The Presbyterian Moment

In her Anecdotes of Samuel Johnson, Mrs. Thrale reports that (in a situation where politics was irrelevant) a Whig was behaving oddly. The Tory Dr. Johnson remarked, “Is he not a citizen of London, a native of North America, and a Whig? Let him be absurd, I beg of you; when a monkey is too like a man, it shocks one.”

Something like Johnson’s remark must occur often to Presbyterians as they observe the behavior of their national leadership. Just in the last 18 months, the Presbyterian Church has protested the bombing of Libya, filed a court brief in a case seeking to legalize sodomy in Georgia, published a Sunday-school book aimed at Hispanics that features Jesus as an immigrant (the Holy Family fled to Egypt, then returned), and issued a communiqué urging protests against ABC’s mini-series Amerika.

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In her Anecdotes of Samuel Johnson, Mrs. Thrale reports that (in a situation where politics was irrelevant) a Whig was behaving oddly. The Tory Dr. Johnson remarked, “Is he not a citizen of London, a native of North America, and a Whig? Let him be absurd, I beg of you; when a monkey is too like a man, it shocks one.”

Something like Johnson’s remark must occur often to Presbyterians as they observe the behavior of their national leadership. Just in the last 18 months, the Presbyterian Church has protested the bombing of Libya, filed a court brief in a case seeking to legalize sodomy in Georgia, published a Sunday-school book aimed at Hispanics that features Jesus as an immigrant (the Holy Family fled to Egypt, then returned), and issued a communiqué urging protests against ABC’s mini-series Amerika.