Claremont Emeritus Professor Proves Everyone Has Kooks

As if the Presbyterian Church in the USA didn't have enough on its plate already, a new book from its publishing company, Westminster/John Knox Press, has added an issue of utter outrageousness.

Specifically, W/JK is releasing a book by David Ray Griffin, a retired professor of theology from Claremont School of Theology, that offers the trenchant, rational allegation that the tragic events of September 11, 2001 were orchestrated by the Bush administration as a pretext for expanding the "demonic" imperial power of the United States.

The book is entitled Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11.

We think that this event illustrates several immutable truths:

• Theologians, this blogger excepted, are generally awful at analyzing contemporary events.
• Publishing houses, even those not owned by for-profit corporations, are willing to publish almost anything that they believe will sell. The truth, to neuter a familiar phrase, be darned.
• Christian publishing houses will publish on any subject as long as the title of the book can somehow be christianized. Christian leftist-conspiracy-theory books can now be added to Christian diet books, Christian how-to-make-a-million-in-real-estate books, Christian romance novels, et cetera ad nauseum.
• The left continues to careen between the incompatible hypotheses that (a) the Republicans are unspeakably stupid; (b) the Republicans are so smart that they can launch massive, undiscovered conspiracies to manipulate events toward their nefarious ends. And of course, only the left is smart enough to perceive both of these realities at once.
• Some Americans are so convinced of the omnipotence of their own government and the invulnerability of their lifestyle that they prefer to believe utterly unsupported and implausible conspiracy hypotheses instead of the obvious truth that terrorists killed a lot of people one day.
• Jacob Neusner never spoke truer words than he did in a debate on William F. Buckley's Firing Line program in the early 1990s. Debating in favor of the proposition "We have nothing to fear from the religious right," the great scholar of rabbinics said to Cornell West, "Look, you have your kooks; we have our kooks. We don't want to trade our kooks for your kooks."