Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 17, 1993 TAG: 9301150301
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CODY LOWE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
YES, JESUS LOVES HIM - EVEN IF THE LETTER WRITER DOESN'T
Imagine this is the last sentence in a letter you got from a disgruntled customer: "Incidentally, I doubt if Jesus loves you at all."Ouch.
That hurt, and it wasn't even addressed to me. That one went to Ed Shamy.
After Ed wrote a column suggesting that a handgun-purchase limit wouldn't mean the end of civilization as we know it, an anonymous letter writer sent him a folded card with "Jesus Loves You" on the front, "but everyone else thinks you're an ---hole" inside.
Pretty nasty, but with at least a trace of humor to redeem it.
The latest letter was devoid of humor. The one-handgun-a-month proposal would inevitably lead to the no-handgun-in-a-lifetime proposal, the letter writer said. And, by the way, Jesus doesn't love you.
Of course the insult carries no weight if delivered by a non-Christian. If Jesus isn't an eternal redeeming presence, then suggesting he doesn't love somebody is just a little joke.
If one is a Christian, however, suggesting Jesus doesn't love someone else is a serious curse. It may be blasphemous - the kind of sin many Christians believe is liable to consign the sinner to hell.
The frustrated letter writer no doubt never thought of that.
What is obvious from such attacks - which all journalists get from time to time - is that the letter writer can't depend on a reasonable argument to persuade. So, the personal attacks.
And a way to demean self and religion in one swoop.
With the inauguration of Bill Clinton as president coming in just a few days, there is a fairly high probability that we'll soon hear some reference to America's role as a divinely anointed world leader.
Though dangerously politically incorrect to refer to a America as a "Christian nation" - or even to a "Judeo-Christian" culture - it seems hard for politicians to avoid some reference to divine favor.
Such references - common especially during the Reagan-Bush years - may trace their history to the writings of an influential 18th-century American theologian - Jonathan Edwards.
As it turns out, according to a Roanoke College religion professor who has just published a book on the subject, Edwards probably would have objected.
Gerald R. McDermott's book is "One Holy and Happy Society: The Public Theology of Jonathan Edwards." Published by Penn State Press at $29.95, it is available at Ram's Head Book Store.
This is a scholarly treatment that doesn't make for light bedtime reading. It demands, for instance, some familiarity with Edwards and his time to be fully illuminating. And it reads more like a doctoral thesis - from which it sprang - than a novel.
But those interested in Edwards, the approaching millennium or the history of the notion of a "Christian America" will find much new in this study of his unpublished writings.
McDermott contends that even though Edwards - who led one of the great evangelistic revivals in Colonial America - believed the final golden age known as the millennium would begin in America, it wasn't because of the region's special piety.
In fact, it was because of what he believed was God's plan to use the "meanest" and "weakest" to implement his divine plans. The millennial age would be a global phenomenon, he said in his sermons, not an exclusively American one.
Despite the overwhelming success of his own preaching and teaching in drawing new converts and initiating a regional revival, Edwards continually decried the shortcomings of his Congregationalist audience.
He was so insistent that he was eventually banished to the frontier to preach. While there, however, he wrote several treatises that continued to influence theologians - and politicians - for more than a century.
He died in 1758 shortly after being recalled from the frontier to preside over what is now Princeton University.
Cody Lowe, a staff writer for this newspaper, reports on issues concerning religion.