[Dialogue] 12/10/2020, Progressing Spirit, Rev. Gretta Vosper: Except for God… freedom never kneels; Spong revisited

Thu Dec 10 06:26:42 PST 2020

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Except for God… freedom never kneels.
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|  Essay by Rev. Gretta Vosper
December 10, 2020
It has been a burdensome year and it is likely to get worse before it is over.

I begin this article on the morning after the convicted felon and twenty-four- day National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, recently pardoned by the United States’ sitting-in-a-golf-cart President, called upon that President to invoke martial law as a means to take back the country from the results of its most recent democratic election. I needn’t go into the details of that election and its aftermath; the whole world has been watching and, in the weeks to come, may see its outcome responded to with more than rude and vocal civic unrest. I hope that is not so, but those with significant platforms, like Flynn and the President of the United States of America, are tossing seeds of sedition on ground made fertile by the anger of those who see themselves as the dispossessed. It may result in a harvest that has always cost human community much throughout the many times and civilizations into which it has been sown, not one of which was brought in or put down without the spilling of innocent blood.

What’s Up with the Evangelical Fervor?
Do you remember coughing up your morning coffee when, way back in 2016, videos of Donald Trump bragging about grabbing pussy hit mainstream media? I do. And I’m not even American. But my coffee splurt was punctuated with a smirk of incredulity, so sure was I that no one in America could possibly take Trump seriously, and even if some of them did, there was no way he’d ever make it to the White House. A few weeks later, that smirk was proverbially wiped off my face. And seriously, I haven’t smirked since. Indeed, I may never smirk at anything that comes out of an American election campaign again.

As evangelical Christians flocked to support the most egregiously disrespectful and crude president America had seen since Lyndon Johnson, those of us in the liberal wing of the institution stared in disbelief. How could people who call themselves Christian support the likes of Donald Trump?

Don’t bother answering that. In an article published by Christian Headlines, columnist Scott Slayton includes as the third thing Christians need to know about Donald Trump’s faith (right before the fourth thing which is that Trump seems to have changed his mind about forgiveness…) the fact that the man has the “Vocal and Public Support of Several Prominent Evangelical Leaders”. Small point, I know, but that doesn’t actually say anything about Donald Trump’s faith as the article’s title promised. What it does say is everything about the desire of Several Prominent Evangelical Leaders for power in the White House, a power with considerably more real-time real-world impact than the otherworldly god in whom they profess belief.

...........Several of the leaders have trumpeted Trump as one of the best
...........friends evangelicals have ever had in the White House. Jerry
...........Falwell, Jr. said that in Trump “evangelicals have found their
...........dream president, adding that “I’ve never seen a White House
...........have such a close relationship with faith leaders than this one (sic).”[1]

Still, the 2020 election result suggests that Public Religion Research Institute CEO Robert P. Jones was right when he argued The End of White Christian America [2] is nigh.

What’s God Got to Do with It?
When Michael Flynn tweeted out the We the People Convention press release[3] calling for martial law with the phrase “Freedom never kneels except for God” in the body of his tweet, my reaction was to be expected. My physical reaction, that is. I can chart the course of anger as it parades across my brain affecting my heart rhythm, my breathing, and the dull presage of a headache. It’s not that I’m angry at Flynn. He may be lamentably and dangerously stupid, but I’m not angry at him. I’m angry at the easy availability of the word “God” to punctuate patriotism, to rally a call to arms, to ennoble any position, no matter how irresponsibly reckless it may be. Haven’t we done that enough already?

The truth is that many of us have learned and so we usually read tweets like Flynn’s and blow them off. We know better than to use God for our own purposes; it is easy to dismiss those who do. Our side of the tradition has learned how problematic self-justification in the faith is. We hobble ourselves with the academic deconstruction of traditional texts and the beliefs built upon them, remind ourselves that there is no ultimate power that can show us the way or the truth, humble our blind arrogance with the stories of those who took up the shield of faith blindly and arrogantly before us, and challenge our truths over and again until there is little left of them other than the belief that they must never be taken as truths. We have been taught, and taught others, that god is love, that faith is the cost of that love, and that we must always explore our intention, our personal investment, our prejudice, and our privilege as we seek to live out that love. It has not been simple. Quite the contrary. It’s been a bitch.

Which is why my body heads toward that classic stress response when I read stuff like Flynn’s tweet. But not just stuff like Flynn’s tweet. Anything that uses the word “God” as though it is an umbrella term for something everyone will understand makes my heart lurch to attention. What does the being we have given the name God, in whom most liberals and progressives do not literally believe, have to do with it the things we must deal with in the here and now? In two words: E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G. and N.O.T.H.I.N.G.: Every purpose to which it is attached that has a human desire behind it, none of which results can be directly attributed to the actions of such a fictional being. We who identify as liberals or progressives must stop supporting the illusion that we give credence to this charade. We can only do so by refusing any non-expletive-use of the word “god”. The risks that have caused us to maintain the illusion of our belief are no longer relevant. There are bigger concerns at hand.

Tillich: Having Our God and Eat It, Too
When in theological college, I hated Tillich. I think it had something to do with being a single parent struggling with regular migraines and an inability to retain auditory learning a.k.a. lectures. Or maybe it was just that Tillich didn’t make any sense to me, no matter how I laboured over his work. Who knows?

Over time, I’ve come to appreciate what he was trying to do, however, and can say that I truly admire his fortitude in that undertaking. But I’m seriously pissed that he managed to pull it off. Because he’s the reason anyone can call on the god called God to underscore any endeavour they want to promote for whatever reason they might want to promote it, most of which has nothing to do with the god Tillich was so creatively reconstructing. Tillich laboured long and hard to give us our god and let us eat it, too.

In The Faith of a Heretic, the late German-American philosopher and poet, Walter Kaufman, considered Tillich’s enduring work. Recognizing that Tillich’s definitions of theists and atheists seem to reverse standard understandings, that is, those who believe in the traditional “ancient beliefs of Christendom, the Apostles’ Creed, or Luther’s articles of faith may well be lacking faith, while the man who doubts all these beliefs but is sufficiently concerned to lie awake nights worrying about it is a paragon of faith,”[4] Kaufman effectively exposes Tillich’s purpose: to provide a faith for those who have explored beyond the boundaries of literal faith while preserving the dignity of those who have not had the opportunity or courage to do so.

...........Taken literally, Tillich considers the Christian myths untenable; 
...........but “the natural stage of literalism is that in which the mythical 
...........and the literal are indistinguishable,” and this is characteristic of 
...........“the primitive period of individuals and groups. … This stage has 
...........a full right of its own and should not be disturbed, either in 
...........individuals or in groups, up to the moment when man’s 
...........questioning mind breaks the natural acceptance of the 
...........mythological versions as literal.”[5]

We have had these arguments reiterated by scholars such as the late Marcus Borg who spoke of pre- and post-critical naivete. Heading back into the literature and language of faith with a post-critical naivete rooted in scholarship and a scientific worldview, we encounter a rich environment for metaphor and interpretation. Progressives everywhere, eager to retain the community, elegance, liturgy, and meaning of their Christian tradition, revel in it. It allows us to have our cake and eat it, too.

Is this what we want? Is this what we need RIGHT NOW? To keep the waters of faith literally undisturbed? To hold onto the privileges of a religious tradition no matter what it might cost or how it might play out at the hands of others?

Every time liberal and progressive Christians, particularly leaders, use the word God when our beliefs do not align with the ancient, traditional Christian beliefs about God still held by others to be true, or that do not meet the definitions hammered out in the creeds and articles of faith of our traditions, many still recited with the formal dignities of former generations, whenever we call upon the god called God in services of worship or public gatherings, or use words of faith metaphorically, we swallow the truth of what we believe so that we and others might not choke on it.

I know how important those in the pews are to those who lead them. But the world’s concerns are bigger than those of the people in the pews and there are many ways to be pastoral. Miscreants who use a pre-scientific idea of God to serve themselves at the peril of the world, its people, its life, its future, must not be encouraged. Liberal and progressive leaders in congregations around the world who refuse to believe in the god of ancient creeds, the god Tillich refused, must refuse the words that keep such a god alive.

If not God, then what?
Perhaps it is helpful to explore god, as did Tillich, as a concept. Most progressives and liberals do so already, but we don’t often think about the implications of that. Concepts have no power to act except through those who hold them. Freedom is a concept. Without someone acting on behalf of that concept, freedom is only so many words on a page. Animate it, and it can be one of our most beautiful and powerful ideals.

Let’s return to Flynn’s tweet “Freedom never kneels except for God.” A powerful and dangerous statement because the explication of what God wants is always up for grabs. You don’t need to honor the outcome of a democratic election; oil your gun and call on your God’s support for martial law. You don’t need to wear a mask in the midst of a pandemic; if you perish or cause someone else to, you’re uncompromised: it was your God’s plan. You don’t need to stand up for the rights of those who look, speak, or love differently than you; your God gives you the privilege to ignore their plight. You don’t need to be celibate even if no woman will sleep with you: your God gave you that penis and the right to use it. Yes. It can quickly get obscene. That’s my point.

There is no need to call out God in front of your friends or congregations. There is no need to declare war on the word or chastise those who use it differently than do you. There is a simple way to be a person of faith without denying the gods in which others believe: refuse to use the word. Every time it would flow from your lips (which, for progressives, is almost exclusively in church), exercise your brain in pursuit of some new way to say what you mean. Speak about the actions you feel compelled to undertake. Speak about the rights you feel compelled to protect. Speak about the people you refuse to neglect. Speak about the future you will die trying to save. Speak about your truth. Speak only about your truth.

When we do, we find there are many things to which our freedom might bow, the most poignant of which, for me, is the future I create but will never see: the air I will never breathe, the rain I will never watch fall; the forests through which I will never walk. My everything (my “god” were I to use the term) is what comes next and the choices I make that will impact the world I leave to future generations. For that, I will freely and willingly take a knee. What will it be for you?

~ Rev. Gretta Vosper

Read online here

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. Visit her website here.
[1] Scott Slayton, “5 Things Christians Should Know about the Faith of Donald Trump.” Christian Headlines, November 29, 2019. https://www.christianheadlines.com/contributors/scott-slayton/things-christians-should-know-about-the-faith-of-donald-trump.html, accessed December 3, 2020. (Punctuation, grammar as published.)[2] Robert P. Jones, The End of White Christian America, Simon and Schuster, 2016.[3] Please forgive me for not linking you to the We the People Convention page. It’s bad enough that I’ve even mentioned them…[4] Walter Kaufman, The Faith of a Heretic: What can I believe? How should I live? What do I hope? (Anchor Books: New York, 1963) p. 118. Quoting Paul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith, (Harper: New York, 1957), p. 52f.[5] Ibid.  |

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Question & Answer

Q: By Martin

I am officially a Roman Catholic. Over the past 10 years I have suffered a number of adverse life experiences which have seriously weakened the aforementioned faith. Basically I am still sort of Christian. What I believe is that the very early church i.e. “Gnostics” got it right as regards such things as having to subscribe to a detailed set of beliefs, variations in human sexuality. I was taught that the Emperor Constantine “saved Christianity “. I believe that he changed it from a group of “seekers after truth” to a bunch of “yes men”. I believe that what we have in “mainstream” Christianity today is what Bishop Spong described as the “winning side” rather than the “right side”. I’m old. I’m not as incapacitated as some people of my age. But, strangely enough, I still care about what I believe in. Please Help !

A: By Kevin G. Thew Forrester, PhD

Dear Martin,

I am wondering about what you have suffered over these past ten years and its impact upon your heart, mind, and body. I’m also aware of the ageism that plagues our culture and its assumption that with age inevitably comes incapacity, rather than perspective, generosity, and a graceful latitude.

What I hear arising from your words is possibly an awakening of the heart that also carries within it a sense of loss. I am curious about your understanding of personal evolution with “weakened…faith.” I am impressed by the courage to question the assumed belief-set of your formative years. Clearly, the life of your soul, as expressed in your inquisitive mind and your heart of care, has not remained static. I hear words of someone who has been willing to allow their experience of suffering to school their soul and grow even if it has meant leaving behind the security of once held doctrine (and perhaps relationships). It would seem that pursuing truth is more important to you than conformity to hollow beliefs. If so, that is a blessing. If this impression is accurate, then my sense is that while your “belief” in antiquated teachings is diminishing, at the same time your authentic faith is maturing. And maturation, whenever and however it occurs, involves “loss” of what we have previously taken ourselves to be.

A final observation: One of the gifts of the internet is discovering kindred souls on life’s spiritual journey. I would encourage you to avail yourself of this “great cloud of witnesses” – courageous and creative people who can listen, converse, and be of support.

~ Kevin G. Thew Forrester, PhD

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About the Author
Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D. is an Episcopal priest, a student of the Diamond Approach for over a decade, as well as a certified teacher of the Enneagram in the Narrative Tradition. He is the founder of the Healing Arts Center of  in Marquette, Michigan, and the author of five books, including I Have Called You Friends, Holding Beauty in My Soul’s Arms, and My Heart is a Raging Volcano of Love for You and Beyond my Wants, Beyond my Fears: The Soul’s Journey into the Heartland. Visit Kevin’s Blog: Essential Living: For The Soul’s Journey.
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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited

The Origins of the New Testament, Part XX:
Seeing the Crucifixion as Related Liturgically to the Passover

Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong
April 15, 2010
The first narrative of Jesus’ crucifixion to be written achieved its shape and form in Mark’s gospel, specifically in 14:17-15:47. Prior to this, all the Christians had in writing was one line from Paul: “Jesus died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures.” Not a single narrative detail was given by Paul. Perhaps there were no narrative details to be given since Mark’s gospel is quite specific in 14:50 that, when Jesus was arrested, “They all took flight and fled.” This would mean that Jesus died alone without any eye witnesses.

That would be a shattering insight to many since we have literalized the details we have in Mark’s gospel down to recording not just what Jesus said from the cross, but what Jesus and the high priest said to each other, and even what Jesus and the crowd said to each other. One might wonder who was present to record all of these words of conversation. The overwhelming probability is that the familiar details of the cross are not the result of historic memory at all, but are rather liturgical interpretations of who it was who died on the cross and what his death meant. A quick analysis of the details from this narrative reveals that they were drawn not from the memory of eye witnesses, but from the scriptures of the Jewish people, primarily from Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53. So even the central story of the final events in Jesus’ life now looks more like the work of an interpretative imagination than it does the work of a historian.

>From Psalm 22, Mark drew many of the familiar elements of his story, including first the cry of dereliction, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” with which that psalm opens. Next Mark refers to the attitude of the mocking crowd, “shaking their heads” and stating that, “since he trusted in God, let God deliver him,” which Mark has incorporated almost verbatim into his narrative (Ps. 22:8). The notion of disjointed bones (Ps. 22:14), the reality of thirst (Ps. 22:15) and the “piercing of his hands and feet” (Ps. 22:16) are notes also found in this psalm which Mark has clearly drawn into his portrait, as well as the reference to the soldier’s parting his garments and casting lots for his robe (Ps. 22:18). When it becomes obvious that the words used to describe the crucifixion are drawn from a work written at least 400 years before the events being described, then it is surely clear that this is not “eye-witness” reporting.

>From Isaiah 53, which is part of a portrait that this author, called II Isaiah, paints of a figure he calls the “Servant,” or the “Suffering Servant” of the Lord, Mark incorporates into his account of the death of Jesus the picture of one “despised and rejected,” a “man of sorrows and one acquainted with grief (Is. 53:3),” to say nothing of the image of being “wounded for our transgressions” and “bruised for our iniquities (Is. 53:5).” The “Servant” in Isaiah, like Jesus in Mark, “is silent before his accuser (Is. 53:7).” Of Isaiah’s “Servant” it was said, “with his stripes we are healed (Is. 53:5),” language that later informed the Christian idea of Jesus in the substitutionary theory of the atonement.

This identification becomes even more exact when we read in Isaiah that the “Servant” will be numbered among the transgressors (Is. 53:12), which in time gave substance to the story introduced by Mark of Jesus being crucified between two thieves. Isaiah also stated that this “Servant” would, in his death, “make his grave with the rich (Is. 53:9),” which eventually led to Mark’s story of his being buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, who was “a ruler of the Jews” and thus a person of means.

As much as this knowledge flies in the face of a familiar literalism, which has been carved in stone for us in such artifacts of our worship as the “Passion of Jesus” set to music by J. S. Bach, the traditional Good Friday liturgies of the church through the ages and in such ecclesiastical habits as sermons preached on the “seven last words” supposedly spoken by Jesus from the cross, the truth is that Mark’s story of the crucifixion is not the remembered history of an eye witness at all, but second generation interpretations of Jesus’ death shaped by biblical sources that had fed Jewish messianic expectations through the ages drawn, as they were, directly from the Hebrew Scriptures. So our first step in understanding the familiar story of the cross is to free our minds from any assumption that we are reading history. What we are reading is the interpretation of Jesus’ death as his Jewish disciples had come to understand it.

The second step in this eye-opening process is to notice that this first narrative story of the cross was itself crafted by Mark to serve as a liturgical reenactment of the meaning of Jesus’ passion. Current studies of 1st century Judaism inform us that the Jews observed Passover in a family setting that usually consumed about three hours. Included in these three hours were the family gathering, various games played to enhance the holiday spirit, the meal itself which included feeding “on the body of the lamb of God,” as well as the use of the various symbols of their past like bitter herbs and unleavened bread, which reminded them of their life in slavery and their hasty exodus from Egypt. Following the meal the youngest boy in the family would say to the senior patriarch of the family, “Father, why is this night different from all other nights?” which would give the head of the household the chance to relate the story of the Exodus and thus to recount the moment of their birth as a nation. The meal would then conclude with the singing of a hymn, and the family members, who did not live in this house, would depart into the night for their own houses.

Church historians and liturgical scholars have discovered some evidence that by the latter years of the second century CE, Christians were observing the passion of Jesus by stretching the three-hour Passover celebration of the Jews into a twenty-four hour vigil. The question is, when did that vigil practice begin? I think the evidence in Mark’s story of the Passion is that it began very early, certainly prior to the writing of this first gospel, for the outline of a twenty-four hour vigil is in the text of Mark itself. If we look at Mark’s story of the Passion (Mark 14:17-15:47) and if we study the text carefully we can see the outline of a twenty-four hour vigil. It is a twenty-four hour narrative that runs from sundown on what we now call Maundy Thursday to sundown on what we now call Good Friday. Let me point out the time markers that are in the text itself of Mark’s gospel. Mark 14:17 has Jesus arrive with the twelve at a house in Jerusalem for the Passover “in the evening,” that is at sundown or approximately 6 pm. Mark has earlier given us the details of the preparation the disciple band has undergone to ready a place for this night. The supper is then described and Mark says the evening ended with the singing of a hymn and Jesus and his disciples went into the night. It is thus now about 9 pm. Then they went to the Garden of Gethsemane where the disciples were not able, without falling asleep, to watch with him “one,” “two,” or “three” hours, which would carry the vigil to midnight. In 14:43 Mark then relates the act of betrayal at midnight, making the darkest deed in history occur at the darkest moment of the night. It is dramatically powerful, but hardly historically accurate.

Following the arrest comes the trial before the high priest and the chief priest which is told from 14:53-65 and which carries us to 3 am. The watch of the night between 3 am and 6 am is called “cockcrow,” and into these three hours Mark has placed the story of Peter’s threefold denial (14:66-72), presumably one denial for each hour of that watch until the cock crows and the broken Peter is portrayed as weeping.

Then the text says (15:1) that “when morning came,” which means it is now about 6 am, and this is the time to which Mark has assigned the trial before Pilate (15:1-14). The story of Barabbas and the torture by the soldiers, complete with purple robe and a crown of thorns, are also described in this segment. Mark then informs us (15:35) that it was the third hour when they crucified him, or 9 am. The drama of the cross reaches its crescendo when, in verse 33, the text says “when the sixth hour,” or noon, comes darkness covers the earth until the 9th hour, or 3 pm, when Jesus utters his cry of dereliction and dies. When we arrive at 15:42, we are told of his burial before “evening came,” or about 6 pm. For the Jews, Sabbath started at sundown on Friday, not at midnight. The fact that they did not have time to complete the burial process before the Sabbath began, is Mark’s segue to explain just why it was that the women had to come with embalming spices at dawn on the first day of the week and thus set the stage for the Easter story.

Vestiges of the twenty-four hour vigil still exist in liturgical churches today. The climax of Holy Week begins with the Maundy Thursday service commemorating the establishment of the Eucharist. This is followed by a stripping of the altar until it is left bare and tomblike. The Sacrament is then placed into the ambry and worshipers are invited to keep watch through the night. Sometimes churches organize the vigil to make certain that some members are always present. On Good Friday, the elements are distributed from the Reserved Sacrament since the somberness of the day precludes a “celebration” of the Eucharist. Then comes the three-hour service with worshipers observing that time when darkness was covering the earth between 12 noon and 3 pm. Then Jesus’ rest in the tomb is marked on “holy Saturday” until the fires are lit that evening at the first “Mass of Easter.” The tradition is ancient. The Easter Vigil was observed, I am now convinced, before the first gospel was written. Mark did not create it; Mark observed it and wrote his gospel account of the Passion to help people act it out.

It was thus the liturgical life of the synagogue, and not the remembered life of Jesus, that was the organizing principle in Mark’s first written gospel. He in turn set the example for Matthew and Luke to follow. As we turn to consider those two gospels, we will see how both expanded and lengthened Mark, but neither ever challenged his organizing principle, which was and is the annual cycle of the liturgical life of the synagogue.

~  John Shelby Spong
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