final until it is approved May 14 by Southeastern’s trustees, that approval is considered a formality.

Asked whether he had been forced out, the 49-year-old fundamentalist leader, who has been president of Criswell since 1975, said: “They have not tried to force me to do anything . . . but they have a direction they want to go in. They may be right and they may be wrong. And they’re answerable to God. But they’ll always be trustees.’

With his voice nearly breaking, Dr. Patterson told about 300 people at chapel that “God had freed me and indeed called me’ to be president of the seminary.

“I was a little more emotionally involved than I ought to be,’ Dr. Patterson said several hours later during an interview in his office. “I thought I at least could read a statement.’

Among those present for Dr. Patterson’s announcement was Dr. W.A. Criswell, longtime pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas and founder and chancellor of the college that bears his name.

“He’s going to a wonderful place,’ Dr. Criswell said of Dr. Patterson. “He’ll be president of the only seminary we have on the Eastern Sea-board.

“He has an open door there that is incomparable.’

Dr. Criswell said an interim administration will run Criswell College while a search is conducted for a new president.

“It is a matter of supplication before God himself,’ the pastor said. “There will be a search from one side of the continent to the other.’

At Criswell, there was a mixture of regret, sadness, anger and hopefulness after Dr. Patterson’s announcement. Some students said they will transfer to other schools; others said they will wait to see what happens with the replacement.

“If the trustees are not pleased with the leadership of Dr. Patterson, the question remains: What kind of leadership do they want?’ said Wayne Grier, 33, a junior who said he would not return to Criswell in the fall.

“The trustees basically wanted Dr. Patterson out and they did not want to make public their agenda,’ said Mr. Grier, who plans to move back to Dallas, Ga.

Dr. Patterson said his influence at Southeastern will be different than it has been at Criswell, where he described himself as “a Socratic gad-fly on the posterior’ of the Southern Baptist Convention.

At the seminary, he said, “I will be a denominational servant.’

The move is a step up for Dr. Patterson, who leaves a small, independent Baptist school for a large denominational seminary supported and financed by the Southern Baptist Convention.

Conservatives have taken control of Southeastern in recent years, prompting complaints that the intellectual atmosphere has been stifled. Only seven of the 35 faculty members are left from 1987, and enrollment has dropped from 1,125 to 425 during the same period.

Dr. Patterson said he intends to fill seven or eight vacancies with theological conservatives. “It’s what my fellow conservatives want me to do,’ he said.

Criswell College, located in a sparkling new building at 4010 Gaston Ave., has been troubled in the last six months by a dispute between the board of trustees and Dr. Patterson, one of the leaders in the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Dr. Patterson was almost fired by the trustees in November, but the dismissal raised an outcry from six leading Southern Baptist pastors.

Led by the Rev. Adrian Rogers of Memphis, Tenn., and the Rev. Jack Graham of Prestonwood Baptist Church in North Dallas, the pastors met with the Criswell College trustees at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.

After nine hours, according to sources close to the trustees, an agreement was reached to give Dr. Patterson six months to find another ministry.

However, that agreement was not made public. Instead, the trustees issued a statement saying they had agreed to “wait on the Lord in connection with any leadership changes at the college.’

Dr. Patterson said he was “gratified but also humbled’ by the support he had received.

Meanwhile, it became apparent that the president of Southeastern, the Rev. Lewis Drummond, would be leaving the troubled seminary, sources said, and the cadre of leading pastors began putting into motion the process for naming Dr. Patterson as his successor.

After Dr. Drummond resigned, with a retirement package estimated at more than $100,000, a national search for a replacement was announced. Some Baptist insiders, however, say the search was a charade, that the job was Dr. Patterson’s from the start.

The specifics of Dr. Patterson’s dispute with Criswell trustees are not known, but some college officials say that the disagreement had to do with Dr. Patterson’s management style and that some trustees thought he spent too much time on denominational politics.

In moving to Southeastern, Dr. Patterson is leaving a school that 16 years ago had 12 students, four faculty members, no degrees, no accreditation and no money.

Criswell today has about 375 students, nearly 30 full-time faculty members, both bachelor’s and master’s degree programs, accreditation and an endowment that totals almost $12 million, most of it from the Criswell Foundation, school officials said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

More archives…

Last year, Paige Patterson censored Dwight McKissic for expressing views that were critical of the IMB Board of Trustees.  In his statement,  Patterson recognized the dilemma for one Southern Baptist agency to criticize another.

Early in Patterson’s tenure at SEBTS, however, a very interesting event occurred.  The SEBTS booth distributed a pamphlet compiled six years earlier by Patterson that was critical of sister SBC agencies and executives.  Soon after this event, Patterson fired his Public Relations Director, who now serves with the International Mission Board.  Today, I found this article:

Pamphlet for Patterson criticizes prominent Baptist leaders
Daniel Cattau, Religion Editor of The Dallas Morning News
Published: June 16, 1993

HOUSTON — Controversy seems to find Paige Patterson whether he’s looking for it or not.

A Southern Baptist Convention booth promoting his North Carolina seminary featured a pamphlet he wrote accusing several prominent Baptist leaders — including fellow seminary presidents — of being “neo-orthodox’ and “neo-liberal.’ Dr. Patterson, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., defined orthodox as accepting “full inerrancy and infallibility of the Bible.’ He defined neo-orthodox or neo-liberal as “rejects inerrancy completely.’

The former president of Criswell College in Dallas apologized Tuesday for the 6-year-old pamphlet.

“I did not authorize its use and deeply regret that it has been distributed,’ he said in a brief statement.

Dr. Russell H. Dilday, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth and one of those named, accepted the apology. But the “damage is already done,’ he said.

“The document distributed by Dr. Patterson is an unfortunate repetition of the strategy he used in earlier years — spreading inaccurate and unfounded accusations to lure confused messengers into his political camp,’ Dr. Dilday said.

Digging the archives…

Just another article I’ve run across in research for my book. I was challenged a few months back by SEBTS Professor Brad Reynolds for alleging in an earlier post that Paige Patterson had been “fired” from Criswell College.

Today, in a file I was packing, I found this article:

Patterson reportedly dismissed. Dean says other officials of Criswell College fired
By Helen Parmley, Religion Editor of The Dallas Morning News
Published: NOVEMBER 1, 1991

The Rev. Paige Patterson, one of the architects of the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention, has been dismissed as president of Criswell College, the college’s dean of students said Thursday. The dean, the Rev. Danny Akin, told students Thursday that the Dallas school’s board of trustees met in an executive session Monday night and “dismissed all the school’s administrators, including Dr. Patterson.’ The college will remain under fundamentalist control.

Dr. Patterson, 49, was out of town and unavailable for comment Thursday, and members of the college’s board did not return phone calls.

Trustees have promised not to say anything publicly about the dismissal until Dr. Patterson announces his plans Monday, said a source close to the college.

Officials knowledgeable about Criswell College say that his dismissal as president is a result of his devoting too much time and energy to denominational politics at the college’s expense. “That’s exactly what happened,’ said one trustee who asked not to be identified.

The reason for the other administrators’ dismissals was unclear.

Mr. Akin said he was told by a trustee that Dr. Patterson is “negotiating’ his future position with the college. “The school is devastated,’ Mr. Akin said. “It’s been traumatic, hurtful and confusing for our school, which is absolutely behind Dr. Patterson.’

The dean said he asked a trustee whether the board’s decision was “based on anything illegal, immoral or unethical in nature.’ “

He said, “Absolutely not,’ ‘ Mr. Akin said. “It’s all so unbelievable. My love and respect for him (Dr. Patterson) is even greater than before. He has handled this whole thing in such a gracious manner.’

Beginning in 1979, Dr. Patterson and state District Judge Paul Pressler of Houston led a successful movement for a fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention.

They have orchestrated the election of the denomination’s presidents for the last 11 years. And through appointments, the fundamentalists have won control of the denomination’s seminaries, agencies and commissions.

Dr. Patterson has been a visible and controversial spokesman for the fundamentalist movement within the 14.9 million-member Southern Baptist Convention.

Some officials who wanted him dismissed as president of Criswell College supported the takeover of the convention.

Earlier this year, the Rev. W.A. Criswell, longtime pastor of First Baptist Church and founder of the college, was elevated to senior pastor of the church. He also became chancellor of the school, which First Baptist owns, and his primary job now is to develop the college’s endowment.

Criswell College was founded in 1970 as Criswell Bible Institute.

The following year, the Rev. H. Leo Eddleman became president, a position he held until 1975, when trustees elected Dr. Patterson to succeed him.

The school is accredited for undergraduate and graduate degrees in biblical studies, evangelism, counseling and music. It has 350 students, an enrollment that, like those of other church schools, is down a little from last year. The school also owns religious radio station KCBI-FM (90.9).

After years of crowding at its downtown location near First Baptist Church, Criswell College last year bought Gaston Avenue Baptist Church, a landmark near Baylor University Medical Center.

After extensive remodeling to provide classrooms, dormitory space, a library and offices, the school completed its move this year.

This pretty much says it all…

SWBTS to offer additional degree

For Immediate Release
Fort Worth, Texas

In a move to counter the mounting criticism that Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and its president, Paige Patterson, have received on account of the “homemaking degree,” offered through the seminary’s undergraduate program, the Fort Worth school has now authorized the development of a supplementary degree concentration in Christian Husbandry.

The new degree, which will launch this fall, will further serve the school’s mission to equip Southern Baptist churches to reclaim the Christian home as a counter-cultural weapon against un-biblical family paradigms.

With elective course offerings in lawnmowing, hedgetrimming, weedeating, and fire-ant prevention, Southwestern’s husbandry degree will achieve Patterson’s objective to make the seminary a premier center for theological education in America.

“The Bible is replete with exhortations for men who seek to fulfill their God-given commission as the leaders of their households,” Patterson said. “Southwestern Seminary will spare no effort — we will spend every last dime of convention money, if necessary — to preserve and protect the biblical roles of Christian men.”

The 23-hour concentration will require three hours of archery, sharpshooting, and gun safety complete with a taxidermy lab, four hours of marinade preparation and outdoor grilling, a seminar in automotive maintenance and repair, and a two hour course in corporal punishment techniques. Only male students will be allowed to enroll.

Southwestern Seminary’s dean of husbandry studies, Rev. Dean Nichols, has high hopes for the program’s success.

“We’re not going to tolerate Christian men who don’t know how to change a tire or baste a rack of ribs,” Nichols growled. “Southern Baptist churches will have confidence that preachers coming out of Southwestern Seminary can keep the church bus running, keep the baptistry pump working, and still prepare sermons for Sunday meeting.”

Nichols serves concurrently as the faculty sponsor for Southwestern Seminary’s student organization, The Royal Society of the Deer Pants.

Having watched FTE enrollment drop below 2000 for the first time in decades, Patterson hopes the paired programs of homemaking and husbandry will plug the drain of student attrition. A simultaneous wild game dinner and British tea is planned for the Fall semester to profile the new degree concentrations.

In related news, SWBTS President Paige Patterson has announced a new capital improvement campaign to fund construction of facilities to house the Ted Nugent School of Biblical Husbandry.

Fridays are for Film…

In this penultimate scene from Clint Eastwood’s Academy Award winning film, Unforgiven, William Munny, played by Eastwood, takes out Little Bill Daggett, played by Gene Hackman. This is perhaps the best Western film since the death of the Duke. Warning to the faint-hearted puritans among us: This scene has a few wordy dirts.

Spam-A-Lot

Two weekends ago I had the joy of attending the final performance of the Dallas Summer Musicals run of the Tony Award-winning production Spam-A-Lot, a twisted, scripted sing-a-long of Monty Python’s greatest hits coupled with the glitz and glamour of the Broadway stage.

Whether banging coconuts together, whacking cats, or arranging shrubberies, the musical — while entertaining — lacked something that the original Python players possessed. I grew up watching Monty Python. Before the age of ten, I could quote extended excerpts from The Holy Grail or The Life of Brian at length. My younger sister and I would double over in the living room floor late at night and howl with hysterical laughter at the ridiculous, the absurd, and the preposterous ways that John Cleese, in particular, contorted his face and altered his voice in character.

Tim the Enchanter was, and is, my favorite in Cleese’s repertoire.

I remembered reading that Monty Python was banned in England at one point for their film The Life of Brian, which is an odd narrative about a Roman citizen whose life parallels that of Jesus of Nazareth. Before I knew what “blasphemy” was, I knew that the Python players had been found guilty. Through the years, I’ve found myself struggling not to laugh at sacred things, more often than not with limited success.

I’ve laughed when Mr. Bean, played by Rowan Atkinson, tried to feign piety in a vaulted Anglican cathedral. I’ve laughed when Southpark had Jesus fighting Santa Clause in a death-match over the true meaning of Christmas. I’ve laughed when Family Guy poked fun at Christianity, and I’ve belched many a guffaw while reading The Wittenburg Door or the Landover Baptist Church website.

Perhaps I’m of a generation that blurs the lines of comedic decency too freely. Perhaps it’s not my generation at all. Maybe it’s just me.

Lately, I’ve decided that there’s enough to give Christians a laugh without laughing about the essential truths of the Christian faith. It’s much safer ground to make light of the peculiar people who follow Christ than it is to make light of the Crucified One himself.

I remember my sense of humor blowing up in my face last year. I had just finished watching a episode of the Benny Hill Show when I went searching Youtube for more. As early as I can remember, Boots Randolph’s jazzy tune “Yakety Sax” made me smile, most likely owing to my childhood association of the song with the credits for Benny Hill’s half-hour British comedy. Some kids snuck out of bed at night to watch horror flicks or Cinemax. I snuck out to watch Benny Hill.

While browsing Youtube, I discovered that a tremendous number of people shared my affection for Yakety Sax, even going so far as to remix other movie scenes and trailers with the song, speeding them up to capture a hilarity similar to that of Benny Hill’s original credits. There was The Planet of the Apes , the Star Wars version, The Shining version, Saving Private Ryan version, the War of the Worlds version , and now there’s the 300 version.

None of those, however, were the source of my loudest and most irreverent laughs. Rather it was a version of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ that sent me into a chortling orbit. Whether my frustration over the way Evangelicals had carried on over the movie — some churches renting out whole theaters to preview it — or whether my more carnal instincts took hold, I do not know. All I do know, however, is that the night I pulled it up on my computer to show a group of friends, the humor fell flat.

I was embarrassed, tortured, even convicted about having laughed at it. Like few others, this moment remains a deep and incurable scar upon my conscience. I realized — perhaps for the very first time — how dangerous and wicked a little leavened levity can be. Like all sinners caught in a moment of shame, I tried to play it off and go on with other things. But my mind kept coming back to the sense of inner disgust I felt over having found humor in something as tremendously terrifying as the murder of the Son of Man. Even writing these words, I’m overcome with grief for that sin.

I’m still not sure I know where the line is best drawn. Some people draw it one place. Others draw it another. All I know is that night I felt the overwhelming weight of personal transgression. I had crossed a line. A big one.

In a weird way, the fact that I regarded myself as a transgressor at all was quite reassuring. Only sinners can truly believe. And only believers know they are truly sinners.

Fridays Are For Film…

Harry Potter, Martin Luther, and Martin Marty…

If you’ve never been introduced to the fascinating world of the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School, then you’ve been shortchanged a chance to read some of the most engaging reflections on the confluence of theology and culture, religion and politics. The Marty Center publishes an online journal of occasional essays, many of which are written by graduate students from the divinity school. The internet journal, entitled Sightings, “reports and comments on the role of religion in public life via e-mail twice a week to a readership of over 5,000. Through the eyes, ears, and keyboards of a diverse group of writers—academics, clergyman, laypeople, and students—Sightings displays the kaleidoscope of religious activity: a reflection of how religious currents are shaping and being shaped in the world.”

Today’s column, Severus Snape and the Transparency of Evil, is authored by Elizabeth Musselman, a graduate student in theology. Her brief characterization of the moral tensions raised in the bestselling Harry Potter series is worth reading. I reproduce the article here with permission from the Marty Center:

On July 21, children across the country will stay up all night reading as the narrative of Harry Potter draws to a close. Many adults will also stay up all night reading the final chapters in J. K. Rowling’s imaginative epic of teenage wizards negotiating the forces of good and evil. Perhaps if Martin Luther were alive today, he too would find himself drawn into the textual world of Harry Potter — for Harry’s world bears some striking resemblances to Luther’s theological realm. Appearances are deceptive, and human reason is not to be trusted; spoken words carry the power to defeat danger; and the ongoing struggle between good and evil finds no easy resolution.One of the most contentious questions in the online world of textual interpretation (blogging, fan fiction, and the like) concerns the moral status of Severus Snape, Harry’s “Defense Against the Dark Arts” teacher. Snape is the only character whose moral status has remained unknown through the series: while this greasy-haired teacher appears on the surface to be more evil than good, by the end of the sixth book the reader is still left questioning Snape’s motives and disposition.