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The Westar Institute exists to bridge a 200-year-old gap

between biblical scholars and church members.

It does this by assembling scholars, from the top ranks of

professional societies like the Society of Biblical

Literature, who will covenant to share together, in earnest

conclave, their findings on urgent matters of biblical

understanding and interpretation:--to share unequivocally with

each other what they, as of the moment according to their own

scholarship and that of others, believe to be the state of

scholarly opinion on a given point that may influence how

Christians understand the gospel and carry it to the world, and

--to share, as a group (now about 70), with those Christians who

have no other way of knowing, exactly what degree of consensus

exists on any given point of scripture and how it was arrived at.

It does this, further, by also assembling Associate Members

who can and do engage the scholars or Fellows (some are of

course women) directly as to the clarity of proposed

communications and for the purpose of exposing the Fellows

to intelligent and deeply-interested lay and clergy

Christians.

This is a radical approach to communicating scholarship.

For it, Westar has been pilloried by other scholars

(unjustly and quite unscholarly I would say) and by much of

media where the mission is portrayed as scholars hiding

behind secret ballots that are conducted by heirs of P.T.

Barnum. This is also quite unfair and sophomoric of the

media in my view.

The many printed products of Westar, however, are finding

great favor in many churches and among many people who long

ago tired of formal religion. Jesus is proving especially

attractive to people who do not love the church.  How

interesting!  How challenging!

"The Five Gospels" by Robert Funk, Roy Hoover and the Jesus

Seminar, Macmillan, is new and is already going into a

second printing to much acclaim (and also anguished howls

from quarters where simple literal reading of scripture is

deemed sufficient and interpretation is deemed demonic).

POSTSCRIPT     Oct. 18, 1995

I talked this morning with Char Matejovsky, administrator of

the Westar Institute.  [Ordinarily I'd feel I need not

identify Char in any other way, but there are probably those

of you who do not know she is Bob Funk's wife. Properly,

that's only important to them;  but full disclosure does

have its place sometimes, and I'd like to think we who are

interested in Westar are kind of "family."]

Char said Bob Funk's major speech, in Santa Rosa Friday

night, Oct. 27, will hardly pass unnoticed.  It's a rouser:

in answer to "why a Third Quest for the historical Jesus,

seeing the first two convincingly failed?" Bob will project

the significance of what's happening now -- into a future

scenario where Jesus (who, he insists, did NOT found

Christianity) will be freed from the church's creed and

tradition, liberated, I take it, to renew his modeling of

God's Realm.

I'm sure I'm understating and hedging -- the text of Bob's

address has not been released and may not be until after he

has presented it.

But it looks as though the Jesus Seminar, which has gone

through two stages now, will embark on a third -- the

projection into the world of Jesus' faith, freed from the

radical deformation of it that began almost immediately

after his death.

The news will be the Third Phase of the Third Quest, but of

course media will have it that Funk/Westar is throwing out

the whole religion now.

Stay tuned.  Bob Cramer