[Dialogue] 12/31/2020, Progressing Spirit: Rev. Irene Monroe: Where Do We Go from Here, Redux; Spong revisited
Ellie Stock
elliestock at aol.com
Thu Dec 31 06:38:37 PST 2020
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| Where Do We Go from Here, Redux |
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| Essay by Rev. Irene Monroe
December 31, 2020
The year 2020 has been a stressful one. With George Floyd's death as an inflection point about race and racism in America, an unprecedented presidential election, and social unrest during an ongoing pandemic with a rising death toll, something is deeply broken in America's body politic.
America has been divided and broken before: The American Civil War and the 1960's Civil Rights Movement. However, is America so broken now we can't turn back? Do we want to turn back? The daunting question as we approach 2021 is, "Where do we go from here?" invoking the words of Dr. Martin Luther King. We have revisited this question several times in American history, but have resisted the work and change needed to be done - individually, collectively, and systematically.
The long, hot summer of 1967 is when Martin Luther King wrote the book Where do we go from here? It was King's fourth and final tome before his assassination a year later. King wrote the book because in that summer of 1967, there were 159 race riots across America. Many wondered, with the rage and frustrations of young black America, if the government could extinguish the conflagration. Sadly, what caught the nation's attention was not the protesters' plight but rather the violence. "Everyone is worrying about the long hot summer with its threat of riots. We had a long cold winter when little was done about the conditions that create riots" King stated that summer at a luncheon in his honor. The riots were the need for better jobs, higher wages, decent housing, quality education, health care, voting rights, and to end mass incarceration and police brutality. In other words, it was a clarion call to end systemic racism.
However, the more things appear to change on the surface for people of color through the years, the more they remain the same systemically. This year proved it. Consequently, the summer of 2020 was a long hot summer, too. According to Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED), "between 26 May, the day after Floyd's death, and 22 August, ACLED records over 7,750 demonstrations linked to the BLM movement across more than 2,440 locations in all 50 states and Washington, DC." The protestors consisted of not only blacks but the entire face of America from all walks of life. Ninety- five percent of the protests were nonviolent. This year's demonstrations were the same old same old as 1967: the need for better jobs, higher wages, decent housing, quality education, health care, voting rights, and to end mass incarceration and police brutality. This time the clarion call is to end systemic racism, now!
In order to know "where do we go from here?", we must honestly look at where we are now. While the Christian Right needs to talk to the right Christians, it doesn't excuse those who think they are the right Christians from looking at themselves, too. While many of the right Christians would not think of themselves as racist, the distinction must be recognized that being racist differs from being “anti-racist."
White supremacy is an ideology and belief system. It is not the province of solely white people; there are black white supremacists, too. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and Dr. Ben Carson are examples. They uphold a white heteronormative and nationalist government that has power shaping policy impacting us all - LGBTQ, women, and POC.
The five pillars of white supremacy create dysfunctional notions of entitlement in the following ways:
1. Racial privilege in terms of internalizing beliefs in superiority.
2. Culturally in terms of relinquishing their actual cultural/ethnic/national identities to "become white."
3. Economically in terms of creating allegiance to an economic system that disempowers most whites, too.
4. Politically in terms of supporting public policy that is against their best interests.
5. Spiritually in terms of ritualizing white supremacist thought with dogma, creeds, theology, and liturgy.
In Romans 12:2 Apostle Paul talks about the renewing of our mind. "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is -- his good, pleasing and perfect will. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good."
White supremacy is in the DNA of America. Clinging to it for as long as America has is precisely where we are today as a broken nation. The question "where do we go from here" means problems have not been solved. While the Covid vaccine will eventually stop the spread of the pandemic, sadly, the pandemic of racism will persist. Americans cannot be blamed for the misinformation we have been taught and have absorbed from our society and culture. However, we must be held responsible for repeating misinformation, unexamined racism and privileges in ourselves after we have learned otherwise.
George Floyd's death, a cis-gendered male, symbolizes the new face of anti-black violence, as Matthew Shepard's face came to symbolize homophobic violence after his murder in 1998. His death forces us to look at what's broken in America as well as ourselves. But his death can also be an opportunity for reconciliation and healing the sacred in all of us, recognizing our shared humanity. It starts by calling out and addressing racists, whether they are well-intentioned white liberals or ill-intentioned white nationalists, because both erase our lived reality of a multiracial society.
In the end, we cannot think that white supremacy and white privilege exist outside ourselves. Rather, it must be assumed. With that assumption, democracy can fully begin for those on the margin to experience what others take for granted.
Otherwise, we won't be united as a country. Divided, we will continue to be petty people.
~ Rev. Irene Monroe
Read online here.
About the Author
The Reverend Monroe does a weekly Monday segment, “All Revved Up!” on NPR's WGBH (89.7 FM). She is a weekly Friday commentator on New England Channel NEWS. Monroe is the Boston voice for Detour’s African American Heritage Trail, Guided Walking Tour of Beacon Hill: Boston’s Black Women Abolitionists. A Huffington Post blogger and a syndicated religion columnist; her columns appear the Boston LGBTQ newspaper Baywindows, Cambridge Chronicle, and the Boston Globe.
Monroe states that her “columns are an interdisciplinary approach drawing on critical race theory, African American, queer and religious studies. As a religion columnist I try to inform the public of the role religion plays in discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. 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. |
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Question & Answer
Q: By Susan
I have been an on and off member of a Assemblies of God church 15 years - the pastor is more liberal in his style of message giving. They can’t and don’t speak to the issues of gayness and they would say that Jesus is the only way to God. This pastor has meant so much to me. He introduced me to the person of Jesus, which has led to my graduate studies in theology. Problem is, I am much more progressive than they are. I’ve had a troubled childhood, so my journey to God has been fraught with questions, which theology school is helping me to investigate.
I also have a child who dislikes Sunday school at this church, which makes me sad. I want her to feel excited about knowing God, but the language they use sometimes is a bit unapproachable–even reading the Bible to a kid with words like “righteous” means nothing–even to me.
I was going to try the Universalist Unitarian church, but it seems to denounce God and lessen Jesus. I want to be a Christian and I want to show my daughter who God is and can be, but I’m at a loss. Do I stay where I am or do I join a less Christian church? Either way I will feel like an outsider.
A: By Rev. Jim Burklo
Dear Susan,
You are in excellent company in your quandary, and in your quest to find your way into a faith community that serves the souls of you and your dear daughter. I pray that you won’t despair, and that you will find the church home that is right for you.
Your story resonates with my own. Jesus captured my heart in a conversion experience when I was sixteen years old. But I was that kid who asked questions that the youth leaders and pastor could not answer. Finally, the pastor told me: “If you keep asking all these questions, you’re going to argue your way into seminary!” And that's exactly what happened. What a relief it was to arrive at seminary and find other progressive Christians who valued the questions even more than dogmatic answers! It took a long time for me to “find my people”, but I’m grateful I did. And I really hope that happens for you and your daughter.
Good news! In your area there are many wonderful progressive Christian churches: open-hearted, open-minded, Jesus-loving communities. Look them up here. And if you otherwise appreciate what you find in the Unitarian community, you might also explore the network of Christian UUA’s. UUA congregations differ substantially: some lift up their Christian heritage, others do not.
As you “church shop”, ask about the curricula in Sunday Schools. A Joyful Path is the wonderful new curriculum produced by ProgressiveChristianity.org, used in many churches in our network. Some otherwise progressive churches continue to use denominational Sunday School curricula that are not in “synch” with what is preached and taught to adults, so it’s important to inquire about the details.
I urge you to abandon shyness about asking hard questions about the churches you visit. It will save you a lot of time and heartache! Many churches seem “cool” because they have rock bands and the preachers wear designer street wear. But upon further examination, they turn out to be fundamentalists in skinny jeans! More and more evangelical churches make a big deal about welcoming gay and lesbian people, but in fact they do not affirm their sexuality and do not celebrate same-sex marriages. Before suffering disappointment, it’s good to discover reality up-front.
Here’s a “cheat sheet” of questions, to get you started as you visit a congregation:
1. Can I make great new friends there?
2. Does it have meaningful worship?
3. Does it offer Bible study?
4. Will it help me grow in my relationship with Jesus?
5. Does it practice meditative prayer?
6. Can it help to get me involved in activism for service and social justice?
7. Do its members take the Bible seriously without having to take it literally?
8. Does it take scientific and intellectual exploration seriously - for example, does it accept the validity of the theory of evolution?
9. Are women given the same opportunities for leadership positions in the church as men?
10. Does it fully affirm LGBTQI sexuality, and celebrate same-sex marriage?
11. Does it teach that how we treat others is the true test of our faith, rather than belief in a fixed doctrine?
12. Does it respect and celebrate other faiths? Does it teach that other religions might be as good for others as Christianity is for us?
13. Does it teach that because God is love, nobody is going to hell?
If “yes” is the answer to all of these questions, you’ve probably found a solid progressive church.
Here’s a “next-level” set of questions to pose to pastors and lay leaders of the churches you are exploring:
1. Who or what do you mean by the word "God"? Do you experience God? If you say you believe in God, what do you mean by "belief"? (For a list of different understandings of God, see my blog article, "Varieties of God".)
2. Is the Bible the Word of God to humans, or is it humans' words about God? What is your relationship to the Bible? How literally do you take its miracle stories (walking on water, physical resurrection, etc), if at all? (See my “musings” blog entry on "How to Read the Bible" to explore this topic.)
3. Who was Jesus? Who/what is the Christ? What is your relationship to Jesus and/or the Christ?
4. Can people be "saved" without Christ or Christianity? Are there ways to experience God/Ultimate Reality outside of Christ or Christianity? Can other religions possibly be as good for other people as Christianity is for us?
5. Do you think it is okay for LGBTQ people to have sex? Under what circumstances? Do you support same-sex marriage?
6. Do you support women as leaders in all roles in church and society? Do you support a woman's right to choose whether or not to have an abortion?
7. Does your faith lead you to take political action for economic justice and peace? (Lots more on such issues at ProgessiveChristiansUniting.org .)
8. What other questions should I be asking?
Let me know when you find the church home you’ve been yearning to discover!
~ Rev. Jim Burklo
jtburklo at yahoo.com
Read and share online here
About the Author
Rev. Jim Burklo is the Senior Associate Dean of Religious and Spiritual Life at the University of Southern California. An ordained United Church of Christ minister, he formerly served as a community organizer, director of a homeless services agency, church pastor, and campus minister. He is a member of the board of directors of ProgressiveChristiansUniting.org and an honorary advisor for ProgressiveChristianity.org. Jim is the author of seven published books on progressive Christianity, including TENDERLY CALLING: An Invitation to the Way of Jesus, which will be in print in early 2021. His weekly blog, “musings”, has a global readership.
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Howard Thurman reminded us that the work of Christmas goes far beyond a single day or even a season. The work of Christmas — social justice that lies at the heart of the Gospel — is absolutely central to how we must live year-round.
As we prepare for a New Year, we need your help to do continue the work of Progressive Christianity in 2021. ProgressiveChristianity.org and Progressing Spirit strive to live authentically at the intersection of faith, reason, and justice. We strive to be a bold witness for the work of Christmas that Thurman described.
If you have not yet made a donation to ProgressiveChristianity.org, but believe in the work that we are doing, we hope that you’ll consider making a year-end donation. Your gift makes an enormous impact and helps to ensure that a progressive Christian voice is amplified. Thank you for your generosity.
Thank you from your friends at
ProgressiveChristianity.org and Progressing Spirit! |
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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited
The Origins of New Testament, Part XXII:
The Figure of Moses as the Interpretive Secret in Matthew
Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong
May 6, 2010
Matthew’s gospel has always fascinated me more than the others. It is not the most profound of the gospels, but it does open interpretive eyes for me more widely than the others. The doorway into this perception is found in the process of being able to ask the right questions. Matthew is the “Jewish Gospel,” par excellence, and if one does not understand what it means to be a Jewish Gospel, one will never understand this book. Two biblical characters are taken by Matthew from the Jewish scriptures and used as symbols around which he weaves his story of Jesus. Today I will look at both of them in an effort to illustrate that Matthew is deeply dependent on his audience having a sufficient understanding of Judaism to recognize his allusions both to Jewish history and to Jewish scripture.
The first of these Jewish characters is Joseph, the patriarch whose story is told in Genesis 37-50. This is the Joseph of the coat of many colors, the first born son to Jacob by his favorite wife Rachel. In our earlier trek through the Old Testament, we noted the deep and historic division between Judah, the dominant tribe in the south and the Northern Kingdom of which Joseph was the principle ancestor. Recall that the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, both sons of this same Joseph, were the dominant tribes in that separate part of the Hebrew nation. You may also recall our earlier discussion of how it was that the tribe of Judah not only produced King David but also produced the Yahwist version of the Hebrew scriptures, while the Joseph tribes in the North produced the Elohist version of the same scriptures, and how these two strands of Jewish history were later put together by an interpreter to form a major step in the production of the Torah.
One agenda that drove Matthew’s gospel was to present Jesus as the messianic life who was capable of binding up this deep historic division that had long divided the Jewish people. When we read Matthew knowing this background, we can watch just how he does it. Matthew opens his gospel with a seventeen verse genealogy in which he traces the lineage of Jesus through King David and the kings of the Jewish world that centered in Jerusalem. In this passage he clearly roots Jesus in the tribe of Judah, which was the tribe to which David and his royal house belonged. Jesus was clearly the son of Judah.
Then Matthew introduced into the developing tradition the story of Jesus’ miraculous birth and, in the process, confronts us with a new character who is also going to be portrayed as Jesus’ father. His name is Joseph and he has never before been mentioned anywhere in Christian writing. In the new story of Jesus’ birth to a “virgin,” there is a clear need for someone to play the role of “earthly father” and to give the child the protection that only a man could give in that fiercely patriarchal society. By having Joseph name this child, thus claiming him as his own, Matthew sought to dampen the rumors of illegitimacy that were swirling around from the ninth decade critics of the Christian movement. In this manner, Joseph, the name of the other major patriarch of Jewish history enters the story as this child’s protector and defender. In this manner, Matthew has bound Jewish history together in the person of Jesus.
Next look at the portrait of Joseph as Matthew painted him. Everything we know about Matthew’s character Joseph we learn in Matthew’s birth narrative. Joseph never appears in any part of the gospel tradition except in the birth narratives. From Matthew’s account we learn three things about Joseph. First, he has a father named Jacob (Matt. 1:16). Second, God only speaks to him in dreams (Matt. 1:20, 2:13, 2:19, and 2:22). Third, his role in the drama of salvation is to save the child of promise from death by taking him down to Egypt (2:13-16).
Now go back to the story of the patriarch Joseph in the book of Genesis (37-50) and read that narrative. There you will discover three things about the patriarch Joseph. First, he has a father named Jacob (Gen.37:2). Second, he is constantly associated with dreams (Gen. 37:5-11) and was even called the dreamer by his brothers (Gen. 37:19). As the story of his life unfolds he is noted primarily as the interpreter of dreams (Gen. 40:1-19), and even rides into political power in Egypt based on that gift (Gen. 41). Third, his role in the drama of salvation is to save the people of the covenant from death by taking them down to Egypt (Gen. 46).
Is this simply coincidence or are we beginning to discern how the Jewish Scriptures were used to interpret the Jesus experience? Matthew was not writing a biography of Jesus, he was interpreting Jesus in the light of the Jewish scriptures. Literalism is not the way to read a Jewish story. Literalism is, in fact, a late-developing Gentile heresy. To make Jesus simultaneously the son of Judah and the son of Joseph was something Matthew’s Jewish readers would understand.
The second shadowy figure from the Hebrew Scriptures around which Matthew weaves the story of Jesus is Moses. Moses was the founder of the Jewish nation, the giver of the Law, or Torah, and the ultimate hero of Judaism. Moses makes his first appearance in Matthew’s birth narrative in the account of the wicked King Herod, who slaughtered the male babies in Bethlehem in a vain attempt to wipe out this threat to his throne (Matt. 2:16-18). Every Jewish reader of Matthew’s gospel would have recognized that story as a Moses story. When Moses was born, a wicked King Pharaoh decreed that all the Jewish boy babies were to be destroyed so that his power would not be threatened (Ex. 1:8-22). To save their son from this fate, Moses’ parents put him in a basket on the River Nile where, according to that story, he was rescued by the Pharaoh’s daughter. Matthew in these opening verses of his gospel is signaling to his readers that he was interpreting Jesus under the popular messianic image of the New Moses. This theme is picked up later in the birth narrative when Matthew quotes Hosea as saying, “Out of Egypt have I called my Son.” This was once again a clear reference to Moses but used by Matthew to mark Jesus’ return from his flight to Egypt to which he had fled to avoid Herod.
Matthew next interprets the baptism of Jesus in such a way as to frame it as an analogy to Moses’ crossing of the Red Sea, by separating the waters so that the people could walk through the sea on dry land. Once again Jewish readers would recognize this theme for splitting the waters was a regular theme in the Jewish Scriptures. Moses did it at the Red Sea; Joshua did it at the Jordan River. Both Elijah and Elisha also split the waters of the Jordan River on their way to and from the place of Elijah’s departure in a fiery chariot. Now Matthew brings Jesus in the first story of his adult life to the Jordan River for baptism. In this narrative, he was clearly seeking to say that the God presence we have met in Jesus is even greater than the God presence our ancestors met in Moses. It was a stunning claim. How did he develop this theme? At the baptism, Jesus steps into the waters of the Jordan River, but he does not split these waters. That had been done so many times that it represented nothing special. Jesus rather splits the heavens that we are told in the creation story was “the firmament” that separates the waters above from the waters below (Gen.1:7). Jesus thus splits the heavenly waters, which then fall on him as the Holy Spirit, for that is what “living water” means in the Hebrew Scriptures (see Zech.14:8).
What did Moses do after his “baptism” in the Red Sea? The Torah says he wandered in the wilderness for forty years trying to determine what it meant to be the “chosen people.” What did Matthew have Jesus do after his “Red Sea” experience in the Jordan River? He wandered in the wilderness for forty days trying to determine what it means to be the chosen messiah.
While Moses was in the wilderness he had three critical experiences. The first involved the shortage of food and it was solved with manna from heaven. The second was when the shortage of water forced Moses to “put God to the test” by striking a rock and demanding that water flow from it. The third occurred when his people in his absence turned away from God and began to worship a golden calf as “the god who brought them out of Egypt.”
Matthew, as noted previously, is the first gospel writer to give content to the temptations, which Jesus had to endure in the wilderness. Examine that content. The first temptation involved the shortage of food. “Turn these stones into bread, Jesus.” The second had to do with putting God to the test. “Cast yourself off the pinnacle of the Temple, Jesus. He will give his angels charge over you.” The third temptation had to do with worshiping something other than God. “Bow down before me, Jesus, and I will give you all the kingdoms of this world.”
Once more, do you think this is coincidental? Or are you beginning to see Matthew’s gospel as interpretive writing designed to show that Jesus relived the messianic image of being the new Moses by having Moses’ stories from the Hebrew Scriptures wrapped around him. Matthew’s Jewish audience would immediately have understood the interpretive tools he was employing. Western, non-Jewish, literalists still do not comprehend.
The most distinguishing marks of Matthew’s gospel begin to form a pattern. The baptism story with the heavens parting is a Red Sea story. The temptations are shaped by the Moses narrative. Then comes the powerful Matthean portrait of Jesus giving the Sermon on the Mount. No other gospel in the New Testament includes the Sermon on the Mount. It is Matthew’s special creation because it enables him to portray Jesus as the new Moses on a new mountain, giving a new interpretation of the Torah. In this sermon, Matthew has Jesus compare Moses with him: “You have heard it said of old—-but I say unto you.” He reinterprets Moses driving the external Law of Moses toward the internal level of motivation. Moses is quite clearly one of the great interpretive clues to Matthew’s gospel. One has to read this book with Jewish eyes.
~ Bishop John Shelby Spong |
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