[Dialogue] what is the right question these days?
KarenBueno at aol.com
KarenBueno at aol.com
Sat Jun 30 11:50:14 PDT 2012
Let's talk. Is it "How are we to live together and preserve this planet
for the future?" ?
In a message dated 6/29/2012 6:07:33 P.M. Mountain Daylight Time,
jfwiegel at yahoo.com writes:
Ah, what is the right question these days? Right questions??
Jim Wiegel
_Jfwiegel at yahoo.com_ (mailto:Jfwiegel at yahoo.com)
“One cannot live in the afternoon of life according to the program of life’
s morning; for what was great in the morning will be of little importance
in the evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have
become a lie.” – Carl Jung
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On Jun 29, 2012, at 0:11, "David Walters" <_walters at alaweb.com_
(mailto:walters at alaweb.com) > wrote:
The problem with gathering Spong describes is just another event where
people come together and talk and talk and always ask the wrong question. The
one thing I learned during my time in the Order was the value of asking the
right question, especially during those hot sweaty summers of the west
side of Chicago.
-David Walters
--- _elliestock at aol.com_ (mailto:elliestock at aol.com) wrote:
From: Ellie Stock <_elliestock at aol.com_ (mailto:elliestock at aol.com) >
To: _dialogue at lists.wedgeblade.net_ (mailto:dialogue at lists.wedgeblade.net)
, _oe at lists.wedgeblade.net_ (mailto:oe at lists.wedgeblade.net)
Subject: [Dialogue] 6/28/12, Spong: My Way into an Interfaith Future
Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2012 16:57:06 -0400 (EDT)
Sent from Chautauqua where Spong is speaking every afternoon.
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My Way into an Interfaith Future
Last week I introduced you, my readers, to an interfaith “think tank” in
which I shared recently at a conference center known as the Chautauqua
Institution in Western New York. Some fifty leaders from among all the major
religious systems of the world gathered there to explore the common ground
that might lead to deeper interfaith cooperation and appreciation. The
goal seemed desirable and all of the participants came with hope and
excitement. The need for interfaith cooperation is apparent all over the world.
Where divergent religious systems confront each other, violence almost
always ensues. One has only to look for documentation at the Jewish-Moslem
conflict in the Middle East, the Hindu-Moslem conflict between Pakistan and
India, the Christian-Islamic violence that cuts across Africa, the
Catholic-Protestant tensions in Ireland or the Sunni-Shia conflict that keeps
Islam divided in the Middle East. One could also look at Christian history to
see the anti-Semitism of the ages, the violence of the Crusades directed
against Islam, or the Thirty Years’ War in Europe that followed the
Reformation as both Protestant Europe and Catholic Europe sought to impose its
faith on the other.
This reality forces us to ask what there is about religion in most of its
forms that makes violence all but inevitable as it appears to be in
religious history. At the Chautauqua conference it did not take long for this
flaw to be revealed. Indeed, it became present and visible in the first
presentation.
This presentation was given by Dr. John Cavadini, a Roman Catholic
Professor of Theology from Notre Dame. The Roman Catholic Church articulates its
claim to supremacy quite overtly. The current pope has reiterated a
position taken by his predecessor that there is but one true religion and that
is Christianity and that there is only one true version of Christianity and
that is the Roman Catholic Church! He went on to warn those Catholics
engaged in ecumenical relations that they should never refer to other Christian
traditions as “sister churches,” since that implies some legitimacy. When
that point of view is publicly articulated there is a genuine
embarrassment in the listening audience. Such an attitude makes any significant
conversation aimed at unity a rather worthless activity. Professor Cavalini
tried at our gathering, unsuccessfully I believe, to navigate these troubled
waters by making a distinction between revealed truth and our understanding
of this truth. The central Christian doctrine of the Incarnation was not
subject to debate, he said, but the way we understand that doctrine is
always unfolding.
Lest the blame for interfaith failure be placed too heavily on Roman
Catholic shoulders, let me hasten to say that almost every religious tradition
makes similar claims to be the exclusive possessor of revealed and “saving”
truth. Protestant fundamentalists assert that the Bible is the literal “
word of God” and those denying that claim are either to be condemned or
subjected to conversion pressure. Protestant evangelicals believe that the
prerequisite for salvation is that one must be “born again” or “accept
Jesus as their personal savior.” Muslims make the Islamic claim that in the
Koran the Word of God was dictated directly to the prophet Muhammad. Within
Islam itself both the Sunnis and the Shia claim that theirs is the only
true expression of that faith tradition. Other sacred writings from the
religions of the East are similarly invested with claims of being vessels
through which the absolute truth of God has come into human possession. These
claims that ultimate truth is the possession of a particular religious
system are what make interfaith conversation all but impossible. The attempt to
be open, to understand or to appreciate another faith perspective is thus
deeply threatening to every religious system.
One of the things that every religious system seeks to do is to offer
religious certainty and for that to be possible that religion must escape the
quicksand of relativity. Relativity, at the same time, is almost always
impossible to escape without falling into religious triumphalism. At the
Chautauqua “think tank” these problems were quickly identified and named. We
could not start without finding a new way into the interfaith issue. As I
thought about this over the next few days I tried to discover that illusive
new path. Let me try to outline it briefly.
The first step in any interfaith process is to be conscious of the fact
that these exclusive claims exist and that we must begin where people are,
not with where we wish they were. No one speaks in a vacuum and no one
listens in a vacuum. We need to listen to each other closely, the same way we
want others to listen to us. Let me then begin this process
autobiographically.
I am a Christian. Any interfaith activity in which I am engaged must
start with that fact. I am not apologetic about this self-identification, nor
am I willing to jettison this definition of myself for the sake of
interfaith unity. The deepest commitment of my life is my commitment to walk the
Christ path as my doorway into the mystery of God. Christianity is of
absolute importance to me. I want to explore its wonders as deeply as I
possibly can. Yet, I do not think that God is a Christian, certainly not in any
creedal way, and that insight opens me up to all kinds of new
possibilities. Christianity, like every other religious system in history is clearly a
human creation that has evolved over the centuries. The virgin birth, for
example, did not enter the Christian tradition until the ninth decade of
the Christian era. It was certainly not a part of primitive Christianity.
Neither Paul nor Mark appears ever to have heard about such an idea. The
ascension was a tenth decade addition. Surely a quick reading of Paul would
reveal that Paul was not a Trinitarian. The doctrines of the Incarnation
and the Holy Trinity were not worked out until the third and fourth
centuries. Doctrines are always attempts to put rational forms onto a
transformative experience. Doctrines, therefore, can never be ultimate, but the
experience that made the development of the doctrine seem proper might well be.
Can we then separate the God experience that we Christians believe we have
met in Jesus from the explanations of that experience which form the
content of our faith tradition? That is a crucial distinction. The Jesus
experience might well offer me a doorway into that which is ultimate, but
Christianity itself cannot be ultimate and it thus cannot be the final revelation
of God. God can never be contained inside any human form or bound by any
human words. This means that neither my understanding of God nor my Church
’s understanding of God can ever be ultimate. This realization does not,
however, invalidate the truth of my experience.
As a Christian, I walk the Christ path. My deepest hope is that if I walk
the Christ path long enough and faithfully enough, I will discover that I
inevitably will transcend the boundaries of my own religion. That reality
thus becomes a religious inevitability. When I articulate the fact that
this is true for me I discover that it also seems to be true for people in
all other religious systems. The Muslim must walk the Islamic path; the
Jews must walk the Jewish path; the Hindus and Buddhists must walk the Hindu
or Buddhist path. All walk with the realization, however, that God is not
a Muslim, a Jew, a Hindu or a Buddhist. All religious systems are designed
by human beings to help its adherents walk into the mystery of an
unbounded God. If any of us walks our own faith path long enough and faithfully
enough, we will discover that our walk carries us beyond the boundaries of
our own religious systems, since God can never be limited by or exhausted
in any thing that is a human creation, whether it be scripture, creeds,
doctrines or dogmas. To say it boldly the God experience may well be ultima
te, but the religious system through which we walk into the God experience
can never be.
The next realization comes when we discover that while we are walking our
separate paths, we are also taking into ourselves the values and the
treasures found in our own tradition. We hold these treasures close to our
hearts; we do not want to lose them. I grasp joyfully the pearl of great
price that Christianity gives me. Then I realize that my brothers and sisters
in Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism are doing exactly the same. They
must embrace the treasures of their religion and cling to the pearl of
great price that they have received from their religious system. So perhaps
the deepest and the common religious call to each of us is not to affirm our
unique creeds so much as it is to explore our faith so deeply that we
each transcend its boundaries and escape fear-laden limits. Then beyond the
boundaries and the limits of the faith system that has nurtured each of us,
but without sacrificing the pearl of great price that our own tradition has
given us, we can turn and face in a new way our brothers and sisters who
have walked a path different from our own. In that setting I can speak to
them and say: “This is the essence of my faith. This is the treasure that
I have received as I walked the Christ path and now I want to share this
treasure with you.” Each of my interfaith pilgrims will in turn do the
same. They will say to me: “This is the essence of Judaism, of Islam, of
Hinduism, of Buddhism. This is the treasure, the pearl of great price that I
have received by walking faithfully and deeply the path of my religion and
I want to share it with you.” We each receive the treasure of the other.
No one has to sacrifice the treasure of the system which has nurtured him
or her. We all become enriched. We no longer have to protect our truth
or play the familiar religious games of supremacy that we have so often
played in the past. No one loses, everyone gains.
The alternative to genuine interfaith cooperation may well be genocide.
While we can assert that there is no relativity in the God experience, there
can also be no triumphalism in the various explanations of that
experience. No religion is therefore ultimate, but God is and God is met on many
paths and our call is to walk our path faithfully. In that realization, the
beauty of an interfaith future is born.
~John Shelby Spong
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Question & Answer
The Rev. Stuart Maywood from Norwood, Mass., and Naples, Florida, writes:
Question:
What is the role or place of Christian Education in Church School? It
seems to me that much of what is taught is watered-down material of
questionable worth. As a former pastor this was always an issue and it is more so
now. It seems to me that we need better educated adults to live fully and
then let the children follow.
Answer:
Dear Stuart,
Thank you for your letter and for sharing your experience. I concur with
your observation. I remember only two things from the years I spent going
to Sunday school and neither of them had anything to do with content. I
remember being slapped by my fourth grade Sunday school teacher for
misbehaving (I have no idea what my offence was) and I remember my fifth grade
teacher who was instructing us on the Ten Commandments and he skipped from
the 6th commandment against killing to the 8th commandment against stealing.
Noticing that he had omitted commandment number 7, I raised my hand and
asked, “Mr. Darrow, why did you skip the commandment about adultery? What
does it mean to commit adultery?” Threatened, my teacher responded with
irritation saying, “You will learn about that when you get older!”
Otherwise Sunday school content did not appear to penetrate my mind. Yet by some
process, I picked up the cultural fundamentalism. I assumed there was a
real ark filled with animals, that the ascension really meant that Jesus
went into the sky of a three-tiered universe and that miracles were simply
part of Jesus’ life. Whether I would have been able to absorb a critical
study of the Bible at that time in my life, I do not know. I only know that
I never was given the opportunity to find out. I agree that most Sunday
school material is of little value, contributing to a view of God, who like
Santa Claus, will someday have to be abandoned because we have grown up.
On the other hand, the most exciting thing I did as a parish priest was to
teach an adult Bible class every Sunday morning for an hour prior to our
service of worship. Adults came in large numbers, sometimes dragging their
children with them for Sunday school. I know that in those classes, I
taught them as if I were teaching in a graduate school attended by adults who
were capable of learning anything I knew. I know they were excited about
the Bible, capable of embracing the controversy and tension of modern
scholarship. And, finally, I know that out of that class each year, I
recruited Sunday school teachers who were eager to pass on to the children the
things that they had learned. That experience convinced me that the key to
Christian education was to teach the adults.
Still good Sunday school material is a help. I have read many Sunday
school curricula – some commercially produced, some denominationally produced
and some inter-denominationally produced. My first rule is to “do no harm,”
by which I mean do not teach anything that you the teacher do not
yourself believe; and my second rule is to teach nothing that the child will
someday have to renounce.
The Center for Progressive Christianity has just begun to produce church
school materials. They have now completed material for children 6-10
years. It is the best I have ever read. It is not religious pabulum, but
offers a critical approach to scripture. I recommend it. If you would like to
learn more about it, email _admin at progressivechristianity.org_
(mailto:admin at progressivechristianity.org) , and they will send you more information
on it. They hope to expand this beginning initiative into a full church
school curriculum in time. That is, however, a difficult and expensive
process. I hope it succeeds.
I trust that this addresses your concerns.
~John Shelby Spong
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: "The great need in the Christian church is for a Sunday school
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The Center for Progressive Christianity has produced just that. Teachers
can now teach children in Sunday school without crossing their fingers. I
endorse it wholeheartedly."
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