Books Which Didn't Change My Mind

More memories from my days when I was becoming Reformed and working in the Christian Bookstore industry

Books Which Changed My Mind

The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels was the first honest to goodness piece of critical scholarship I ever read—for a student paper at the Simon Greenleaf School of Law. If I recall correctly, it was suggested by John Warwick Montgomery as a recommended book for a student review, which was required for his History of Christianity course. Of course, we did not carry it in our Christian bookstore, but I found it at Walden Books—remember them? I almost felt like I was sinning when buying and then reading it, but then I got my dander up and gave it, let me just say, a less than stellar review. Little did I know it would be the first of many works I would read by critical scholars over the years. D. F. Strauss’s Life of Jesus, Critically Examined, and Ernest Renan’s, Life of Jesus were far and away the worst. Burton Mack’s (of the Jesus Seminar) stuff was pretty bad too.

Pagels argued that the famous discovery at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945, of “lost” and long buried ancient Christian writings revealed a much more diverse set of authentic Christian writings than those included in our Bibles. Her claim is that orthodox Christianity was not so orthodox after all. Those accepted and esteemed biblical texts in our Bibles were more or less the product of political and ecclesiastical power struggles among those who determined which books made it into the canon, and which groups among these diverse Christian communities were to be regarded as orthodox. In Pagels’s estimation, the various Gnostic communities and their teachings were unjustifiably excluded by those with power—bishops with political connections. If the term existed when Pagels’s book was published, these suppression efforts in opposition to the Gnostic texts and groups would be labeled the “deep church.”

This was the first time I was exposed to historical and critical thought, although I’d heard sermons attacking “the liberals” most of my life. Pagels’s book never put fear in my heart because F. F. Bruce’s New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? was near at hand, as was his book on the Canon of Scripture, as well as John Warwick Montgomery’s volumes on the nature of history. I was already well-fortified against the likes of Pagels and left to wonder why Christians were fearful of interacting with such texts. Her agenda and alternate history repeatedly ran afoul of those like the church father Irenaeus, who took these groups head on while he was living and documented their departure from the teaching of Scripture as well as those anti-Christian philosophical sources which provided the soul from which they sprang. This was my first inkling that apologetics would be my first real area of professional interest.

In the end, I wasn’t convinced by Pagels but did manage to fall victim to Dr. Montgomery’s red grading pen. Business majors had much to learn about writing graduate papers in the humanities.

This is not a book I decided to read on my own, although we carried it in our bookstore. I was urged to read it by a salesman, who’s company supplied us with many items typically found in Christian bookstores of the day. The reason for his impassioned request was my unwillingness to carry a line of well-done, large, and expensive framed lithographs featuring Abraham Lincoln kneeling before an open Bible with an American flag in the background. The salesman was certain our store was the perfect place to carry the line—we were located at Knott’s Berry Farm, a well known Orange County, CA, amusement park and rival to nearby Disneyland. Christians from around the world and of all stripes came through our store. That was one great thing about growing up in such an environment.

The salesman was a very nice gentleman, a retired pastor, and someone I had known since my teens. He explained that the Abraham Lincoln Portrait line was perfect for Christians who wanted to honor America’s Christian heritage. He was right, I had no doubt we could sell many of these.

But when I told him “no, sorry, but I am not comfortable carrying the line,” he looked shocked and completely deflated. “Why?” he asked. Although I was still a novice to the Reformed tradition, I had read widely in Civil War history and although I admired Lincoln, I knew that whatever religion Lincoln claimed to possess, it was not evangelical Christianity (later confirmed in sad detail by Allen Guelzo’s Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President). I told him as much (nicely). He was horrified. He headed for our book display and handed me a copy of Light and the Glory, by Peter Marshall. “Have you read this?” he pressed. “Parts of it,” I conceded. “Well, read it before I come back next time. If this doesn’t convince you that America is a Christian nation, nothing will.”

So, I re-read Marshall’s book but became only more convinced that I was not going to carry the Lincoln portraits. Marshall’s take upon America’s history was that God’s providential plan for America was to bring Christianity to the new world (with Columbus and others leading the way), which eventually led to the Puritans establishing their “City Upon a Hill” as the model for future American civilization. The subsequent history of America is blessing whenever God’s law is established and honored, but curse (in the form of some calamitous event) whenever America wandered from its Christian path. America’s founders were faithful Christians (don’t tell Thomas Jefferson) and the American Revolution was as much about religious liberty as it was about taxation without representation and the actions of the heavy-handed George III. Marshall concluded that Christians in America had a sacred duty to reclaim America’s destiny—hence the Lincoln art.

I guess I was steering toward a Reformed two-kingdom view years before I really knew what that was. At the time (and to this day) I am desirous of better things for our country and I do feel the pull on my heart strings from writers like Marshall— “if only . . .” But it was immediately clear to me even then that Marshall’s desire ignores so many realities—from historical, political, and economic factors, to a complete confusion of the mission and purpose of Christ’s church, as well as any sense of how our Christian faith should determine how we as Christian citizens should relate to non-Christians in a very pluralistic republic.

I couldn’t bring myself to embrace the sort of Christian America Peter Marshall championed, or bring its “Lincoln as Christian patriot” art into our store even though I knew it would sell well, and regrettably, would hit our salesman in his commission wallet.

But all of that was yet another good reason to get out of the Christian bookstore business, which I eventually did.