ADDED link to alternative YouTube posting without regional restrictions.
The 2019 documentary American Heretics: The Politics of the Gospel focuses on unorthodox Christians in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where TSZ contributor Jonathan Bartlett lives, and in Oklahoma City, where I live. The most prominent of the subjects are two ministers of the United Church of Christ, Robin Meyers (author of Why the Christian Right Is Wrong and Saving Jesus from the Church), and Carlton Pearson (a black protege of Oral Roberts who went on to great success as a televangelist). They both accepted, earlier in life, the orthodox doctrine that the unsaved will suffer eternal damnation, but ultimately repudiated it.
The documentary has gotten favorable reviews in major newspapers, including The New York Times, but I have to say that it is somewhat slow and diffuse. The filmmakers clearly did not capture as much good footage as they needed for a feature-length release. However, the good footage is quite good, and many of you will be interested in what it reveals of religion and politics in the U.S. today. Note that YouTube provides options for increased playback speed and for captioning.
ETA: Thanks to Dazz for locating the YouTube posting above. Note that the documentary is followed by discussion that I have not reviewed. (The posting I originally linked to is not accessible from all regions of the world.)
I watched.
Yes, it was too slow and too long. But, overall, I thought it was a pretty good report.
I rather like the Robin Meyers view of Christianity. It is consistent with my reading of the gospels. I left Christianity because typical American Christianity is not at all like that.
What’s the point of this post at The Skeptical Zone still I hope?
Video unavailable
The uploader has not made this video available in your country.
And me between VPNs (I dumped Surfshark last month as they were no longer reliable in getting into BBC Iplayer). Thinking of trying Express. Good to see you, Tom.
Yikes. I am sorry.
Glad to hear that.
And mine, too. According to Wikipedia, Meyers was influenced by Marcus Borg. So was I.
Not your fault. Copyright exists for a reason. I’d happily pay for BBC service if they offered that opportunity. There’s also the EU rules about privacy and having to get permission to leave cookies which I think is the issue here. Many US sites don’t bother to put in “accept cookies” and just have a banner “not available in your country”.
Does Youtube provide options to skip the bad footage? (other than just prevent seeing the whole thing)
I’m disappointed I don’t have access to the documentary but I have been looking for what I can find on Robin Meyers. From what I can see he talks a lot of sense and if more people thought and acted like he does there would be much less extremism, division and hostility in the world.
So thanks for posting this, Tom.
CharlieM,
I’m glad you got something from it.
ZenMate (Chrome extension) did the trick for me.
Café cortado sorts me! 😉
I do need to choose another VPN. Just googled and got this comparison site. I see Surfshark are downgraded with the exact problem I had with them but Zen come in below. I’ve used Nord before and other people have suggested Express but not heard of Cyberghost.
Excuse derail, Tom. I’ll get there!
Alan Fox,
Well, turns out there’s another YT upload that’s not restricted:
dazz,
Yep, that works. Well done, dazz!
No problem, Alan, hope you’re doing great, as always.
It’s a very inspiring documentary, really enjoyed it.
Thank you very much. I’m annoyed with myself for not having seen that one. I had found an alternative, but there was something very shady about the provider. I’m not sure about the legality of what you’ve found, but I don’t believe that the provider is out to cheat anyone.
A connection to Oral Roberts …
The Engineering and Metaphysics 2012 conference, organized by Jonathan Bartlett, and attended (virtually) by many of the “Usual Suspects” of ID, was cosponsored by Oral Roberts University College of Science and Engineering.