I don’t often ask readers to simply go read something on another blog, but today I am. Hugh Farey has published a letter he received in response to a recent debate on the Shroud — a letter signed “A Reasonable Person.” Many of us can guess who the writer is, and I shall not mention his name.

Note: It looks familiar, like comments I used to receive leading me to ban realseekersministries . . . (Danny Boy, I know you unjustly banned me from your site–he recently wrote) . . . you get the idea.

You can read it here:

Does this man speak for you?

Go read it before you read anything else I have to say about it. It looks familiar, like content I once received as comments leading me to . . . (Danny Boy, I know you unjustly banned me from your site).

I have spent many years on this subject, and I have watched authenticists, skeptics, and the genuinely undecided argue with one another — sometimes sharply, occasionally unfairly, but rarely like this. This letter calls Hugh a “corrupt, crooked, deceitful, disgusting, lying sack of garbage.” It accuses him of being a fake Christian for daring to question a fellow believer. It dismisses the sincerely held views of millions of people — anyone who isn’t Christian, and even plenty of Christians who happen to disagree — as, by definition, unreasonable. This is not argument. It’s not even close to argument.

And it does damage well beyond those involved. It’s a shame — a genuine shame — because this kind of letter reflects badly on everyone who takes Shroud research seriously, whatever conclusion they’ve reached. It’s bad for authenticists, who are real scholars and have real arguments and don’t need this attached to their cause. It’s bad for skeptics, who get painted as the sole source of incivility in this field when the record plainly shows otherwise. And it’s bad for the people in the middle — the ones sincerely trying to work out what’s true — who now have one more reason to conclude that the whole subject attracts more heat than light.

I’ll say plainly what I think needs to happen. The author should rescind this letter and apologize to Hugh Farey, publicly and without qualification. And if he doesn’t, others in the authenticist community who value their own credibility should say so clearly, rather than staying silent or making excuses for him. Silence here isn’t neutral. As Hugh himself noted, quoting the old legal maxim, qui tacet consentire videtur — silence is taken for consent.

I’d go further. Language that declares an entire class of people — non-Christians, or Christians who read the evidence differently — inherently unreasonable simply because of what they believe, isn’t just uncivil. It borders on religious bigotry, and it should be named as such.

Here is the comment I left on Hugh’s site:

Hugh,

Thank you for handling this with more grace than most of us could have managed. Reading Glover’s letter, what struck me wasn’t the anger itself but its shape — it’s the kind of fury that usually comes from somewhere closer to home than the target lets on. People rarely explode like that over a position they hold with quiet confidence. That kind of vehemence tends to show up when a belief someone has built a large part of their identity around starts to feel less solid than they can afford to admit, even to themselves.

I don’t say that to diagnose the man, only to note the pattern. A genuinely settled conviction doesn’t usually need to call its critics “epistemic inferiors” or “satanically induced.” That’s the language of someone defending a position he’s afraid to look at too closely.

Take care, Dan

Read the letter. Decide for yourself whether this is what the Shroud debate should look like — and whether silence, this time, is really the answer.