[Dialogue] 9/07/17, Spong, Wolsey: Where the Rubber Hits the Road; Vosper; Spong revisited
Ellie Stock via Dialogue
dialogue at lists.wedgeblade.net
Thu Sep 7 05:37:54 PDT 2017
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<div style="color: #000000;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><h1 style="color: #003d4a;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 34px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">Where the Rubber Hits the Road</h1>
<h3 class="aolmail_null" style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 26px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">By Rev. Roger Wolsey</h3>
<p><img height="120" style="border: 0px;width: 125px;height: 120px;margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px;float: left;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;line-height: 100%;outline: none;text-decoration: none;text-transform: capitalize;display: inline;" width="125" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/b51b9cf441b059bb232418480/images/358d93b0-ae45-4f25-bf54-51b2ef9d800b.jpg">Progressive Christianity intentionally seeks to evolve and adapt with the times so that the faith can continue to be sensible, relevant, and meaningful in the lives of people. As part of this, we tend to believe that Christianity isn’t the “best,” “only,” “right,” and/or “true,” religion or way that God is at work in the world. We honor that the Divine is fully at work in all of the major world religions – and beyond.</p>
<p>Perhaps a bit like John Wesley before us, a hallmark of progressive Christianity is a liberated freedom to rummage through the theological, ecclesiastical, and liturgical trunks in Grandma’s attic to explore, try out, and weave in the many gems we come across from all across Christian history – including gems that we might find within the very diverse: Roman Catholic trunk, Eastern Orthodox trunk, Coptic trunk, Gnostic trunk, mainline Protestant trunk, Anabaptist trunk, Evangelical trunk, Mysticism trunk, and more.</p>
<p>Moreover, knowing that Christianity doesn’t have a monopoly on spirituality, we are increasingly open to exploring the trunks in the attics in the houses of other world religions and spiritual traditions. I’ve been known to weave in Buddhist parables in sermons that I preach – right along with ones attributed to Jesus. And I sure love the <a style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=b213201316&e=db34daa597">“upaya”</a> concept that speaks of the “many ways and skillful means” that enlightening insight can be shared with people – which I translate to the many ways that God touches us and evokes salvific (healing & wholeness fostering) transformation in our lives.</p>
<p>And yet, I wonder if it might be possible to go “too” far in our explorations, integrations, and appropriations. Let’s wonder together.</p>
<p>Let’s consider the Ship of Theseus – an ancient Greek paradox (koan?). Theseus buys a ship and assembles a crew and heads off across the seas for a long voyage. Along the way, the ship runs into storms and wear and tear, and repairs are made with new materials. In various ports, new sails are hoisted, new planks, new decks, new hull, new rudder, new bow, new stern, new crew members, etc… and, by the time it reaches its destination, every part of that ship has been replaced with new materials. The only thing that remains the same is Theseus– the owner of the ship. Question: Did he arrive to his destination on the same ship on which he began his voyage? Think about it.</p>
<p>Still more. As Thomas Hobbes went on to inquire centuries later, what would happen if the original boards and planks were gathered up after they were replaced, mended, and used to build a different ship. Which ship would be the actual Ship of Theseus? Mind blown.</p>
<p>Okay, let’s apply this to current progressive Christianity. Not a few progressive Christians also practice yoga, vipassana meditation, chant at kirtans, and/or attend rituals on the various solstices. I do several of those things and, along with more conventionally Christian offerings, offer free Yoga taught by a non-Christian, Meditation taught a mindfulness instructor who isn’t Christian, and we hold a gathering for students who identify as spiritual but not religious. Are we still a Christian church/campus ministry? While most of the readers of this newsletter would likely say yes, it is the case that the vast majority of evangelical and more conservative Christians may well disagree.</p>
<p>But what of the person who participates in a progressive Christian congregation on Christmas and Easter, but who mostly reads about <a style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=b694345189&e=db34daa597">non-dualism</a> (based on the Hindu concept of Advaita – the idea that all of the universe is one essential reality, and that all facets and aspects of the universe is ultimately an expression or appearance of that one reality, so there really is no good or bad or right or wrong..), participates in yoga, meditation, kirtans, dharma talks, and/or auspicious astrological rites and rituals? Still a Christian? I suppose one might say that, like art, it’s in the eye of the beholder (or self-identifier). Now, what of those who contend that all progressive Christian pastors would do well to tell their parishioners that they <em>should</em> take part in ayahuasca (a Peruvian mind-altering drug consumed in tea) journeys? What of those who contend that there is no God or that we <em>should</em> embrace seeing ourselves as “post-theist” or “post-Christian?”</p>
<p><a style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=374325c000&e=db34daa597"><img align="right" class="aolmail_alignright aolmail_size-medium aolmail_wp-image-49916" height="150" style="border: 0px;width: 150px;height: 150px;margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;line-height: 100%;outline: none;text-decoration: none;text-transform: capitalize;display: inline;" width="150" src="https://johnshelbyspong.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/roger-wolseys-bike-300x300.jpg"></a>I own several bikes. One is my “Franken-bike.” It’s a sort of bike that is weird assemblage of parts from various bikes. It started out as a mountain bike, but is now part cruiser and part commuter as well. In fact, only the frame and seat stem are original. While fun to ride, it doesn’t ride as well for commuting as a commuter bike, it doesn’t cruise very well as a cruiser, and I certainly wouldn’t take it off road. Come to think of it, I haven’t ridden it much. Frankly, I’m not even sure why I still have it other than for the curiosity/freak factor. One way I do my part to help “keep Boulder weird” I suppose.</p>
<p>Now, for the rubber to the road. The U.S. is facing a time of civil unrest. Statues of Confederate generals are being toppled. The KKK and Nazis are holding rallies promoting white supremacy. Much pushing, shoving, and punching has ensued. A car was driven into a crowd of counter-protestors – injuring many and killing one. This is a matter of life and death.</p>
<p>As a mystic, I’m at a point in life where I don’t have to be a Christian. My connection to the Divine is primary and I do more and more solo connecting. However, I chose to maintain my affiliation with and involvement in Christianity for very specific reasons. Among them, I value its heritage of prophetic speaking truth to power. We have a sense of right and wrong. Good and bad. Holy and Evil. Certain other religions traditions teach that there is no good or bad, or right or wrong, resulting in certain consequences – namely a tendency to moral quietude. An oppressive and unjust <a style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=b2ff304e48&e=db34daa597">caste system</a> comes to mind – where generations of people in certain families are doomed to lives of poverty and squalor.</p>
<p>Let me attempt a logical flow and syllogism. Progressive Christianity is a form of Christianity. Christianity is a religion (not just “a relationship” as the evangelicals wish to say). Christianity is an <a style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=975731cbd0&e=db34daa597">Abrahamic religion</a>. The Abrahamic religions are <a style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=b90f21264c&e=db34daa597">covenantal</a> and involve a sense of right relationship to the Divine, to ourselves, and to others. Progressive Christianity involves concepts of right and wrong, just and unjust. There are <a style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=34d12d15c8&e=db34daa597">progressive Christian understandings</a> of sin and evil.</p>
<p>A case could be made that progressivechristianity.org’s <a style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=33a343f435&e=db34daa597">“8 Points of progressive Christianity”</a> are a bit covenantal. One needn’t subscribe to supernatural theism to be covenantal. Many progressive Christians embrace <a style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=4b7510bb91&e=db34daa597">panentheism</a>, and many are mystics, and as such we tend to sense a both/and concerning Divinity – immanently within, and transcendently beyond, us. An <a style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=a1076d366e&e=db34daa597">“I-thou”</a> still meaningfully applies.</p>
<p>As I’ve contended in other forums, <em>progressive Christianity is the post-modern influenced evolution of historic mainline liberal Christianity</em> – and it is an heir of the <a style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=68eebaf9f5&e=db34daa597">Social Gospel</a> movement. To the extent that my assertion is correct, we’d do well to re-familiarize ourselves with the Social Gospel’s aims to help bring about a world that is more just, with less war, and more health and wholeness for as many people as possible. We pursue those things because they are right and their opposites are wrong. If we find ourselves reading more authors lauding non-dualism, and less of the Bible or Martin Luther King, Jr., we should be concerned (<em>possibly</em> – see p.s.).</p>
<p>Now before anyone accuses me of being a closet conservative or fundamentalist, as a practicing yogi, I’m fully aware that authentic yoga (not the exercise class type) involves the teaching of the yamas and the niyamas – the “dos and the don’ts.” I’m also aware that there is a recent rise in “engaged Buddhism.” I’m glad to see that. However, I’d suggest that this is largely in response to the East’s exposure to the West – e.g., Thomas Merton’s relationship with Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, etc., as well as a felt need of Westerners (including many Jews) who take to Buddhism bringing along a yearning to have it motivate and stimulate work toward justice and needed social change.</p>
<p>I recently participated in a 5 day meditation retreat that was based on non-dualism. Over 70 of us sat for 2 hours three times a day. I was very much blessed by the experience and felt much shift taking place within me. Yet, I felt a gnawing critique about the logical implications of some of what I was hearing. It seemed that the gist was that “there isn’t any good or bad, there’s only physical feelings that we feel and sense in our bodies and we can breathe into them and find that we’re okay, we don’t need to do anything to improve anything, and all is well just as it is.”</p>
<p>This is helpful in certain ways – as it can lead to increased healing, self-compassion and self-love. Where it can fall apart is if I’m sitting on a plane at the gate across the aisle from a dark skinned Muslim man who is making the xenophobic person next to him uncomfortable and then I see the uncomfortable passenger seek to have that Muslim fellow kicked of the plane. And I witness it escalate. If I know how the whole thing started and I just “breathe into my physical sensations knowing that all is well and perfect as it is” and quietly allow that man to be ejected from the plane, I am complicit in that injustice. And it’s not just my familiarity with, and appreciation of, the secular U.S. Constitution and the American legal and political system that convict me.</p>
<p>I believe Jesus and his early followers – and many more recent followers and kindred spirits – call us to not meekly pass by when we see someone beaten up on the side of the road; and to not timidly remain silent in the face of injustice; and to not carry on with life as usual when the powers that be conspire to increase global warming.</p>
<p>Let me say it clearly. <strong>White supremacy is sin. Racism is evil. Murder is wrong. And we are called to confront, challenge, and reduce each of them.</strong></p>
<p>If progressive Christianity becomes so enamored with non-dualist teachings (esp. if being shallow about it and not deep), and with things that are marked deviations from our prophetic, covenantal heritage that it can’t concur with these things or view them as essential, either it’s wrong, or I’m not as much of a progressive Christian as I think I am.</p>
<p>In Christ,</p>
<p>~ Rev. Roger Wolsey</p>
<p><strong>About the Author</strong></p>
<p>Rev. Roger Wolsey is an ordained United Methodist pastor who directs the Wesley Foundation at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and is author of <a style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=28398d64d1&e=db34daa597">Kissing Fish: christianity for people who don’t like christianity</a>; The <a style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=c02d622d04&e=db34daa597">Kissing Fish Facebook</a> page; <a style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=03dd035664&e=db34daa597">Roger’s Blog on Patheos “The Holy Kiss” </a></p>
<p>ps. As a good progressive Christian, I can’t settle for simplistic truth claims or discussions – the expected 900 word blogs don’t allow for much nuance. It is the case that if one really goes deep with the teachings of non-dualism, one can discern compatibility with Christian panentheism and mysticism. In both cases, ones ethics aren’t really driven by a legalistic sense of dos and don’ts, but more from a shared place/knowing/experience of compassion and love.</p>
<p>Jesus is presented as having taught and modeled an ethic of love not of law (“embrace the Shema, love your neighbor as yourself, and do unto others as you’d have them do unto you”). Sure, there were a few times where he radicalized certain laws – but in doing so, he got to the spiritual heart of things. Examples, (paraphrased) “You have heard it said it is wrong to commit adultery, but I tell you that if you even look at someone with lust in your heart you have committed adultery against them…You have heard “an eye for an eye” – but I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, boldly and defiantly turn to them the other cheek toward them. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your underthings as well. If a Roman soldier forces you to go one mile, shame them by going with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you; and, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” (Matthew 5:27-43)</p>
<p>Similarly, in non-dualism, one sees that when people intentionally harm others they do so from a place of ignorance for if they really knew what they were doing, they wouldn’t do that. And, if one is truly engaging in non-dualist meditation, one will come to a place of deep compassion for self and others and hence naturally seek to make choices and act according to what is most loving and compassionate in any moment and that may well mean acting toward what is right and just. And, adding in the Hindu concept of karma, there is no “getting away” with wrong-doing and evil as it will result in people not attaining enlightenment, not being liberated from the cycle of samsara, and being reincarnated into a state that is less that desirable (yet, see again the earlier mention of the unjust caste system – which I contend is rationalization for an unjust systemic oppression). Granted, not all non-dualists are Hindus or believe in karma. The point is, without any sort of overt teaching that there is a right and wrong – and encouragement to do the right and avoid the wrong, it is my opinion and experience that many fellow humans may opt out of getting involved when they see wrong happening. I don’t subscribe to reincarnation. While I may not have a conventional view of the Christian notion of resurrection, that is my paradigm – with a focus on the present. This life is what we have, and we need to do good and act boldly for justice here and now.</p>
<p>Read the essay online <a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=206abae011&e=db34daa597">here</a>.</p>
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<p><span style="font-size:18px">A Reader from the Internet, writes:</span></p>
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Question:</h4>
<p>If you were the moderator of the United Church of Canada with no restrictions... what would the church look like? What do you see as the perfect/ideal United Church of Canada?</p>
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<span style="font-size:20px">Answer: By Gretta Vosper</span></h4>
<p><img align="left" height="154" style="border: 0px;width: 125px;height: 154px;margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;line-height: 100%;outline: none;text-decoration: none;text-transform: capitalize;display: inline;" width="125" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/b51b9cf441b059bb232418480/images/135046a1-fd32-4936-8189-fa82f0a195d1.png">Dear Reader,</p>
<p>Thanks for engaging. My response is, necessarily, tied to my own denomination but I feel that it has something to say to many mainline denominations today.</p>
<p>I don't actually speculate about what I would do were I the moderator! And it is important to note that the moderator doesn't really have the power to shape the United Church. More and more, it seems, as the responsibilities of the church become more complex and centralized, the role relies on the direction set by the General Council and, even more heavily, I believe, on the direction established by General Council Staff in response to the General Council's work. This isn't, of course, the way the work of the church was structurally set up but it is the way it manages to function given the massive scale of responsibility and the dwindling local and regional human resources that support the church's work across the country.</p>
<p>The United Church I knew and loved began its deepening relationship with fear in the few years after the 1988 decision to ordain LGBTQ leaders when it first realized the cold reality of decline. Having lost membership and experienced the serious financial impact of that, it stopped making the bold, sometimes irrational, decisions of its youth and began hedging its bets. That has been at great cost to it, to Canada, and to Christianity the world over.</p>
<p>Were I to find myself in the position of Moderator, I would challenge the church to give up fear and invite it to invert the terrifying charts of decline and find its "mission field", if you will. If you invert the charts of decline, you see a growing group of people - the secular world - who are those the UCC spent its first sixty-three years preparing to serve. Lloyd Geering argues that the secular world is the evolution of Christianity; it's where we were headed all along. If the church had continued to unflinchingly choose love, it would have continued moving in that direction and could have served the needs of those who inhabit that great growing curve.</p>
<p>I have no illusions about where the church is headed; like all Christian denominations, it will either wear itself out or veer back, dramatically, to the right and become, as religion always does, a sedative in the coming trauma of human existence. That sounds bleak. It is. If I were the Moderator, I wouldn't be able to change that but I might be able to find a way to encourage those to whom we have failed to model courage by challenging ourselves to do so. There is much more work needing to be done in the world than shoring up a fearful denomination. If I could encourage the church, those within and those outside of it, to focus fearlessly on that work, then I think we'd lose ourselves in it and forget our fears about denominational preservation. That would be worth it.</p>
<p>~ Rev. Gretta Vosper
Read and share online <a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=c82849b329&e=db34daa597">here</a></p>
<p><strong>About the Author</strong></p>
<p>The Rev. Gretta Vosper is a United Church of Canada minister who is an atheist. Her best selling books include <a style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=5ecb4f3f6c&e=db34daa597"><em>With or Without God: Why The Way We Live is More Important Than What We Believe</em></a>, and <a style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=07ca36148b&e=db34daa597"><em>Amen: What Prayer Can Mean in a World Beyond Belief</em></a>. She has also published three books of poetry and prayers.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">______________________________________</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 26px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;"><strong>Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited</strong></h3>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:18px"><strong>Unmasking the Sources of Christian Anti-Semitism - Part 1</strong></span></p>
<p> </p>
<p><img alt="Spong" class="aolmail_wp-image-49832 aolmail_alignleft" height="128" style="border: 0px;width: 121px;height: 128px;margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px;float: left;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;line-height: 100%;outline: none;text-decoration: none;text-transform: capitalize;display: inline;" width="121" src="https://johnshelbyspong.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Spong-283x300.jpg"><em>"His blood be upon us and upon our children (Mt.27: 25)."</em></p>
<p>The darkest, most disillusioning side of Christianity is revealed in the way that Christians have treated Jews throughout history. Anti-Semitism has been a terrifying prejudice for the Jews to endure. It has also distorted the very essence of the Christian message.</p>
<p>Christianity was born in the womb of Judaism. Jesus was a Jew. The tradition tells us he was circumcised on the eighth day and presented in the temple on the 40th day of his life. The story of his journey to Jerusalem at age 12 has the marks of a bar mitzvah-type ceremony. The gospels refer to Jesus going to the synagogue "as was his custom." The picture drawn of Jesus was that of a devout Jew, deeply engaged in the worship tradition of his people.</p>
<p>The earliest disciples, beginning with the twelve, and expanding rapidly after the Easter experience, were all Jews. They were members of the synagogue, known as 'the Followers of the Way' until expelled around the year C.E.88, when they began to be called Christians. Their faith story was validated time after time with appeals to the Hebrew Scriptures.</p>
<p>Yet something happened that poisoned the relationship between the womb of Judaism in which Christianity was born and the later Christian movement that became dreadfully hate-filled and deeply destructive to the Jews. Through the centuries the primary gifts that Christians have given the Jews have been pain, death, ghettoization and religious persecution that defies imagination. To justify this behavior, Christians quoted the New Testament. The favorite text was from Matthew where the Jewish crowd at the foot of the cross was portrayed as responding to Pilate's plea of innocence by saying, "His blood be upon us and upon our children." No other verse in Holy Scripture has been as responsible for violence and bloodshed as this one.</p>
<p>Biblical anti-Semitism, however, is not limited to this single text. Jews are denigrated time after time in the New Testament. Paul, quoting Isaiah (29:10), referred to the Jews as "those to whom God has given a sluggish spirit, eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear down to this very day (Rom. 11:8)." John's Gospel quotes Jesus as saying that the Jews are "from your father, the devil, and you choose to do your father's desires (8:44)." Whenever the phrase, 'the Jews,' is used in John's Gospel, there is a pejorative undertone. When John tells about the first Easter appearance of the risen Christ, he depicts the disciples hiding behind locked doors, "for fear of the Jews (20:19)." The reason the tomb of Jesus had a detachment of Temple guards placed around it, according to Matthew, was because the Jewish Chief Priests, together with the Pharisees, told Pilate that "this imposter" had predicted that "after three days, I will arise again (27:63)." The list could go on and on. The clear message in the New Testament is that Jews are the dark, sinister characters responsible for the death of Jesus. That definition, emerging from the Bible, has infiltrated 2100 years of Christian history.</p>
<p>Even in this present century, synagogues and Jewish gravesites are still defaced periodically with swastikas or hostile words. A noted American politician in the last decades of the 20th century referred to New York City in a derogatory way as "Hymie Town." A national leader of a Southeastern Asian nation, speaking in the 21st century, referred to the Jews as the source of all the ills in the world. It has not been an easy journey through history for those who have defined themselves as "God's Chosen People."</p>
<p>Midway into the 20th century in Nazi Germany, something Adolph Hitler designated as "the final solution of the Jewish problem" occurred. Beginning with 'Crystal Night' in 1938 and ending only when the Allied Armies overran the concentration camps in 1945, six million Jews perished. This occurred in a modern, well-educated, western, ostensibly Christian nation with little protest from the Church. Indeed Pope Pius XII has been deeply implicated in these crimes, being referred to in one book title as <u>Hitler's Pope</u>. He either actively supported these atrocities, in the worst-case scenario, or simply acquiesced without opposition, as the best possible explanation holds. Either way, Christian anti-Semitism played a huge role in the Holocaust. Protestant Christian leaders inside Germany did not cover themselves with glory either. The Protestant Church accommodated itself to the Nazi agenda far more than anyone would now like to believe. Those who spoke out, like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Niemoeller, were so few that their names are still remembered. Revisionist historians like to suggest that this murderous prejudice was limited just to Germany, but the facts do not support this self-serving conclusion. The governments of Great Britain, Canada and the United States knew what was going on in Nazi Germany but none of them made efforts diplomatically or politically to bring pressure on the German nation to halt this violence. Anti-Semitism was strong enough in each of these nations that politicians were not willing to be perceived as pro-Jewish. Each of these nations also refused to allow persecuted German or Polish Jews to enter their countries as political refugees. These negative responses were manifestations of the underlying hostilities that had marked the relationship between Christians and Jews for two thousand years.</p>
<p>Part of what created Hitler was none other than Martin Luther in the 16th century. The great Church reformer helped to establish both the German nation and its language, yet he had a destructive blind spot about Jews. Jews for Luther were evil by nature, without redeeming value or saving grace. He railed against them, publicly and privately, and his followers acted on the permission their leader had given them to engage in their own deeds of anti-Semitism.</p>
<p>The story does not get brighter as we journey backward into the 14th century. That was the century in which the devastating bubonic plague swept across Europe killing at least one in five adults on the continent. The population of Western Europe was decimated and people even thought the human race might die out. This plague struck 500 years before science discovered that things like germs caused diseases. Mysterious illnesses were explained by the Church as expressions of divine wrath. Something human beings were doing had infuriated God so deeply that God sent the Black Death as the divine scourge. Whatever this evil was it had to be something in which the entire human population shared, for the punishment fell indiscriminately on faithful God-fearing worshipers as well as godless renegades. Given this way of thinking, the religious leaders sought to understand the mind of God so that repentance, prayer and resolve could root out this evil. That was why they asked such questions as: "Why did this happen? What have we done to incur this unprecedented expression of God's anger?"</p>
<p>It was in answer to those questions that two movements developed in Europe. One was called "the Flagellants." These were devout people who, not knowing what they had done to incur the drastic punishment of the plague, decided that if they punished themselves sufficiently and severely enough, God would stop punishing them. They walked through the cities of Europe lashing their bare backs with whips in public acts of contrition. It was self-inflicted violence and obviously masochistic, but the Church Fathers looked upon the Flagellants with favor.</p>
<p>The second response, however, moved beyond self-inflicted pain and became more destructive. Since the plague was area wide, it had to be caused by systemic behavior. At last, as with the flash of insight, the cause was identified and it fitted. Christian Europe had tolerated "infidels" in its midst. If Christians would only begin to purge the infidels from their world, the argument went, then the wrath of God would be withdrawn. It was an emotionally satisfying solution. Latent prejudices could be revived. The anger that is present in every tragedy and death experience could be focused. The enemy could be identified and hatreds could flow freely. Who were these infidels? Why they were the Jews, of course! They must have poisoned the wells, infesting the drinking water. That is why the plague was so rampant and so indiscriminate. It was an interesting shift from blaming God to blaming the Jews. It was also a shift from seeing the plague as God's punishment for tolerating infidels to seeing the cause as Jewish poisoning. However, rationality is frequently a casualty when fear and prejudice are running rampant. So the result of the bubonic plague was the worst outbreak of anti-Semitic horror to embrace the Christian world up until Adolph Hitler. Jews were murdered, beaten, kidnapped, forcibly baptized, robbed of their assets, expelled from their homes and ghettoized. Even those Jews, who had converted to Christianity, were investigated and charged with continuing to observe Jewish rites in the privacy of their homes. They were among the most prominent victims who faced the fires at the stake during the period of history we call the Inquisition. It was one more dark chapter in the continuing saga of anti-Semitism in the Christian Church. The bloodstream of Christian history has been so deeply contaminated by this sickness that periodic epidemics were guaranteed. Why did Christians feel justified in this behavior? It was in obedience to the literal Word of God, they said. The Jews themselves had accepted blame for the death of Jesus and had invited this evil upon their own children.</p>
<p>Next week we will continue to press this analysis backward in time until we arrive at the birth of anti-Semitism. Tragically, we will discover that it is present in the Jesus story from the very moment these stories came to be written. So stay tuned.</p>
<p>~ John Shelby Spong
Originally published April 28, 2004</p>
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<h3 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 26px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:22px"><span style="color:#000000"><strong>A New Message from Bishop John Shelby Spong</strong></span></span></h3>
<p>
Dear Friends:</p>
<p>It has been almost a year since I had a stroke and I would like to reflect on this experience and my future plans.</p>
<p>The date was September 10, 2016. We were in Marquette, MI, a town on Lake Superior on the Upper Peninsula. We arrived on Friday evening because getting to Marquette on the day of the lecture was almost impossible. All that was planned for the evening was dinner with good friends at one of Marquette’s best restaurants. We got to bed at 10 p.m.</p>
<p>The next day, Saturday, was a late-starting day with a lecture at the University of Northern Michigan set for 11 a.m. I got up early and went down to the fitness center in the hotel to get in my normal 4-mile run and then returned to my room. Christine was ready for breakfast so we went immediately. Breakfast was delicious and on our return to our room I showered, shaved and dressed. Then it happened without any warning. I fell to the floor and seemed to be unconscious. Yet, I remained aware in a weird kind of way. I saw my body on the floor. From a spot above the room I had some awareness. I watched the rescue team. They decided to cut off my clerical shirt rather than unbutton it – I protested, but no one heard me! – and the shirt was cut into large pieces and handed to my wife. It was the last clerical shirt that I owned. When it was complete I gave into unconsciousness and remember nothing until I regained consciousness the next day.</p>
<p>I awoke with my right arm and a right leg that would not move. Yet from somewhere I knew that I would be o.k. Chris told that they had cut off my shirt and that she had the pieces. I told her that I knew that. It was a strange feeling.</p>
<p>Two people arrived – I do not know exactly when – but as soon as they could get there. One was my oldest daughter Ellen from Richmond and the other was my step-daughter Rachel, who is a doctor. Their presence gave me great comfort and great joy. I could not walk but with their arms as support I was ready to try. We stayed in Marquette about a week, then taking a medivac plane we flew back to Morristown, N.J. It was a very small plane. There were only four passengers. I was strapped down on a stretcher in the plane with a nurse at my side. Chris rode in the co-pilot’s seat as the fourth passenger. At the Morristown Airport we were greeted with an ambulance that took us to the Rehabilitation Center of Morristown Memorial Hospital on Mt. Kemble Avenue in Morristown. I spent four weeks at this facility where I would learn to walk again. It was followed by six weeks therapy in my home.</p>
<p>Today, almost a year later, I still use my running track and do an hour a day, but now I only walk. I cannot write well, so my column is no longer a possibility. I appreciate that they use my old columns as “a voice from the past” to go with the new voices of those they have raised up. I did complete the book I was writing which was almost ninety percent finished, but it was very difficult and, once again, Christine made it possible. It will come out from HarperCollins on or about January 1st under the title <em>UNBELIEVABLE – Why neither ancient creeds nor the Reformation can give us a living faith today.</em></p>
<p>I have received permission to write two columns on my old site to launch the book. Next spring I will begin to do lectures in “safe places.” They are places that are very important to me. One is my parish church, St. Peter’s in Morristown, N.J., where Janet Broderick is the rector, and where I will give lectures at the adult forum on four Sunday mornings on the “Meaning of Miracles in the Bible.” The second one is noonday preaching for a week during Lent at St. Paul’s Church in Richmond, where Wallace Adams-Riley is the rector. I will examine “Prayer in the Modern World.” Both are topics from the book.</p>
<p>I have two other tentative commitments – a weekend at a retreat center and a five-day lecture series at another location. They will both be on the book.</p>
<p>I expect to accomplish these events, which will be my last public engagements. I thank you for your support, your letters, your messages and your prayers. It has been a rewarding and satisfying career.</p>
<p>~ John Shelby Spong</p>
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