[Dialogue] 2/23/2023, Progressing Spirit: Rev. Jim Burklo: Flipping the “He Gets Us” Script; Spong revisited

Sat Feb 25 10:32:48 PST 2023

Good poster, Karen! Thanks for sharing it.

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On Fri, Feb 24, 2023 at 2:25 PM Karenbueno via Dialogue <
dialogue at lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:

> Poster attached to go with the article in Progressive Christianity.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Shaw via Dialogue <dialogue at lists.wedgeblade.net>
> To: Colleague Dialogue <dialogue at lists.wedgeblade.net>
> Cc: Michael Shaw <d.michael.shaw at comcast.net>
> Sent: Thu, Feb 23, 2023 9:37 pm
> Subject: Re: [Dialogue] 2/23/2023, Progressing Spirit: Rev. Jim Burklo:
> Flipping the “He Gets Us” Script; Spong revisited
>
> I was a student at Asbury college from 1965 through 67. I remember when
> the sanctification triangles came out and I first heard someone do the walk
> through, I made the comment: “That sounds like what they were trying to
> teach us that Asbury college, but did not have a way to communicate it.“
> That was when I learned that Joe Matthews graduated from Asbury.
>
> I read an article saying that the speaker at chapel the day the revival
> started texted his wife that his message hag “really tanked.” He has gone
> home and taken a nap, and later went back to campus and learned what was
> going on.
>
> Peace,
> Michael
> sent from my phone
>
> On Feb 23, 2023, at 21:14, James Wiegel via Dialogue <
> dialogue at lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:
>
> 
>
> Anyone else noticing the reports of a revival at Asbury college in
> Kentucky?  Mathew’s got his undergraduate degree there in 1936
>
> Jim Wiegel
> “…the long work
> of turning their lives
> into a celebration
> is not easy. Come and let us talk“.
> The Sunflowers. Mary Oliver
>
> On Feb 23, 2023, at 9:06 PM, Evelyn Kurihara Philbrook via Dialogue <
> dialogue at lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:
>
> 
>
>
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On Feb 23, 2023, at 10:50 PM, Ellie Stock via Dialogue <
> dialogue at lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:
>
> 
>
> By Rev. Jim Burklo
> View this email in your browser
> <https://mailchi.mp/ab615814ede0/flipping-the-he-gets-us-script?e=db34daa597>
>
> <https://progressivechristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=9f55c127d7&e=db34daa597>
>
> <https://progressivechristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=f73a5b8217&e=db34daa597>
> *Flipping the “He Gets Us” Script*
>
> <https://progressivechristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=ae3da2cee7&e=db34daa597>
> Essay by Rev. Jim Burklo
> February 23, 2023
> *“We did four to five months’ worth of research. And what we found was
> that skeptics, and even cultural Christians, weren’t so much interested in
> Christians, Christianity and the Church, but they very much still resonated
> with Jesus.”* So said Jason Vanderground
> <https://progressivechristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=0a0c4b1138&e=db34daa597>,
> the media architect of the HeGetsUs
> <https://progressivechristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=59e3a3a8a6&e=db34daa597>
> campaign.
>
> On TV for the Super Bowl, a major ad showed, which is also manifesting on
> billboards and other media outlets all over the country.  It is an effort
> to make Jesus look good - funded by the same fundamentalists who have
> trashed his reputation.  Through a dark-money outfit called Signatry and
> its front, the Servant Foundation, it got a huge donation from the
> hard-right-wing Green family, the owners of Hobby Lobby.  The campaign
> website funnels readers into the right-wing media universe, including
> “Focus on the Family”.  “He Gets Us” is fundamentalism in streetwear,
> co-opting social justice themes to attract people, especially young folks,
> into a bait-and-switch.  It aims to be a long-term, billion-dollar ad
> campaign.  (See a piece about this ad campaign on NPR here
> <https://progressivechristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=613f5a06b1&e=db34daa597>
> .)
>
> *“There were four specific things that people want for themselves today
> that they see reflected in Jesus, and the top one is seeking peace,”*
> said Vanderground. *“To be able to make peace with yourself and peace
> with others around you, because the top pain point that people are
> experiencing now is toxic relationships….  But then there are three other
> values: approachable, compassionate, and loving all… So, even though they
> are not fully engaged in religious activity or institutional Christianity,
> that value set that Jesus represents is very relevant to people who are on
> the fence about what they believe when it comes to faith.”*
>
> So the campaign poses Jesus as a loving, caring, relatable peace- and
> justice-maker.  Its front-facing messaging is progressive-adjacent, even if
> its backmatter is not.  So we should make the most of it, flipping its
> hidden script!  I’ve been urging churches and organizations to put out
> messaging that moves from “He Gets Us” to “He Gets Us To”:
>
> HE GETS US to welcome immigrants
> HE GETS US to embrace other religions
> HE GETS US to celebrate same-sex marriages
> HE GETS US to save the earth from human-caused climate change
> HE GETS US to take the Bible seriously, not literally
> HE GETS US to end systemic racism
> HE GETS US to stand up for women's right to choose
> HE GETS US to resist the right-wing agenda of the funders of HeGetsUs.com.
>
> What are your creative ideas to contribute to this effort?  Send me
> <jtburklo at yahoo.com> your memes and pictures of your signs and I'll
> spread them far and wide in the progressive Christian movement.  And I’ll
> send you my portfolio of memes you can use in your social media and
> front-of-church messaging.
>
> But another response is in order, as well.  And that is for progressive
> Christians to have a larger conversation in the public sphere about who
> Jesus was – and was not.
>
> This conversation has already started – in, of all places, the very
> evangelical milieu in which HeGetsUs.com was formed.  Because a fair number
> of fundamentalists are upset with the campaign for focusing attention on
> Jesus the human being, instead of on Jesus as almighty, supernatural God.
> The marketing wonks who put the HeGetsUs campaign together rightly
> determined that the best way to sell Jesus to a skeptical public was as a
> compassionate mortal. * “The Jesus of this campaign is nothing more than
> an inspiring human who relates to our problems and cares a whole lot about
> a culturally palatable version of social justice,” *complains well-known
> fundamentalist blogger Natasha Crain.
> <https://progressivechristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=fa3dcd3a50&e=db34daa597>
> Philip Ryan, a pastor in the evangelical Presbyterian Church in America,
> writes:
> <https://progressivechristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=9fab478485&e=db34daa597> *“The
> He Gets Us campaign does not practice biblical evangelism, and it does not
> present the biblical Jesus. We in the PCA should be seriously concerned
> that our leadership is even considering cooperating with such a campaign,
> much less promoting and defending it to our churches.”*  These objections
> explain exactly why progressive Christians should seize this opportunity to
> shift the narrative about Jesus in the public sphere.  Jesus was a
> stunningly compassionate human being who found divine love at the center of
> his being, and showed others how to be at one with that love, as well.  He
> was a humble human who emptied himself to serve others.  To this day, he
> gets us to take action –personal charity, but also political and social
> engagement - to make peace and justice real in this world.
>
> So let’s make the best use of that billion dollars!  By not focusing on
> the supernatural divinity of Jesus, “He Gets Us” puts viewers on the very
> slippery slope that fundamentalists warn against – one that can deliver
> them into the realm of progressive Christianity.
>
> I suggest that we work on two fronts in response to He Gets Us.  First, we
> take a positive approach, and piggy-back on its messaging, spinning it
> cleverly to invite people to visit our progressive churches and check out
> our media and content universe.  Next, we “out” the people behind
> HeGetsUs.com – and get word into the public arena about the money and the
> forces behind the campaign, in order to short-circuit their attempt to use
> the campaign to direct people into their far-right cosmos.  The fact that
> they actively work to hide the money and the donors behind the campaign is
> particularly outrageous.  I find this language on the site
> <https://progressivechristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=6dbc9a7de2&e=db34daa597>
> pretty insulting:  *"Now, bear with us as we use some official language
> for those who care about this stuff. He Gets Us is an initiative of Servant
> Foundation, a designated 501(c)(3) organization with a 100/100 Charity
> Navigator rating."*  "Those who care about such stuff"?  That ought to be
> everybody.  When you google Servant Foundation, the first thing you get is
> a Methodist foundation in Oklahoma that has nothing to do with
> HeGetsUs.com.  A different Servant Foundation is behind the campaign, and
> it is no more than a storefront for Signatry, which has funded right-wing,
> fundamentalist groups: Alliance Defending Freedom (an anti-gay activist
> group), Answers in Genesis (the six-day “Creation Museum” people), and
> Campus Crusade for Christ (fundamentalist campus ministries), as revealed
> in a video by Rebecca Watson
> <https://progressivechristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=fedd052e8b&e=db34daa597>
> .
>
> The people behind HeGetsUs don’t get him.  But that doesn’t prevent us
> from using their campaign to help folks get who Jesus really was – and
> making his compassionate personality the welcoming face of our progressive
> faith communities.
> ~ Rev. Jim Burklo
> Read online here
> <https://progressivechristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=3b81e2a74b&e=db34daa597>
>
> *About the Author*
> *Rev. Jim Burklo* is the Executive Director of Progressive Christians
> Uniting
> <https://progressivechristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=23234023f6&e=db34daa597>,
> which is now organizing ZOE
> <https://progressivechristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=8a93ca7217&e=db34daa597>
> , a national network of progressive Christian ministries at colleges and
> universities.   He is the founder of Souljourning.org
> <https://progressivechristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=417154d668&e=db34daa597>
> , providing resources for families to nurture the natural spirituality of
> young people.  He retired as the Senior Associate Dean of Religious and
> Spiritual Life at the University of Southern California in 2022 and now
> serves as pastor of the United Church of Christ of Simi Valley, CA. An
> ordained pastor in the United Church of Christ, he is the author of seven
> published books on progressive Christianity.  His latest is Tenderly
> Calling: An Invitation to the Way of Jesus
> <https://progressivechristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=0e50ebfa0b&e=db34daa597>.
> His weekly blog, “Musings,”
> <https://progressivechristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=82b8cd54da&e=db34daa597>
>   has a global readership.  He is an honorary advisor and frequent
> content contributor for ProgressiveChristianity.org
> <https://progressivechristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=da2d81f43d&e=db34daa597>
> .  Jim and his wife Roberta live in Ojai, CA.
> Question & Answer
> *Q: By A Reader*
>
> *Why do so many churches continue judging people? Their sermons so often
> speak of how progressive they are and profess that certain people are of
> the wrong - or heaven-forbid -   or non-existent belief, the wrong sexual
> orientation, or political alliance. Jesus didn't judge; why do many modern
> churches still preach this way? *
>
> *A: By Rev. Gretta Vosper*
>
> <https://progressivechristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=419dbc74a4&e=db34daa597>Dear
> Reader,
> Thank you for this question, one often on the minds of liberal and
> progressive Christians baffled by the harsh judgments meted out by those
> more conservative.
>
> The rules or laws meted out by parents, courts, religions, workplaces, and
> institutions, and superior court justices are all human creations. And most
> of them, I would be wont to argue, are created either for the protection of
> those affected by them or for the control of those same people. Stoplights
> keep me from being killed several times a day as I walk or drive in my
> community and beyond. Local alcohol laws keep me from drinking alcohol in
> public places – not that I drink. The former is for my safety; the latter
> is to control me. One feels good the other maybe a little arbitrary.
>
> The interesting thing about the law preventing me from drinking in a
> public place is that it can be framed in a way that suggests it is about my
> safety. The streets, free of those who have consumed to the point of
> drunkenness – those who might become a problem – are safe because of the
> law. The law puts “a fence around” that possibility – makes it harder to
> consume to the point of drunkenness – by not allowing drinking at all. And
> that is what many of our laws do: they put a fence around the real law to
> keep people from accidently, or intentionally, becoming the real problem.
> Biblical prohibitions are often fences around other breaches that, at the
> time, would have been considered catastrophic.
>
> Churches are often organized around what is good and what is bad. It’s in
> our genes to do so, of course. Religion was about differentiating people
> from one another when the other was considered dangerous. Now that there
> are only the rare occasions – related to cults or fundamentalist iterations
> of religions (think Iran, just now) – that religious adherence would mean
> the other was a danger to us, differentiation becomes difficult because
> there is no need for it. But religious institutions don’t want to melt into
> the melting pot; they only thrive on being different and that often means
> having an “evil other” to point at. *Ergo*, long lists of prohibitions,
> some based in interpretations of holy scriptures, other based only in
> prejudice, all maintaining privilege in a complex society.
>
> Jesus judged plenty, by the way. We don’t hear much about that judgment in
> contemporary liberal churches because it is distasteful to us. But a good
> study would reveal that we play our own games with what we choose to say
> Jesus  did and was and for our own purposes, as well. In the religious
> world, do’s and don’ts will always be a part of the ongoing story as they
> have always been part of religious history.
>
> ~ Rev. Gretta Vosper
> Read and share online here
> <https://progressivechristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=e4232a4c78&e=db34daa597>
>
> *About the Author*
> *The Rev. Gretta Vosper* is a United Church of Canada minister who is an
> atheist. Her best-selling books include *With or Without God: Why The Way
> We Live is More Important Than What We Believe*
> <https://progressivechristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=ae6780ce4f&e=db34daa597>,
> and *Amen: What Prayer Can Mean in a World Beyond Belief*
> <https://progressivechristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=9d03801c9c&e=db34daa597>.
> She has also published three books of poetry and prayers. Visit her website
> here
> <https://progressivechristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=3fdb00fdbc&e=db34daa597> and
> her Blog here
> <https://progressivechristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=516b327a5c&e=db34daa597>
> .
>
>
> <https://progressivechristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=b87a1819b2&e=db34daa597>Please
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> <https://progressivechristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=6ad8280a26&e=db34daa597>…
> we are listening. We aim to give voice to many different perspectives that
> are relevant and inspiring along this spiritually progressing path. We are
> not here to tell you what to believe or how to act. We are here to support
> your journey, to share and learn together.
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> Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited
> Part IV Matthew - The Sermon on the Mount
> Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong
> October 24, 2013
> Jesus never preached the Sermon on the Mount! Some of the content recorded
> in that well-known part of Matthew’s gospel may well stretch back to the
> literal words of the Jesus of history, but there was never a time in the
> life of Jesus of Nazareth when he went up on a mountain and delivered the
> material we now find in chapters 5-7 of Matthew’s gospel. How do we know?
> We have learned to read the gospels in general and Matthew in particular
> with Jewish eyes. We have learned how to look into the Jewish background of
> the gospels and to discern the content taken out of the Hebrew Scriptures
> and then wrapped around Jesus of Nazareth. We have learned to recognize the
> Hebrew liturgical traditions, which helped to create the form and much of
> the content that the gospels contain.
>
> We have escaped what I have called the “Gentile Captivity” of
> Christianity, which through the centuries has suggested that we either had
> to read the Bible literally as a historically accurate document or we were
> being unfaithful to the sources of our faith. The Bible, this Gentile
> mentality argued, was either literally true or it was not true at all and
> thus of no lasting value. This attitude was destined to create a biblical
> fundamentalism, which now comes in both a Protestant and Catholic form and
> which has been, I believe, the ultimate cause of the demise of
> Christianity. This charge, I am convinced, is true even as the
> fundamentalists claim they are the ones who are resisting the acids of
> modernity, which they believe will inevitably erode and destroy the
> ultimate truth of the “Word of God.” The Bible, however, is not literal
> history; it is not eyewitness reporting. It is a Jewish book, written by
> Jewish authors, telling a profoundly Jewish story about an indefinable God
> working in a special human life. If we recover the Jewishness of the Bible,
> we will be freed from both the killing fundamentalism of our time and from
> the rebellion against that fundamentalism that masquerades as an
> unbelieving “secular humanism.” Nowhere in the Bible is this truth better
> on display than in what we call the “Sermon on the Mount.”
>
> First some facts. The “Sermon on the Mount” in the gospel of Matthew fills
> chapters five, six and seven, but it occurs nowhere else in the Bible. Does
> that mean that the other gospel writers, Mark, Luke and John simply ignored
> this moment in Jesus’ life, which Matthew proclaims was both dramatic and
> powerful? Or does it mean that Matthew himself is the author and creator of
> the “Sermon on the Mount,” and that he alone placed these words and in this
> form onto the lips of Jesus as a part of his carefully drawn “New Moses”
> portrait? It is very clear, as I have tried to demonstrate thus far in this
> series, that Moses was the image against which Matthew developed his
> portrait of Jesus. Contemporary biblical scholarship now makes it very
> obvious that Matthew created the “Sermon on the Mount.” The data for this
> conclusion is readily available. We look first at the Jewish liturgical
> practice of the synagogue to give content to this point of view and to this
> conclusion.
>
> On the fiftieth day after the Passover, the Jews celebrated a solemn holy
> liturgy that went under a variety of names. It was called “Pentecost,”
> which simply meant 50 days. It was called the Festival of Weeks because the
> 50th day was the first day after seven complete weeks. It was called
> Shavuot because it marked the sacred moment in Jewish history when God was
> believed to have given the law, the Torah, to Moses on Mt. Sinai. Shavuot
> was observed with a twenty-four hour vigil.
>
> We know today that God did not dictate the Torah to Moses at any point in
> human history. That is not how the Torah was either created or received. In
> fact we know that Moses did not write a single word of the Torah. Indeed,
> the Moses of history died some three hundred years before the first word of
> the Jewish law was placed on parchment by a human hand holding a quill. We
> know that the Torah came into being over a period of close to five hundred
> years from a series of sources that have been isolated and studied over the
> past two centuries in the academies of higher biblical learning. We also
> know that the entire Torah was treated with great reverence in Jewish
> worship centers and that well before the time of Jesus the Torah was read
> in its entirety in synagogue settings on the Sabbaths of a single year. We
> know that when the Jewish people returned from exile in Babylon during the
> 5th century BCE, under the leadership of Ezra, the priest, and Nehemiah,
> the governor, they covenanted to keep the Torah, to honor the Torah and to
> acknowledge Moses as the mythological father of the Torah. This devotion
> found its way into their annual worship life in the festival called
> Shavuot, observed in the Jewish calendar in the month of Sivan, which would
> make it fall in late May or early June in our calendar. Shavuot was a time
> for the Jews to give thanks for the law, thought by the Jews to be God’s
> greatest gift to the world. In that celebration, the worship leaders of
> Judaism called for the people to observe a twenty-four hour vigil in which
> they would recall the Sinai moment when they believed the law was given to
> Moses. That twenty-four hour service was divided into eight three-hour
> segments. For that 24-hour vigil, they created the 119th psalm. Psalm 119
> was the longest psalm in the Psalter because it had to provide readings for
> each of the eight segments in the 24 hours. Psalm 119 was thus made up of
> 176 verses in 22 segments, with each segment being named after the 22
> letters of the Jewish alphabet from Aleph to Taw. The content of this psalm
> was and is a constant hymn of praise to the beauty and wonder of the law.
> It includes such phrases as “My lips pour forth your praise, when you teach
> me your statues (i.e. law);” “Great peace have they who love your law; for
> then there is no stumbling block;” and “Happy are they who observe God’s
> decrees…those who walk in the law of the Lord.” So, once a year, the people
> would gather at Shavuot in solemn assembly to give thanks to God for the
> law and to pledge their renewed allegiance to it. Psalm 119, the psalm of
> Shavuot, begins with an introductory stanza of eight verses. In the first
> two of those eight verses, the opening word is “Blessed,” which is
> sometimes translated “Happy.”
>
> The author of Matthew’s gospel quite obviously took that 119th psalm and
> used it as a model to create the “Sermon on the Mount.” In Matthew’s
> introductory stanza to his “sermon,” he made each of its eight verses begin
> with the word “Blessed.” Today, we call those eight verses “The
> Beatitudes,” but they are clearly based on Psalm 119:1-8. Then Matthew
> fashioned the entire sermon to be divided into eight segments in order to
> provide words of Jesus to be read during each of the eight three-hour
> segments of the 24-hour vigil of Shavuot. That is how the “Sermon on the
> Mount” came into being. The rest of this “Sermon” involved a commentary on
> the eight Beatitudes, but in reverse order, with the first commentary being
> on Beatitude number eight and the last commentary being on Beatitude number
> one.
>
> The second thing to notice is that this “Sermon” constitutes a dialogue
> between Moses and Jesus, although once again the name of Moses is never
> spoken. This was not an attempt to be supersessionistic, that is, to
> portray Jesus’ superiority to Moses, but it was designed to portray Jesus
> as the ultimate and true interpreter of Moses. While Jesus will assert in
> this gospel that not one “jot or tittle” of the law was to be changed, the
> whole law was, Matthew suggested, meant to be internalized. By this Matthew
> was saying that the Torah was designed to cover not just the deeds of one’s
> life, but the thoughts and motives that always precede the deeds. In
> Matthew’s hands, the law became more than just external rules it was also
> aimed at governing internal motivations. This purpose was articulated by a
> regular refrain in this sermon: “You have heard it said of old (Moses) you
> shall not kill;” that was commandment number six, but I (Jesus) say unto
> you “that murder starts in the hatred of the human heart.” It is not enough
> to refrain from the act of murder, the law also requires that one deal with
> the anger and hostility that expresses itself in violence. This refrain was
> then repeated with the seventh commandment prohibiting adultery. Jesus
> interprets Moses to say that adultery begins in human lust, in human
> insecurity and in threats to the human ego. It is not enough to refrain
> from the act of adultery, one must, in order to fulfill the law, also deal
> with the lust, the sense of inadequacy that expresses itself in adultery.
>
> The author of Matthew’s gospel was in these three chapters reaching a
> crescendo in his process of interpreting Jesus as the “New Moses.” He began
> this process by a story about Moses in his birth of Jesus narrative. He
> then likened Jesus’ baptism to the account of Moses at the Red Sea. He next
> portrayed Jesus as like Moses spending time in the wilderness, forty days
> for Jesus, forty years for Moses. He has wrapped Moses’ critical moments in
> the wilderness around Jesus as the content of the temptations. Now in this
> climax we call the “Sermon on the Mount,” he has portrayed Jesus as a “New
> Moses,” on a new mountain, giving us a new interpretation of the law of
> God. The “Sermon on the Mount” was thus designed to replace the 119th psalm
> in the Christian observance of the Jewish Festival of Shavuot.
>
> Matthew is writing neither a biography nor a history. When Matthew wrote
> his gospel, the Christian movement was still a movement within the
> synagogue, not yet a separate movement. He was taking the life-changing
> experience found in Jesus of Nazareth and interpreting it inside the
> symbols and observances of his Jewish faith system. His Jewish audience
> understood that and reveled in it. Gentile Christians, blindly unaware of
> these Jewish traditions and of the content of Jewish Scripture with which
> Matthew was so familiar, did not. The Gentiles in their misunderstanding
> interpreted these narratives literally; that was when biblical
> fundamentalism was born. It is time to reverse this process. This series on
> Matthew’s gospel is designed to do just this.
> ~  John Shelby Spong
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