As a lifetime member of the Church of Christ and Sunday school teacher I drew from the sermons of Jesus and in so doing have had an unfavorable impression of Pharisees. Jesus’ speech recorded in Matthew 23 is probably the most incisive and condemning.

Historians, including Josephus, tell us there were three major sects—Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes. This "generation of vipers" engaged in repeated efforts to trap and discredit Jesus. The criticisms coming from Jesus were not doctrinal but were primarily accusations of hypocrisy.

The Sadducees were a smaller group, religious conservatives, bound to the Pentateuch, somewhat academically elitist and humanistic and more committed to secular history than belief in an afterlife and divine determinism.

In contrast, the Pharisees were students of a broader interpretation of oral law and the Talmud. It was a larger group that attracted ordinary people. The Pharisees amassed a collection of rules and regulations to amplify and expand sectarian control over their adherents. Something that was well-intended became a moral millstone to the pious. They came to equate knowing God with being a member of their group. Membership was more important than knowledge of God and the spirit of the law.

I look back upon the instruction of my youth and see a paradox of emphasis on the letter of the law and a neglect of the spirit of the law. I often say that we not only found delight in being right, but also took some pleasure in believing that those who differed might be wrong. We were not hypocrites as were the Pharisees, but maybe guilty of superficial elitism. I am grateful that with very limited remnants, this arrogance is gone from our brotherhood.

I don’t know when or how it happened, but the torch of intolerance has been passed and has ignited the caldron of religious fervor with frightful images of the early history of the Christian era.

Two conflicting ideas within contemporary Christianity have contributed to these images. Within the fundamentalist and evangelical body of Christians is a fear that Christianity is under attack from government, from secularism, from religious diversity, and from intellectual elitism. There is a counter-fear within the liberal Christian community that an expanded and legalistic sectarian culture has become an internal threat to the image of Christianity. This conflict has found its way into the halls of Congress, into political campaigns, and interpretation of our civil documents of governance. It has found its way into education, academic discourse, school textbooks, and family values. It has ignited a bilateral accusation of blame for the moral and academic decline in America.

On the brighter side, we share a common vision for finding harmony of faith and reason, and a commitment to religious freedom and the philosophical diversity of a democracy.