{"id":8283,"date":"2003-12-22T08:55:25","date_gmt":"2003-12-22T08:55:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2003\/12\/absolutely_positively_scariest_letter_of_the_day.html"},"modified":"2003-12-22T08:55:25","modified_gmt":"2003-12-22T08:55:25","slug":"absolutely_positively_scariest_letter_of_the_day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2003\/12\/absolutely_positively_scariest_letter_of_the_day.html","title":{"rendered":"Absolutely, Positively Scariest Letter of the Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>I recently read your review of \u201cThe Da Vinci Code\u201d and I am writing to inform you that I wholeheartedly disagree with your views. Mr. Brown has done a tremendous amount of research into the earliest history of the Christian church, most of which is easily accessible and is considered fact, by both Christians and non-Christians alike. <em>I am a middle school teacher at a Catholic school,<\/em> teaching the Old Testament to children between eleven and twelve years of age and the one problems that I encounter on a daily basis with both my students and more commonly their parents is that they are unaware of the true history of the church. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I was thinking that this must be a joke, but taking in the whole letter, I don&#8217;t think it is. Well, it is a joke, but not the kind I was hoping.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I recently read your review of \u201cThe Da Vinci Code\u201d and I am writing to inform you that I wholeheartedly disagree with your views. Mr. Brown has done a tremendous amount of research into the earliest history of the Christian church, most of which is easily accessible and is considered fact, by both Christians and&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Absolutely, Positively Scariest Letter of the Day - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2003\/12\/absolutely_positively_scariest_letter_of_the_day.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Absolutely, Positively Scariest Letter of the Day - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I recently read your review of \u201cThe Da Vinci Code\u201d and I am writing to inform you that I wholeheartedly disagree with your views. Mr. Brown has done a tremendous amount of research into the earliest history of the Christian church, most of which is easily accessible and is considered fact, by both Christians and&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2003\/12\/absolutely_positively_scariest_letter_of_the_day.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2003-12-22T08:55:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Absolutely, Positively Scariest Letter of the Day - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2003\/12\/absolutely_positively_scariest_letter_of_the_day.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Absolutely, Positively Scariest Letter of the Day - Via Media","og_description":"I recently read your review of \u201cThe Da Vinci Code\u201d and I am writing to inform you that I wholeheartedly disagree with your views. Mr. Brown has done a tremendous amount of research into the earliest history of the Christian church, most of which is easily accessible and is considered fact, by both Christians and&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2003\/12\/absolutely_positively_scariest_letter_of_the_day.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2003-12-22T08:55:25+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2003\/12\/absolutely_positively_scariest_letter_of_the_day.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2003\/12\/absolutely_positively_scariest_letter_of_the_day.html","name":"Absolutely, Positively Scariest Letter of the Day - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2003-12-22T08:55:25+00:00","dateModified":"2003-12-22T08:55:25+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2003\/12\/absolutely_positively_scariest_letter_of_the_day.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2003\/12\/absolutely_positively_scariest_letter_of_the_day.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2003\/12\/absolutely_positively_scariest_letter_of_the_day.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Absolutely, Positively Scariest Letter of the Day"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8283\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}