http://www.theage.com.au/national/new-faith-throws-out-the-ten-commandments-20080915-4h3d.html?page=-1
Barney Zwartz
September 16, 2008 - 3:46PM
- Jesus 'just a Jewish peasant'
- Cleric launches new faith
- Ten Commandments 'too negative'
Dr Macnab says Abraham is probably a concoction, Moses was a
mass murderer and Jesus Christ just a Jewish peasant who certainly
was not God. In fact, there is no God, in the usual sense of an
interventionist deity - what we strive for is a presence both
within and beyond us.
Dr Macnab, a noted psychotherapist and executive minister at
St Michael's
Uniting Church in the city, said the new faith was necessary
because the old faith no longer worked.
"The old faith is in large sections unbelievable. We want to
make the new faith more believable, realistic and helpful in terms
of the way people live," he said.
St Michael's is promoting the new faith with a $120,000 campaign
over several months, involving newspaper and radio advertising, the
internet, banners and billboards. Dr Macnab is being advised by
Barry Whalen, who was the media guru for Cardinal George Pell when
he was Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne.
According to Dr Macnab, the new faith transcends denominations
and religions. It is about searching, not dogma. It seeks the good,
the tender and the beautiful, and finds it in Islam, Buddhism and
Hinduism, Christianity and Judaism.
"At the Jesus Seminar (a scholarly but sceptical international
enterprise examining the statements attributed to Jesus, of which
Dr Macnab is a member), we are inclined to think there was a real
Jesus but we don't know much about him. The record has been
embellished a great deal along the way. He gives glimpses of
something beyond him, and that's the most powerful aspect of what
he was doing."
Dr Macnab said the Ten Commandments were full of what people
could not do, and were given by a patriarchal figure, Moses, who
was a mass murderer. The Bible records that Moses killed 3000
Israelites who worshipped the Golden Calf.
"Allegedly he went up the mountain and came down and said "you
shall not kill', so how come he was such a genocidal man?" Dr
Macnab said.
Until 1900, people believed in heaven above, earth, and hell
below. "We have given up that idea. He's no longer the God up
there, an interventionist God. We can all feel a presence beyond
ourselves and are trying to get in touch with the presence better
than ourselves. It's trying to bring a more humanitarian
understanding."
Dr Macnab has been at St Michael's, where he is minister for
life, since 1971. He did not seek wider approval for the campaign,
and said some in the Uniting Church would resent it, but some would
agree.
This story was found at:
http://www.theage.com.au/national/new-faith-throws-out-the-ten-commandments-20080915-4h3d.html
