Originally posted July 29, 2008. August 3, 2008 Update: Apparently I was not the only person disturbed by Carl Strock’s comparison between two church shootings. Writing in today’s Gazette, Kevin O’Connor of Niskayuna, a trustee for the First Unitarian Society of Schenectady, said:
Strock unfair comparing two church shootings
I was disappointed in Mr. Carl Strock’s July 29 column [“Shootings in churches: two responses”] about the shooting assault at a Unitarian church in Knoxville, Tenn., on July 27. Mr. Strock seemed to be trying to contrast the responses of a particular congregant in the Unitarian Church who tried to shield others from gunshots and was killed, with the response in a different church shooting at an Evangelical Christian congregation in Colorado [Dec. 10 Gazette]. In that attack, the shooter was himself shot by a congregant who had his own gun.
I’m not sure what point Mr. Strock was trying to make. Both events must have been unimaginable horrors to those present. Who knows what our personal responses would be in a similar event. Is Mr. Strock trying to draw wider conclusions about Christians and Unitarians based on individuals’ responses in these life-threatening assaults? This parallel is unfair, and leaning toward divisive for our society struggling to come to grasp with the mysteries of human alienation and violence.
Read the rest of O’Connor’s letter to the editor.
My original post of July 29, 2008 begins here.
If I were to write my autobiography, it could appropriately be called Up From Fundamentalism. I grew up in a Fundamentalist Baptist home. When I left home I migrated into Evangelicalism. At some point in the past decade, I shifted from Evangelicalism to Neo-Evangelicalism to simply Christian, although if you want to brand me, you “might” be able to call me moderate or Neo-Orthodox.
My faith has a great deal of doubt and skepticism mixed with it. But when I consider the alternatives, I have just as many if not more doubts.
In any event, I know Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism inside and out, and while I have serious problems with Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism, I find it disturbing when an alleged journalist portrays them unfairly.
This happens on a regular basis with Gazette columnist, Carl Strock, whom I have labeled The Master Baiter because he is skilled at baiting people, whether the Schenectady Police Department or Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christians. His column in today’s Gazette is a case in point. The Daily Gazette does not post his column on its website, but essentially Strock compared and contrasted in a Freshman English 101 contrast paper style the differences between a gunman’s attack on the Tennessee Valley Unitarian-Universalist Church in Tenessee this week and the attack on the New Life Church in Colorado Springs several months ago.
First, Carl Strock’s ignorance of Christianity is profound. He continues to equate Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism. He refers to New Life Church in one instance as a Fundamentalist Church; in another instance as an Evangelical one. Sometimes Evangelicalism is an umbrella term that can incorporate Fundamentalism, but the opposite is never true. Fundamentalists are much more conservative in their theology and in their way of life than Evangelicals. For example, Fundamentalists are teetotalers, many Evangelicals are not. A cursory glance at New Life Church’s website reveals that it is an Evangelical church not a Fundamentalist one.
Secondly, Strock confuses Biblical inerrancy with a literal interpretation of the Bible. He claims that New Life Church believes in a literal interpretation of the Bible, apparently finding some proof of it on the church’s website. However, nowhere on New Life’s website does it say that the church believes that every word of the Bible should be taken literally. Their doctrinal statement does say that they believe in inerrancy, but while a belief in inerrancy does affect the way one interprets the Bible, it does not mean that one believes that every word of the Bible should be taken literally. There are millions of Christians who believe in inerrancy who don’t believe that every word should be taken literally. Even Fundamentalists, who generally do believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible, recognize the use of allegory and symbolism.
Strock seems to have his own difficulty with allegory and symbolism. His own approach to the Bible seems to be that of a Fundamentalist who not only believes in a literal interpretation but refuses to recognize metaphorical language.
Strock says in today’s column, “Regular readers will recall that in the case of Colorado Springs I pointed out the obvious contradiction between claiming to believe the Bible literally, since the Bible includes an injunction to turn the other cheek, and the readiness to shoot back at those who attack us. I figured you can’t have it both ways. Either you believe in turning the other cheek, or you believe in self-defense. You can’t declare that you accept every word of the Bible as perfectly true and then thank God for steadying your hand when you shoot somebody.”
The contradiction is only obvious to someone like Strock who confuses inerrancy and literal interpretation. He never establishes that New Life Church teaches that every word of the Bible should be taken literally. He only assumes that.
Even if New Life Church believed that every word should be taken literally, one cannot ignore other statements in the Bible, including other sayings of Jesus, that modify the injunction to “turn the other cheek.” Furthermore, Strock fails to discuss the context of the Biblical injunction to “turn the other cheek.” I would hate to see what other literary works would look like if Strock imposed these same hermeneutical prinicples on them.
Thirdly, Strock in his obsessive drive to score points against Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christians failed to mention the most important similarity between the two shootings. Both shooters were consumed by hatred. The gunman at New Life was consumed with hatred for Evangelicals, while the gunman at Tennessee Valley was consumed with hatred for liberals. Hatred was the primary reason both shootings took place, and the similarities between the two shootings outweighed the differences, similarities that Strock in his monomania chose to ignore
It’s strange that a few months ago Strock wrote a piece praising the Schenectady City Mission because the mission was founded by Fundamentalists, even though now it has many evangelical, moderate and even some liberal supporters. Strock seemed ignorant of the mission’s history. The mission was founded to care for the poor, the homeless and the addicted, long before there were government programs to help these people. Indeed, when I look around the greater Capital District and the Mohawk Valley, many charitable organizations were founded by Fundamentalist or Evangelical Christians along with conservative Catholics. Besides Schenectady City Mission, there are Capital City Rescue Mission, Ellis Hospital, Union College, Albany Academy, Northeast Parent and Child Society, the YMCA, several Catholic hospitals, and Catholic Charities, just to name a few, although many of these have moved from their roots.
So even though I have problems with Fundamentalists, Evangelicals, conservative Catholics and many other religious people for that matter, it is hard to ignore their contributions to the area.
I have searched in vain for similar charitable organizations founded by the likes of Carl Strock.
1 Comment
August 5, 2008 at 6:11 am
[...] The Daily Gazette’s Carl Strock Just Doesn’t Get It Jump to Comments On his blog today, Carl Strock responds to a letter to the editor of the Daily Gazette by a Unitarian who criticized Strock’s comparison/contrast of two different church shootings. [...]