Pulitzer Prize–winning author and Episcopalian denies basic Christian tenet
by David Virtue, Virtueonline:
In his new book “Hope of Glory: Reflections on the Last Words of Jesus from the Cross”, Jon Meacham, a renowned Episcopal layman and scholar of American history writes; “I am in no sense an evangelical, for I do not share the view that faith in Jesus is the only route to salvation, nor am I determined to convert others to my point of view. It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god,” Thomas Jefferson remarked. “It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
Meacham cited the Roman writer Symmachus, arguing against Christians who wanted to remove an altar to the pagan deity Victory, saying, “We cannot attain to so great a mystery by one way: I agree.”
“I adhere to the broad outlines of the Christian faith as it has come down through the Anglican tradition,” he writes in his book. It apparently does not include Article 18 of the 39 Articles of Religion which reads, “Of Obtaining Eternal Salvation Only by the Name of Christ.”
Meacham has taught history at Sewanee: The University of the South, the Episcopal Church’s only university, a progressive institution which claims its influences are from the evangelical, the high church and the broad church traditions of Anglican theology and worship.
This is not Meacham’s first run in with orthodox Christianity. In 2009, he slammed the then Bishop of Pittsburgh, Robert Duncan over heterosexual marriage, accusing the bishop of fundamentalism.
Meacham was editor of NEWSWEEK at the time, a favorite son and a graduate of Sewanee. He revealed a real and personal animus towards the Pittsburgh bishop.
When Duncan and other leaders of the conservative forces reacted negatively to the ecclesiastical and cultural acceptance of homosexuality and declared their opposition to the ordination and the marriage of homosexuals was irrevocably rooted in the Bible-which they regard as the ‘final authority and unchangeable standard for Christian faith and life’, Meacham slammed Duncan, calling it the “worst kind of fundamentalism.”
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