[Dialogue] 8/16/18, Progressing Spirit: David Felten: Saving Christianity from Easter; Spong revisited

[Ellie Stock]

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                        <td valign="top" class="aolmail_mcnTextContent" style="padding-top: 0;padding-right: 18px;padding-bottom: 9px;padding-left: 18px;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;word-break: break-word;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">

                            <h1 style="display: block;margin: 0;padding: 0;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 26px;font-style: normal;font-weight: bold;line-height: 125%;letter-spacing: normal;text-align: left;">Saving Christianity from Easter</h1>
 

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><img align="left" height="154" style="border: 0px;float: left;width: 125px;height: 154px;margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px;outline: none;text-decoration: none;-ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic;" width="125" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/b51b9cf441b059bb232418480/images/117a0944-fe1a-42ac-a7d1-ca77e6c7b715.png">Column by Rev. David M. Felten

August 16, 2018</p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">I’ll always remember the day I was kicked out of the Fountain Hills “Ministerial Association.” It was Tuesday of Holy Week and the President of the group (then an ELCA Lutheran, now an LCMC pastor), walked into our staff meeting and informed me that there “wasn’t a part for me” in the upcoming “community” Easter Sunrise service.</p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">I drove over to the then PCUSA Presbyterian church (now ECO) to ask the pastor there (who I wrongly assumed to be sympathetic) what was going on. His response was, “I agree with the rest of the clergy. Frankly, if I believed what you believe, I’d have no reason to get up on Easter morning.”</p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Having voiced my metaphorical take on Easter the previous year, one thing was clear: these purveyors of the conventional Easter story were worried. Why? Because they know that the woo-woo supernatural conventional take on resurrection is wearing thin – and they’re desperate to keep a lid on it. In the case of both of the above pastors, their solution was to distance themselves from me and my heretical ways and then tack to the right to join more fundamentalist denominations, taking their churches with them.</p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">But for those who aren’t willing to join such folks in circling the wagons and going backward theologically, Bishop Spong’s reflections in <a style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #2BAADF;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=5060c30afa&e=db34daa597"><em>Unbelievable</em></a> offer a clear path forward into the future. One of his most concise theses challenges what many conventional Christians consider the last stand of “true” Christians: unwavering faith in Jesus’ literal and physical resurrection. In short, Spong’s alternative is both gratifying and profound in its transcendence of traditional Christianity’s fixation on the literal.</p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><strong>Spiritual NOT Physical</strong></p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Spong, ever the whistle-blower, begins his exposé of the Biblical accounts of resurrection with our earliest “witness,” Paul. Predating the Gospel accounts by close to 20 years, Paul’s mentions of Jesus’ “appearances” are sketchy, at best. The word Paul uses to describe the experience of those encounters, <em>opthe</em> (the Greek root of the English word “ophthalmology”), is clearly used to convey something more than a literal, physical event. Paul’s descriptions don’t describe an empty tomb OR a resuscitated body. Paul’s list of witnesses are folks who’ve had a breakthrough of <em>understanding</em> – an “aha” moment that renews their vision of life and the possibilities attendant to living into the purposes that Jesus expressed in his life and death. Like Genesis’ Joseph or Isaiah’s suffering servant, Jesus chose love instead of revenge. Whatever you’d like to say the historical Jesus’ message was about, it was not about winning. It was about absorbing the world’s hostility, draining people of their anger, and returning it to them as love.</p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Jesus’ life was not an expression of a judging, vengeful vision, but was about manifesting a way of life that wasn’t driven by mere survival. Jesus’ life was grounded in a commitment to freeing people to love beyond their boundaries and their fears – beyond tribe, race, ethnicity, gender. This is the kind of love that enabled him to give his life away.</p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">For those who “got it,” Jesus’ resurrection was shorthand for the transforming realization that Jesus had taken humanity to a new dimension – moving our life’s purpose from self-preservation to a universal interconnectedness – an awareness of the oneness of all things. Those who were “witnesses” to the resurrection had, in effect, “seen the light.”</p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">It shouldn’t surprise us that the gospels then took Paul’s more spiritual concept in a totally different (and literal) direction. Exhibit A can be found in the various endings of Mark. At first, our humble original gospel had absolutely no account of Christ appearing – no physical appearance whatsoever. This “oversight” on Mark’s part so bothered early Christians that they took it upon themselves to add new endings (cf. Mark’s “longer” and “shorter” endings you’ll find in your Bible).</p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Mark’s original Easter story portrays women coming to the tomb and discovering the stone moved and a young man dressed in white announcing, “He is not here!” and “Go tell the Disciples…”. But instead they run off without saying anything to anyone, “for they were afraid.” That’s the original Jesus-free gospel description of Easter – a story that hinges on the message of the white-robed messenger: return home and go about the business of making what you’ve learned from Jesus a reality in your everyday lives. The message to the original readers is akin to: “Look, <em>somebody’s</em> got to do it. All the disciples ran away and can’t be counted on.”</p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">But that wasn’t good enough. As later “appearance” stories were added to the narrative, it’s as though we can see the earliest signs of the literalization of Easter happening right before our eyes.</p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Later, Matthew magnifies the miraculous and, as Bishop Spong suggests, “closes the loopholes” Matthew thinks Mark has left open. The young man in white becomes an angel (with a wardrobe upgrade!) and offers a much more supernatural message: “Jesus has risen from the grave! He goes before you to Galilee.” The women are faithful (not afraid) and do indeed tell the Disciples, to whom Jesus then appears. It is helpful to note that this is the first narrative of a resurrected Jesus being seen by anyone in the whole Bible – and it was written 50+ years after the events described.</p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">For Matthew, the resurrected Jesus is not “physical” but appears and disappears in various encounters, culminating in what’s called “the great commission.” Bishop Spong acknowledges that Jesus’ final words in Matthew are traditionally interpreted as an evangelical charge to go forth and “convert the heathen.” But, as there was no church to convert anyone to at the time, it makes much more sense to hear the great commission as Christ reminding the disciples of just what Jesus demonstrated in his life: “to go beyond your boundaries, your fears, your lines of security: learn to give yourselves away and know that you are part of who I am. We cannot now be separated!” What a difference!</p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Then along comes Luke, upping the ante to TWO angels, an unmistakably physical body for Jesus (eating, drinking, walking, teaching) but still possessing the handy ability to dematerialize into thin air. These alleged physical appearances leverage the need for Luke to pen the story (absent from the other gospels) of what’s come to be called the ascension (a narrative Jack covers in another chapter).</p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Then John, who is not satisfied with just one resurrection story, generates four!

1. Mary Magdalene discovers the empty tomb and goes to fetch Peter and the beloved disciple. While there’s no body, the beloved disciple “believes” (ushering in the idea that “belief without seeing” is the ultimate litmus test.

2. Mary Magdalene lingers at the tomb and has a chat with the gardener, who (surprise!) turns out to be Jesus. As if to say, “Don’t cling to the physical. That’s not what resurrection is about,” the gardener says, “Don’t hold onto me.”

3. Jesus appears to the disciples and they “believe.” Thomas is absent.

4. Cut to eight days later: Jesus again appears to the disciples – including Thomas, who now confesses his belief. Jesus then disses Thomas with, “You get it now? By the way, it will be better in the future if folks believe without having to see me, OK?”</p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">What are we to make of all these disparate and conflicting stories (besides yet more evidence that followers of Jesus have seldom agreed on anything)? Namely, whatever historical events did or didn’t happen, early efforts to describe and document Jesus’ transformation from 1st century rabbi to cosmic god-man tried to recast a subjective awareness into objective fact. Perhaps the gospel writers and early champions of the faith could have made today’s interpretive challenges less complicated if they’d been familiar with the mantra of our #fakenews generation: “You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.”</p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><strong>“What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.”</strong>(i)</p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">In the final analysis, the Biblical evidence of the Easter experience is clearly not about a physical body walking out of a tomb. “It is far more profound than that,” writes Spong. It is about the Divine being seen and lived out in human experience. Paul and the gospel writers do their very best in trying to describe (with 1st century imagery) what is essentially a change of worldview and purpose in people’s minds and hearts. In Bishop Spong’s words, true resurrection happens only when “we live fully, love wastefully, and become all that we are capable of being.”</p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Instead, the history of Christianity is the history of apologists interpreting the resurrection stories grounded in a belief in a supernatural, interventionist, theistic God manipulating history and human lives. We have failed to communicate the deeper, poetic, and metaphorical understanding that one can only truly “see” Jesus “resurrected” when we open our eyes to the reality of the Divine in the midst of everyday life, in expressions of love and courage, compassion and barrier-breaking.</p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Look, Mary Magdalene (in John), the Emmaus disciples (in Luke), and the disciples out fishing (also John) don’t even recognize the “physical” Jesus. Whatever resurrection is, it’s evidently not about a recognizable resuscitated body. Awareness dawns on Mary and the disciples only when Jesus speaks words of compassion and demonstrates his agenda of inclusivity in the breaking of bread. It’s not about believing in a one-off wing-ding event that happened 2000 years ago, but an ongoing and life re-ordering process. We have badly misunderstood Easter and failed to communicate the biblical vision that is so clearly present – and so yearned for in contemporary life.</p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><strong>Saving Christianity from Easter</strong></p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">One might wonder if it’s realistic to think that Christians who are stuck on the literal will ever come around. Maybe, maybe not. But the chances are even less likely if we continue to be coy with people regarding the many and varied interpretations of resurrection within the New Testament itself.</p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Countless members of what Bishop Spong calls the Church Alumni/ae Association have left the church precisely because they have the spiritual and interpretive integrity to want more from these stories than the institutional expectation of suspended disbelief and unquestioning assent to the irrational and supernatural. These alumni/ae have read the text and see the contradictions. They have a gut feeling that there’s got to be something more, but receiving little to no intellectual satisfaction from clergy and other “authorities,” choose to set off in search of a spiritual path that transcends the felt-board simplicity of their childhoods.</p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">This is our challenge going forward: no less than saving Christianity from Easter (at least the Easter that has driven whole generations of thinking Christians out of the church). We always, of course, have the option to join the pastors of the Fountain Hills Ministerial Association in doubling-down on the miraculous and gloating in our über-piety. OR, we can be encouraged by Bishop Spong’s life-affirming, world-changing, vision of resurrection – a challenge to “live fully, love wastefully, and become all that we are capable of being.” It will be risky – especially for clergy. But the only way we can restore resurrection’s credibility in the minds and hearts of 21st century, thinking people is to remove the dead-weight of literalism and to resurrect our theological imaginations. Bishop Spong is calling us to go beyond our boundaries, our fears, our lines of security and give ourselves away – a call that transcends threadbare beliefs and makes resurrection real in the world, here and now.</p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">— Rev. David M. Felten



Click <a target="_blank" style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #2BAADF;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=3eecaf8e7f&e=db34daa597">here</a> to read online and to share your thoughts

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<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">(i) <a target="_blank" style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #2BAADF;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=5a4694d332&e=db34daa597"><img align="center" height="19" style="border: 0px;width: 400px;height: 19px;margin: 0px;outline: none;text-decoration: none;-ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic;" width="400" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/b51b9cf441b059bb232418480/images/4d421716-fb47-44a7-b9e9-5371a8809a97.png"></a>



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<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><strong>About the Author</strong></p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Rev. David M. Felten is a full-time pastor at <a style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #2BAADF;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=76ef221ca6&e=db34daa597">The Fountains</a>, a United Methodist Church in Fountain Hills, Arizona. David and fellow United Methodist Pastor, Jeff Procter-Murphy, are the creators of the DVD-based discussion series for Progressive Christians, “<a style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #2BAADF;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=0670dd6547&e=db34daa597">Living the Questions</a>”.</p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">A co-founder of the <a style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #2BAADF;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=8c9e967fd3&e=db34daa597">Arizona Foundation for Contemporary Theology</a> and also a founding member of <a style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #2BAADF;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=aa95e0d415&e=db34daa597">No Longer Silent: Clergy for Justice</a>, David is an outspoken voice for LGBTQ rights both in the church and in the community at large. David is active in the <a style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #2BAADF;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=b4f808a1da&e=db34daa597">Desert Southwest Conference of the United Methodist Church</a> and tries to stay connected to his roots as a musician. You’ll find him playing saxophones in a variety of settings, including appearances with the <a style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #2BAADF;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=3d97aa42fa&e=db34daa597">Fountain Hills Saxophone Quartet</a>.</p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">David and his wife Laura, an administrator for a large Arizona public school district, live in Phoenix with their three often adorable children.</p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"> </p>

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                            <h1 style="display: block;margin: 0;padding: 0;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 26px;font-style: normal;font-weight: bold;line-height: 125%;letter-spacing: normal;text-align: left;">Question & Answer</h1>

<h3 style="display: block;margin: 0;padding: 0;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 20px;font-style: normal;font-weight: bold;line-height: 125%;letter-spacing: normal;text-align: left;"> </h3>

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<em>What is your take on how obsessed Progressive Christians have gotten about bashing Trump?</em></p>

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<strong><span style="font-size:18px">A: By Eric Alexander</span></strong></h3>
 

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><img height="138" style="border: 0px;width: 125px;height: 138px;margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px;float: left;outline: none;text-decoration: none;-ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic;" width="125" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/b51b9cf441b059bb232418480/images/815c2b92-d861-4a60-8989-61811546374e.jpg"></p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">This is an excellent question Matthew. I understand the need for catharsis, and even some healthy anger to propel change. But one of the things I find very interesting about many non-American spiritual leaders such as the Dalai Llama and the Pope, is that when given the opportunities to bash Trump, they usually never do. They are sometimes asked very direct questions about Trump’s policies on wealth concentration at the top, immigration, gun control, prison reform, consumerism, fossil fuels, healthcare, racism, foreign policy, and the size of the military; and they quickly shift the focus to how to deal with the issues on a broader scale. They have a degree of separation to see that these problems are not just Trump, but rather that they are distinctly tied to American culture no matter which political party is in office. They know that Trump is a symptom and not necessarily the disease.

 

Now, they may prefer a man like Obama versus a man like Trump, but they see that not much actually changes from administration to administration, and they also know that the path to change isn’t through anger, hate, or dejection; but rather through jointly seeking solutions and focusing on what can be done better. And like Jesus did, they spend little to no time bashing any particular leaders by name, but rather they focus on upleveling the populace, which in turn creates systemic improvement from the grass roots. In American culture we have the incredible ability to express those feelings at the polls.

 

In my humble opinion, as a society and global kinhood, we are ready to shift beyond being pawns of self-centered parties and raise the vibe, both in our hearts and at the polls. It is time to focus on larger solutions, such as why are we all at perpetual war? Why are the uber rich sucking up most of the resources. Why is healthcare and education so costly? And why are we still so focused on fossil fuels? This is not something that is going to be solved by the dominant political parties of our day until it grips the hearts of the people who hold the power to vote.

 

In my humble opinion, it is time for progressive Christianity to welcome the wholeness of this political spirituality. That doesn’t mean not to take action or be passionate about the issues, but it means to do the things that are effective for real change of hearts, and that which compels people to make informed decisions at the polls.



Thank you again for your excellent question.</p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">~ Eric Alexander



Click <a target="_blank" style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #2BAADF;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=c9f18e1c10&e=db34daa597">here</a> to read and share online

 </p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><strong>About the Author</strong></p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Eric Alexander is an author, speaker, and entrepreneur. He is a board member at <a style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #2BAADF;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=2b65b1ae9e&e=db34daa597">ProgressiveChristianity.org</a>, and is the founder of <a style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #2BAADF;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=308f135325&e=db34daa597">Jesism</a>, <a style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #2BAADF;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=170f792aa4&e=db34daa597">Christian Evolution</a>, and the <a style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #2BAADF;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=d585e39def&e=db34daa597">Progressive Christianity and Politics</a> group on Facebook. Eric holds a Master of Theology from Saint Leo University and studied negotiations at Harvard Law School, and and is author of <a style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #2BAADF;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=4dc197579e&e=db34daa597"><em>Teaching Kids Life IS Good</em></a>.</p>

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                            <h1 style="text-align: center;display: block;margin: 0;padding: 0;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 26px;font-style: normal;font-weight: bold;line-height: 125%;letter-spacing: normal;">Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited</h1>

<h3 style="text-align: center;display: block;margin: 0;padding: 0;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 20px;font-style: normal;font-weight: bold;line-height: 125%;letter-spacing: normal;">The Virgin in the New Testament</h3>


Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong on December 14, 2005

 
<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><img align="left" height="132" style="border: 0px;width: 125px;height: 132px;margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px;outline: none;text-decoration: none;-ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic;" width="125" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/b51b9cf441b059bb232418480/images/84fbd945-363f-48e0-97f1-129010755fed.jpg"></p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">As the Christmas season arrives, the icon of the Virgin Mary enters the consciousness of the Christian world in a significant way. She is universally recognized with her eyes lowered, the infant Jesus in her arms, and located in a stable. Joseph normally stands guard behind the manger. Sheep and cattle fill in the humble scene. Madonna and child have provided the content for many artists over the centuries. Most of us assume that this portrait is historically true and beyond reasonable doubt and that the Virgin Mother is a force for good, the image of female purity and virtue. Unfortunately, both of those conclusions are highly debatable at best and clear distortions of reality at worst. A look at some biblical facts might be in order.</p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Paul, the first writer of what was destined to be called the New Testament, wrote his epistles between 50 and 64 C.E. An examination of these texts will reveal that Paul knew nothing about a tradition of a miraculous birth or of a virgin mother. He certainly never mentions either. However, an argument from silence is not very strong, so it is essential to note that Paul contradicts such a tradition when he asserts that Jesus was “born of a woman, born under the law (Gal.4: 4).” The Greek word used here for “woman” has no connotation of virgin associated with it at all. His phrase “born under the law” was another way of saying that he was Jewish. Paul does mention that Jesus has a brother named James with whom Paul does not get along very well (Gal. 1:19). James was a force in the Christian movement in Jerusalem against which Paul had to contend. James appears to have achieved this position only because of his physical kinship to Jesus. Before the 8th decade of the Common Era, this is all the Christian movement seems to have known about Jesus’ family of origin.</p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">In the early 70s, the first gospel called Mark made its appearance. There was no birth story in this original gospel either. Jesus rather bursts upon the scene in Mark’s narrative as a full-grown adult being baptized in the Jordan River as part of the John the Baptist movement. Revealing no knowledge of a virgin birth tradition, Mark explains the God presence they find in Jesus by saying that at his baptism, the Holy Spirit was poured out upon him from heaven and the heavenly voice of God acknowledged Jesus as “my beloved son.” That acknowledgment appears to lean on words from Isaiah 42, in which the mythological servant figure, around whom II Isaiah builds his prophetic message, is also referred to by a heavenly voice as God’s son.</p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Mark does introduce Jesus’ family later in his gospel, but it is not a flattering portrait. His mother, as yet unnamed, and his brothers and sisters are portrayed as thinking Jesus is “beside himself” and they go to take him away (Mk 3:21, 31-35). No father is mentioned as part of this family constellation. Jesus rejects their attempt to define him inside their structures by claiming that “whoever does the will of God” is his family (Mark 3:35).</p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Later Mark fleshes out the data on the family of Jesus (see Mark 6:1-6). Here a critic of Jesus from the crowd shouts, “Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary?” Please note that Jesus, not Joseph, is the carpenter in this earliest gospel. Mark has never heard of Joseph. Note also that the designation, “the son of Mary” is the first and only time that the name of Jesus’ mother is mentioned either in Mark or in any Christian written material until the 9th decade when Matthew’s Gospel comes into being. This passage also names the four brothers of Jesus– James, Joses, Simon and Judas, who presumably are Mary’s sons. This passage also states that Jesus had sisters. The word is plural, meaning at least two, but in this patriarchal era when women were not valued, they were also not honored with names. It is clear that by this time, no story of a miraculous birth or a virgin mother had entered the Christian tradition. Therefore, the tradition of a miraculous birth to a virgin mother cannot possibly be a part of the earliest Christian proclamation called the Kerygma.</p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">In the middle years of the 9th decade, Matthew wrote his gospel, basically by expanding Mark’s text, which he clearly had before him, fashioning his work specifically for his more traditional Jewish audience. He is the author who introduces the virgin birth to Christianity. Some five to 10 years after Matthew, Luke writes a gospel in which he also expands Mark’s story but fashions it for his audience, which was made up of Jews dispersed throughout the empire, as well as for a number of people closely associated with the synagogues called ‘gentile proselytes.’ Luke also includes a story about Jesus having a miraculous birth. The two stories are quite different, but few people recognize that because Matthew and Luke have their birth stories blended in Christmas pageants, which are the source of most peoples’ knowledge of Jesus’ birth.</p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Matthew begins his gospel with a list of Jesus’ direct line of ancestry stretching from his father Joseph all the way back to David and Abraham. This is the first biblical mention of the name of Joseph and indeed the first reference to the existence of such a person. After establishing both Jesus’ Jewish and his royal roots through Joseph, Matthew tells the story of the miraculous birth of Jesus, which he bases on Isaiah (7:14). Matthew misreads that text as saying “Behold a virgin shall conceive.” Matthew appears to be unable to read Hebrew, for whenever he quotes the Hebrew Scriptures he quotes a Greek translation. If he had read it in Hebrew, he would have known that this Isaiah text does not have the word “virgin” in it. It is an account of a critical time in Jewish history in the 8th century BCE when Jerusalem was under siege by the armies of the Northern Kingdom and the Syrians. Isaiah states that the birth of a child to a woman (presumably in the royal family) would be a sign from God that Jerusalem would not be destroyed by this attack. The birth of a child some 800 years later would hardly meet that criterion. It is a strange use of a text but Matthew used the Bible strangely on more than one occasion. Most scholars today believe that that text really says “Behold a young woman is with child.” That is hardly the story of a virgin!</p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Matthew goes on to give us the familiar details of a star, magi, gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. These details appear to be based on Isaiah 60, in which kings are said, “to come to the brightness of God’s rising,” bringing gifts of gold and frankincense. Traveling on camels, these kings are also said to have come from Sheba. It is the word Sheba that brought myrrh into the story, since it led expositors to recall the visit of the Queen of Sheba to pay homage to Solomon, another ‘king of the Jews.’ As her tribute she brought truckloads of spices of which myrrh was the most familiar.



Matthew makes Joseph the primary star in his original birth drama. In Matthew it is Joseph who receives the annunciation from the angel in a dream, Joseph who names the child, Joseph who flees with the child to Egypt, Joseph who, when it is safe, returns to Bethlehem and responding to another threat, it is Joseph who moves the family to Nazareth. The Virgin is a minor figure in Matthew’s story. She is portrayed as a ‘fallen woman.’ Joseph debates whether or not to embrace her as his wife until God in a dream assured him of the baby’s sacred origin.</p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Luke refashions the birth story centering it on Mary. In Luke’s narrative it is Mary who receives the angel’s annunciation, and who denies the possibility of being pregnant, “since I know not man.” Mary is then assured by the angel of the child’s divine source. In Luke Mary sings the Magnificat, which is patterned on the song of Hannah at the birth of Samuel. Then the mythological elements begin to appear. In Luke shepherds replace the Magi, since Bethlehem was the home of David, the shepherd king. An angel and a heavenly host replace the star. There are no gifts but the shepherds do journey, as the wise men did, and miraculously find the child. Luke has no flight to Egypt to escape Herod’s wrath but rather in obedience to the Torah, Jesus is circumcised on the 8th day, and presented in the Temple on the 40th day before taking a leisurely journey back to Nazareth. The virgin birth thus entered the Christian tradition somewhere between 82 and 93 CE in two quite distinct forms that are filled with contradictory details. Far from being history, the virgin birth is a mythological interpretation of who Jesus is.</p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">To complete this New Testament survey, the gospel of John (95-100 CE) contains no birth story, miraculous or otherwise. On two occasions, John refers to Jesus simply as the “Son of Joseph.” The mother of Jesus is mentioned in this gospel only twice. In the first Jesus rebukes her at a wedding feast (2:1-11) for trying to press him before his time had come. In the second John has her present at the cross in order to receive Jesus’ commendation of her to the care of the beloved disciple. No other gospel portrays her anywhere near the cross. Mel Gibson will be shocked to discover that! Perhaps he should check his sources more carefully.</p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">That is all there is in the New Testament about the miraculous birth of Jesus and the role of the Virgin Mary. If one takes the birth narratives out of the gospels, Mary all but disappears from the story except for negative references. That usually surprises people who do not recognize that the Virgin they think they know, the Virgin who seems to appear periodically to people in visions, is a product, not of the gospels but of later Christian history. She is the creation of a male-dominated Church, which portrays her in the way males like to fantasize about women: she is a virgin and a mother, sweet, docile and obedient. She has been a weapon used historically to help religion repress real women. To the story of the Virgin myth in history, I will return next week.</p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">~  John Shelby Spong</p>

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The Essence of Compassion</strong></h2>

<div style="text-align: center;"><strong>From the Charter for Compassion</strong></div>

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<span style="font-size:20px"><strong>Goals of the Course</strong></span></h2>

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* Create a personal definition of compassion that is informed by <span style="color:#FFFFFF">...</span>a variety of sources.   </span></h2>

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<span style="font-size:18px">Online Course begins September 9, 2018 - $15



<a target="_blank" style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #2BAADF;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=83b7a8f3b4&e=db34daa597"><strong>Click here for more information ...</strong></a><a target="_blank" style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #2BAADF;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=5760c394d1&e=db34daa597"><strong> </strong></a></span></h2>

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