[Dialogue] 11/29/18, Progressing Spirit: Gretta VosperOur Deepest Roots; Spong revisited
Ellie Stock
elliestock at aol.com
Thu Nov 29 05:55:59 PST 2018
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!important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv2538069147 #yiv2538069147templateBody .yiv2538069147mcnTextContent, #yiv2538069147 #yiv2538069147templateBody .yiv2538069147mcnTextContent p{ font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv2538069147 #yiv2538069147templateFooter .yiv2538069147mcnTextContent, #yiv2538069147 #yiv2538069147templateFooter .yiv2538069147mcnTextContent p{ font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;} } At this time of year, we turn toward traditions that go deep into the backstories of our lives.
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Our Deepest Roots
Column by Rev. Gretta Vosper
Novembery 29, 2018
At this time of year, we turn toward traditions that go deep into the backstories of our lives. The Christmas narrative serves as a foundation for our own narratives, those of our families of origin and those of the families we have created for ourselves. They are good. They are bad. They are beautiful. They are ugly. And we feel compelled to participate whether the stories are healthy or horrible. It’s what we do, right?ABOUT THAT STORY WE ALL KNOW AND LOVE …The real Christmas story, itself, is all but washed up in many progressive Christian congregations. For decades we’ve been uncomfortable with the clash between the birth narratives and “what we now know”, the latter whispered discreetly to those we think can bear to hear the truth. “The Version Birth” by Dot Saunders-Perez and Janet Allyn, a true-to-the-text clash of the birth narratives found in Matthew and Luke, has offered a humorous way to introduce congregants to the truths that have been in front of them their whole lives. Without, of course, requiring they believe even that tidbit of historical quandary. It is a clash of stories so unremembered that I even mixed them up in my first book, With or Without God, attributing the magi to Luke and the shepherds to Matthew. (In my defense, eight theologically literate people proofread that manuscript! Which proves my point, I think…)Liberal and progressive Christians have long wrestled with the birth narratives, their fantastic tales, the unlikely heroes. In a statement of faith accepted by The United Church of Canada in 1940, reference to the virgin birth was removed entirely. Yet it is the most sacred Christian story of all despite the fact that it is undoubtedly fantasy. It remains indisputable by the so so so so so so so many Christians who still believe there were angels singing, three wise men (sic) on camels bringing precious and fragrant gifts, and shepherds quaking on the hillsides. Oh, and the star. There had to have been a star. Over the baby.“Myth” is an easier word to get heads around than “fantasy”, of course. There is a dignity in ”myth” that provides a sense of intellectual earnestness or enlightenment. We use it to relate to scholars exploring the great religious traditions of the world, Mircea Eliade and his work on religion and myth, or Frazer and his Golden Bough. It helps us rise above those who take the stories literally. And definitely above those who haven’t yet learned that the one seamless story they listen to every year doesn’t exist; they remain quite happy to see angels tossing hay at the wisemen in the Christmas pageant. Who are we to undermine their Christmas joy?Of course, “fabrication” is too harsh a word for most churchgoers. They find it confrontational and confrontation is not terribly welcome in church, particularly around feature articles like this one about the birth of Jesus. Yes, the stories were fabricated, woven together of the threads of oral tradition that wound themselves into truths in the decades after Jesus’ death. But they are also beautiful, earnest, easily cast, and delightful in their innocent presentation by new children year after year after year.WELL, WHAT DOES THE MINISTER BELIEVE?One of the essential problems that arises from the annual Christmas play, the uplifting Lessons and Carols service, or the peaceful, reflective beauty of the Midnight Mass is their reinforcement to all who attend of the belief that clergy think the virgin birth and all its accoutrements are factual. Fantastic, yes, but fantastic because of the super powers of the god called God. Those who dare to ask the question may receive from their minister an answer that more closely resembles her or his actual beliefs: it is a story we tell over and over to remind us of the impregnation of our hearts by God’s love and our need to live that out in the contemporary world, according to the needs of that world. That sounds good, doesn’t it? Of course it does! And we all watched the Christmas play happily ever after.But the problem remains. Why do we want clergy to act and speak and lead in ways that allow those not asking questions to assume an ongoing belief in fantastic tales? What is the merit in that? Especially when we are seeing younger generations eschew the mythology of “the virgin” for the seemingly more accessible mythology of “the good life” and its myriad representations over the Christmas season? Is maintaining a semblance of belief worth losing whole generations who find fantastic tales just that: too fantastic to believe, too irrelevant to today?I think not. But I must admit that mine is not a popular perspective in the wider church. Clergy know that if they tamper with the traditions of Christmas, they will lose people. Big time. I know from experience. The fact that those families they lose are very likely those who only show up for Christmas and (maybe) Easter, makes no difference. It is loss. And when year end financial targets are built to include the once-a-year donations of those Christmas patrons, it is calculable.GETTING DOWN UNDER THE STORYLet me share with you a tradition that has grown up at West Hill over the past several years. We frame it as a “celebration of the deepest roots of our tradition”. The scholarship undergirding that statement tells us that the Christmas narratives grew out of the desire of the early church to wrap its stories around traditions that already existed, that were known and celebrated by the people the church hoped would embrace its story. But I imagine that the truth goes even deeper: religious traditions, including our earliest, unrecorded affirmations and acknowledgements, were, themselves, wrapped around our deepest needs. In the midst of winter[i], that need was for a return of the light, of the warmth of the sun, of the promise that they would, once again, revel in warmth and bounty.The first time we celebrated The Longest Night, we also celebrated Christmas Eve. But the former was so popular and beautiful, that it became our sole seasonal celebration the following and every year since. The service draws participants into the fears that lie within our darkest nights. We tell those stories, as true today as they have been throughout history, stories of fear, of accountabilities unpaid.
The earth spins outside our control,
swirling through a cosmos upon which we have no hold.
We gaze at constellations,
wonder at the beauty of the heavens,
leave footprints in sand and watch them wash away.
But we have made our mark
upon its face in ways not so easily erased
where our power,
our lust for life,
leaves too deep a stain.
We have burned and scraped Earth clear,
making room for the planting of our own desires,
overpowering whatever future
it may have unfolded for itself.
Pressing back against what might emerge,
we draw lines,
prepare plans,
plant modifications nature would never have dreamed.
And we threaten the future,
the seventh generation,
one that may not even see the light of day
because we serve our own ravenous hungers
like addictions we recognize
but lack the fortitude to overcome.
We consume not only what we have –
the here and now –
but what might serve tomorrow.
We plunder Earth’s future hope.
And tonight, we sit within the darkness of the truths we whisper here.[ii]
And then we work the magic, calling ourselves and one another to the possibilities that lie within our reach, within our own hearts. We create a sculpture of candlelight as we do so, each member of the gathered community lighting candles as symbols of their commitment to creating peace, hope, joy, and love in the world, to the work of bringing about the beauty in the hope-filled stories we cast before us.
Whether we believe we are compelled to love
by some outside force
or some inner strength,
we are responsible for creating that love –
the culmination of our highest ideals –
through our acts, our voices, our lives.
We challenge ourselves
to hold those ideals boldly
because it is too easy to weave ourselves
into a web of our own desires
and the cultural expectations that surround us.
May that which we once projected
onto gods and divine beings –
pure, unsullied by our baser needs and wants –
may it stir once again in our own hearts –
beyond all gods –
that we might remember
who we are
and who we seek to be.
Finally, when the sculpture is complete, the candlelight shimmering like lit water in the centre of our space, we take up our responsibilities. The community comes forward, each person accepting both a lit candle and a candlewick bracelet and hearing the words, “You are the light of the world” as the bracelet is slipped over their hand and onto their wrist. Some wear these bracelets throughout the year, replacing the greyed cord with a fresh, bright one only when the next Longest Night circles round.A SHARED FOUNDATIONThe best part of the service is that it lives underneath all the stories we have ever told of this dark night and the events we conspired to merge it with. It supports every telling of that tale. Those who are traditional believers hear the story of a cold and frightened family and the birth of a child who will shine with his own extraordinary light. They slip their bracelet on as a symbol of that light and their commitment to it. Those who have no belief in the Christian story, slip their bracelets on as a symbol of the infinite possibility into which they were born and the reminder that their choices alone weave together the story of their life. The bracelet is a reminder to recommit morning after morning after morning.“Make light!” we say to one another when the final song is sung. “Make light!”After all, isn’t that the best we could ever hope to do with our “one wild and precious life”?[iii]
~ Rev. Gretta Vosper
Click here to read online and to share your thoughts
About the Author
The Rev. Gretta Vosper is a United Church of Canada minister who is an atheist. Her best-selling books include With or Without God: Why The Way We Live is More Important Than What We Believe, and Amen: What Prayer Can Mean in a World Beyond Belief. She has also published three books of poetry and prayers.
************************[i] Apologies to our Southern Hemisphere colleagues who spend their Christmases on the beach![ii] Longest Night elements © 2017 gretta vosper, used with permission.[iii] Mary Oliver, A Summer Day |
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Question & Answer
Q: Recently, Arizona’s state school board narrowly defeated the effort of creationist Christians to alter science standards and open the door for a literal interpretation of the Bible being taught alongside evolution. Some of the advisers advocating for creationism were referred to as “Young Earthers” in the news. What exactly does that mean?
A: By Rev. David M. Felten
Dear Readers,Believe it or not, “Young Earthers” are folks who are convinced that the earth (and all of creation) is only 6,022 years old (as of 2018). How did they arrive at this remarkably specific date?It seems that back in the 17th century, a Renaissance Bishop (James Ussher, 1581-1656) figured that he could use the Bible to calculate the date of creation. Taking note of genealogies, events, and the number of candles on Methuselah’s birthday cake (all of which he took as literally as possible), he counted backwards to arrive at the exact day of creation: October 23rd 4004 BCE. He wasn’t clear on the exact time (or the time zone), but suggested that it was in the morning. Today, a big chunk of American Christians attend churches that claim the Bible is inerrant (without error) and infallible (a safe and reliable source in all matters). I want to believe that most of them don’t actually believe this – considering that they live in the 21st century – but enough of them do believe it to make it a problem for the rest of us.And you’ve got to feel a little sorry for them. Literalists are taught to expect that the Bible does not waiver from objective truth in the matter of history and science – and despite advances in biology, cosmology, archaeology, geology – and evidence in the Bible itself – they continue to double-down on inerrancy. As an outside observer of this phenomenon, it appears that they believe that “real” Christians are somehow spiritually superior for their ability to, despite evidence to the contrary, deny reality. Obviously, this has clear parallels in our current political reality.Here’s the problem: despite the very real and urgent societal issues challenging humanity, many literalists continue to fixate not on solving the world’s problems, but on “proving” the Bible is literally true. They are enabled by theological carnival barkers like Ken Ham, who wastes people’s time and resources on building a full-size ark in Kentucky (complete with dinosaurs to account for and then misrepresent the fossil record) – all to shore up their doubts and insecurities.From Darwin to the Scopes Monkey Trial to today’s efforts to influence school curriculum, literalists have seen themselves as pious warriors engaged in a pitched winner-take-all, us-vs-them battle with science. Many perceive science as an enemy to be defeated at all costs (unless they get sick and want 21st century medical science at their disposal).To overthrow the enemy, they try to impose their narrow-minded worldview on their neighbors – through challenges to science-based curriculum, sowing doubt about the reality of climate change, and generally promoting an anti-science agenda. If their cockamamie ideas only affected them, then no problem. But trying to sneak fundamentalist ideas into my children’s science curriculum? Them’s fightin’ words! To top it off, their efforts stand to do lasting damage to the United States’ intellectual reputation, our standing in a global economy, and a decreased likelihood that the world will take us seriously as participants in a future grounded in science.So, put Young Earthers in the same category with Flat Earthers, Vaxers, and those who believe the moon landing was faked: all of them people who, for their own reasons, have decided to live in a world disconnected from evidence-based reality. It would be funny if it weren’t for their attempts to try and impose their antiquated worldview on everyone else.~ Rev. David M. FeltenPS: I encourage you to visit the website of the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter to see just how far these people will go to try and prove their point and get out of the hard work of following Jesus. My advice? Don’t give in! But be kind. Evidently, they don’t seem to know any better and don’t have anyone who loves them enough (or whom they trust enough) to get them caught up on the last two hundred years of science and theology.
Click here to read and share onlineAbout the Author
Rev. David M. Felten is a full-time pastor at The Fountains, 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, “Living the Questions”.A co-founder of the Arizona Foundation for Contemporary Theology and also a founding member of No Longer Silent: Clergy for Justice, David is an outspoken voice for LGBTQ rights both in the church and in the community at large. David is active in the Desert Southwest Conference of the United Methodist Church 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 Fountain Hills Saxophone Quartet. David and his wife Laura have three children. |
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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited
Understanding Religious Anger
Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong on August 22, 2006
One of the things that always surprises me is the level of anger, often expressed in acts of overt rudeness, which seems to mark religious people. It appears so often that I have almost come to expect it, or at the very least not to be surprised by it. A recent episode simply made the connection between religion and anger newly indelible in my consciousness.It occurred last spring when I attended, at their invitation, the graduation ceremonies of a well-known university. Indeed, I was to receive an honorary degree. There was much conviviality connected with this event. We were entertained royally by the president of the university and his wife. We saw former classmates. Families gathered to share this transitional moment with a graduating son or daughter. It seemed to be a very pleasant occasion.When the procession formed to begin the ceremonial walk into the arena, there was a panoply of color marking the assembly. The black caps and gowns of academia were bedecked with bright and varied hoods, representing the doctorates earned by the members of the faculty and reflecting the school colors of the awarding universities. Harvard’s crimson was immediately identifiable, as well as the unique form of the doctoral hoods from the storied universities of Cambridge and Oxford. My place in this lineup was in the company of some of the university’s deans. While we waited for the signal to begin the procession, I introduced myself to my nearest companions. They were all cordial until I introduced myself to the Dean of the Medical School. It was not a time for small talk for this man. He could not have possibly known that he and I would be together in the procession, so what followed was clearly spontaneous and unplanned. He obviously had strong feelings about me and could not miss this exquisite opportunity to give expression to them. I had never met this man before this moment, but my expectation was that one whose career in medicine had been so successful that he had become the dean of a major medical school would have a broad perspective on life. I was wrong. He was bitter and small-minded, caught more in his narrow religious agenda than in his academic excellence. We had barely unlocked hands in our introductory handshake when he said,“I wish I did not feel this way but I think what you have done to the Church is both reprehensible and destructive. I regret that this university has decided to honor you today.” I was taken aback not by the content of his remarks, since I have dealt with threatened religious people many times before, but by the inappropriateness of his comments. This was neither the time nor the place for this tirade. I was after all an invited guest in his world. Yet, he simply could not contain his feelings. I tried to parry his comments by saying something like: “I’m sorry we don’t have time to discuss this here, but you must realize that the world has undergone a vast intellectual revolution in the last 500-600 years and if the Church is to stay in dialogue with that world then the Church must also change. However, this Dean was in no mood to let go; he had the bit between his teeth. “You totally ignore the truth of those first 1,300 years of Christian history,” he retorted, his anger still rising. “Would you want to practice medicine in today’s world equipped only with the medical knowledge available in the first 1300 years of Christian history?” I enquired. At that moment the conversation ended because the music started, the stately procession began its journey into the stadium where literally thousands were gathered.As we walked in silence I could not help but wonder at the rudeness of this Dean, who had so great a need to express his anger that he violated the good manners of his university. I learned later that this doctor was part of a conservative Christian congregation. Somehow, religious convictions seem to give people permission to be rude.A similar incident occurred in the summer of 2005, when I was the guest lecturer at the Highlands Institute for American and Philosophical Thought in Western North Carolina. I had been there for the past three summers, and had always met with a warm and positive reception. However, on this particular night, a local fundamentalist decided to achieve his fifteen minutes of fame. About midway in the lecture, this man stood up and drew sufficient attention to himself that I stopped speaking and enquired if there was something wrong. “I’m feeling sick,” this gentleman replied. So I responded, “There is nothing I’m saying tonight that is more important than your health, so let me pause until you get whatever help you need.” “You don’t understand,” he retorted, “I’m sick of you.” Somehow this man felt that his religious convictions justified his interruption of a lecture attended by more than 250 people. It never occurred to him that this behavior was rude to me, rude to the audience and that it reflected little more than his own anger. I learned later that he was a member of the Community Bible Church and that he had been encouraged to take this action by fellow members of his fundamentalist church. Once again if one is acting ‘in the name of God,’ both anger and rudeness are apparently justified.Those two experiences set me to thinking about the relationship between religion and anger. It is far closer than most people seem to realize. Sometimes the sweet piety of religion serves to hide anger even from the awareness of the angry one, though it is obvious to everyone else. Is it anything but anger when religious people describe what is in store for those who do not believe their way? Is the threat of hell, which is spoken so freely in religious circles, not a projection onto God of the anger inside the one consigning another to a place of eternal torment? Is there much difference between a person saying in hostility: “Go to hell!” and a preacher threatening a congregation with that same destiny? When one looks at the history of religious persecution, which has included such things as excommunication, torture, and the burning of heretics at the stake, there is ample evidence of hostility associated with Christianity. When one adds to that the Crusades designed ‘to kill the infidels,’ a history of anti-Semitism, and the wars between Catholics and Protestants, the picture of religion as a source of anger in human society, victimizing people in every generation, becomes clear.In moments of social upheaval, religious anger becomes very apparent. Most of the anger that was displayed during the movement to emancipate women came from the Christian Church. Most of the anger displayed in the current struggle over justice for gay and lesbian people emanates from the Christian Church.It is very hard to deny that underneath the sounds of religious conviction, there is a boiling cauldron of anger that seems to be an unrecognized part of the religious experience. Step one, therefore, is to recognize it. Step two is to understand it. Religious anger seems to manifest itself first and most stridently in those religious traditions that claim to possess absolute certainty. It is only when one believes that one possesses the whole truth of God that one finds the need to persecute those who do not accept your version of truth. What that behavior reveals is that the frightened human psyche needs the certainty of religion, no matter how narrowly defined, in order to feel secure. Christianity has developed many security-giving idols inside its traditional formulations, infallible popes and inerrant scriptures being two of them. How rational, for example, is it for anyone to say: “Since my God is the true God and your God is, therefore, a false God, I have the right to hate you, to persecute you or even to kill you?” Yet all of these expressions of anger are found inside the Christian Church.The second thing that religious anger reveals to me is that organized religion feeds the expression of self-hatred in its people. There is certainly much self-negativity in traditional Christianity with its doctrines of ‘the Fall,’ its emphasis on the depravity of human life, the need to be rescued, and the guilt-producing idea that “Jesus died for my sins.” The liturgies of Christian churches are constantly calling their worshipers such things as ‘a wretch,’ ‘a worm,’ ‘one unworthy to gather up the crumbs under the divine table,’ all interspersed with the plea to God to ‘have mercy, have mercy, have mercy.’ Are these not expressions of self-directed religious anger?If one absorbs negativity from any source long enough, one cannot help but become negative. When one is denigrated in worship over a sustained period of time, one inevitably projects this denigration onto others as anger. It is necessary for survival.Does this not help us to understand why prejudice is greater among religious people than among non-religious people; why slavery, segregation and other overt forms of racism have been the pattern of that region of our country that we call ‘the Bible Belt;’ and why the ‘Religious Right’ even today is more supportive of war as an instrument of national policy than any other segment of our national population? Each of these attitudes reflects religiously justified violence.Has religion in general and Christianity in particular degenerated to the level that it has become little more than a veil under which anger can be legitimatized? What happened to that biblical proclamation that the disciples of Jesus are to be known by their love? How does religious anger fit in with the Fourth Gospel’s interpretation of Jesus’ purpose to be that of bringing life more abundantly?Perhaps the time has come to recognize that Christianity was never meant to be about religion; it is to be about life. The achievement of personal security is the goal of religion. The ability to live with integrity in the midst of the insecurity of life is the goal of Christianity. Religion seeks to control life with guilt. Christianity seeks to free people to be all that they can be. There is a vast difference. Perhaps it will take the death of religion to open us once again to the meaning of Christianity, even ‘Religionless Christianity.’ For the purpose of Jesus was not to make us religious but to make us fully human.~ John Shelby Spong |
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