Good News for Moderns
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Within about fifty years of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ a man known to history as Luke wrote an account of a movement started in Jesus’ name. That account was in two volumes. We know these two volumes as the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts in the New Testament. Within the latter we learn of the Apostle Paul who may not have ever seen Jesus but came to be devoted to him. But Paul came into contention with Jesus’ family and those who were closest to him in life. We learn in the Book of Acts that some members of the early Jesus movement tried to kill Paul. How this came to be is an interesting story and it is relevant two thousand years later because it shows that diversity of beliefs was at the very beginnings of Christianity.
A large amount of diversity can be found in modern Christianity from Pentecostalism, to high church Anglicanism, to the Vatican, to Salt Lake City, to the Watchtower Society, to the Christian Science Monitor, between black and white Americans, between Protestants, Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and within these large bodies. What is less well understood is that the pages of the New Testament, even to the reader untrained in scholarship, reveal a significant amount of diversity in the origin of Christianity. That New Testament diversity properly understood broadens the understanding of what it means to be a Christian. So does the Christian experience in the modern stronghold of Christianity, the United States of America.
Many people may want to be considered as Christians but reject what they understand it may require them to believe. But these people can, if they want, find a place in Christianity - whether or not they decide to go to church in the future. This group may be ready. In one study of American adults who identified themselves as belonging to “no religion,” 9 of 10 also told researchers that they pray. According to a May 2007 Gallup Poll 78% of Americans believe in God and 70% believe in the Devil. Another study showed that “(w)ell over 80 percent “of Americans pray quite regularly. These are numbers that run ahead of the number of people who attend church once a week or almost every week which was reported by Gallup in 2010 to be forty-three percent.
This book is written with great respect for the belief that Jesus of Nazareth was divine and that he died a substitutionary death on behalf of every individual providing those who accept him eternal life. This respect is a foundation for this book even as I argue for a broader understanding of Christianity.
Although the New Testament is quoted in this work extensively, there is no premise that it or the Bible as a whole are somehow without any mistakes or in terms of the modern debate among American Christians, inerrant. This is an important point. The humanity of the Bible as a whole and the New Testament in particular as opposed to the deification of this book allows for an understanding that is crucial for the survival of Christianity: that there is more than one way to be a Christian. Much then turns on the issue of inerrancy for the future of Christianity.
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About the Book
There are many ways to be a Christian.
In Good News for Moderns author Nero James Pruitt shows that within the pages of the New Testament there is room for a diversity of Christianities. This is a diversity that is not talked about often but, when properly understood, expands the perception of what a Christian is.
Consider the words of Justin Martyr the second century Christian writer recognized as a saint by the Catholic Church, the Anglicans and the Eastern Orthodox in about 150 AD: “We are taught that Christ is the first born of God, and we have shown that He is the reason (word) of whom the whole human race partake. And those who live according to reason are Christians, even though they are counted atheists. Such were Socrates and Heraclitus among the Greeks, and those like them....” Consider the words of John Adams the second President of the United States in 1816: “The Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount contain my religion.” Consider the words Bill Clinton the forty-second President of the United States: “In 1955, I had absorbed enough of my church’s teachings to know that I was a sinner and to want Jesus to save me…”
Finally, consider the words of the writer of the small New Testament Book of III John: “Whoever does good is from God...”
Good News for Moderns is based on Pruitt’s reading of the scriptures and over one hundred authors of various points of view. In our busy time it is brief – slightly more than one hundred thousand words supplemented by slightly less than one hundred thousand words of end-notes. It recognizes that human life moves by fast in what seems like an infinity of time and space and the book closes this way: “By listing many who have come before us and the immensity of time and space I have underscored the brevity of our lives because as a Psalmist taught, recognizing our own mortality is the path to wisdom.”
About the Author
Nero James Pruitt is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and Michigan State University. He lives in the San Francisco Bay area, where he works in the field of labor relations. He has published articles on labor history and diversity.