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{"id":9908,"date":"2012-10-08T12:18:28","date_gmt":"2012-10-08T16:18:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=9908"},"modified":"2012-10-08T12:18:28","modified_gmt":"2012-10-08T16:18:28","slug":"the-uncredible-hallq-on-liberal-christianity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2012\/10\/the-uncredible-hallq-on-liberal-christianity.html","title":{"rendered":"The Uncredible Hallq on Liberal Christianity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

There is a rather bizarre post by Chris Hallq on his blog \u201cThe Uncredible Hallq\u201d<\/a> in which he takes aim at liberal Christians, and in particular myself and Fred Clark.<\/p>\n

$\"\"$ He begins by arguing that, because fundamentalists sometimes acknowledge they were wrong, therefore the generalization is incorrect that inerrantists identify their own interpretation with \u201cwhat the Bible says\u201d and thereby end up in practice treating themselves as inerrant.<\/p>\n

Exceptions do not mean that generalizations are not essentially accurate. Todd Wood is a young-earth creationist who acknowledges that evolution is not \u201ca theory in crisis\u201d and that the scientific evidence supports it. But that doesn\u2019t negate the fact that young-earth creationists\u00a0generally<\/em> adopt a very different stance than Wood\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Hallq then suggests that liberal Christians don\u2019t point out that the problem with fundamentalists is not their own flawed perspective but the flawed text of the Bible itself, saying that this would involve admitting something that is \u201cembarrassing to Christians of every stripe.\u201d<\/p>\n

To which I can do little but shake my head in disappointment that someone would criticize a phenomenon they understand so little and about the history of which they are so poorly informed.<\/p>\n

Liberal Christianity pioneered Biblical criticism<\/a>, the tools and methods that exposed the Bible\u2019s fallibility. The methods and the results of that approach are widely embraced by atheists like Hallq. For them to then turn around and suggest that the results of them are an embarrassment to liberal Christians, rather than something liberal Christians<\/a> were among the first to draw attention to, is rather insulting \u2013 as I\u2019ve said before<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I am grateful to Hallq for mentioning my post<\/a>. But hopefully if he wants to interact in the future, he will learn something about liberal Christianity first.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"