Let Jennings, ABC Hear from You on Blasphemous 'Jesus and Paul' Special

FOCUS ON THE FAMILY ^ | 04/06/04 | JAMES DOBSON

[chicagolady]

Network has produced another show loaded with liberal theologians and permeated with a sense of unbelief.

Peter Jennings is at it again.

The "ABC World News Tonight" anchor is the driving force behind Monday night's three-hour network special "Jesus and Paul -- the Word and the Witness." Like "The Search for Jesus," a previous ABC special Jennings shepherded, the new show is filled with "expert" analysis from liberal theologians and carries the underlying worldview of unbelief in Scripture and Jesus' divinity.

"Jennings repeatedly refers to 'the Jesus movement' as if it were just another political party or faction," Focus on the Family's Tom Neven writes in his review of the special. "They also pit Paul against Jesus, as if the apostle taught things that contradicted Jesus, and some refer to Paul as 'the founder of Christianity.' "

Dr. James Dobson, founder and chairman of Focus on the Family, has urged listeners to contact Jennings and ABC and express their displeasure with the content of "Jesus and Paul." You can use the contact information below to do just that.

• To call Jennings' office directly, dial 212-456-4027 or call 212-456-4025.

• To call or send an e-mail to ABC, click here.

• You also can express your displeasure to the executives at your local ABC affiliate -- in fact, that might be the most effective way to protest. To find contact information, including phone and fax numbers and an easy-to-use e-mail form, click here and then type your ZIP code into the space provided.

[MEGoody]

"I dont present myself as a theologian; but I do think that folks need to understand the context of the days of the early Christian movement"

If you want the truth about that, you shouldn't go to any Peter Jennings special. He seeks out the less scholarly of the scholars.

[hawkaw]

Like I said before. I respect everyone's beliefs including yours. Maybe JWs, Mormans etc. are not Christians per main stream religions as you believe them but in their organizations (which are God's Chosen Organizations according to them) they believe that they are the only true Christians on the planet. I guess my point is that is what they believe and you have your beliefs. Take care

[bored at work]

Being a Christian going into a secular movie about Christ, I expected nothing less. I found it "historically" correct and pretty interesting. I didn't watch it to strengthen my faith. Any religious commentary spin PJ may have inserted, for me, was dismissed as ignorance.

[pray boy]

To ABC


Why am I not surprised?

Again we parade the "scholars" in front of the TV camera. And again they are scholars with an axe to grind.

Mr. Jennings has a beef with Christians, just like Joseph Goebbels had a beef with the Jews.

"Propaganda has only one object - to conquer the masses. Every means that furthers this aim is good; every means that hinders it is bad."

[Drawsing]

Driving home from work yesterday I was surprised to hear Dr. D. James Kennedy (President of Coral Ridge Ministries)doing an interview with Peter Jennings! Turns out ABC had requested the interview. Kennedy called him to task on the liberal bias of the "theologians" he had chosen for this program and the previous Jesus special he did. Jennings blathered about "different truths for different people" and kept referring to all the times he had lived in the holy lands etc... and about how he was a serious journalist who didn't choose people based on belief or non-belief.

Kennedy was gracious, but didn't pull any punches and said he will critique the program this coming Thursday. He ended by saying a prayer for Jennings after Jennings had hung up the phone. Kennedy also reminded Christians to voice their opinions to ABC, but be kind in their tone.

[aruanan]

Here you go. The part with links intact:

• To call or send an e-mail to ABC, click here.

• You also can express your displeasure to the executives at your local ABC affiliate -- in fact, that might be the most effective way to protest. To find contact information, including phone and fax numbers and an easy-to-use e-mail form, click here and then type your ZIP code into the space provided.

[chicagolady]

Thanks for the great Link!!!!

[Savage Beast]

He seems to appeal to some people. What else could it be?

[agrace]

Spong's Twelve Theses

1. Theism as a way of defining God, is dead. God can no longer be understood with credibility as a Being, supernatural in power, dwelling above the sky and prepared to invade human history periodically to enforce the divine will. So, most theological talk today is meaningless unless we find a new way to speak of God.

2. Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity. So the Christology of the ages is bankrupt.

3. The biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.

4. The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes the divinity of Christ, as traditionally understood, impossible.

5. The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity.

6. The view of the cross as a sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God that must be dismissed.

7. Resurrection is an action of God, who raised Jesus into the meaning of God. It therefore cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history.

8. The story of the ascension assumed a three-tiered universe and is therefore not capable of being translated into the concepts of a post-Copernican space age.

9. There is no external, objective, revealed standard writ in Scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behaviour for all time.

10. Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way.

11. The hope for life after death must be separated for ever from the behaviour-control mentality of reward and punishment. The church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behaviour.

12. All human beings bear God’s image and must be respected for what each person is. Therefore no external description of one’s being, whether based on race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation, can properly be used as the basis for either rejection or discrimination.

Yup, he's a Christian.

[Savage Beast]

I think you're on to something. He's certainly full of it, all right.

[wtc911]

Yep, no way I would spend a second of my time getting Jennings' or ABC's take on Jesus.

[reed_inthe_wind]

I tuned in just as the focus shifted to Paul. I learned that Christianity means anything you want it to. Paul had no concept of dogma, and either should we. Why, it is perfectly right for all Christians to be divided and separated on every topic. After all, what is truth? Gee willikers ABC, thanks for untying my bound hands it feels so good.

[AD from SpringBay]

It's called deconstruction and it's an academic process by which you can make things mean nothing. Since the success of The Passion we'll see even more of this. For example, - how many Law & Order criminals have some stripe of perverted Christianity in them. Or where, as a history lesson, are all the people concerned about violence in our movies? Were they among the casualties caused by the nasty Mel Gibson movie?

[GailA]

Tthe left are pulling out all the hate GOD & JESUS stops along with the hate Bush ones.

Jesus scares the day lights out of them

I didn't watch it...knew if peter jennings had anything to do with it it would be a liberal hit piece.

Tune out, turn off, hit them in their pockets...abc, cbs, nbc, holywierd purveyors of filth and lies.

[freebilly]

My church is undergoing tremendous growth right now. We're a Christ centered church which takes its truth about Christ from Scripture. It must bother then academes, to no end, that most people don't care a rat's bottom for what they think....

[Dave S]

Apparently, to Peter Jennings and the "thinkers" on his show say that Christianity mainly broke from Judaism because of circumcision. Paul was an ugly twit and none of Jesus original followers liked him.

OK I will bite. If it wasnt over the need of non-jews to become circumsized to join the movement, something that for adults in 1st century Israel was a highly risky operation, what did Paul break with James over. Sure some of it was faith verus works but what the Bible says the primary arguments where about circumsision and the necessity to keep all the Jewish dietary and other laws.

[tang-soo]

I watched it in the background while I worked on some material for a Bible study. Just a few things I noticed ...

A claim was made by Pastor Jennings that Paul was greek for the name Saul - huh? never heard that before.

One of the more horrible sections focused on Christ praying in the garden. "They read the passage Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me." and left out the following clause "yet not my will, but yours be done." This implied Christ was only looking for a way out - rather than being obedient to His Father. By the way, I believe it's possible that the cup Christ was praying about was the eventual seperation from His eternal Father and not neccessarily the physical death - but that's another topic.

And of course, the nonsense about the "gospel of thomas". christ the "zen master". Never talks about the diety of Christ or the plan of salvation - yet it gets held up because it has the word "gospel" in its title.

There was one guy who implied the letters by Paul were in err because Paul (as a human) was prone to error. Guess this guy never heard what the word "Inspired" means.

I did notice the only time someone with a conservative bent was portrayed, it was the "god hates f*gs" idiots. That and the silly Pauline parade and the head bounce story (three times) seemed to serve its purpose for the reverend jennings of making Christians look silly.

I thought the music was really distracting and not appropriate at all.