First they came for the fire chiefs...

Josh Moody  |  Features  |  Letter from America
Date posted:  1 Feb 2015
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First they came for the fire chiefs...

Kevin Cochran | photo: bilerico.com

The year was off to such a good start.

Finally we said goodbye to Newsweek’s scandalous butchery of the multi-faceted academic debate regarding the historical reliability of the Bible – a reliability that has eminent, respected and authoritative defenders from the late great F.F. Bruce to the esteemed denizens of Tyndale House in Cambridge University. Perhaps the New Year would usher in a season of common sense to Western culture. No such luck.

The unread book

In early January, the fire chief of Atlanta, Georgia, Kelvin Cochran, was fired. ‘Why?’, you ask. Because he had written a book entitled Who Told You That You Were Naked? in which he explained his Christian faith. Now, before I go any further I must admit two things: 1) I have not read the book and 2) I am probably not going to. By all descriptions it is an important book, even though reviews said it is not a literary, or intellectual, masterpiece. I will not read it, not because I do not have the time, or because I do not care for what I am told are its points, but because I want to have the same lack of information as that of the executive director of a group who, reportedly, demanded that ‘frankly the only course of action at this point and time is his (Cochran’s) immediate and permanent dismissal’. A judgment from a man who had not read the book either.

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