New faith throws out the Ten Commandments

New faith throws out the Ten Commandments

“The Ten Commandments, one of the most negative documents ever written.” With that provocative claim posted high over two city streets, controversial cleric Francis Macnab yesterday launched “a new faith for the 21st century”, a faith beyond orthodox Christianity.

Dr Macnab says Abraham is probably a concoction, Moses was a mass murderer and Jesus Christ just a Jewish peasant who certainly was not God. In fact, there is no God, in the usual sense of an interventionist deity – what we strive for is a presence both within and beyond us.

Dr Macnab, a noted psychotherapist and executive minister at St Michael’s Uniting Church in the city, said the new faith was necessary because the old faith no longer worked.

“The old faith is in large sections unbelievable. We want to make the new faith more believable, realistic and helpful in terms of the way people live,” he said.

St Michael’s is promoting the new faith with a $120,000 campaign over several months, involving newspaper and radio advertising, the internet, banners and billboards. Dr Macnab is being advised by Barry Whalen, who was the media guru for Cardinal George Pell when he was Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne.

According to Dr Macnab, the new faith transcends denominations and religions. It is about searching, not dogma. It seeks the good, the tender and the beautiful, and finds it in Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism, Christianity and Judaism.

“At the Jesus Seminar (a scholarly but sceptical international enterprise examining the statements attributed to Jesus, of which Dr Macnab is a member), we are inclined to think there was a real Jesus but we don’t know much about him. The record has been embellished a great deal along the way. He gives glimpses of something beyond him, and that’s the most powerful aspect of what he was doing.”

Note: to evaluate Mr. Macnab’s views, see these research resources on the Jesus Seminar

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