View this email in your browser

Refiguring the Birth of Christ

Column by Toni Reynolds on July 5, 2018

Part of the struggle for 21^st century Christians is that we have inherited a tradition formed many lifetimes ago, a key component being the virgin birth of the Christ. This tradition has been handed to us with little to no permission to rework the interpretations for ourselves. I am eager to follow Bishop Spong?s lead in doing so before more time passes by. The leaders of the past fit the Jesus story into the scope of vision respective to their eras and cultures, giving us the creeds and doctrines while prohibiting us from doing the same shaping for our own present time. We need not continue with this prohibition if we aim to bring our most authentic selves to the timeline of Christianity. To me, there is no question whether or not Christianity is capable of being relevant in this century. From kernel to husk of the tradition there is something with which we can work to better understand God, ourselves, and our relationship to all things God has made. What I worry about is whether or not the churches that currently house Christianity are willing to let the tradition live in ways that it wants to, leaving it free to metabolize in each new millennium so that the people learn to be good to one another in ways that make sense to their changing needs. Clearly, Christians want to do this work. You reading essays like this one is a small testament to that. The fan base Spong amassed throughout his career is an even larger testament. So, our enterprise is to free ourselves of the ruling old school mindset that claims we have no right to understand these stories for ourselves. For Christianity to grow into our 21^st century lives we must take seriously our right to understand these stories and concepts for ourselves. We have no choice but to embody an understanding of the Jesus story that empowers us to recognize our generation of Christians as fundamental in the lineage of this tradition. An assignment within this enterprise is to be about the business of truth seeking and adapting it for now. To find ways to encourage developing pastors to reject the acquired myth that ?your congregation won?t be ready for the truth about the Bible.? We must share resources and knowledge, wisdom and practices. We must live our lives in ways that reflect our priorities in all situations of life. In each gospel, creed, and doctrine existent in Protestant traditions is something of a time capsule for us to better understand the theological and political convictions of our faith ancestors. Whatever happened in those nine decades separating Mark from Matthew necessitated a deeper understanding of how/why Jesus?s birth was significant. Perhaps this is part of why this birth story goes from absent to colorfully present. It is worth questioning if the virgin birth accounts were some attempt to acknowledge the impressive role of Jesus?s mother in his life and ministry. As Spong notes, Mark takes care to name that Jesus?s mother was one who went to retrieve him as others were calling him crazy for his witness (p. 106). With implicit and explicit emphasis on Jesus?s maternal line we acknowledge the importance of honoring Mary in some significant way. What modern understandings of genetics has done is explained a process with images and details that leaves us thinking we know full well how a human being comes to exist in the stomach of another human being. Just because we can explain the process doesn?t mean the process is devoid of miraculousness; it?s just a different type of miraculous than the virgin birth attempted to capture. Perhaps more exciting is that it is a miraculous process that each of us has experienced. We share an intimate experience with Christ by having first arrived in the womb of another person. I defend the extraordinary nature of human conception and birth because birthing is an incredible symbol for the act of creating. I believe we are each called to create as a way of making offerings to the world and the Creator. Birthing is a symbol I believe has the power to preserve the gospel writers? hope that the followers of Jesus would take their ability to create seriously. Jesus?s birth and life is miraculous to us for different reasons than it was miraculous to the authors of Matthew and Luke. He was born into and killed by a ruthless empire. These facts are not disputable. We know that Rome was good at violent conquest and brutal crowd control, from physical to psychological forms of cruelty. Yet Jesus maintained his sense of purpose and his commitment to compassionate action despite the temptations of a violent culture. Mary begat Jesus and Jesus begat a ministry and legacy that prompted generations of compassionate care for one another and creation. This is our heritage. Creating is an act that is available to each of us. No exceptions. To matter in our present context, our understanding of the birth of Christ must fuel us as we resist the ills of our world today. A new interpretation of the virgin birth must focus on creating with clarity of heart and certainty of mind. After a day of personal challenges, in a week of stressful headlines in the news, through a year of ever-increasing crimes against humanity our understanding of Christ?s arrival to this world must fuel us in the direction of compassion. Regardless. Like Mary and Jesus we are called to birth loving acts in our own day and age. I propose that a contemporary version of Christ?s conception and birth be more explicitly linked to our call to co-create Holy works for the benefit of all beings. To do so in times that are resistant to Goodness will better align us with the priorities of Jesus. Through our words, thoughts, projects, prayers, relationships, memory making and future visioning we ought to be consulting the Holy Spirit as a creative partner in our lives. Never creating in isolation, forever creating so that all might experience the fullness of life on earth. There are many ways to reinterpret the virgin birth of the Christ child. To my estimation, the only crucial component that ought to exist in each is that Christians be motivated to live as a radical creator of compassion and justice. Ready to offer healing to a social enemy as Jesus does to the Syrophoenician woman, and equally ready to flip a table where injustice has become the new norm. A crucial hope of the birth of Christ narratives is that each reader be inspired to birth radical acts of loving justice that go along to birth their own radical acts of justice. One thought at a time. One relationship at a time. One song, poem, article, book at a time. Happy birthing.

~ Toni Reynolds Click here to read online and to share your thoughts

About the Author Minister Toni Anne Reynolds is committed to singing flesh onto the bones of the Christian tradition by incorporating recently found texts of the ancient world into liturgy, sermons, and poetry. Toni?s Christianity forms a holy trinity with the psychological medicine of Tibetan Buddhism and the eternal Life found in Yoruba traditions. Balanced in an eclectic faith and focused in theology, Toni?s ministry offers a unique perspective on life, theology, and spirituality.

Refiguring the Birth of Christ

Column by Toni Reynolds on July 5, 2018

~ Toni Reynolds Click here to read online and to share your thoughts

Question & Answer

Q: By Mark Adams-Westin I have been on a journey much like John Spong?s for almost 67 years. I have followed his work over the years with interest and used to be on his regular mailing list. I just finished his ?last Book? and found it both enlightening, and frustrating. I appreciated the insights and the bio of his and our shared journey, and resonate with many of his conclusions. Where I part company is his ?insight? that we human?s alone have ?self-consciousness,? which allows only us to grasp: life, death, fear, joy, God, spirit etc. Sadly Spong trots out the age old notion that humans are mentally & spiritually superior to the ?lower? beings on our planet. This attitude has justified our human lethal domination of this planet to the detriment of every species including human beings. Worst of all it is a conjecture that can neither be proven nor disproven (which I personally think is the easier of the two tasks) because we humans lack the ability to communicate with our fellow travelers. Stating this opinion and maintaining it as ?fact? throughout the book diminishes, Bishop Spong?s logic and conclusions, because it is so basic to every argument that follows. I pray that as we humans expand our own spiritual consciousness we will outgrow all of the assumptions we?ve nurtured about our innate superiority.

A: By Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox

Dear Mark

Rather than plunge into your disagreement with Bishop Spong as such, I prefer to speak to the important issue you raise about our so-called ?innate superiority? as a species.

To me, we as a species are better than other species in some things but inferior in others. Among the former, I would put front and center our capacity for evil. I don?t know any other species that has put such effort into developing nuclear missiles that would destroy the planet as we know it. Nor has any species created an event like the Second World War which killed at least 42 million human beings and sported concentration camps and the holocaust. Or that indulges in climate change and denial of climate change at the same time,

Why are we so superior when it comes to Evil? Aquinas says one human being can do more evil than all the other species put together. How did he know that, writing as he did in the thirteenth century and 700 years before Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, et al? Because he recognized the profundity of our intellects and our creativity which together constitute the ?image and likeness of God? that we carry either for good or for evil.

Rather than carry on the myth of our ?innate superiority,? I prefer to think in terms of what Meister Eckhart calls the ?equality of being?--at the level of being we are all equals, none greater than the other.[1] In a culture with its religions, theology and educational systems rarely talking about ?being? at all, we set ourselves up for the kind of ?superiority complex? that you are warning us about.

It is existence or being that is the true miracle of life. We cannot take credit for it--existence is a given, a gift, a grace. We all got it. Now to use it well and wisely. My being as a human is not greater than other beings, say my dog, as a dog. Being is being and being is divine.

Thomas Merton puts it this way: ?The consciousness of being (whether considered positively or negatively and apophatically as in Buddhism) is an immediate experience that goes beyond reflective awareness. It is not ?consciousness of? but pure consciousness, in which the subject as such ?disappears.?? He adds: ?To one who has been exposed to scholastic ontology and has not recovered, it remains evident that the activity of becoming is considerably less alive and dynamic than the act of being.?[2]

Eastern Orthodox scholar David Bentley Hart, in his excellent book, The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss, chastises both Western and Eastern wisdom traditions for neglecting the experience of being. He criticizes contemporary religion for forgetting a God of being and offering instead superficial ersatz notions and projections whether of a theistic or atheistic bent.

The real miracle among us is the miracle of being and shame on us for taking it for granted or forgetting it.

So before dashing off and declaring ourselves the ?king of the hill? and the ?summit and even purpose of all creation? we should wake up and smell the roses--and the sun, clouds, rain, supernovas and original fireball that make the roses possible. Aquinas says the most excellent thing in the universe is not the human but the universe itself. In short, we must return to cosmology in preference to all that feeds our collective narcissism as a species. It is the beings that preceded us and nurture us still that make our being possible. Let us cease the chauvinism and become instead grateful for being and therefore grateful for our equality with all beings.

~ Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox Click here to read and share online

About the Author Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox holds a doctorate in spirituality from the Institut Catholique de Paris and has authored 32 books on spirituality and contemporary culture that have been translated into 69 languages. Fox has devoted 45 years to developing and teaching the tradition of Creation Spirituality and in doing so has reinvented forms of education and worship. His work is inclusive of today?s science and world spiritual traditions and has awakened millions to the much neglected earth-based mystical tradition of the West. He has helped to rediscover Hildegard of Bingen, Meister Eckhart, Thomas Aquinas. Among his books are Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh, Transforming Evil in Soul and Society, A Way To God: Thomas Merton?s Creation Spirituality Journey, Meister Eckhart: A Mystic-Warrior For Our Times and Confessions: The Making of a Postdenominational Priest

A new school, adopting the pedagogy Fox created and practiced for over 35 years, is opening in Boulder, Colorado this September. Called the Fox Institute for Creation Spirituality it is being run by graduates of his doctoral program and will offer MA, D Min and Doctor of Spirituality degrees. With young leaders he is launching a new spiritual (not religious) "order" called the Order of the Sacred Earth (OSE) that is welcoming to people of all faith traditions and none and whose 'glue' is a common vow: "I promise to be the best lover of Mother Earth and the best defender of Mother Earth that I can be."

------------------------- [1] See Matthew Fox, Passion for Creation: The Earth-Honoring Spirituality of Meister Eckhart (Rochester, Vt: Inner Traditions, 2000), Sermon Five: ?How All Creatures Share an Equality of Being,? 91-101. [2] See Matthew Fox, A Way To God: Thomas Merton?s Creation Spirituality Journey (Novato, Ca: New World Library, 2016), 237f.

Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited

2000 Deaths Later, the Time Has Come to Render to Caesar His Due!

Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong on November 2, 2005

A well-known and oft-quoted verse in Matthew?s Gospel portrays Jesus, responding to a question designed to trap him between competing loyalties. Where does the line fall between what one owes to God and what one owes to the State? To this question Jesus responded, ?You render to Caesar that which belongs to Caesar and to God that which belongs to God.? His words suggested that the distinction was clear, that there were no gray areas. That is hardly ever the case.

Christianity has wrestled with these dual loyalties over the centuries in very different political settings. At the beginning of the Common Era, Christians were persecuted by the State and as a consequence worshiped in the hiddeness of the catacombs. To be a Christian in that era was to be guilty of a capital offense. By the time the 13th century had arrived the roles were reversed as Christianity dominated the State; seating, removing and excommunicating kings. Christian leaders at that time persecuted those deviating from accepted Christian understandings.

Then there were the more confused times, mostly post-Renaissance, when Church and State lived in a poorly defined, ambiguous relationship. That is the situation today in the Western World. Europe is now a secular society in which the Church has been marginalized, while in the United States, religion has experienced a rebirth of zeal, and seeks to force a particular world-view on the people of this nation. The Federal Government, for example, now funds ?Faith-based initiatives.? Catholic Bishops threaten to deny communion to Catholic politicians unless they promise to impose Catholic sexual values on the country?s population. A president nominates one to the Supreme Court because she is ?an evangelical Christian.? Strangely, however, this same president lectures the people of Iraq on how inappropriate it would be for them to adopt a constitution that would place a fundamentalist Islamic regime into power.

?Render to Caesar? has been used historically, to support the state?s power of taxation, to affirm a lofty patriotism and to assert one?s loyalty to one?s country. After all, Paul does say in Romans that we are ?to be subject to the higher authority, since all authority is of God.?

I, for one, do feel I owe my country a great deal. I relish the freedom that Americans enjoy and the ideals for which this country stands. I think the taxes I pay to my government are still the best bargain in my budget. Yes, of course, I am aware that not all of our tax dollars are spent wisely. ?Pork? fed to voters back home is the lifeblood of politics. This nation?s lawmakers have been known to authorize the financing of a bridge in Alaska that goes nowhere. Government waste, and sycophants who feed regularly at the public trough, are facts of life. Even when these things are taken into account, however, I still believe that the freedom and liberty this country provides, its strength that guarantees our peace is worth everything I pay in taxes. I do not agree with my friend Fox News? Bill O?Reilly, that the money I make is rightly mine and that taxes are the government?s confiscation of what is my own. Taxes, I believe, are the payment that I am called upon to make for the privilege of enjoying life in this great nation. If that is what ?Render to Caesar? means, then I am prepared to do so and joyfully.

There is, however, much more to this admonition than just that. I also believe it is my duty as a Christian to bear a public witness against policies that ?Caesar? adopts when these policies violate all that I consider holy. In the Judeo-Christian tradition that is traditionally the role of the prophet. When Israel?s religion was co-opted by the King, it was the prophets who called their King to accountability. Prophecy had nothing to do with predicting the future; it had everything to do with speaking uncomfortable truth inside the citadels of political power.

I consider a man named Nathan to be the father of the prophetic movement in Israel. This man stood before King David, armed only with a sense of the rightness of the moral order, and accused him of being guilty of both an adulterous relationship with a woman named Bathsheba and the subsequent murder of her husband Uriah. When Nathan described the King?s immoral behavior in a parable, which caused the King to think he was describing another citizen of his realm, the King was irate and said that the man who had done what had Nathan related must surely be put to death. In one of the most dramatic moments in the entire biblical story, Nathan looked straight into King David?s eyes and said, ?You are the Man!? That is the supreme biblical illustration of what it means to ?Render to Caesar that which is due to Caesar.? We owe the Caesars in every generation a call to truth when truth is violated; a call to responsibility when incompetence is displayed and a call to morality when evil is rampant. I do not want a religious state, but I do want a state in which the voice of religious judgment can still be heard.

My current head of state, my Caesar, took this nation into a war in Iraq that has now cost the lives of 2000 of our youngest and most patriotic citizens. It has cost this nation?s armed forces more than 15,000 others who have been wounded, some destined to face life crippled or blind. The suffering and loss of life among the people of Iraq has yet to be told or counted. Billions of dollars have been spent to prosecute this war that will place our children and grandchildren in debt for the balance of their lives. I do not mean to suggest that war is never justified. I am not a pacifist, though I admire the witness of the pacifists among us. In my opinion war is sometimes essential in the defense of life and liberty. The leaders of any government, however, must make that case to its people before the sacrifice that war always brings can possibly be justified. The necessity for this war was said by our Caesar to be that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, that Iraq was developing chemical and biological weapons, and that Iraq was building a nuclear arsenal. None of these things were true. In his State of the Union address in 2003 our President informed this nation that British Intelligence had learned of an Iraqi purchase from Niger of a substance called ?yellow cake,? needed in the development of nuclear weapons. The Central Intelligence Agency knew at the time that this was not so, and members of this administration would soon move to punish those who countered their false version of ?truth.? The people of this nation were assured that our armed forces would be welcomed in Iraq as liberators. Three years later this claim is patently not so. Our Caesar, standing on an aircraft carrier dressed in full battle gear announced in May of 2003, ?our mission is accomplished.? More people would die after that victory announcement than had died before it was made. This war was necessary, our leaders stated, because Iraq housed, trained and supported the terrorists who attacked us on 91l. No such connection has ever been documented.

In the worst-case scenario, we have an administration in the United States that has deliberately lied to the people. In the best-case scenario we have an administration so inept that it does not recognize the truth. There is no other alternative.

This nation, led by this President, has also refused to treat enemy prisoners according to the provisions of the Geneva Agreement. Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib now stain the national soul. This inhumane treatment goes unpunished to this day except for a few enlisted personnel who could hardly have set this tone without higher approval. Supporters of these methods of torture including the Vice-President and the Secretary of Defense, say that this treatment is necessary because of who the terrorists are. To this self-serving explanation Senator John McCain, who himself knows something about what it means to be an inhumanely treated prisoner of war, replied ?This is not about who they are, it is about who we are!? While calling on members of our armed services to make the ultimate sacrifice, this administration has asked sacrifices of no one else. Perhaps that will change this winter when the poor begin to pay war-inflated prices to heat their homes. The oil industry, so closely allied with this administration, will not share that sacrifice, however, since it will be too busy counting its record profits.

While all of this is bombarding our consciences, this administration diverts the attention of our people from these great moral issues by playing on fears and prejudices. As members of our armed forces die daily in a war entered without honesty, and from which we do not seem to know how to extricate ourselves with dignity, the national debate concentrates on the position a potential nominee to the Supreme Court might have on gay marriage and the right of a woman to make decisions about her own body!

The time has come for us to ?Render to Caesar? what is appropriate, what is due to Caesar. The prophetic word of judgment must again be heard in the public arena. The ?Nathans? of our day must rise up and speak the ?Word of the Lord? to our Caesar. That ?Word,? it seems to me begins with the 9th Commandment: You shall not bear false witness. It continues: You must not kill or cause others to be killed for inadequate reasons. You must not treat those defined as enemies as if they are not themselves human being made in God?s image. You must not violate everything for which this nation stands by acting contrary to those principles. The enormity of Caesar?s power is best seen in the example Caesar sets for the rest of the world to follow.

Christian voices of this land must now be prepared to render to Caesar the things that are due to Caesar: truth, confrontation, and judgment. Patriotism and national devotion demand it.

When Nathan confronted King David, the King repented, changed his path and went on to greatness. Perhaps if we like Nathan, will render to Caesar that which is due Caesar, something similar will occur. I hope so. If it does then we will recognize that we have also been rendering to God the things that are God?s.

~ John Shelby Spong

Announcements

The Wild Goose Festival July 12 - 15th, Hot Springs, N. C.

The Wild Goos Festival is a 4-day Spirit, Justice, Music and Arts Festival. But it's so much more than that. At Wild Goose, people flock together to celebrate a way of life rooted in faith, justice, creativity, and beauty. A part of the festival this year you don't want to miss is Wisdom Camp - A pop-up retreat for mystical misfits led by Mike Morrell.

READ ON ...

View this email in your browser

Moving Toward Radical Inclusion- Part 1

Column by Rev. Irene Monroe on July 12, 2018

Radical inclusion must not be intellectualized but instead connected deeply with our need for personal healing which requires us to heal our ?isms.?

Since September 11 America has changed radically. We have become a country where partisan politics rule the day, that we can no longer agree to disagree and shouting matches laced with expletives has taken the place of civil discourse. And this ugliness has imploded on us.

To build a huge tent of radical inclusion, we must challenge ourselves to hear each other and to understand not just our oppressions but those of others. Understanding the intersections of oppression allows us to develop relationships and allies.

?We don?t socialize together. There are very few places where black and white socialize together, which is the basis of relationships and friendships, the basis of understanding,? Earl Fowlkes told the Washington Blade last year, explaining why Pride events are segregated. Fowlkes is executive director of the Center for Black Equity, a national D.C.-based group that advocates for African-American LGBT people and helps organize Black Pride events in the U.S. and abroad.

?And until we start doing that and creating those spaces to do that we?re going to have misunderstandings and a lack of sensitivity toward issues of race.?

We must address deep-seated biases that impede authentic, respectful and enriching relationships as a Christian body. I am reminded of Paul?s letter to the Galatians in chapter 3 verse 28 where he wrote: ?There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither male nor female for we are all one in Christ Jesus.?

But the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., reminds us that ?it is appalling that the most segregated hour of Christian America is eleven o?clock on Sunday morning.? We see that still in 2018.

Segregated churches began in the 1800?s. Richard Allen, born in 1760 in Philadelphia, was the slave of a Quaker master. As a free black in the 1780?s, he converted to Methodism and became an itinerant Methodist preacher. Allen could not sit in the all-white historic St. George?s Methodist Church. In 1797 Richard Allen founded Mother Bethel African Methodist Church, the first black Methodist Church in Philadelphia, and in 1816 Richard Allen led African Methodists into a separate denomination after many years of struggle against white control. The African Methodist Episcopal Church is now the oldest black denomination in this country.

Radical inclusion is an ongoing process that allows us to see, along this troubling human timeline, those faces and to hear those voices in society of the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected, and the dispossessed. And radical inclusion can only begin to work when those relegated to the fringes of society can begin to sample what those in society take for granted as their inalienable right. And sometimes for that to happen, it must start with Christians who understand the biblical mandate in Matthew 25:35 where Jesus said: ?For I was hungry and you gave Me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave Me something to drink, I was a stranger and you took Me in.?

With today?s nativist spirit of patriotism and isolationist rhetoric to ?Make America Great Again,? we close our doors and heart to refugees. Evangelical Christians, in particular, fail to see Jesus and his parents, Mary and Joseph, were Middle Eastern refugees. Soon after Jesus?s birth Mary and Joseph fled with their newborn to Egypt as refugees fleeing from violence, as undocumented immigrants crossing the border from Mexico into the U. S. are today. And oddly, this isolationist rhetoric fails to recognize that the first group of settlers in America were refugees- the Pilgrims

In ?Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center,? African American cultural critic bell hooks states that she begins her analysis at the margin because it is a space of radical openness, and it gives you an oppositional gaze from which to see the world, unknown to the oppressor. It is at the margin where you can see injustice being done. It is not only a site where you can honestly critique the oppressive structures in society that keeps us wounded as a people, but it is also a site that can heal us as a people ? both the oppressed and the oppressor.

In other words, it is not enough only to look outside ourselves to see the places where society is broken. It is not enough to talk about institutions, churches, and workplaces that fracture and separate people based on race, religion, gender and sexual orientation, to name a few.

We must also look at the ways we as an individual and a community are both the oppressed and the oppressor. We must look at ways that we manifest these bigotries, how we are the very ones who uphold and are part of these institutions and workplaces. Often, we find that these institutions and workplaces are broken, dysfunctional and wounded in the very same ways that we are. And the structures we have created are mirrors not of who we want to be, but who we sadly really are.

We cannot heal the world if we have not healed ourselves. So perhaps the most significant task, and the most challenging work we must do first, is to improve ourselves. And this work must be done in relationship with our justice work in the world.

In ?The Old Man and the Sea,? Ernest Hemingway said that the world breaks us all, but some of us grow strong in those broken places. Jesus invites us to become strong in our broken places ? not only to mend the sin-sick world in which we live in, but also to mend the sin-sick world that we carry around within us. And we can only do that if we are willing to look both inward and outward, healing ourselves of the bigotry, biases and the demons that chip away at our efforts to work toward justice and diversity in our churches.

I know that the struggle against racism is only legitimate if I am also fighting anti-Semitism, homophobia, sexism, and classism ? not only out in the world but also in myself. Otherwise, I am creating an ongoing cycle of abuse that goes on unexamined and unaccounted.

When suffering is understood as an ongoing cycle of abuse that goes on unexamined and unaccounted for, we can then begin to see its manifestation in systems of racism, sexism, classism, and heterosexism in our everyday lives. With a new understanding about suffering and how it victimizes the innocent and its aborts the Christian mission of inclusiveness, Jesus? death at Calvary invites a different hermeneutic than its classically held one.

As an instrument for execution by Roman officials during Jesus? time, the cross?s symbolic nature and its symbolic value can both be seen as the valorization of suffering and abuse, especially in the lives of the oppressed.

For those of us on the margins, a Christology mounted on the belief that ?Jesus died on the cross for our sins? instead of ?Jesus died on the cross because of our sins? not only exalts Jesus as the suffering servant, but it also ritualizes suffering as redemptive. While suffering points to the need for redemption, suffering in and of itself is not redemptive, and it does not always correlate to one?s sinfulness. For example, the belief that undeserved suffering is endured by faith, and that it has a morally educative component to it makes the powerful insensitive to the plight of others, and it forces the less powerful to be complacent to their suffering ? therefore, maintaining the status quo.

Trans issues in our churches are not addressed enough. However, trans activism is taking afoot in DignityUSA, an organization that focuses on LGBTQ rights and the Catholic Church. And their voices want to be heard in Catholic dioceses across the country that will eventually inform and impact the Vatican. They must be heard in our Protestant churches, too. Of the many breakout sessions at the DignityUSA conference in 2017, I wished Pope Francis could have sat in on ?Trans Catholic Voices,? because his transphobic pronouncements have been hurtful. Francis compared transgender people to nuclear weapons. His reason is that transgender people destroy and desecrate God?s holy and ordained order of creation.

?Let?s think of the nuclear arms, of the possibility to annihilate in a few instants a very high number of human beings,? Francis stated in 2015 in an interview with the National Catholic Reporter ?Let?s think also of genetic manipulation, of the manipulation of life, or of the gender theory, that does not recognize the order of creation.?

During the ?Trans Catholic Voices? breakout season an African American transwoman pointed out that Francis statements about transpeople deny them of basic human dignity and perpetuates violence against them. The life expectancy for black trans is 32 years old.

In her closing remarks, the African American transwoman in ?Trans Catholic Voices? asked for help from advocates and allies in the room that nearly brought me to tears.

?Trans lives are real lives. Trans deaths are real deaths. God works through other people. Maybe you can be those other people.?

As Christians, we fail to realize that our gift and our struggle are that we are a diverse community within ourselves, and our diversity should not dilute our commitment and love toward one another, but rather our diversity should teach us more about its gift of complexity, and by extension teach the larger society.

The Kwanzaa principle of Umoja- unity-must take root in our self-understanding of who we are and what we decide to be as both a people and a Christian community. In understanding the interconnectedness between himself as the individual and himself as the community, African historian John Mbuti said, ?I am because we are; and since we are, therefore, I am.?

We must cure ourselves of our indifference to each others? oppressions. As a community, we must all pitch in. The belief among us that one oppression ? ours ? is more significant than another persecution sets up a hierarchy of oppression and keeps us fighting. The moral and spiritual challenge before us is that united we can stand as a Christian community or divided we can fall as a petty people.

Our job, therefore, is to remember that our longing for social justice and radical inclusion is also inextricably tied to our longing for personal healing.

~ Rev. Irene Monroe Click here to read online and to share your thoughts

About the Author

The Reverend Monroe is an ordained minister. She does a weekly Monday segment, ?All Revved Up!? on WGBH (89.7 FM), a Boston member station of National Public Radio (NPR), that is now a podcast, and a weekly Friday commentator on New England Channel NEWS (NECN). Monroe is the Boston voice for Detour?s African American Heritage Trail, Guided Walking Tour of Beacon Hill: Boston?s Black Women Abolitionists (Boston) ? Detour

Monroe?s a Huffington Post blogger and a syndicated religion columnist. Her columns appear in cities across the country and in the U.K, Ireland, Canada. Monroe writes a column in the Boston home LGBTQ newspaper Baywindows, Cambridge Chronicle, and Opinion pieces for the Boston Globe.

Monroe stated that her ?columns are an interdisciplinary approach drawing on critical race theory, African American, queer and religious studies. As an religion columnist I try to inform the public of the role religion plays in discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. Because homophobia is both a hatred of the ?other ? and it?s usually acted upon ?in the name of religion,? by reporting religion in the news I aim to highlight how religious intolerance and fundamentalism not only shatters the goal of American democracy, but also aids in perpetuating other forms of oppression such as racism, sexism, classism and anti-Semitism.? Her papers are at the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College?s research library on the history of women in America. Click here to visit her website.

Question & Answer

Q: By Kevin Has humankind invented God to look after life after death? One can say this in connection with many of the Gods in the Bible and elsewhere in man?s evolution, but is there a Creator of the Universe? If so, after studying the cosmos, one must conclude that it must be entirely different from what we have assumed, so far. If so, this might explain why we have produced such a cruel world with most of us thinking only of our own survival. But, again, there are so many examples of selflessness and good!

A: By Toni Reynolds

Dear Kevin,

I think there is something of a God vs. Science question beneath the ones you?ve posed.

I do think that humans created stories, and rituals to articulate their experiences of/with God. All in attempt to better understand their relationship to their experiences. I am not convinced that humans invented God, most definitely not just so that God could oversee the afterlife. Through those rituals and applications of the stories, I think the civilizations before ours were deciding about the intricate ways in which God works here and out there in the cosmos you speak of. In these ways we got many of the stories found in the Bible as recorded observations from generations as they studied their relationship to God and the people around them. Today, we are more comfortable using the framework of science to explain and relate to phenomena. Experientially, I think the authors of religious stories had a similar project to yours and simply used a different toolbox to work out potential answers.

I don?t quite know what to conclude about the Creator after a study of the cosmos. It seems to me that even among the specialists there is quite a range of conclusions to be drawn about such divine architecture?I would love to know more about what you conclude yourself, as well as how that conclusion informs the way you see the world at work on any given day.

The unknown details of the Creator don?t shift my thoughts when it comes to your final piece about the production of cruelty in our world. When bad things happen it can be easy to say, ?what a cruel world we live in? without interrogating the ways we are organized and, therefore, enabling or altogether creating the catastrophes we recognize as ?cruel?. Though God has made this world, and us in it, I do not think God should get credit for making or even allowing the evils we experience and perpetuate. We are creators here too. We are not separate from God; blame can?t go on one side and us, blameless on the other. Our decisions have consequences and we can no longer shove the responsibility into the hands of God and fain ignorance. God cannot force us to act in accordance with the rest of nature--partnering with other organisms to live symbiotically. As humans we get to choose to do that, it is no fault of the Creator when we don?t. We can make a better world than this.

If there is a creator God, and I truly think there is, I imagine that creator God is wondering how we could stray so far off the pattern of creation, blame God for the woes, and seriously expect tomorrow to be better without changing our bad habits.

You are right, there are so many examples of selflessness and goodness. I hope we can grow those examples so that they become general traits of society, instead of just fringe examples.

With you in making more examples of goodness,

~ Toni Reynolds Click here to read and share online

About the Author

Minister Toni Anne Reynolds is committed to singing flesh onto the bones of the Christian tradition by incorporating recently found texts of the ancient world into liturgy, sermons, and poetry. Toni?s Christianity forms a holy trinity with the psychological medicine of Tibetan Buddhism and the eternal Life found in Yoruba traditions. Balanced in an eclectic faith and focused in theology, Toni?s ministry offers a unique perspective on life, theology, and spirituality.

Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited

Troy D. Perry - One of God's Original Saints

Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong November 9, 2005 It all began on October 6, 1968. On that day, twelve people gathered in a house in Los Angeles in response to an advertisement in a four-page magazine for homosexuals called ?The Advocate.? This ad was addressed to gay men and lesbians who might want to be a part of a Christian Church in which they did not have to hide. The advertisement, signed by the Rev. Troy D. Perry, gave a specific address where this first service of worship would take place. Of the twelve who gathered on that date, two were a heterosexual couple, the other ten were homosexuals. One was African American, one Hispanic; seven were males and five were females. That was the founding moment for what came to be called The Metropolitan Community Church, which now has 330 congregations located in 22 countries. Troy D. Perry, then a 28-year old Pentecostal preacher, is now a world figure, the recipient of numerous honorary degrees, a person from whom presidents and presidential candidates have sought advice, a friend of Desmond Tutu and a religious leader invited to meet with John Paul II on one of his visits to the United States. On October 30, 2005 in the National Cathedral of the Episcopal Church in Washington. D.C., the place from which presidents have been buried, Troy Perry?s successor, The Rev. Nancy Wilson, was installed as the second Moderator of the Worldwide Fellowship of The Metropolitan Community Church. That setting and transition was in itself symbolic of the remarkable journey made by this incredible man, whose story needs to be told and whose contribution to the life of the Christian Church needs to be recognized.

Troy Perry was born in Tallahassee, Florida, in 1940, the oldest in what was to be a family of five children. His mother was a Southern Baptist; his father a member of the Pentecostal Church of God, though that membership might have been compromised by his father?s profession. He was, what we called in the South in those days, ?a bootlegger,? one who made illegal whisky available to those who were willing to pay for this service. Even as a young child, Troy was deeply drawn to the church and yearned to be a preacher. In Southern evangelical circles, the call to preach was far more important than any academic preparation designed to equip one for that duty. It was quite enough to be ?open to the Spirit.? Troy was a gifted boy who spoke well and by the age of 13 he had achieved a reputation of some significance. He preached to his classmates before school every Wednesday with more than a little interest being expressed by the crowds of students and faculty that gathered. Soon, he was given a preaching license by the Southern Baptists and became known in his expanding Bible Belt orbit of North Florida, Alabama and South Georgia as ?the Teen-Aged Evangelist.?

Like so many people of that era in the South, Troy had no idea what a homosexual was but he knew he had attractions toward other males his age. Fearing that there was something wrong with him, he consulted a written source provided by his church, which informed him that homosexuals were ?sick people who wore dresses and molested children.? Since neither was true of him, he breathed a sigh of relief. Later when his fears did not go away, he turned to a Pentecostal preacher and was told that all he had to do was to get married and his fantasies would disappear. Troy responded by marrying that man?s 18-year-old daughter. It lasted five years and produced two sons. When the marriage ended, Troy went into the army. Vietnam was to be his destiny. As part of his medical examination, he was asked to check whether or not he had ?any homosexual tendencies.? The question, he said, came right after cancer and tuberculosis. He checked ?yes.? Nonetheless, he was taken in, given top security clearance and became a computer expert. He served well, was given an honorable discharge and began to work for Sears. In time, he became a division manager. However, his heart still drew him toward his pastor?s calling, so back to being a Pentecostal preacher he went. By this time, however, he was quite sure he was a homosexual and had had gay liaisons. The church he was serving, however, was quite sure that homosexuality was sinful, depraved behavior. One survived in that atmosphere only by being dishonest. Hiding never works and Troy was discovered, banished from that church and his license to preach revoked. It was for him a moment of great despair. With the help of his first partner he coped with that rejection. When that relationship broke up, his depression was so deep that he slashed his wrists in a suicide attempt that failed. From somewhere, he says, in that moment of darkness, he found an overwhelming sense of God?s love for him. That, he concluded, was the heart of the Gospel ? God loves me. He noticed when he read the Bible that even those who forsook, denied, betrayed, tortured and crucified Jesus were still the beloved of God. Aided by this conviction he began to form a new consciousness. His logic went like this: God loves me. I am gay. Therefore God must love gays. ?The Lord is my shepherd, he knows I?m gay? became his theme. He still felt a great desire to preach but the churches with which he was familiar were not open to him in his new found honesty. Their fear and hostility toward homosexual people expressed itself in mistaken attempts to turn them into heterosexuals and, if that failed, to assure them that hell was their destiny. Troy understood that sexual orientation is not a choice for anyone; it is part of our identity to which we awaken. Mental health begins, he believed, in self-acceptance not self-rejection. So coming to the conclusion that there must be others just like himself who yearned to practice the faith in which they had been reared, Troy asked himself the question that would change his life: Could there be a worship community in the Christian tradition for those who are honest about their homosexuality? That was the moment when he placed the advertisement in ?The Advocate.?

To issue a public call for homosexuals to gather at a specific address was a bold act in 1968. Hate crimes were quite normal in that day. To sign that advertisement with one?s real name and to provide one?s telephone number was thought foolhardy even by Troy?s friends. Having no idea what a vast audience was waiting for this catalyst, he accepted the risk. There are today MCC churches in every major city in America and Canada; some of them bulging at the seams with members. Interestingly enough, their strength is primarily in the South, by which I mean that stretch of states that once constituted the heart of Dixie, from Texas to Florida. The MCC conducts an annual conference each year to which as many as ten thousand are in attendance. Today their pastors are trained in accredited seminaries like The Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, Union in New York City, Harvard Divinity School, the Divinity School of the University of Chicago and the Vancouver School of Theology among others. This Church continues to grow and is beginning to attract young gay people who feel alienated from those churches that condemn what they know they are.

I first met Troy Perry in 1991 when the Episcopal National Convention and the MCC National Conference were both meeting in Phoenix. My book, ?Living in Sin?? had come out in 1988 and had placed me in the national eye since in that book I called for the State to make homosexual unions legal and for the Church to give these unions the blessing we bestow in marriage. I also challenged the Church to be honest about its gay clergy whose name was and is legion. Acting on this conviction, I ordained to the priesthood in December of 1989 America?s first openly homosexual person living in a publicly acknowledged, committed relationship. The hostility I absorbed was overwhelming. Hate mail poured in; abusive telephone calls, even death threats, were plentiful. The House of Bishops in September of 2000 had voted to disassociate themselves from me for this action by a slender 78-74 margin, with two abstentions, one of which was my own. I honestly did not know how to vote on whether or not I wanted to associate with myself! Prior to this vote, I had carried this battle to the airways of this nation with appearances on CBS This Morning, the Phil Donahue Show, the Oprah Winfrey Show, and even Bill Buckley?s Firing Line. Despite the rejecting anger that engulfed me, I felt compelled to see this battle through. When I prepared to go to the General Convention of my Church in1991 in Phoenix, I was sure the debate would be intense and that I would be abused again in speech after speech. When Troy heard that I was in town, he invited me to speak to his National Conference. Christine and I had dinner with him prior to my talk, at which time I could not help but be aware of the heavy security around him. One manifestation of this was his insistence that we ride in separate cars to the hall where his delegates gathered. When we arrived Troy led Chris and me onto the stage, but before any word of introduction had been spoken, the entire assembly rose as one and gave us a sustained, indeed a thunderous, ovation that lasted for ten literal minutes. It was like having all of our wounds bathed with healing love. We stood there teary eyed, taking it all in. If what we had done meant that much to this many, it was worth all the hostility we had absorbed. From that day to this, Troy has been a close friend. We have dinner with him when in Los Angeles. We consult on the phone on various strategies and opportunities and I have spoken in MCC churches in five countries. I was touched when he asked me to speak at his retirement.

Troy Perry made the Church more whole, inclusive and yes more Christian. MCC had to be formed to show the rest of us how unwelcoming we had been to some of God?s children. Troy knew full well that when Christians sang, ?Just as I am without a plea, O Lamb of God, I come,? they had to mean it. He knew that Jesus had said: ?Come unto me all of ye,? not ?some of ye.? I will always be grateful for the existence of The Metropolitan Community Church and for Troy D. Perry, its enormously talented founder and first moderator.

~ John Shelby Spong

Announcements

Beloved Festival

Beloved is a 4-day sacred art, music, and movement festival on the Oregon Coast from August 10th -14th. Beloved is a healing event. Beloved is a model for a culture that understands the depth of our connection with each other, to the planet, and to our souls. Beloved is all of the names and forms of the Divine, affirming their Unity. Click here for more information/registration.