The new CT is here! The new CT is here!

I feel a bit like Steve Martin did in 'The Jerk' when the new phone books came in. He saw his name in the phone book for the first time and carried on as though he'd won the lottery.

Well, I'm not that bad but I am rather excited to have a letter published in my favorite magazine, Christianity Today. You may want to read the article I was critiquing (see "The Mary We Never Knew") to appreciate my letter, but here it is:

Scot McKnight's fantasia on Mary paints a portrait of Jesus' mother that's a cross between Che Guevara and Betty Friedan. His eisegesis is breathtaking. My favorite instance: Luke mentions Caesar Augustus' census, therefore the kind doctor is depicting a revolutionary Mary who spits in the face of Rome by carrying the Messiah.

I don't doubt that Mary's Magnificat is an earnest song of joy that includes praise for Israel's long-awaited deliverance. McKnight's interpretation, however, evokes nothing but a bandoliered young woman standing atop an armored vehicle, shaking her fist at the palace gates and daring Herod to come out and face her baby boy.

Marys' response to Gabriel's birth announcement clearly shows that subversion was not her modus operandi; submission to God was.

Reading it anew for the first time in weeks, I was stricken by just how glib and showy my writing can be sometimes. I e-mailed the letters editor to thank them for printing my diatribe. But I also told him I was now embarassed by my attempt at vitriol couched in wit. He said the other editors who agreed with my position loved it and that it was the most concise statement of all the readers who felt likewise.

Yay, me, I guess.

So I read McKnight's article again and found that it still provoked a passionate response from me. Scot's a recent addition to CT's staff and is intended to give the Emerging movement a voice in evangelicals' flagship magazine. I agree with him on many points and some of his explanations of the Emerging trend are worth a listen but his subjectivism really crossed the line with the Mary as Rebel theory. Now I think I might have been rather easy on him.

However...

Qualifying, conciliatory language may not have been as economical when it came to word count but it may have been more loving. And it wouldn't have been ammunition for him when lecturing his college students on how out of touch and mean-spirited the geezers are.