Jane Fonda's Christianity ...

So Jane Fonda's found the light. Or so she says. After having been an agnostic most of her life, she says she's become a Christian. When asked recently about her faith, she replied that she's a "feminist Christian" and still hasn't found a church yet, but that she's looking for one. When asked whether she sees Christianity more broadly than fundamentalists, she replied:

"I don't want to offend anyone. But I believe people have different ways of approaching The Word. For me, it's metaphor, written by people a long time after Christ died. And interpreted by specific groups. I read the gospels that aren't included in the Bible. These make me feel good about calling myself a Christian."

While it's always heartening to see people "come out" as a Christian, it's always a bit dicey as to what extent their new-found faith can break free of the corrupting influences of the secular milieu that has found its way even into Christian circles. This has sorely compromised what the Anglican writer, Harry Blamires, years ago called "The Christian Mind," in a book by that title (The Christian Mind: How Should A Christian Think? [1988]; see also his more recent The Post-Christian Mind: Exposing Its Destructive Agenda [1999]).

Ms. Fonda says she believes there are "different ways of approaching The Word." This already falls into the relativism of historical protestantism, which denies there is no authoritative or correct interpretation of Scripture, and may well be reinforced by the popular relativism that prevails today, which falls victim to what G.K Chesterton called "humility in the wrong place":

[W]hat we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert--himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt--the Divine Reason.... But the new sceptic is so humble that he doubts if he can even learn. (Orthodoxy, from ch. 3, "The Suicide of Thought")

How does Ms. Fonda approach The Word? "For me," she says, "it's metaphor." What does she mean? If something is metaphorical, it means that it isn't to be taken literally. When the movie Barbarella came out in 1968, starring Jane Fonda, guys used to say that she was "hot." They didn't mean that her body temperature was alarmingly elevated. "Hot" was simply a metaphor for the elevated temperatures of their own libidos, which is to say: she looked sexy. What does Ms. Fonda mean by calling The Word "metaphor"? Does she mean that the Incarnation, Resurrection, Ascension, Redemption, and promise of Eternal Life are not to be taken literally?

Ms. Fonda adds that she believes that the Bible was "written by people a long time after Christ died." This is a view commonly held by liberals Christians along with their secular counterparts who don't believe in the supernatural. It's a view that "demythologizes" the Biblical narratives, a view we owe to the influence of the Enlightenment skeptics, who rejected belief in the supernatural, and to their stepchildren, the classic Protestant liberals who re-interpreted Christianity in light of this anti-supernaturalist bias (for a great survey of this tradition, take a look at John O'Neill's excellent book, The Bible's Authority: A Portrait Gallery of Thinkers from Lessing to Bultmann).

Ms. Fonda also says: " I read the gospels that aren't included in the Bible. These make me feel good about calling myself a Christian." Which "gospels" does she mean? She means the Gnostic pseudo-Gospels, like the so-called (pseudo-) Gospel of Thomas, which the notoriously irresponsible Jesus Seminar, whose chief contribution to Biblical studies is its notoriously irresponsible conclusion that virtually none of the words of Jesus recorded in the Gospels were actually spoken by Jesus, has packaged together with the four canonical Gospels (those that are actually part of the New Testament) by the Seminar's notoriously irresponsible founder, Robert W. Funk, in a book presumptuously entitled The Five Gospels: What Did Jesus Really Say? The Search for the AUTHENTIC Words of Jesus.

Now as to why reading the Gnostic pseudo-Gospels makes Ms. Fonda "feel good" about calling herself a Christian, we'll leave for you to guess-- although my own guess would be that she needs prayer.