I recently attend FBC Columbia, TN and you'll see my entry about the experience here. I wrote the pastor pointing out flaws in his church and sermon and have received no response. So I figured I'd make the letter public since I've received no response in 16 days. Enjoy.
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Dr. Livengood,
My name is Daniel Brown and I am a former member of First Family, a former employee of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee, and a former Christian. I graduated from Belmont, after transferring from Union as a religion major. I worked as a youth minister for four years and preached occasionally while in college. Ultimately, I changed my major to design communication and used my degree to work for the Tennessee Baptist Convention and for the now-defunct Cooperative Program Development Division of the SBC.
Around 2003, I decided to become self-employed and use my free-time to research my faith deeper—delving into the origin of Scriptures in particular. I resurfaced with a rational approach to religion and decided the Scriptures couldn’t be authenticated and the miracles couldn’t be remotely validated. Thus, I denounced the church, Christianity, and Christ and now claim to be a rational, free-thinking, truth-seeking individual. Solid, irrefutable evidence is king. If a philosophical statement cannot be demonstrated as true or false, I suspend judgment. Therefore, the “God exists” claim is meaningless to me. However, I must say I thoroughly enjoy discussing religion with educated Christians.
I decided last week to begin visiting churches again on a regular basis to see if anything has changed in the way the Gospel is presented. Yours was the first church I’ve visited in over seven years.
There were several items that disturbed me about your sermon. First of all, you began with a direct assault on science, philosophy, and education in general. You praised the foolishness of the message of Christ, but did nothing to add a sense of validity to it. I hoped for some sort of paradoxical truth that would tie up the loose end, but nothing was offered. Repeating the mantra that “the message of the Cross is foolish” doesn’t make it a good position. It only reinforces the non-thinking required to be a Christian.
You invited the college-age students to seek you out for advice on how to process new information they receive in school. You made the typical, unlettered, 1970s Christian claim that “they (whoever THEY is) dated this-or-that to be several million years old when it’s only 30 years old” or something along those lines. You cited no source and made a wild, deceptive claim thinking no one would call you out on it. This is disheartening considering your level of education. Scientists use a variety of dating methods to verify each date claim made—Uranium-lead dating, Rubidium-strontium dating, Samrarium-neodymium dating, potassium-argon, argon-argon, fission track, optical, luminescence, thermoluminescence, and many more. A quick Google search would provide you with this info. I am appalled by your complete negligence with this statement.
The church service did nothing to change my perspective on the church and was everything I expected. By the way, only one person spoke to me the entire time and he specifically said he didn’t know if I was a member or a visitor. You might want to work with your people on that.
I apologize if I’m coming off as irritated, but I am growing weary of Christians spreading false information. I expected to hear things I disagreed with, but not outright attacks on critical thinking, science, and rational thought.
I hope you aren’t too put off by my email and I’d love to engage you in further discussion.
Sincerely,
Daniel A. Brown
PO Box 1331
Columbia, TN 38402
der_hammerman@yahoo.com
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