COMMENTARY: One PowerPoint Slide Doesn’t Tell the Whole Story

c. 2006 Religion News Service (UNDATED) In a compartmentalized, PowerPoint world, one stand-alone slide would be the autumn Saturday in my junior year at Williams College when I stood beside a bus carrying freshman girls from Skidmore College. As they exited the bus for a mixer, I selected eight attractive girls for the freshmen boys […]

c. 2006 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) In a compartmentalized, PowerPoint world, one stand-alone slide would be the autumn Saturday in my junior year at Williams College when I stood beside a bus carrying freshman girls from Skidmore College. As they exited the bus for a mixer, I selected eight attractive girls for the freshmen boys in my dorm.

Imagine my surprise when, six years later, I moved to Boston and one of my new colleagues said she had been on that Skidmore bus. Being culled like cattle that day had changed her life, she said, making her a radical feminist.


More surprise came when I arrived at seminary and found myself among angry women. At first, I concluded their anger had nothing to do with me. Then gradually _ grudgingly, painfully, confusingly _ slides stopped standing alone, compartments collapsed, and a larger whole came into view.

Another surprising slide show might be the popularity of Dan Brown’s novel “The Da Vinci Code.” Some denounce its scholarship, as if scholarship doubts would quash further interest in it. That academic piety misses the point of other slides, such as fascination with the rest of Jesus’ story, a growing sense that parts of him were distorted or stolen by the early church, and speculation that the Easter Day scene in which the risen Christ and Mary Magdalene meet is more than verification to empower male disciples but was the very encounter Jesus wanted.

Another slide show might be the drama playing out in Durham, N.C., where Duke University lacrosse players are accused of gang-raping a young woman. Lawyers, administrators, townsfolk and other students are working hard to keep the PowerPoint slides separated. Some focus on legal issues, some on DNA (which, according to the players’ attorneys do not link any of those tested to the accuser), some on a district attorney’s political ambitions, some on decency among other Duke students, some on the accuser’s being an exotic dancer, some on preserving Durham’s reputation, some on Duke’s progress since the bad Old South days, some on continued racism, some on evaluating the athletic program and nothing else.

The slides won’t stay separated in tidy parades of bullet points. One turned-over stone leads to another, people’s responses spin out of control, larger issues of privilege and arrogance come into focus, and now an entire system is under scrutiny.

People who make policy prefer a PowerPoint world. Look at how much energy goes into not seeing links between Vietnam and Iraq, not wanting questions about a war’s rationale to cloud today’s approval ratings, not wanting to connect trust issues over Iraq with trust issues on economic policy, government data-gathering and ports management.

Religion’s doctrinal and moral warriors prefer compartments, too. Quote this Bible verse and ignore the rest. Fight furiously over one isolated ethical matter and ignore its larger and less black-and-white context. Come to a definitive conclusion about, say, abortion and then be appalled and bewildered when other people see it differently. Win a vote but lose community.

By such compartmentalization, we eviscerate the very faith we hope to promote.

Consider the recently discovered “Gospel of Judas” and the way it invites reconsideration of the entire Passion narrative. Yes, it is inconvenient to think that Jesus assigned Judas to betray him. Many a doctrine and canned sermon will require rethinking. But that is what happens when you see the whole.


The early church’s effort to reduce the Christ event to a few propositions and then to build an institution on those propositions no longer seems convincing. Too much was left out, and for reasons (like institution-building and male domination) that we no longer accept without question.

MO/JL RNS END

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, consultant and leader of workshops. His book, “Just Wondering, Jesus: 100 Questions People Want to Ask,” was published by Morehouse Publishing. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C. His Web site is http://www.onajourney.org)

Editors: To obtain a photo of Tom Ehrich, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.

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