[Dialogue] 7/01/2021, Progressing Spirit: Rev. Roger Wolsey: Paul: Friend or Foe?; Spong revisited

Thu Jul 1 06:05:22 PDT 2021

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Paul: Friend or Foe?
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|  Essay by Rev. Roger Wolsey
July 1, 2021Sometimes we see posts on social media that begin with someone soliciting “Unpopular Views You Hold that Many Others Don’t” as conversation starters.

People respond to such posts by saying things like: “I like light beer.” “I think curling is a proper Olympic sport.” “Young people who are graduating from high school would do well to consider not going to college and instead learn a trade to begin their careers.” “I’m a vegan chiropractor who recommends that people get the Covid-19 vaccine.” Or even, “I’m a Republican who embraces progressive Christianity.”

I have a couple of apparently unpopular views. I think that constructing thorium and salt reactors as quickly as possible is needed in order to properly address human aggravated global warming. And, I think that that the apostle Paul has gotten an undeserved bum rap by many progressives and that it is good, right, and well for Christian pastors to preach from the letters of the apostle Paul. I will focus on the second of those two contentions in this essay. 

Zeitgeist – a German word that means “the defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time”  – or put more simply, “the spirit of the times.”  I’ve been an active follower of the progressive Christian movement for many years. One thing I have noticed rather a lot along the way is a frequent disposition and bias against the apostle Paul. I’ve often seen it show up as a knee-jerk hostility – even as allergy and loathing. If one reads the comments posted on social media in progressive Christian circles it’s easy to recognize and confirm this. An anti-Paul attitude seems to be a zeitgeist.

As a progressive Christian pastor who takes both the Bible, and academic scholarship seriously, it saddens me each time that I encounter this. The following is an example of such words written by someone in response to a post on a progressive Christian social media page:

“..the ‘Paulistas’ as I call them, will scour the letters of Paul for anything which allows them to legalistically refute the actual example of Jesus….”

Others have said things like, “those evangelicals are more into Paul than they are into Jesus,” “those fundies are into Paulianity not CHRISTianity,” etc.

In my observation, there is often much overlap with the people who would reject the writings of Paul, with those who contend that Christians should “reject the Old Testament and only focus on the New Testament.” My response to people who would have us reject the Hebrew scriptures out of hand is to remind them that that is asking us to commit the heresy of Marcionism    – the notion that “the God of the Old Testament is different than the God of the New Testament; that “the earlier God was wrathful, mean, and cruel”, and the God of Jesus is warm and loving; and that Christians should reject the Hebrew Scriptures. I remind them that Jesus was informed and inspired by many of the Hebrew scriptures and we do well to be informed and inspired by them too (esp. the prophets and the Psalms). Moreover, one really can’t fully understand the content of the New Testament books and letters without being very familiar with the content of the Hebrew texts. Indeed, a high percentage of the words “in red ink” that are attributed to Jesus – are direct or partial quotes from the Hebrew texts, and/or Jesus riffing on verses within the Hebrew texts. I remind them that many of Paul’s letters were written prior to any of the Gospels - including before Mark, the earliest of the Gospels written. That means there is no such thing as a “Gospel-based Christianity” that existed prior to Paul. All early Christianity, including the Gospels, was formed in the context of Paul’s letters circulating.

And, finally, I point out how such a view is not only an example of anti-intellectualism, it’s a form of antisemitism – rudely dismissing the religion of Judaism and the people who practice it.  

To be sure, the books within the Hebrew scriptures contain a great diversity of theologies some of them helpful and some rather toxic and dysfunctional (same with the New Testament). But to dismiss them all out of hand? - intellectual laziness and liberal dog-whistling that does more harm than good. What’s needed is a mature approach to the faith that follows Jesus’s example in prioritizing and affirming certain parts of the scriptures over others.  

Now to be fair, most all of the people who are critical of Paul tend to be people who care greatly about persons in our world who have been oppressed; i.e. women, LGBTQ+ persons, and people of color. It is of course good, right, and well, to care about such persons and to pro-actively seek to protect them. The problem is basically a matter of lack of education about the Bible.

If people think that Paul wrote the so-called pastoral epistles  – the skinny little letters in Bible that contain many of the most micro-managing, controlling, and misogynist verses, then it’d be understandable why many people reject Paul.

Thing is, Paul didn’t write them  – even though some of them are attributed to Paul. It’s long been the consensus of Biblical scholars that Paul was not the author of those letters. They conclude this because of the difference in language used, theology expressed, and references to certain contexts that suggest location in place and time. They also point out how common it was in that era for people to write pseudepigraphically  - “in the name of others.” This information however is rarely passed along by the pastors in the conservative evangelicalism that has become mainstream Christianity. Moreover, unlike mainline Protestant pastors and Catholic priests, many of those evangelical pastors aren’t even required to attend seminary. Bottomline, they aren’t aware of this academic consensus. They don’t know what they don’t know. I suppose this is similar to how so many American Christians are unaware of the reality of human aggravated global warming, and thus, don’t consider stewardship of the earth and Creation care to be integral for people who call themselves Christians. However, some of those religious leaders are quite aware of this, but make a point to not share this information with the people in their pews – frequently with an agenda to “keep women in their place.”

That said, there are certain verses within the pastoral epistles that are edifying and worthy of preaching upon in Christian worship; and likewise, there are a few verses within some of the letters that scholars have consensus that Paul did actually write, that are still problematic and worthy of critique. But, Romans 1 isn’t one of them. Some have mistakenly contended that this chapter condemns homosexuality. It doesn’t. See: “Why Romans doesn’t condemn homosexuality”  and; “Romans 1 A Clobber Passage that Should Lose its Wallop.” 

Some progressive Christians claim that Paul was anti-women but they completely miss how Paul fully embraced the egalitarian inclusion of Jesus and that Paul celebrated numerous women who were leaders of the early Church, and that he even recognized one of them, Junia, as being a fellow apostle. 

Yes, it would have been helpful if Paul had overtly condemned slavery, but that is also true for Jesus as well. A logical implication of both Jesus’s and Paul’s teachings is that no Christian could possibly own a fellow human being if they are truly converted to the good news of the Gospel.

Some of the most beloved, inspiring, and liberating verses in the Christian Bible are the words of Paul. Which of us would really want a Bible that didn’t include these passages?:

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation: The old has gone, the new is here!  ~ 2 Corinthians 5:17

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.  If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.  Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.  Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.  ~ 1 Corinthians 13:1-13

 …In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.  And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God. ..What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?  He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?... No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.  ~ Romans 8:22-39

So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.  ~ Galatians 3:26-29

(a passage massively helpful to the cause of women’s rights, and pro-LGBTQ advocacy – as being in Christ transcends all human constructs!)

Sure, Paul might be viewed as a bit too arrogant – but in truth he was going out of his way to express a humble attitude. He wasn’t trying to be a “super Christian,” indeed, he strove to show that he wasn’t one of those sorts of people. Frankly, his trying “too hard” efforts remind me a bit of me – and this endears me to him.

Speaking of zeitgeist, on June 3 of this year, Rev. Dr. Jeffrey Frantz published an article on the ProgressiveChristianity.org website entitled “Did Paul Distort the Message of Jesus?“  His essay shares a similar concern about people dismissing Paul without giving him a fair shake. And consider also the following books which provide excellent insights about Paul and his letters from progressive Christian points of view:

* Paul the Progressive?: The Compassionate Christians Guide to Reclaiming the Apostle as An Ally, Eric Smith.  

* The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary, Marcus Borg

* Paul: A Biography,  N.T. Wright 
Finally, most of the Christians reading this essay wouldn’t likely be Christians today if it weren’t for the apostle Paul. Prior to him, the following of Jesus was merely a sect within Judaism. Paul felt called by God to extend the good news of the Gospel to the gentiles – following the radically inclusive spirit and hospitality of Jesus in doing so.

May this more generous understanding of Paul truly become the new zeitgeist spirit of our times; and may this view of the good apostle not be so unpopular with each passing day.

In “the peace that surpasses all understanding,” (Philippians 4:6) ~ Rev. Roger Wolsey
Read online here

About the Author
Rev. Roger Wolsey is a United Methodist pastor who resides in Grand Junction, CO. Roger is author of Kissing Fish: Christianity for people who don’t like Christianity and blogs for Patheos as The Holy Kiss and serves on the Board of Directors of ProgressiveChristianity.Org. Roger became “a Christian on purpose” during his college years and he experienced a call to ordained ministry two years after college. He values the Wesleyan approach to the faith and, as a certified spiritual director, he seeks to help others grow and mature. Roger enjoys yoga; playing trumpet; motorcycling; and camping with his son. He served as the Director of the Wesley Foundation campus ministry at the University of Colorado in Boulder for 14 years, and has served as pastor of churches in Minnesota, Iowa, and currently serves as the pastor of Fruita UMC in Colorado, and also serves as the "CRM" (Congregational Resource Minister/Church Consultant) for the Utah/Western Colorado District of the Mountain Sky Conference.  |

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Question & Answer

Q: By Karen
My oldest child has recently come out as transgender. Not surprisingly, many Christian friends are now pointing to the bible saying that she is a sinner and that God 'condemns' her. Does the Bible and God really say that?

A: By Rev. Mark Sandlin
Dear Karen,No, the Bible nor God say that. The reality is that the Bible is largely uninterested in same-sex relationships and it completely silent on the question of transgender folks.

If the people saying these things to you are sincere in their desire to be Christians, to follow the teachings of Jesus, I encourage them to think about some of the things Jesus most frequently talked about: loving your neighbor as yourself and standing with those who are marginalized as opposed to taking part in marginalizing them.

As I say in one of my articles on the Bible and Homosexuality (Clobbering “Biblical” Gay Bashing), “Time and time again, Jesus made it clear that we should not put ourselves in the place of playing God and that, unlike far too many humans, God welcomes and loves us all equally. Period.”

The way I see it, if you are being hateful towards a person, it is very clearly not of God. If anything, it's an attempt to pin hateful beliefs on God, to put words into God's mouth that run counter to what Jesus taught us about God.

And, that? That's using God's name in vain. It's blasphemy.

When religion isn't practiced with intelligence and compassion, it can easily be used as an authoritative confirmation of biases. Without critical thinking and the innate valuing of individuals, perverting religious outlooks to suit personal prejudices is far too easy.

Your child is beautiful and loved in the eyes of God. Always has been always will be. And, yes, that's biblical. If others can't see that, they aren't seeing her from God's perspective. God is love. Condemning a person because of who they are does not come from a place of love, it is not from God.

Give your child a giant hug, remind them of just how much you love them for being exactly who they are and tell them that is the way God sees them as well.
 ~ Rev. Mark Sandlin

Read and share online here

About the Author
Rev. Mark Sandlin is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) from the South. He currently serves at Presbyterian Church of the Covenant. Mark also serves as the President and Co-executive Director of ProgressiveChristianity.org. He is a co-founder of The Christian Left. His blog, has been named as one of the “Top Ten Christian Blogs.”  Mark received The Associated Church Press’ Award of Excellence in 2012. Follow Mark on Facebook and Twitter @marksandlin.  |

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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited

Thoughts at the end of 2010 - Darkness Ahead

Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong
December 30, 2010Momentarily a new year will dawn. 2010 has been difficult economically for this nation and the world. Now is a traditional time both for looking backward and forward.

When I watch our politicians discharge their duties at year’s end, I find myself despairing for two reasons. First, few people in public life seem eager to accept accountability and to recognize their role in creating the problems that this nation now faces. It is always someone else’s fault. Second, when one listens to the political rhetoric, it becomes apparent far too often that many of our lawmakers are either uninformed or dishonest. I cite these data that lead me to these depressing conclusions.

Many political voices bemoan publicly the out-of-bounds growth in the national debt, but few of them are willing to take any concrete steps to address this issue. Clearly solving the fiscal crisis is not the path to political success. The fact is that this country has been living beyond its means for sometime now. There are three ways only to bring the nation’s finances under control. We can raise taxes, we can cut government spending or we can adopt a combination of both. While that is fairly obvious, the fact is that there is no political constituency developing around any aspect of this equation.

How did the debt grow to such threatening proportions? There are four primary, easy to document causes. Two of them are our current wars, neither of which was provided for in the national budget. To finance these wars by calling for sacrifices on the part of our citizens was just too painful politically. No one on either side of the aisle was willing to raise taxes or to cut non-essential spending to spread the sacrifice. To do either ran the risk of eroding support for these wars and so a decision was made at the highest level that the only Americans who would have to sacrifice for these foreign policy initiatives would be the members of the armed services and their families, and sacrifice they did with their lives, their limbs and for many, we are now recognizing, their long- term mental health. No one else had either to pay a nickel or to see his or her life style inconvenienced. War also creates new sources of wealth. Certain businesses seize the war opportunity to make enormous profits. These businesses are primarily in security, construction and oil and each has powerful friends in high places. It is also the case, inappropriately enough, that many of these war profits made abroad find ways of escaping taxation at home. If a nation’s freedom or survival is at risk most would be willing to sacrifice the economy. Can anyone, however, honestly say that the wars in either Iraq or Afghanistan represented a response to either our freedom or our survival? One could argue, I believe, that invading Afghanistan was an act of self-defense, since the Taliban government of that country had sheltered Al Qaeda when they attacked the United States. The Iraq war, however, the far more expensive of the two, was begun on trumped-up charges about that country’s possession of weapons of mass destruction. Those charges turned out to be first blatantly false, second politically calculated lie and third covered up. It is also a fact that neither war has yet achieved popular support.

When a nation or a government is not convinced of the rightness of its cause, its leaders always find ancillary excuses to justify their actions. The most popular of these in Afghanistan at least, was the Taliban’s treatment of its women under fundamentalist Muslim rule. We have all read stories of women being beaten and even executed for such crimes as having too much ankle visible in public, for being in the company of males other than their family and for becoming pregnant out of wedlock. Girls were not allowed to go to school. Greg Mortenson’s popular book, Three Cups of Tea, related the attempts by an American to build schools for girls in Afghanistan and touched such a deep place in the American psyche that it remained at the top of American best selling book lists for years, making our citizens feel better about this troubling war. When President Obama supported a surge of troops in Afghanistan he effectively made that war his own. Neither President Bush nor Obama has yet gone to the Congress to secure budgetary support for either war, so their costs continue to feed the increasing deficit.

The third cause of our gigantic current deficit was the second round of what were called “The Bush Tax Cuts.” The initial Bush tax cuts early in his first term were judged by most economists to be both reasonable and necessary. The government of the United States had begun to run a surplus in the 1990’s. What to do with this surplus had become a hotly debated political issue. One option was to use the surplus or some part of it to guarantee the solvency of Social Security. That course of action was defeated in favor of tax cuts alone. The second tax cut, however, had no such justification and even a conservative economist like Alan Greenspan called them “irresponsible.” No cuts in government spending were offered to minimize the inevitable addition to the national debt. There was sufficient opposition to these second tax cuts that the only way the Bush administration could get this proposal passed was to make them “temporary.” They were to expire on December 31, 2010. No one anticipated that when that date arrived this country would be in the deepest recession since the Great Depression.

The fourth reason for the ever-widening deficit was that same recession. In the fall of 2008 reckless greed ultimately received its comeuppance. The “irrational exuberance” finally broke and began to spiral downward toward a world wide depression. Venerable businesses like Lehman Brothers, Merrill-Lynch, Bear Sterns and Wachovia Bank disappeared into either liquidation or fire sales. Giant banks like Citicorp, Bank of American, JP Morgan Chase and Morgan Stanley tottered on the brink of failure. The housing industry collapsed, having been financed by loans based on the premise of continuous inflation on housing prices. Washington Mutual and Countrywide Financial went into bankruptcy. AIG, the world’s biggest insurance company was in ruins. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government housing agencies, were no longer solvent. The American auto industry almost disappeared. Chrysler and General Motors received massive infusions of government money. Ultimately Chrysler went private and General Motors went into bankruptcy. Of course, with massive losses in the stock market, government revenues also tumbled, while government spending went on as if nothing had happened. Eventually, this nation itself flirted with bankruptcy.

No president, with the possible exception of Franklin D. Roosevelt, ever took office in a more difficult time than Barack Obama. Recession, a tottering economy and two unfinished and unfinanced wars greeted him. It has not been an easy time for our nation or our people. Of course, if one believed the political rhetoric, no one was to blame for these disasters except one’s political enemies. It was obvious, according to Republican talking points, that the way to climb out of this downturn was to cut runaway social programs. Democratic talking points countered by suggesting that allowing the Bush tax cuts on the rich to expire was the clear pathway back to prosperity. As the showdown developed in the Senate the Republican minority clearly proved itself to be more politically adept than the Democratic majority. Taking a position of negativity on all issues, they fought the Democrats to a standstill. They exhausted the administration in the Health Care fight, while prohibiting the public option, which was the one thing in the original Obama health care proposal that had any possibility of lowering health care costs. Once that was defeated they began their attack on “the government’s takeover of health care.” It was strange logic and observers noted that the price of the stock in the private health care companies went up during and after the health care debate. Then using the recession as the reason for extending the soon to expire “Bush tax cuts” for all Americans including the top two percent of our wealthiest citizens, they added another huge hole to the national debt causing it to spin out of control for the foreseeable future. The Republican strategy is to build their future political victories by campaigning against the very deficit they helped to create. The Democrats, on the other hand, seemed to have been reduced to whimpering in the dark shadows of Washington about how heartless Republicans are. Yet they were unwilling to initiate any cuts in the national budget. In a similar manner no union seemed willing to face the fact that their companies can no longer compete against foreign businesses because of the cost of labor, making their only choice to be that that of bankruptcy or shifting jobs overseas. No teacher’s union wants to have any teachers judged by the standard of their students’ achievements despite the fact that the purpose of education is to educate. The fact is that this nation spends more money on education and achieves lower results than any developed nation in the world.

So we enter 2011 facing difficult days ahead. The recession lingers; the unemployment rate remains just under 10%. Instead of working together to solve these critical issues, the primary agenda in Washington seems to be posturing for the next election. We are sowing the seeds of a disaster. It is not a time to be proud of our elected leaders, but this is there we are as we enter 2011.~  John Shelby Spong  |

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Announcements

New Online Programs for those called by Earth and Spirit to Return to the Great Conversation

We are excited to offer several new virtual and experiential Seminary of the Wild programs designed to support your journey of ecological awakening and a new kind of leadership.

Re-member and reclaim the deep, sacramental rhythms of life - Online July 30th & 31st

The deep imaginal realm is like treasure hidden in the field of your life, a key to the doorway of your destiny - August 14th, 20th and 27th.  |

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