Britain: Publisher scraps long awaited Christian Encyclopedia for being too critical of Islam

What more can you say about a culture which hates itself?

Source

The story begins in 2006 with a contract signed between George Thomas Kurian, an experienced encyclopedist of high repute, with the eminent English academic publishing house, Wiley-Blackwell to produce a multi-volume “Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization.”

For two years Kurian toiled at this massive task with the help of almost 400 contributors. Over and above the 4,000 entries, covering everything from Bach to Transubstantiation, the reader is introduced, according to the editor’s foreword, to a “panoptic” exploration of theology and history, but also to the influence of Christianity on civilization in all its permutations: Music, law, architecture and so forth.

Rebecca Harkin, Wiley’s religion editor, was delighted with the result of Kurian’s “tremendous undertaking” and said so to him in a rapturous e-mail. The book was scheduled for publication in 2009; early feedback posted on Amazon.com was enthusiastic. With the outlook sunny, Ms. Harkin launched her baby into the world at the November, 2008, annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature and the American Academy of Religion.

Then the proverbial ordure hit the fan. Four (please note: only four of many editors and the aforementioned 400 contributors) of the encyclopedia’s editorial board members wrote a litany of complaints to Harkin and Kurian.

They objected to the “highly negative, even racist characterization of Islam” in the encyclopedia’s introduction. They felt Kurian’s “malignant assumptions” did “nothing to advance scholarly understanding” and demanded Kurian modify his introduction “to remove the offence thrust at Islam and other religions and to moderate the tone of confrontation and polemic.”

Harkin immediately backpedaled from her initial approval to express concern about suddenly “contentious” and “problematic” textual items. And pretty soon, criticism was no longer a question of this or that passage — it had metastasized into disapproval of the whole shebang.

Emboldened, the few saboteurs were, according to Kurian, demanding the encyclopedia be denuded of its Christian content (remember the book’s name, the Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization). They wanted excision of entries such as: “Antichrist,” “Virgin Birth,” “Resurrection” and “Uniqueness of Christ and Christianity.”

hattip: ZIP

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