{"id":2211,"date":"2012-04-09T20:51:00","date_gmt":"2012-04-09T20:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2012\/04\/christianity-in-crisis.html"},"modified":"2012-04-09T20:51:00","modified_gmt":"2012-04-09T20:51:00","slug":"christianity-in-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2012\/04\/christianity-in-crisis.html","title":{"rendered":"Christianity in Crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

If you go to the second floor of the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., you\u2019ll find a small room containing an 18th-century Bible whose pages are full of holes. They are carefully razor-cut empty spaces, so this was not an act of vandalism. It was, rather, a project begun by Thomas Jefferson when he was 77 years old. Painstakingly removing those passages he thought reflected the actual teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, Jefferson literally cut and pasted them into a slimmer, different New Testament, and left behind the remnants (all on display until July 15). What did he edit out? He told us: \u201cWe must reduce our volume to the simple evangelists, select, even from them, the very words only of Jesus.\u201d He removed what he felt were the \u201cmisconceptions\u201d of Jesus\u2019 followers, \u201cexpressing unintelligibly for others what they had not understood themselves.\u201d And it wasn\u2019t hard for him. He described the difference between the real Jesus and the evangelists\u2019 embellishments as \u201cdiamonds\u201d in a \u201cdunghill,\u201d glittering as \u201cthe most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man.\u201d Yes, he was calling vast parts of the Bible religious manure.
Read the rest here<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you go to the second floor of the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., you\u2019ll find a small room containing an 18th-century Bible whose pages are full of holes. They are carefully razor-cut empty spaces, so this was not an act of vandalism. It was, rather, a project begun by Thomas Jefferson […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2251,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nChristianity in Crisis<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"If you go to the second floor of the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., you\u2019ll find a small room containing an 18th-century Bible\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2012\/04\/christianity-in-crisis.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Christianity in Crisis\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"If you go to the second floor of the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., you\u2019ll find a small room containing an 18th-century Bible\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2012\/04\/christianity-in-crisis.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Rhetoric Race and Religion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-04-09T20:51:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Andre E. 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