Robert Sungenis | |
|---|---|
| Born | c. 1955 (age 69–70) |
| Academic background | |
| Education | George Washington University (BA) Westminster Theological Seminary (MA) |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Religious studies |
| Sub-discipline | Catholic apologetics Young Earth creationism Geocentrism |
Robert A. Sungenis (bornc. 1955)[1] is an American Catholicapologist and advocate of thepseudoscientificbelief that the Earth is the center of the universe.[2] He has made statements aboutJews andJudaism which have been criticized as beingantisemitic, which he denies. Sungenis is a member of theKolbe Center for the Study of Creation, a CatholicYoung Earth creationist group.[3]
Sungenis was brought up in aRoman Catholic household and converted toProtestantism as a young man.[4] He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in religion fromGeorge Washington University in 1979 and a Master of Arts in theology fromWestminster Theological Seminary in 1982.[4][5] He reverted to Roman Catholicism in 1992.[4][6]
In 2006 he received a Ph.D. inreligious studies from the Calamus International University, anunaccredited distance-learning institution incorporated in theRepublic of Vanuatu.[5][7]
After his conversion back to Roman Catholicism, Sungenis became aTraditionalist Catholic. He wroteNot By Faith Alone, a book ofapologetics, explaining his view of theCatholic Church'sdoctrine ofjustification and his critique of theProtestant doctrine of salvation byfaith alone.[1][4][5][8][9]
Sungenis' writings includeantisemitic ideas, sources, and claims about theJews andJudaism[10] and have been criticized by fellow Catholics and by theSouthern Poverty Law Center, as has the publishing company he founded and uses to publish his books, Catholic Apologetics International.[1][9][11][12] In 2002, he said it was a fact that no one had ever proven that 6 million Jews were murdered duringthe Holocaust and that demographic statistics show no real difference in the number of Jews living before and after World War II (seeHistorical Jewish population comparisons). According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, he also "repeated a series of ancientanti-Semitic canards" and later wrote about the involvement of Jews and Israel in a Zionist Satanic conspiracy aimed at Satan ruling the world.[9][12][13]
In 2006 Sungenis campaigned against a sentence in theUnited States Catholic Catechism for Adults (USCCA) which at that time read, "Thus the covenant that God made with the Jewish people through Moses remains eternally valid for them." Sungenis believed it implied that the Jews can be saved without believing in Jesus, and people who read the forum began repeating his complaint to Catholic authorities. In the summer of 2008, theUnited States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) voted to remove the sentence and replace it with a quote from theEpistle to the Romans: "To the Jewish people, whom God first chose to hear his word, belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ". Monsignor Daniel Kutys said that the sentence was not changed because of what Sungenis said, but because of the misunderstanding that Sungenis' blog had generated.[1]
By 2008 his local bishop had instructed him to stop writing about Jews and to remove the name "Catholic" from his blog.[1][14]
In 2014 Sungenis stated that he would no longer write about Jewish issues that are political in nature and that he would remove content about Jews and Judaism, but he still maintained that the Jews as an ethnic group do not have a covenant with God.[10] In 2014, during an interview on theChristian Broadcasting Network about his geocentrism movie, he was asked about people describing him as denying the holocaust and being antisemitic. He said: "I had to make a public statement, and I made two separate statements -- 'I believe in the holocaust (you know), I love the Jewish people, I’m not an anti-semite.'"[15]
According to Sungenis, he became interested ingeocentrism around 2002 after he read the book,Geocentricity by Gerardus D. Bouw. Sungenis became an advocate for the idea by 2006.[5][11][16][17] He believes that the earth does not rotate[5] and has offered $1,000 via his group, Catholic Apologetics International, to anyone who could prove that the Earth moves around the Sun.[5]
By 2011, he was the leader of a small group of conservative Roman Catholics who were advocating for the Roman Catholic Church to go back to the stance it took in condemningGalileo and which viewed theheliocentric model as part of a conspiracy to undermine the authority of the church in society more generally.[18] He self-published a three-volume book calledGalileo Was Wrong[14] and runs a blog calledGalileo Was Wrong in which he promotes these ideas.[19]
In 2014, Sungenis, along with Rick Delano, was an executive producer ofThe Principle, a documentary which advocates for his ideas about geocentrism.[20][17] The movie features interviews withLawrence Krauss,Michio Kaku,Max Tegmark,Julian Barbour, andGeorge F. R. Ellis, and was narrated byKate Mulgrew, and was briefly in the news in 2014 when Mulgrew and the physicists said that the filmmakers did not honestly explain the purpose of their film to them.[17][19][21][22] The release date of the film was October 24, 2014 when it was screened at the Marcus Addison Cinema inAddison, Illinois, according to the distributorRocky Mountain Pictures.[23] As of April 30, 2015 the film had grossed $89,543.[24]
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