What a sight Thursday night — Stephens Auditorium packed with smug, self-righteous fundamentalists, boorishly chuckling at Hector Avalos’ reasoned and eminently logical arguments for his position. I was ashamed of them.

Ever since Islamic fundamentalists attacked the Twin Towers, fundamentalist Christians have been loathe to call themselves fundamentalists (the current fashion is to call themselves “non-denominational”), but don’t be fooled — they have more in common with their Muslim counterparts than they might wish to admit.

Fundamentalists believe that their holy book — the Koran for Muslims, the Bible for Christians — is without error, literally the word of God.

In fact, Christians of this ilk often refer to the Bible as, “The Word.”

The prologue to John’s Gospel begins with a description of the eternal nature of the Christ, “In the beginning was the Word.” The Greek term, Logos, can also be translated as “reason” and is the root of our English-language word “logic.”

The prologue further states, “And the Word [Logos] became Flesh, and dwelt among us.” This Logos incarnate is nothing less than the person of Christ himself, according to traditional interpretations down through the centuries. To call the Bible “the Word,” therefore, amounts to nothing less than idolatry.

Idolatry is putting something else before God. To fetishize the Bible as the inerrant “Word,” fundamentalists are calling a book —inspired by God, but written by mortals — by the name reserved by the author of John’s Gospel for Jesus himself, who, according to the Nicene Creed is “One in Being with the Father,” (i.e. the same as God).

I would challenge Christians to emulate the reason (the Logos) of Jesus: critical and free in thought — even if it meant going against the rigid orthodoxy of the fundamentalists of his day, the Pharisees.

Jesus asks us to abandon our sins, not our minds.

Dennis Raverty

Assistant Professor

Art and Design

A correction to this item was printed on Feb 2, 2004:

A headline in the opinion section of the Feb. 9 edition of the Daily inaccurately reflected a letter written by Dennis Raverty, assistant professor of art and design. The headline said “Christians idolize Bible, ignore Jesus,” but the letter referred to fundamentalists, not to Christians in general. The headline was written by a Daily editor, not by the letter’s author. The Daily regrets the error.