[Dialogue] 1/21/2021, Progressing Spirit: Rev. David M Felton At Cross Purposes; Spong revisited was

Thu Jan 21 08:36:37 PST 2021

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At Cross Purposes
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|  Essay by Rev. David M. Felten
January 21, 2021
On January 6th 2021, the day of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, smaller demonstrations took place at various capitols around the country. In Lansing, a mob of Proud Boys were seen raising a giant cross in front of the besieged Michigan state capitol building as part of a “Pray for Trump” rally.

As one who’s had to endure a career in a denomination whose global trademark is a burning cross, it once again raised the question in my mind of how the cross, burning or otherwise, had become a symbol of hate and White Supremacy.

I had always assumed that it was the Ku Klux Klan who had created the uniquely American symbol of hate that is the burning cross, but no, it was a movie. The original Klan was founded in 1865 by former Confederate Officers without any purpose beyond the amusement of its participants. It had no overt religious affiliations or aim. However, its members soon found the organization to be a means through which they could channel their resentments and anger toward Reconstruction policy in general and freed African Americans in particular. What followed were five years of ferocious vigilante violence, terror and mayhem, but no burning crosses. Eventually, after acts by Congress and other efforts, President Grant invoked the Insurrection Act and deployed Federal troops. Klansmen were apprehended and prosecuted in Federal court and, by 1872, the original Klan had been broken as an organization.

Fast-forward to 1915 and the release of D.W. Griffith’s film, Birth of a Nation. Griffith’s vision was influenced by the romanticized portrayal of the Klan found in Thomas Dixon, Jr.’s novel, The Clansman, where, among other fabrications, Klan members wore white flowing robes and burned crosses. As it turns out, ritual cross-burnings by the Klan was total fiction. Dixon’s depictions were drawn from the writings of Sir Walter Scott, who described some Scottish clans being rallied by a messenger bearing a “bidding stick” or fiery cross as a call to arms.

Griffith’s dramatic cinematic portrayal of Dixon’s fantasies went on to inspire an otherwise aimless, washed-up Methodist preacher by the name of William Joseph Simmons. He, along with a rag-tag group of fifteen “charter members,” traipsed up Stone Mountain on Thanksgiving night 1915. There, Simmons declared himself “Imperial Wizard” and, with an instinctive sense of the potential for intimidating symbols, burned the first cross of what was to become the second Klan.

No doubt Simmons’ prejudice against Jewish and Roman Catholic immigrants contributed to the development of the second Klan’s emphasis on white Protestant religious sensibilities, including the singing of hymns and the reading of select scriptures. Even today, through all its various iterations of White Supremacy and Christian Nationalism, it can be said that “Not every White Christian is in the KKK. But every KKK member is a White Christian.”[i] They genuinely believe that the Bible is the history of the white race and that white Christians are morally and spiritually superior to other races.

So, burning or otherwise, that’s how the cross was adulterated to become associated with the hatred and violence of White Supremacy. And beyond the burning of “Latin” crosses, several other crosses have come to represent White Supremacy in the U.S. and around the world: the white-on-red “Blood Drop Cross” and the pre-Christian Odin’s Cross popularized by Norwegian Nazis during World War II (and which resembles a modified Celtic Cross).

Why the Proud Boys were raising a cross in Lansing on January 6th has nothing to do with any Christian affiliation on their part and everything to do with a disingenuous calculation that associating with Christianity will serve their overall “brand” of White Supremacy and toxic masculinity. Some of their fundraising has been done through a fringe Christian fundraising site that caters to outcasts and extremist groups (and casts itself as “a place to fund hope”),[ii] but nowhere do the Proud Boys claim to be Christian. Their core values include a hodge-podge of libertarian, nationalist, anti-Semitic, anti-communist, anti-political correctness ideologies, including “venerating the housewife” and “reinstating a spirit of Western Chauvinism.” But hey, in-so-far as tens-of-millions of Christians share those same core values, sure, they’ll help raise a cross in solidarity.

But alas, there’s another burning cross with which I’m forced, against my will and conscience, to be in solidarity with: the “Cross and Flame” of the United Methodist denomination. As a global symbol, few religious logos are more recognizable. But any brand manager will tell you that the subconscious message a logo sends needs to be one of your first considerations. And heck, forget the subconscious and just do a Google search for images of “flaming cross” and what you get is alternating pictures of KKK rallies and United Methodist churches. The algorithm doesn’t lie.

What is particularly egregious to me is not just the obvious racist undertones of the United Methodist logo, but the circumstances of its having been adopted. Back in the mid-60s, as the Evangelical United Brethren and Methodist Churches were negotiating a merger, the call went out for a new logo. The designers worked away, apparently oblivious to the racial tensions of the 1960s and the riots across the United States. To add insult to injury, the final design was approved and rushed into distribution within a few months of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in April of 1968.

Granted, the committee had earnest theological and design arguments as to why a burning cross was the way to go, but the social and racial tone-deafness of this decision remains, to me, a staggering embarrassment. I guess you could say that the upside of the approaching United Methodist schism is the opportunity to disavow our not-so-subtle racist logo for something more in line with our current aspirations.

So, be it the overt and intentional use of the cross as a symbol of terror and intimidation or the implementation of a counterproductive symbol through the laziness of institutional inertia, the cross has become, for many, synonymous with racism and White Supremacy. Add to that the use of the cross as a symbol of violent colonization and the ethnic cleansing of the American frontier, and the only ones surprised by the tainted reputation of the cross are people who aren’t paying attention.

When a small, local synagogue accepted the offer to move into our church for Shabbat services, we did our best to help make it easy for the organizers to camouflage the large cross at the front of the sanctuary with a couple of artificial plants. However, at least one woman (whose parents had been killed in the Holocaust), was unable to even enter the church because of her traumatic personal experience with those who claimed to be Christian.

The cross will continue to be misused. Christianity will continue to be misrepresented. It’s naïve to think that we’ll ever be able to redeem the symbol of the cross — or even Jesus — from all their cruel and offensive abuses. But therein lies the challenge. What to do? The Apostle Paul might want to jump in with a reminder from 2 Corinthians that “WE are the body of Christ” and encourage us to counteract the bad actors through lives lived with compassion and justice — but the cross will remain, in very real ways, our cross to bear going forward. The Proud Boys and Klan will continue to do what they do and I will continue to work to counter their hate and violence. I also look forward to taking part in what I hope will be the decommissioning of the United Methodist cross and flame. It may not be a lot, but it’s something, and right now, something is better than what we’ve got. 

~ Rev. David M. Felten

Note: See Kelly J. Baker’s book, Gospel According to the Klan for an overview of the KKK’s grip on Protestant America in the early 20th century.

Read online here

About 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” and authors of Living the Questions: The Wisdom of Progressive Christianity. A co-founder of Catalyst Arizona 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 is the proud father of three reliably remarkable human beings.
[i] https://medium.com/@brown.shannonelizabeth/the-kkk-is-a-christian-organization-b4e994b0bba1[ii] https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/a-place-to-fund-hope-how-proud-boys-and-other-fringe-groups-found-refuge-on-a-christian-fundraising-website/2021/01/18/14a536ee-574b-11eb-a08b-f1381ef3d207_story.html  |

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Question & Answer

Q: By Jay

I have a question about the relationship of Progressive Christianity and Jesus. I have always been told that despite their denominational difference all Christians understand Jesus to be the son of God.  Not a man selected by God, or a special creation of God, but both God and man simultaneously in a way that is absolutely unique. From what I have read and heard Progressives see Jesus as inspirational, a great teacher and someone whose words and example should be followed.  It seems Jesus, here, is more of an inspirational philosopher like Socrates or the Buddha.  Is it fair to say that P.C.’s do not see Jesus as the son of God as it is traditionally understood?

A: By Brian D. McLaren

Jay, thanks for this thoughtful question about the term son of God.

Many traditional Christians, I think, connect the term son of God with the virgin birth, as if God sent a divine or spiritual sperm to impregnate Mary, making God Jesus’s father and Jesus God’s son in an almost biological sense. If you want to read an interesting book that tells the story of how this misunderstanding led to conflict between Christians and Muslims, see Miroslav Volf’s Allah: a Christian Response (HarperOne, 2012).

Other traditional Christians frame the term Son of God primarily in Trinitarian theology, with the Son a counterpart/partner with the Father and Spirit.

Some progressive Christians affirm Trinitarian theology as expressed in the historic creeds. Others downplay or modify it, and some reject it. Personally, I find value in progressive re-articulations of Trinitarian thought in the writings of Cynthia Bourgeault, Richard Rohr, and a wide array of relational, process, and feminist theologians who take seriously the patriarchal problems embedded in father/son imagery.

In my writings, I’ve focused on two primary lines of thought. First, I’m interested in the linguistic formulation son of God. The son of formation pops up a few different ways the New Testament. For example, James and John are called Sons of Thunder (Mark 3:17). In John 8:39 ff, the terms sons of God, sons of Abraham, and sons of the devil are put in conversation. This usage, I think, resonates with our familiar aphorism, Like father, like son (or like mother, like daughter). There’s a family likeness, a resemblance. In this light, son of God is roughly synonymous with reflecting the character of God. 

Luke 20:36 has a similar interplay between children of God and children of the resurrection. Of special interest, a blind Jewish man uses the term son of David (Luke 18, Matthew 20, Mark 10) to refer to Jesus, as does a Gentile/Sidonian woman (Matthew 15). Both seem to be saying, “You are a great leader like King David was,” with son of again bearing the idea of resemblance.

That understanding resonates with John 1:12, where we all have the capacity to become children of God, a theme we see also in 1 John 3:2. It especially makes sense of Matthew 5:9, the beatitude where Jesus says that peacemakers will be called children of God. People who make peace resemble the God of peace.

This idea of resemblance calls to mind an insight from Quaker theologian Elton Trueblood: the scandal of Christianity was not the claim that Jesus resembles God, but rather that God resembles Jesus: nonviolent, kind, merciful, healing, reconciling, inclusive, accepting. In other words, the life and teaching of the Son made us conceive of the Father in a radically new way.

Second, I find great value in Dominic Crossan’s explorations of the political meaning of the term son of God. (God And Empire and Excavating Jesus are good places to start.)  Crossan points to stone inscriptions still visible today that demonstrate that the Caesars were seen as sons of the gods. In this way, to call Jesus the son of God is to say that his authority challenges Caesar’s.

We live in a time of resurgent nationalism, where the state and/or its leader are upheld by many as the absolute authority. To call Jesus Son of God can be, in our context as in the first century, a way of saying that we do not hold any human regime to be absolute. We believe there is a higher power, a higher authority, a higher wisdom, that relativizes any nation, any leader, any ideology, even any religion. We dare to believe that the love manifest in Jesus reflects the authentic nature or character of the Ultimate Reality, which makes Jesus a great teacher, an inspirational philosopher, and someone whose words and example should be followed indeed.

~ Brian D. McLaren

Read and share online here

About the Author
Brian D. McLaren is an author, speaker, activist and public theologian. A former college English teacher and pastor, he is a passionate advocate for “a new kind of Christianity” – just, generous, and working with people of all faiths for the common good. He is an Auburn Senior Fellow and a leader in the Convergence Network, through which he is developing an innovative training/mentoring program for pastors, church planters, and lay leaders called Convergence Leadership Project. He works closely with the Center for Progressive Renewal/Convergence, the Wild Goose Festival and the Fair Food Program‘s Faith Working Group. His most recent joint project is an illustrated children’s book (for all ages) called Cory and the Seventh Story. Other recent books include: The Great Spiritual Migration, We Make the Road by Walking, and Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road? (Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World).
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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited

The Origins of the New Testament, Part XXV:
Concluding Luke and the Synoptic Gospels

Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong
June 3, 2010

In this final segment on the third gospel we call Luke, I want to summarize and to establish firmly in the minds of my readers the major thesis that I have sought to develop in my comments on the synoptic gospels: Mark, Matthew and Luke. My thesis is that each of these gospels is organized on the basis of the annual liturgical cycle of the synagogue where Christianity lived in its first generations as a movement within Judaism, and so these gospels must be read through a Jewish lens. The later Greek thinking period, which shaped the creeds in the 4th century and informs Christian doctrine to this day, has actually distorted the gospel message in a radical way.

We have already observed that Mark was the original gospel to be written and that both Matthew and Luke incorporated Mark into their work, expanding Mark in a way appropriate for the community for which each wrote. Matthew’s community was traditionally Jewish. Luke’s community was made up of dispersed Jews living far from home and interacting increasingly with their Gentile neighbors. Clearly Gentiles were beginning to come into Luke’s community, drawn by the ethical monotheism of Judaism, as they faced the demise of the gods of the Olympus. That was why, as we have seen, that the gigantic figure of Moses, the inward-looking father of the law became the popular symbol against which the Jewish Matthew told his Jesus story, and the gigantic figure of Elijah, the outward-looking father of the Jewish prophetic movement, became the symbol against which the more universally-minded Luke told his story of Jesus. It was also this one year liturgical cycle of the synagogue that caused each of these writers to portray the public ministry of Jesus as one year in duration. This time sequence, I am now convinced, has nothing to do with the actual time of Jesus’ ministry, but rather it had everything to do with the fact that Jesus’ ministry in these synoptic gospels was being recalled and retold against the liturgical year observed in the synagogue.

The first holy day in the liturgical year of the Jews was, according to the book of Leviticus (23:24), the Passover, which was observed on the 14th and 15th days of the first month of the year known as Nissan. The Christians obviously told the story of Jesus’ crucifixion against the background of this Passover celebration and then adjusted the Jewish calendar by concluding their Jesus story on the Sabbath and first day of the week following Passover on which they celebrated the Resurrection. So the beginning of the Christian liturgical year was always at least a week and sometimes two weeks after Passover. Once we can embrace this crucial time disparity, the synoptic gospels go in a very orderly way through the other feasts and fasts of the Jewish year. With that preamble, I seek to focus our final consideration of Luke’s Gospel on how this particular gospel writer followed the liturgical pattern of the synagogue. That will put Luke’s gospel into a very different context from the literal pattern that traditional Christians assume to have been the case.

Fifty days or seven Sabbaths after Passover the Jews observed the festival of Shavuot or Pentecost (which means 50 days). On that day they recalled God’s gift of the Torah to Moses on Mt. Sinai. The Law was assumed by the Jews to have been God’s greatest gift to them. Luke, however, probably under the influence of Paul, had come to believe that the Holy Spirit, rather than the Law, was God’s greatest gift to the Christians. When he actually tells the story of Pentecost in chapter two of Acts, the second volume of his gospel, this becomes his focus. So in his gospel he wants to make sure that he presents the Pentecost theme with a suitable Jesus story that would thus be appropriate to Shavuot. Watch how cleverly he does it.

First Luke needs to supply Jesus material for each of the seven Sabbaths between Passover and Shavuot.  He does this by expanding the birth narratives with elaborate details about the nativities of both John the Baptist and Jesus.  Next he relates some substantive content from the preaching of John the Baptist.  Then when he arrives at the Shavuot lesson he has John the Baptist point to and interpret Pentecost exactly as Luke will later describe it in Acts 2, by saying: “I baptise you with water, but he who is mightier than I, will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and with fire…”  In effect, he has John say exactly what will happen when Pentecost rolls around.  Then he adds an even longer genealogy than that of Matthew and expands the temptation story and the forty days Jesus supposedly spent in the wilderness being tempted by the devil.  Then he proceeds to add enough Jesus material to complete the entire Galilean phase of Jesus’ ministry, using much of the content that Matthew had placed into the Sermon on the Mount.  Finally, having produced a sufficiently long narrative to carry us through five and a half months into the year, he finds himself confronted by the celebration of the New Year, or Rosh Hashanah, where Mark had opened his gospel by having John the Baptist convey his Rosh Hashanah themes.  Luke, however, like Matthew before him, has obviously used that story much earlier in his narrative so he needs to find a new way to convey the Rosh Hashanah message.  Exactly as Matthew had done earlier, he re-introduces the Baptist with the story of John, now in prison, sending a messenger to ask Jesus, “Are you the one that should come?”  To this question Jesus responds by quoting the favourite synagogue Rosh Hashanah lesson from Isaiah 35 in which the prophet announces that the signs of the Kingdom, when it comes, will be that “the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk and the mute sing”.  When Luke gets to chapter 7:18-23, he is back in synch with Mark and both now have stories that allow the liturgical year to be introduced by John the Baptist.  The shaping of the Jesus message by the life of the synagogue is in full view.

Rosh Hashanah was the first of three major Jewish observances that occurred in the month of Tishri, the seventh month in the Jewish calendar.  Rosh Hashanah was on the first day of Tishri, Yom Kippur on the tenth and Sukkoth (the Harvest Festival) filled the eight days between Tishri 15-22.  Since John the Baptist has been reintroduced and Rosh Hashanah has been observed, we need to be on the lookout for Yom Kippur and Sukkoth stories.  They come right on cue.  There is a series of verses (7:24-35) that are available for use on any Sabbath that falls between Tishri 1 and Tishri 10 and then, in 7:36-50, the Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement, message comes front and centre.  It is the story of the woman coming into the house while Jesus is at dinner and anointing his feet.  Focus with me now on this story.

The first thing we notice is that it is out of place, at least according to Mark and Matthew.  In both of those gospels the anointing of Jesus by the woman was an event just prior to the crucifixion (see Mark 14:3-9 and Matthew 26:6-13).  “She has anointed me beforehand for burial” (Mark 14:8 and Matthew 26:12), is how Jesus explains this action.  Luke, however, has moved this story and placed it early in the Galilean phase of his ministry.  In neither Mark nor Matthew is there even a hint of scandal, no suggestion that this woman is evil, no intimate fondling of Jesus’ feet and no drying of them with her hair.  So Luke has not only moved this story to a new place, but he has also greatly heightened the sensuous quality of this act and made the woman evil.  Luke has the woman identified as “a woman of the street”, that is, a prostitute who kisses and rubs his feet.  She is by definition unclean and by touching Jesus, has presumably made him unclean.  Jesus is even judged by his Pharisaic host not to be a prophet, for a prophet would know what kind of woman this is and would not allow her behavior!

When we place this story in Luke on the grid of the liturgical year of the synagogue, we discover that it falls exactly where Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, falls and he has clearly chosen, moved and adapted this story to fit this observance.  At Yom Kippur, the people are cleansed of their sins and made pure.  Jesus is thus portrayed as entering the world of ritual uncleanness and instead of being corrupted by it, actually transforms it and purifies the evil.  That is what atonement is all about.  He concludes this story by having Jesus banish the demons from Mary Magdalene and other women, once again a Yom Kippur theme.  When Yom Kippur is over, Luke connects again with Mark and uses Mark’s parable of the Sower for his harvest story to celebrate Sukkoth.  That account begins in chapter eight, but, as we might expect, it is considerably shortened.  Luke’s Gentile leaning community does not do eight day festivals or twenty-four hour vigils.  When Luke’s story moves on he comes to the winter festival called Dedication, or Hanukkah and once again, like Mark, he relates the story of the Transfiguration, where the light of God is not restored to the Temple, but falls on Jesus, the new Temple.

Then Luke has Jesus begin his journey to Jerusalem.  Luke uses this journey sequence to be the hook on which he hangs the concentrated material that constitutes the teaching of Jesus.  So here we have a series of teaching episodes until he has entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.  Luke completes the cycle now by having Jesus observe the Passover on Thursday, be crucified on Friday and be raised on Sunday. The journey from the Sabbath after Passover through the Jewish observances of Shavuot, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkoth, and Dedication back to Passover is now complete.  This was the cycle of remembering the story of Jesus and it is tied in every detail to the liturgical year of the synagogue.  Here the form of the gospels – at least Mark, Matthew and Luke – was born. That is why I entitled one of my books Liberating the Gospels: Reading the Bible with Jewish Eyes.

~  John Shelby Spong
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