Mr. Crankypants is baaa-ack. Today, he will be ranting about theology. No fluffy lightweight stuff today, campers — theology.

Other UU bloggers have been taking a quiz that purports to tell you which theologian you most resemble. You can find it at http://quizfarm.com/test.php?q_id=44116 — but really, don’t waste your time, the quiz simply ignores all of Mr. Crankypants’s favorite cranky theologians.

First of all, you know a theology quiz is suspect when they use the term “man” instead of “humanity” — that automatically means that they are not considering cranky feminist theologians like Mary Daly, Rosemary Radford Reuther, or Rebecca Parker. (Actually, Rebecca Parker is too nice to be called cranky, but she is righteous.)

But it gets worse. The quiz has lots of talk about “Christ,” but very little about “Jesus” — so you can be pretty sure that you’re not going to be compared to Howard Thurman, who tended to use Jesus’ name, not the title later applied to him. The quiz goes on and on about retribution, with nothing about universal salvation, so you know cranky ol’ Hosea Ballou wasn’t considered. No mention of racism or oppression, so you can forget the cranky theolgians who fight oppression like James Cone, Anthony Pinn, or Gustavo Guttierrez.

Not even anything about the struggle between the secular and the religious, so rule out Harvey Cox (who’s not cranky), or Stanley Hauerwas (who has described himself as “the turd in the punchbowl,” and is definitely cranky).

Before Mr. Crankypants was even done with the quiz, he knew the quizmakers hadn’t even considered any of his favorite theolgians — that they were going to try to say Mr. Crankypants was like some dead male German. Sure enough — they said Mr. Crankypants was a 33% match for Jurgen Moltmann. John Calvin was a close second, and Jonathan Edwards was in there somewhere.

Mr. Crankypants can tolerate Edwards (who, although wrong, was plenty cranky, and could write reasonably well besides). But this was one online quiz that was so badly designed.

Now that you know you can skip the quiz, take that time to go and read some good, cranky, paradigm-shattering theology. But not Moltmann….for gosh’s sakes….

((Moltmann. Moltmann?! Grrr. Bet those idots haven’t even read A Black Theology of Liberation.))