[Dialogue] 5/06/21, Progressing Spirit, Rev. David M. Felton: The Measure of a “Genuine” Progressive Christian; Spong revisited

Thu May 6 06:29:26 PDT 2021

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The Measure of a “Genuine” Progressive Christian
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|  Essay by Rev. David M. Felten
May 6, 2021
So, what’s the measure of a “genuine” progressive Christian? For some, it’s proficiency in some obscure spiritual discipline. For others, it’s engagement in the work of social justice. Whatever we are, the media seems to believe the 2020s may provide a leg-up for those who are advocates and practitioners of a post-modern, post-evangelical, post-liberal, post-Christian approach to Jesus following (whatever we’re calling it this week).[i][ii][iii]

For me, any measure of whatever it is we are as progressive Christians has got to include something I often find missing from the conversation: a sense of history. I often hear the complaints of church alumni/ae who’ve abandoned the effort because things aren’t changing fast enough for them. Wrapped in a blanket of righteous indignation, the choice to sit it out is indeed an attractive one.

But as my own United Methodist denomination draws ever nearer to its next inevitable schism, separation, or disintegration (whatever we’re calling it this week), I’m reminded that we’ve been here before — and the challenge for anyone who considers themselves a progressive is two-fold: 1) to not succumb to the sense of futility and loneliness that is often a part of confronting the status quo, and 2) to ground oneself in the context of a struggle that has been unfolding for centuries — and will continue long after we’re gone. For me, the sense of responsibility to pass the passion for healing the world on to the next generation is a big part of pushing back the urge to just give up.

So, as encouragement to those of us out there still trying to move things forward, let me share just a few of the radical and innovative ways the founder of my denomination shook up the status quo in his day. Was he perfect? Most would say he was insufferable. Was he “woke” by today’s standards? Absolutely not. But he did manage to shake up the status quo of his generation and set in motion efforts that are yet to be fully realized 250+ years later.

Women in Leadership
Wesley saw that the real power to change the culture in any village or community was through the influence of its women. In a society that denied women self-determination and basic human dignity, he not only appointed them to organize and lead meetings and make decisions, he empowered them to do the unthinkable: preach. For women who were reluctant, he said, "You have an extraordinary call." And when confronted by Anglican authorities for authorizing women to preach, he quipped with a wink and a nod, “They’re not ‘preaching,’ they’re ‘exhorting the scripture’.”

Public Healthcare
One of Wesley’s bestselling books, Primitive Physic, or An Easy and Natural Method of Curing Most Diseases, gave access to remedies for those who could not otherwise afford a physician. He made free healthcare available to the poor and promoted basic hygiene as a means to maintain one’s health. First recorded in a sermon in 1778, Wesley is even credited with coining the phrase "Cleanness is next to godliness." He modeled his philosophy by exercising, being diet conscious, keeping clean, and drinking water daily (which was not the 18th century norm). While his intentions were good, not all of his recommendations were effective: one of his suggested cures for respiratory problems was to get down on one’s hands and knees and breathe in the smell of fresh mown lawn.

Opposition to Slavery
Wesley actively opposed the slave trade, repeatedly referring to it as the “execrable sum of all villainies.” Abolitionists point to the impact of his pamphlet, Thoughts Upon Slavery, as just one example of his influence. Just days before his death, the very last letter Wesley wrote was to a man who had been converted under Wesley's ministry and who was then a member of Parliament: William Wilberforce. In it, Wesley wrote,

.........“O be not weary of well doing! Go on, in the name of God and
.........in the power of his might, till even American slavery (the vilest
.........that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it.”[iv]

Parliament finally outlawed England's participation in the slave trade in 1807. 

Elimination of Creeds
Wesley was also radical theologically. When Methodists in the American colonies asked for some guidance on “what to believe,” he took the original 39 Anglican Articles of Religion and “distilled” them into just 25. When he did that, he intentionally removed Article XIII, “On the Creeds.” He made the following statement in a sermon in Glasgow:

.........“There is no other religious society under Heaven which requires
.........nothing of men in order to assure their admission into it but a desire
.........to save their souls. Look all around you; you cannot be admitted into
.........the Church, or Society of the Presbyterian, Anabaptists, Quakers,
........ or any other unless you hold the same opinion with them and
.........adhere to the same mode of worship. The Methodists alone do not
.........insist on your holding this or that opinion; but they think and let think.
.........Neither do they impose any particular mode of worship; you may continue
.........to worship to your former manner; be it what it may. Now, I do not know
.........any other religious society, either ancient or modern, wherein such 
.........liberty of conscience is now allowed or has been allowed, since the age
.........of the Apostles. Here is our glorying; and a glorying peculiar to us.
.........What Society shares it with us?”[v]

Granted, there are still plenty of United Methodist churches that recite the creeds, but they’re just not very good Methodists. According to Wesley, the Methodist movement was never meant to be “creedal” like other “societies.”

Corporate Responsibility
While engaging with the poor, Wesley taught the well-off that “Your wealth is evidence of a calling (not approval, but calling) from God, so use your abundance for the good of humanity.” To that end, he is said to have preached, “Earn all you can. Save all you can. Give all you can.”

Around the middle of the 18th century, a young Irish brewer got the message – and also got to work. The more his brewery grew, the more he saved and the more he gave – just like Wesley taught him. He poured money into founding the first Sunday schools in Ireland. He gave vast amounts of money to the poor, sat on the board of a hospital designed to serve the needy and bravely challenged the material excesses of his own social class. He was a veritable one-man army of reform.[vi]

The man taught his children his Methodist values and they, in turn, decided to better society by bettering the lives of their employees. They started by paying better wages than any other employer in Ireland. With the passing of decades, they continued to innovate in offering an entire slate of services to improve the lives of their workers.

That young man was Arthur Guinness — and today, over 250 years later, Guinness is one of the most well-known corporations in the world. Its Methodist-influenced founder built a legacy of good, achieved astonishing prosperity, and used his success to benefit his community in innovative and generous ways.

Just last year, one of the directors of Guinness’ new American brewery in Baltimore announced a Diversity Apprenticeship Program focused on creating career pathways for members of Baltimore’s Black Community. She said, “Guinness has always been ‘made of more’ and… genuine give back efforts are in our DNA.”[vi]  I’d like to think that what’s left of the post-pandemic church could be “made of more,” too. Over 250 years ago, Wesley worked to empower women, provide healthcare for the poor, oppose slavery, toss out outdated dogmas, and inspire corporate responsibility — and the work is still not done.

So, what’s the measure of a “genuine” progressive Christian?  I’d like to think it’s having a sense of one’s place in the struggle of the ages, of not being discouraged by current set-backs — of seeing oneself as a small and integral part of a transformation that has been in the works long before our participation and will continue long after we’re gone. How am I so sure? Because with Jesus and John Wesley, I know we can do better.

And with evangelical, conservative, and even many mainline churches caught in the grip of increasingly unhinged political and religious delusions, the world is even more in need of the voice of those who not only see the big picture, but who have a sense of place in the midst of the struggle — and who refuse to give up hope.

So, “… be not weary of well doing!”  Embrace your place in the story and the gifts you have to make real that vision of a better world our hearts know is possible.

~ Rev. David M. Felten

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://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/02/25/religious-left-politics-liberal-471640[ii] https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/01/the-rise-of-the-religious-left/[iii] https://www.cupblog.org/2021/03/15/the-religious-left-on-the-rise-again-lets-wait-and-see-by-l-benjamin-rolsky/[iv] https://christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/article/wesley-to-wilberforce[v] Wesley, John in “Meet the Methodists” by Allen, Charles L.  Abingdon Press, pg. 41.[vi] https://afro.com/guinness-open-gate-brewery-announces-1-million-fund-focus-for-baltimores-black-community/  |

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Question & Answer

Q: By Phyllis

Do you think that the Church has adequately explored and explained the spiritual aspects of evolution? What does it mean spiritually that we evolved from apes?

A: By Brian D. McLaren

Dear Phyllis,

Thanks so much for your question. It’s one I have a special interest in. I’m a lifelong lover of nature, and from my earliest childhood, I would beg my mother to take me to the library to check out books on plants and animals. Like a lot of young boys, I was fascinated with dinosaurs, especially because there was a stream beside my house that was full of rocks with fossils. I thought evolution was beautiful and sensible, and I remember the conflict I felt when I heard preachers mock evolution and decry Charles Darwin as a devilish figure.

When you ask if “the Church” has adequately engaged with evolution, in general, the answer is a clear no. Thankfully, there have been a few who pioneered a theology of evolution, especially among Catholic thinkers, notably Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881 - 1955). He was a Jesuit scholar, trained in paleontology. More recently, other Catholic scholars like John Haught and Sr. Ilia Delio have engaged with Teilhard’s thought and enriched it with more contemporary scientific and theological insight.

Another key figure in taking evolutionary thought seriously was the great philosopher and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947). He is often called the father of process philosophy, and in his wake, brilliant Protestant Christian theologians developed process theology. Notable among them are John Cobb, Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki, Catherine Keller, Philip Clayton, and Tripp Fuller. The great science fiction writer Octavia Butler could also be seen as a kind of process theologian, expressing her vision in fiction rather than nonfiction prose.

Much of this work has not yet made it into the average pulpit or pew in churches, sad to say, even though it is gaining ground in academic circles. I’ve been working hard to remedy that, especially through my books The Story We Find Ourselves In, We Make the Road by Walking, and especially The Galapagos Islands: A Spiritual Journey, where I get to explore Darwin and evolution in some depth.

As you know, according to evolutionary theory, we aren’t exactly descended from apes. Rather, we and apes descended from common ancestors, and our existence today is connected to the whole web of life, in which we are very literally all related, part of one family tree, part of one story that includes all of life and even all the planets and stars, matter and energy, and space and time. It is a beautiful and grand story, full of poetry and wonder, and it invites centuries of theological reflection and celebration — not just among academics, but among all of us who inhabit this evolving universe. May your question and this response hasten that reflection and celebration!

~ 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 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 book is Faith After Doubt.  He is the author of the illustrated children’s book (for all ages) called Cory and the Seventh Story, The Great Spiritual Migration, We Make the Road by Walking, and Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road? Brian is a popular conference speaker and a frequent guest lecturer for denominational and ecumenical leadership gatherings. He has written for or contributed interviews to many periodicals, including Leadership, Sojourners, Tikkun, Worship Leader, and Conversations and is a frequent guest on television, radio, and news media programs.
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When I was in college, I took a course on the New Testament.  For the first time, the text was not filtered through the lens of belief and dogma.  Like many who begin to deconstruct the Bible through a historical-critical lens, I began to wonder if the Church, God, and faith had any relevance in my life anymore.  Around that time, a campus minister friend of mine handed me Marcus Borg’s Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time.  That book breathed new life into my soul.  I found an articulation of a faith that was intellectually honest, compelling, and social justice focused; it was an expression of the Gospel that spoke to me in a way that resonated very deeply.  This initial foray into Progressive Christianity opened up my mind to new ways of thinking and led me into a deeper search for truth and understanding of that divine mystery that is within us and all around us.  I can honestly say that without Progressive Christianity, I would no longer be in the Church. 

Progressive Christianity has not only played an important role in my life and ministry but continues to play an essential role in our society.  Without Progressive Christianity, the only Christian voice that many people would hear is the voice of fundamentalists who yell the loudest.  That form of “Christianity” is a homophobic, xenophobic, jingoistic religion that is inauthentic to the values of Jesus.  We need the voice lifted by ProgressiveChristianity.org, which promotes the Gospel tenets of unwavering love, radical hospitality, unqualified inclusion, and justice for those on the margins.  These were the values of Jesus and ought to be the guiding principles for all Jesus-followers.

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Peace and Love,

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ProgressiveChristianity.org
Progressing Spirit

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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited

Stephen Hawking and the Death of Theism

Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong
Ocotber 7, 2010

Stephen Hawking, probably the best known and best read scientist of this century, has just published, with his co-author Leonard Mlodinov of Stanford University, a book entitled The Grand Design. This book has achieved headlines in newspapers around the world because Hawking’s conclusion is that one does not need the God hypothesis to explain the origin of the universe. The Grand Design has been hailed by such popular atheist authors as Richard Dawkins of Oxford in the United Kingdom and the author of the best-selling book, The God Delusion, who described Hawking’s book as “Darwinism for the very fabric of nature, not just for the creatures living within it.” It has been attacked by the standard defenders of the theistic God of yesterday such as the Vatican and Canterbury as well as a wide variety of fundamentalist spokespersons. Catholic News Service in Vatican City, in a display of enormous egocentricity, actually speculated that the book was published intentionally one week before the scheduled visit of Benedict XVI to Great Britain. I’m sure the publisher checked the papal schedule before starting the book on its long journey toward publication. Rowan Williams of Canterbury was content simply to dismiss Hawking’s conclusion without much commentary. The fundamentalists give abundant evidence that they don’t understand what Hawking is saying, but they do know that they are against it. I suspect that most of Hawking’s supporters as well as his religious critics have not read the book and probably never will.

The reason that this deep-seated misunderstanding abounds in both the press and in current religious voices is that both the religious and the popular mind are still infected with the theistic definition of God. By this I mean that theologians and average citizens alike continue to conceptualize God as a being who exists in some place external to the world and who is equipped with supernatural power. This deity uses this supernatural power to intervene in history to guide life toward a particular conclusion or down a particular path. This theistic understanding of God, however, died in academic circles as long ago as the 19th century, but its shadow or its echo is still present and is reinforced constantly by the liturgies, hymns, sermons and prayers in the churches, synagogues, mosques and temples of the world. Theistic theology is not unlike the daily report of the weatherman, who informs us that the sun will rise and set at a particular moment each day, though we have known since the time of Copernicus in the 16th century that it is the earth’s rotation on its axis as it journeys around the sun each year that creates the illusion of the sun itself rising and setting.

I welcome Stephen Hawking’s latest book as well as his religious insight as driving one more nail into the coffin of theistic thinking and forcing the religious world to begin the hard process of rethinking what it is that we mean when we say the word God. Maybe the word itself has become so corrupted that we cannot continue to use it, but I would argue that the experience of transcendence, otherness and even heightened consciousness is real and that this experience has pointed to and been part of what we have historically meant by the word God. We need to remember that despite all of our God assumptions, we have only a human language to use and it is by means of that language that we have always sought to translate our deepest yearnings.

What Stephen Hawking is saying is that no matter how sophisticated our theological understanding is, the idea of God as a supernatural being who started the universe, and who from time to time has intervened in miraculous ways in the affairs of the universe in general or of this world in particular, is no longer viable. Since most people have no other frame of reference in which to think about God, they hear this as a denial of any divine reality. If one is not a theist, at least according to the limitations of the English language, the only alternative is to be an atheist. Theism, however, is not a name for God or even a name for one who believes in God. Theism is the name of a human definition of God that is no longer believable. Atheism does not mean that there is no God. Atheism means that the theistic understanding of God no longer translates into the world of our experience.

Can God turn the path of a hurricane as evangelist Pat Robertson has so often argued? Can God intervene in history to stop something as evil as slavery or the Holocaust? Can God actually act to prevent such things as war and prejudice? If God has that power and does not use it, can we not state without equivocation that God is both malevolent and immoral? If God does not have this power, then does this not make God impotent? In either event such a view of God will have a very short shelf life in the world of human ideas. In each of these illustrations, however, it is clear that we have done little more than to create God in our human image, but with all of our human limitations removed. Why do we continue to envision God after the analogy of a limitless human being? Perhaps the reality is that we are not capable of transcending these boundaries. An insect could never describe a bird in any way other than in terms of the experience and world view of an insect, since the insect has no ability to transcend its limits. A horse cannot describe a human being in any other way except in terms of the experience and world view of a horse, since a horse has no capacity to transcend its limits. Human beings, however, even though limited to the experience and world view of a human being, still pretend to act as if the God we worship can and must be understood after the analogy of a limitless human being. That is the extent of our human capability. We human beings then insist, it seems, on going one dreadful step further, and that comes when we turn our God definition into creeds, doctrines and dogmas and immediately invest these ideas with the claim of infallibility or inerrancy. That is why we persecute those who disagree with our definitions or try to convert those who are amenable to our persuasion, both of which are acts of religious imperialism. Self-conscious human beings can escape our human limits, but only by analogy and pointers. There is clearly more to the idea of God than the human mind can ever understand, but we should have learned this by now, since this fact has been clear for centuries. Even St. Paul warned us that we now see only through “a glass darkly.” The Fourth Gospel tells us that the Holy Spirit “will lead us into all truth,” which seems to me to imply that none of us now possesses all truth. Yet in our pathetic human insecurity we still talk about an “inerrant Bible” and an “infallible Pope.” If we recognize that ultimate truth is beyond our limits, how can we continue to describe anyone anywhere as either a “heretic” or an “infidel,” to say nothing of proclaiming one to be an atheist?

The God question will not be solved by postulating a supernatural invasion of a human-like deity at the moment of the “big bang,” or at any other moment in the unfolding of the universe or in the evolution of life. Intelligent design is just as foreign to the biologist as the God who inaugurated the universe is now to the astrophysicist. That does not mean, however, that there is no transcendent reality, no “other” that we can sense or discern as we seek to understand life.

When I was working on my book Eternal Life: A New Vision, I became deeply moved by the wholeness of life. I saw a universe born in a physical explosion of matter that ultimately produced life, consciousness and self-consciousness; I am now convinced that matter carries within it the seeds of life. I see no dualism any longer between matter and life or between matter and spirit. I have also ceased to think of God theistically, that is, as a being — even a supernatural being. I think of God as the Source of life calling me to live, the Source of love, calling me to love, the ground of being calling me to be all that I can be. I think of God as the universal consciousness of which I am a part. All of these concepts are analogies, descriptions of our experience. They are not descriptions of God! I now see worship as the commitment to live fully, to love wastefully and to be all that I can be. I see the mission of my faith not to be winning converts, but to be that of expanding life for all, enhancing love for all, increasing the being of all that renders every human prejudice as a violation of all that God means. I see the divine as the depth dimension of the human and thus as part of the human, not as the invasion of life by a being external to life. I see the symbols of my Christian faith story, trapped as they are inside a theistic belief system, struggling to cast that system aside so that they can be transformed and live again in dramatic new ways.

The claim by Stephen Hawking that God is not necessary to account for the universe as we now understand it is a step in freeing our minds from the clutches of yesterday’s world view. I find the religious voices attacking Hawking in the name of preserving yesterday’s theistic system to be engaged in little more that the activity of institutional religion’s rigor mortis. As I learn more about the universe and life itself, I find myself called into an increasing sense of awe and wonder. Whatever God is, I believe that I am a part of that and whatever I am or can be God is present within it.

The human being lives in the wonder of self-consciousness and perceives thereby the wonder of life itself. God is not external to that. I open my eyes every day to the wonder of life, the power of love, the mystery of being and I call that experience God.

~  John Shelby Spong
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Announcements
 Emily Dickinson & Julian of Norwich:
Mystic Shamans For Our Time

An Evening with Steven Herrmann,
Cameron Trimble and Matthew Fox

Both of these powerful women speak to our needs as a species today from deep within the creation spirituality lineage as we face climate change and eco-destruction and our and other creatures’ extinctions.

May 11th at 4pm (Pacific Time) to mark a day for Mother Earth and all other mothers with two powerhouse women mystic-shamans eager to awaken and heal!  READ ON ...  |

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