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Book Review: Grand Theft Jesus: The Hijacking of Religion in America. Written by Robert S. McElvaine. Published by Random House, 2008. I once referred to another writer as having all of the writing skills of a two-year-old toddler who has just discovered that he can doodle on the wall with the brown stuff that is leaking from his diaper. If we were to take that same toddler and feed him a whole box of marshmallow Peeps that he washed down with three cans of Red Bull before he commenced his doodling, and if we were somehow able to instill in him a strong sense of guilt for having a penis, and if we were also able to instill in him a level of insecurity that caused him to harbor a hatred for anyone that disagreed with him, then the skill set displayed by the toddler would accurately mimic that of Dr. Robert S. McElvaine. Dr. McElvaine is the author of a book entitled Grand Theft Jesus: The Hijacking of Religion in America. Dr. McElvaine is chair of the Department of History at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, and thus one would assume that he considers himself to be something of a historian. But if one opens his book with the expectation of reading a scholarly work containing carefully documented facts, then one will be severely disappointed. McElvaine's book is refreshingly sparing in it's use of boring historical facts, but it is replete with ill-informed opinions that are obviously fabricated in a mind lacking even a rudimentary intelligence. Even though Grand Theft Jesus is filled with hateful personal attacks on a wide range of people, I will endeavor to limit my personal attacks on McElvaine to the ones that I have already made. It will be difficult, because McElvaine's elitist and condescending attitude makes him a very inviting target. Dr. McElvaine's intention in Grand Theft Jesus is to expose the majority of the current leaders of Evangelical Christianity. It is McElvaine's contention that Joel Osteen, Ted Haggard, James Dobson, Tim LaHaye, Ann Coulter, George Bush, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, D. James Kennedy, and virtually anybody else that is or has been a Christian leader and insists upon believing in that quaint idea of a literally-interpreted Bible, is not a follower of Jesus at all, but is alternately termed by McElvaine to be either a “Jesus Thief” or a “Christian Lite” or an “Xian.” McElvaine thinks that the lowly unwashed masses, of which I am a member, who believe that the Bible is to be interpreted literally, and believe that Adam and Eve actually did exist, and believe not only in intelligent design but are actually very certain of the identity of the Designer, are simply brain-washed automatons who have been placed under the spell of the aforementioned Evangelical leaders. It is McElvaine's stated purpose in Grand Theft Jesus “to convert these misled” people. McElvaine, in his gracious benevolence, has deigned us worthy of his time and he will show us the error of our ways. I have a news flash for the mighty Dr. McElvaine. I admit to being one of the “misled” that Dr. McElvaine wishes to convert. I am just a dumb half-breed Cherokee that is on his feet twelve hours each day building bus doors at Wabtec International. My college work would be looked upon with disdain by McElvaine. But my relationship with Jesus is the most important thing in my life. Understanding the life and teachings of Jesus is so important to me that I taught myself New Testament Greek and I am absolutely certain that my translation of the nineteen different uses of the genitive case would be superior to that of Dr. McElvaine. I am not interested in a bragging contest here. I simply want to point out that many of the people that McElvaine wants to characterize as misled automatons are actually people who have thoroughly thought out their own positions and relationship with Jesus. We do not need Evangelical leaders to point us to what is right. Nor do we need Dr. McElvaine.
In Grand Theft Jesus, McElvaine sets himself up as the arbiter of what is true Christian behavior and is somehow able to divine the motivation behind the actions of all those that he criticizes. With much trepidation, I will demonstrate a similar arrogance and call into question McElvaine's stated goal in writing this book. It seems to me that if McElvaine really wanted to write a book that would demonstrate the true meaning of living a life that is Christ-like, and that would assist in guiding those of us who have been led into an incorrect understanding of Christianity, then he would have written a rational book that was free of sarcasm and ridicule, such as Red Letter Christians by Tony Campolo, or A New Kind of Conservative by Joel Hunter. In a book that is purported to explain the true teachings of Jesus, McElvaine subjects a number of people to public scorn in a very un-Jesus-like manner. At one point, in an action that I perceive as terribly un-professional, he even subjects a couple of his students to public scorn for what they wrote in their history journals. I suspect that McElvaine's real motivation for writing Grand Theft Jesus is not an effort to re-direct misguided souls so much as it is to make McElvaine look the part of the conquering hero the next time that he and his postmodernist buddies get together in Istanbul. I would be remiss if I did not mention a few points of agreement that I have with McElvaine. I share his disdain of the megachurches that we have seen spring up across the United States. I agree that these large churches tend to promote an easy-believism and an inappropriate emphasis on wealth and prosperity. More importantly, these large churches promote an environment where sound doctrinal teaching is sacrificed for entertainment's sake. As Ravi Zacharias puts it, evangelicals are “seen to be masters in entertainment and minimalists in thought.” So I would tend to agree with McElvaine's criticisms of the mega-evangelists such as Joel Osteen. But I would also point out that Rick Warren's Saddleback Church, one of the largest congregations in the U.S., is somehow exempt from McElvaine's criticism. Indeed, quotes from Rick Warren are used throughout Grand Theft Jesus, and so I am left with the thought that McElvaine's virulent opposition to megachurches is not ubiquitous but is directed only at the megachurches that do not share his view of Christianity. Additionally, I agree with McElvaine's position on the separation of church and state. It is moronic for Tim LaHaye to unilaterally state that Thomas Jefferson was not one of the founding founders simply because Jefferson was not a Christian. Many evangelicals have recently tried to revise history in order to support their view that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, but history does not support these claims and their efforts appear to be disingenuous. The only question that I have for McElvaine is this: How does his moral superiority allow him to continue to teach at a college that is run by the United Methodist Church but is subsidized by the federal government? McElvaine may want to claim that Pell Grants, GI Loans, and Federally Guaranteed Student Loans are not government subsidies, but the Supreme Court disagrees with him. They stated categorically that such programs are government subsidies in finding against Bob Jones University in 1982. I will await news of Dr. McElvaine's resignation from Millsaps. Call me crazy, but if I were to write a book in which I purported to provide direction to misguided souls who need to find the real Christ and the real Christianity, I would attempt to fill that book with direct quotes from Jesus along with a generous supply of anecdotes from His life in order to bolster any point that I was trying to make. But McElvaine did not see the need to actually involve the words or actions of Jesus in his diatribe on Christianity. For example, in a whole chapter on war, entitled “War is Heaven?” and which is twenty-three pages in length, McElvaine quotes Jesus only once and that is in an unintelligible effort to ridicule a Christian organization known as “Global Harvest.” In the same chapter he quotes the atheist, Sam Harris, twice. And that is the major problem with Grand Theft Jesus. McElvaine's attacks on those that he calls the “Xians” are not based upon the body of work of Jesus Christ as we have it in recorded history, but are rather based upon what McElvaine perceives Jesus to be. One of the more unwarranted attacks that McElvaine makes is on Kurt Warner, the quarterback of the St. Louis Rams when they won the 2000 Super Bowl. McElvaine criticizes Warner for telling Today's Pentecostal Evangel that “For him (referring to Jesus) to give me the opportunity to proclaim his name in the biggest setting of sports, it strengthened my faith.” McElvaine states that in proclaiming the name of Jesus, Warner is actually taking “his name in vain.” McElvaine goes on to state that “One would think that Jesus might have more important concerns than who wins football games.” McElvaine does not understand that Christians such as Kurt Warner and myself believe that Jesus is actually involved in every detail of our lives. We believe that we have a High Priest “that was in all points tempted like as we are.” Additionally, we believe that Jesus is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. As a result, we think that He can handle the entreaties of the suffering in Africa while He is simultaneously handling our trivial concerns, and we think that Jesus is interested in what we are doing, whether we are making bus doors or scoring touchdowns. It is rather presumptuous of McElvaine to assume that he knows Warner's motivation for trying to give credit to the work of Jesus in his life and to say that Warner is taking Jesus' name in vain. In his discussion on being born again, McElvaine attempts to make an argument that can only be regarded as being deliberately obtuse in order to obfuscate the issue. On page 222, McElvaine states “The question becomes more complicated and intriguing when we remember that those who say it is necessary to be born again also say that the unborn are without sin: One of the worst things about abortion, they say, is that it is the taking of innocent life.” It is my belief that McElvaine is attempting some chicanery here, but in case he actually is confused about this matter, I will attempt an explanation of his mistake which even his feeble mind might grasp. When those of us who are opposed to the killing of fetuses refer to the innocence of the fetus, we are in no way stating or implying that a fetus is exempt from the doctrine of Original Sin. Most of us do not even think about Original Sin apart from what we may be forced to learn in a Systematic Theology class. When we refer to a fetus as being “innocent,” we are stating that the fetus is not guilty of committing an act for which they should be put to death at the hands of man. On the matter of being born again, McElvaine rejects the idea as being misogynistic. Indeed, McElvaine believes that all of Christianity's problems can be traced to the misogynists who take away the femininity of Jesus. McElvaine sees a misogynist lurking in every man who is not named Robert S. McElvaine. Putting his misogyny paranoia aside, McElvaine attempts to negate the idea of being born again without ever referring to Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus in John 3 which is the source of the Christian doctrine of re-birth. If he is indeed trying to get us to return to real Christ-likeness, why does he not use Jesus' words to discuss his radical belief? On many occasions throughout Grand Theft Jesus, McElvaine displays an astounding inability to do any critical thinking, but perhaps that inability is most evident in his discussion of the incident at Nickel Mines, PA. You will recall that Charles Carl Robert IV entered an Amish schoolhouse there on October 2, 2006 and killed five young girls and seriously injured five others before committing suicide. In the aftermath of the shooting the Amish community in Nickel Mines, dutifully mindful of Christ's mandate to forgive those who have wronged us, immediately focused on forgiving Charles Carl Robert and went so far as to comfort Robert's widow and other members of Robert's family. McElvaine discusses the amazing capacity for forgiveness of the Amish as it related to this horrible incident, and then goes on to state that if George Bush and the people influencing him were Jesus Followers rather than “Jesus Thieves”, we would all be better off, because a true Jesus Follower would have simply forgiven the terrorists that perpetrated the deaths of thousands on September 11 and would have refrained from striking back. We all certainly admire the ability of the Amish to focus on forgiving Charles Carl Robert in the immediate aftermath of his bloody slaughter. The Amish community in Nickel Mines, including many parents and grandparents of the children that were slaughtered, provided an amazing example of the love and forgiveness taught by Jesus Christ. But if Charles Carl Robert had not committed suicide and had been apprehended by police, I doubt that any of the Amish community would have advocated that he be released again into the community and be provided with the opportunity to slaughter again. Their forgiveness did not preclude the administration of justice or the future protection of the community. I am not certain that it is President Bush's duty to forgive the terrorists who perpetrated the attacks of September 11th. It seems to me that the option of forgiveness of the terrorists lies with the actual wives, husbands, children, and parents of the victims of the attacks. Regardless of whether President Bush is to assume the role of Forgiver-in-Chief, I am certain that he has a responsibility to bring to justice those who attack American citizens and he has a responsibility to do everything in his power to prevent future attacks on American citizens. In the unthinking world of McElvaine, Jesus is a fomenter of anarchy. In his confusion, McElvaine has somehow equated forgiveness with the elimination of all justice. McElvaine would have us believe that Jesus wants us to simply forgive those that rape our daughters and to never pursue them to bring them to justice nor to use deadly force in apprehending them. In McElvaine's wonderful world, when a homeless man is beat senseless by a group of teenagers in their sadistic search for entertainment, Jesus requires the homeless man to forgive the teenagers and to not seek compensation for his suffering, nor should society prevent the teenagers from seeking similar entertainment elsewhere. Jesus' commandment to forgive those who have wronged us in no way precludes society from seeking justice nor from protecting it's members from further harm by those who have demonstrated a willingness to do harm. And Jesus' commandment to forgive can in no way be interpreted as a commandment for President Bush to allow Islamo-Fascists to continue to pursue their stated goal of killing American citizens. In his book, McElvaine attacks Ted Haggard no less than fifteen times. You will recall that Haggard is the former pastor of the New Life Church in Colorado Springs and the former president of the National Association of Evangelicals. Haggard resigned from those two positions when it was revealed that he was a regular patron of a male prostitute. I am not a Haggard apologist, and I believe that the hypocrisy that he demonstrated is unacceptable, especially in a church leader. I believe that Haggard has forfeited his right to ever be a church leader again. But Haggard did admit his guilt and he did ask for forgiveness. And yet McElvaine spends large portions of his book attacking Haggard. It seems that McElvaine is perfectly willing to follow Jesus' example of forgiveness for terrorists that fly planes into buildings, but is unwilling to extend that forgiveness to an apologetic hypocrite. Throughout the book, McElvaine's documentation is, at best, suspect. For example, on page 16 of his book he assigns to Pat Robertson the following quote: “The Lord has just blessed him [George W. Bush]. It doesn't matter what he does, good or bad.” Then on the very next page, he re-assigns the quote to Jerry Falwell, saying, “It doesn't matter, because, as Falwell said, it doesn't matter what he does, good or bad; God has blessed him.” This is the kind of sloppy documentation that would have earned a failing grade on any history paper that I may have composed in college. McElvaine is a person who purports to teach college-level history, and who is the chair of a history department, and has the aid of an editor, Lucinda Bartley. When such a person publishes a book in which continuity in documentation is so blatantly lacking, that person marginalizes himself so that all attributed quotes become suspect. Another example of McElvaine's sloppiness is in his re-telling of the history of the Battle of Milvian Bridge. In McElvaine's account of Constantine's vision on the eve of the battle, McElvaine states that “Constantine is said to have seen a vision of a cross with the Greek letters chi and rho, the first two letters of Christos, on it and to have seen or heard the command, “In this sign you shall conquer.” (That chi looks like the letter X is fittingly symbolic of what Constantine was doing to Jesus.) The chi-rho symbol was put on the shields of Constantine's soldiers (most of whom were pagans), and they won the battle. The grateful conqueror first tolerated and then favored Christians, finally converting on his deathbed.” We can put aside the silly, parenthetical, editorial comments that McElvaine makes and focus on the substance of his historical account. Contrary to McElvaine's account, there is no historical evidence of the Greek letters chi and rho ever being placed on the shields of Constantine's soldiers. The accurate historical account provided by Eusebius, Constantine's biographer, is that Constantine's new standard to carry into battle was “A long spear, overlaid with gold, formed the figure of the cross by means of a transverse bar laid over it.” Eusebius goes on to state that “The emperor constantly made use of this sign of salvation as a safeguard against every adverse and hostile power, and commanded that others similar to it should be carried at the head of all his armies.” While there existed some early versions of the story of Constantine's vision in which he saw the letters chi-rho instead of a cross, there is no historical version in which Constantine sees a cross with the letters chi-rho on it as McElvaine states. In fact Eusebius states that Constantine's vision was “the trophy of a cross of light in the heavens, above the sun, and bearing the inscription CONQUER BY THIS.” Additionally, while there may be some question as to whether Constantine converted to Christianity in 312 A.D. at the Battle of Milvian Bridge, there can be no doubt that after the Battle of Chrysopolis in 324 A.D., Constantine was publicly and firmly a Christian. The deathbed conversion of Constantine in McElvaine's account has absolutely no basis in the historical record. If we are to believe McElvaine's fictional account, then we must conclude that the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D. and the resulting original Nicene Creed were instigated by a pagan Constantine. Such a position would be just so much preposterous silliness. McElvaine's discussion on Intelligent Design is so convoluted that I hesitate to attempt to discuss it here. He apparently believes in a Creator who is not Intelligent, or believes that the theory of Intelligent Design is just a sneaky way to get prayer back into public schools, or that the Creator needed Evolution in order to create, or that Intelligent Design somehow negates Eve's womb. I really do not know what his point was in the whole chapter entitled “Unintelligent Design.” McElvaine's manic style of writing apparently requires an intelligence and an ability to concentrate that far exceed what I possess. I would suggest that a writer who truly wished to convert misguided souls to his way of thinking would take great care to ascertain the readability of what he writes. There are a great number of other things written in Grand Theft Jesus with which I take issue, but if I were to argue each one, I would need to write my own book. Hopefully, the points that I have made here will be sufficient to cause readers to critically contemplate anything presented by McElvaine in any of his works. There is the real temptation to simply ignore the writings of McElvaine because his writing is of such a substandard nature. But it would be a mistake for anyone to ignore his writings if they are tasked with affording a tuition at Millsaps College where McElvaine has the freedom to indoctrinate young minds. I will close this article with the story of an English preacher. He was an undersized man with a delicate appearance. He rose at four every morning and retired at ten every night. He read hundreds of volumes while traveling, utilizing a method of dropping the reins onto his horse's neck and holding the books close to his nearsighted eyes with both hands. In his later years, his friends gave him a two-wheeled carriage and he boarded up one side of it and put in bookshelves and a writing board so that he could continue to work while he traveled. He wrote voluminously, publishing 233 original works, and he translated and edited many others. He could read Hebrew, Greek, and Latin and could not only read but preach in German, French, and Italian. When he was 86 years old, he was ashamed to admit that he could no longer preach more than twice a day. In that same 86th year, he preached in every shire in England and Wales and often rode thirty to fifty miles in a day. That preacher's name was John Wesley, and he is one of my personal heroes. Wesley was the founder of the Methodist Church, the church which operates Millsaps College. Robert McElvaine has written a book in which he ridicules many of the doctrines and beliefs that John Wesley held dear. That is ironic, since if it were not for John Wesley, a man that I am sure that McElvaine views with haughty contempt, McElvaine would be unemployed.
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