Sewanee and Jon Meacham

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I recently attended Jon Meacham's book signing at the Sewanee bookstore. I had already read an Andrew Jackson bio, but I was interested in seeing what Jon had to say about "old hickory". For some reason, I asked him if he considered himself a conservative (I am still confused about the concept of liberal christians, especially sewanee christians)...the question obviously amused him as he laughed out loud at the thought of it. "No, and I don't think they would want me" was what followed the laugh. Interesting comment.

I didn't completely understand his meaning until this news item came out...and yes, Wheaton College is in my old stomping grounds. You don't get more conservative than Wheaton.

Newsweek Editor Slams Orthodox Pittsburgh Bishop as Fundamentalist
Sewanee Alumnus Decries Heterosexual Marriage

News Analysis

By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
1/4/2009

The editor of NEWSWEEK, Jon Meacham, a favorite son and a graduate of Sewanee: The University of the South and the Episcopal Church's only university, recently revealed a real and personal animus towards Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan and heterosexual marriage.

In the December 15, 2008, issue of his magazine, Meacham wrote, "On the campus of Wheaton College in Illinois, in another of the seemingly endless announcements of splintering and schism in the Episcopal Church, the Rt. Rev. Robert Duncan and other leaders of the conservative forces of reaction to the ecclesiastical and cultural acceptance of homosexuality declared that their opposition to the ordination and the marriage of gays was irrevocably rooted in the Bible-which they regard as the '"final authority and unchangeable standard for Christian faith and life'.

"No matter what one thinks about gay rights-for, against or somewhere in between -this conservative resort to biblical authority is the worst kind of fundamentalism. Given the history of the making of the Scriptures and the millennia of critical attention scholars and others have given to the stories and injunctions that come to us in the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament, to argue that something is so because it is in the Bible is more than intellectually bankrupt-it is unserious, and unworthy of the great Judeo-Christian tradition."

Full story at www.virtueonline.com