[Dialogue] 3/30/2023, Progressing Spirit: Rev. Irene Monroe:We are all wonderfully made; Spong revisited

Thu Mar 30 03:21:14 PDT 2023

   By Rev. Irene Monroe  
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We are all wonderfully made
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|  Essay by Rev. Irene Monroe
March 30, 2023
"For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.   Psalms 139:13-14,NIV

Society has a problem with gender differences. People whose genders are not considered normal are forced to bear the weight of the grip cisgender heteronormative has on all our lives. 

In ancient Judaism, there was a range of gender identities: male characteristics, female characteristics, androgynous (both characteristics), and tumtum (not definitely both characteristics). Also, in ancient Judaism, it was understood that one's gender identity evolved over time. For example, someone born male later in life becomes a eunuch (saris), or someone born female later in life becomes "man-ish" (aylonit)

Today's college students embrace and live out loud these various genders. The various gender-inclusive pronouns acknowledge and respect intersex, transgender, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming people. Like so many colleges, my alma mater is wrestling with these issues. 

In February, Wellesley College students voted overwhelmingly to pass the Gender Inclusivity Ballot Question, allowing transgender men and nonbinary people who were assigned male at birth to be eligible for admission. Also, the Ballot Question requested the language used at the college be inclusive of its nonbinary and transgender students, thereby bridging the communication gap over gender-inclusive language between the administration and the student body. The college agreed to train and teach its staff and faculty about gender identity and pronoun use. However, the college administration's position on admitting trans men flatly stated, "there is no plan to change Wellesley's admissions policy or its mission as a women's college."

Wellesley is one of the premier women's colleges in the country with noted alums like First Lady of the Republic of China, Madame Chiang Kai-shek, filmmaker Nora Ephron, television broadcast journalist Diane Sawyer, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and 2016 Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, to name a few. However, Wellesley, like the few remaining women's colleges in this 21st century, will have to rethink its mission - "to provide an excellent liberal arts education to women who will make a difference in the world" - in a society that no longer adheres to the traditional gender binary of male and female.

Today more people are identifying as transgender and nonbinary. According to a 2022 Pew Research Center, American young adults under 30 are more likely to identify as transgender or nonbinary than older adults, underscoring changing gender norms. And 44 percent of Americans now say they personally know a least one person who is transgender, and 20 percent know someone nonbinary, underscoring these are not invisible demographic groups in society any longer, especially on college campuses these days.

College should be a safe space and atmosphere that engenders a positive sense of self for all students, which is the basis of educational achievement and personal growth. Too often, transgender students on college campuses must cope with being misgendered, and non-binary students must cope with the annoyance of gender binary labeling. I cannot imagine what it must feel like for transgender and nonbinary students to evolve into their authentic selves at Wellesley and not be acknowledged or affirmed, and how "the College's use of the words "women" and "alumnae" - and feel that their individual identities are not embraced."

However, as an African American lesbian, I do know what it is like to feel uncertain in a space as an individual and part of an identity group and be made invisible or erased because of - intentional or unintentional - institutional and cultural biases, like the Black Church and black community. 

I, too, am a Wellesley College graduate. I was a student there when it was academically and socially unsafe to be openly lesbian. Because of both - intentional and unintentional - institutional and cultural biases, I stayed closeted for fear of stigmatization and discrimination. I didn't want to be disrespected or treated as an unvalued and unwelcome part of the college community. I remember those years as if they were yesterday, albeit it was decades ago. When I returned to Wellesley College as a Head-of-House, much had changed since my undergraduate years. For example, the freshman class was now called first-year students, and House Mothers, who were administrators of dormitories, were now called Heads-of- House. Having African American Heads-of-House was no longer unbelievable because I was one, and so, too, was Michelle Porche. 

 In 1991 as the Head-of-House at Stone-Davis dormitories, the country had evolved further in understanding the fluidity of gender identities and sexual orientations, and the college took a giant step in hiring two out lesbians to run dormitories - Porsche, a graduate student at the Harvard School of Education, and me, a doctoral student at Harvard Divinity. Porsche arrived on campus with her white live-in partner, and some disdained interracial couples. I came with my mixed-breed dog, Heaven. 

Our hiring was controversial. The Campus Life section of The New York Times that year wrote, "To the administration, it was a "great step forward" to hire a lesbian with a live-in partner as a Head-of-House, but not a good idea to assign her to a dorm with a lot of first-year students" in the article "Wellesley; Counselor's Switch Prompts a Debate About Gay Rights." Wellesley survived our hiring, the then Board of Trustees didn't disband, and alums who threatened to withhold their donations didn't. 

The idea of admitting trans men is controversial, too. However, one of Wellesley's values is gender equality. "As a women's college, we have always been committed to gender equality as foundational to societal progress," it states on the college website. 

In an open letter to the Wellesley College Community titled "Affirming our mission and embracing our community," President Paula A. Johnson wrote, "Wellesley is a women's college that admits cis, trans, and nonbinary students - all who consistently identify as women. Wellesley is also an inclusive community that embraces students, alumnae, faculty, and staff of diverse gender identities. I believe the two ways of seeing Wellesley are not mutually exclusive. Rather, this is who we are: a women's college and a diverse community." 

Wellesley College was founded in 1870- five years after the Civil War and 50 years before women were allowed to vote - with the understanding that "women," as defined in that era, were a marginalized group and should have access to higher education. As women, we are a marginalized group still today. And, so, too, are transgender and nonbinary students. 

The Bible is replete with stories of various gender identities in God's people. These biblical stories affirm that we all are wonderfully made and affirm our God-given right to live them out loud.

~ Rev. Irene Monroe
Read online here

About the Author
Rev. Irene Monroe does a weekly Monday segment, “All Revved Up!” on NPR's WGBH (89.7 FM). She is a weekly Friday commentator on New England Channel NEWS. Monroe is the Boston voice for Detour’s African American Heritage Trail, Guided Walking Tour of Beacon Hill: Boston’s Black Women Abolitionists. A Huffington Post blogger and a syndicated religion columnist, her columns appear in the Boston LGBTQ newspaper Baywindows, Cambridge Chronicle, and the Boston Globe. Monroe states her “columns are an interdisciplinary approach drawing on critical race theory, African American, queer and religious studies. As a religion columnist, I try to inform the public of religion’s role in discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people.” Her papers are at the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College’s research library on the history of women in America. Click here to visit her website.
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Question & Answer

Q: By A Reader

Why are so many progressive Christian churches dying?

A: By Rev. Deshna Shine

Dear Reader,

I invite you to consider that there are many reasons why churches are dying or transitioning. Here are a few from my observation. 

1. Outdated, irrelevant, exclusive liturgy
 Churches need to talk about how white supremacy is centered symbolically in their images, symbols, and language. Examples of this are images of a white Jesus, language that speaks of whiteness as being pure and blackness as being evil, women being absent from the imagery, and the divine only being seen and understood in the masculine or binary pronouns. 

Outdated, inaccessible, and exclusive liturgies contribute to empty seats.

Symbols, language, music, curriculum, images, prayers, terms, metaphors... all of this matters and affects how many people and what types of people are drawn to the church.

2. White (progressive) polite culture
 White polite culture is the slow death of church communities across America. It is a dangerous, quiet, and hard-to-detect disease. It shows up as false kindness, greeting folks at the door but never fully seeing them or caring for them. It shows up as asking little of the pastor and fear of change. It is prideful, and it arises out of white fragility. It can be seen in the othering of folks who are different from the old guard of the church, often under the guise of helping those people. 

White progressive polite is a culture of avoidance and hero worship. Authenticity can not easily survive in communities with this culture. 

3. Lack of a clear vision 
 Too many churches do not have a clear vision of what their purpose is. When I visit a church, I want to clearly see the values of the church and how the community is living into those values. What actions are they taking? What level of discomfort are they willing to be in to be radically inclusive? I want to see a church that is clear on its mission and its values. Because if the church knows its purpose, it will know how to act when there is a gap to fill. I want to see a church that is doing the hard work of becoming radically authentic with each other. I want to see the church doing something to effect change. Be that in the lives of the congregants, their local town, or affecting state and national legislature.

~ Rev. Deshna Shine
Read and share online here

About the Author
Rev. Deshna Shine is Project Director of ProgressiveChristianity.org’s Children’s Curriculum.  She is an ordained Interfaith Minister, author, international speaker, and visionary. She grew up in a thriving progressive Christian church and has worked in the field for over 13 years. She graduated from UCSB with a major in Religious Studies and a minor in Global Peace and Security. She was Executive Director of ProgressiveChristianity.org, Executive Producer of Embrace Festival and has co-authored the novel, Missing Mothers. Deshna is passionate about sacred community, nourishing children spiritually and transforming Christianity through a radically inclusive lens.
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|  Please continue to send us your feedback… 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.Thank you for being a part of this community - join us on Facebook!  |

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|  In May of 1922, Rev. Harry Emerson Fosdick delivered a famed sermon with a central question, “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?”  The central assertation of his sermon about the threat of fundamentalism shook the religious world to its core and cost him his job.  Even though he spoke the words of this sermon over 100 years ago, reading through it all these years later leaves one with an eerie sense of relevance.  Why?  Because the fundamentalists won…or at the very least they defined the cultural concept of what it means to be Christian in America.

Christianity that is concerned only with biblical inerrancy, individual salvation at the expense of others, defining life at conception, denying science, discriminating against LGBTQIA+ children of God, and ignoring history is antithetical to the actual life and teachings of Jesus.  Fundamentalist Christianity isn’t Christianity at all, and it’s turning droves of people away from Christianity while causing substantial church-induced trauma.

While fundamentalists have defined our cultural conversation for decades, it doesn’t have to stay that way.  Through expanding social media, resources, and influence, ProgressiveChristianity.org has led an enormous effort to help people find an authentic, intellectually honest, and life-changing faith.  Now is the time to galvanize people into action!  Could you help us create this change? A recurring donation ensures that we can do this work for years to come and a one-time gift makes a huge difference.

Thank you for your generosity!

The Rev. Dr. Caleb J. Lines
Co-Executive Director, ProgressiveChristianity.org  |

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|  Don't miss the next Episode of PC.org's Executive Directors Mark and Caleb on:
The Moonshine Jesus Show
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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited

Part IX Matthew
Matthew Introduces Joseph - The Earthly Father of Jesus

Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong
December 19, 2013
Matthew’s opening genealogy of Jesus is now complete with the intriguing idea that the line which produced Jesus of Nazareth, traveled not only through the royal family of the house of David, but also through four “tainted’ women: Tamar, who engaged in incest; Rahab, who was called a prostitute; Ruth, who achieved her goals through seduction, and Bathsheba, who was an adulterer. After this provocative introduction Matthew then moves on to introduce the rest of the cast of characters who will star in the drama he is about to write! The first of these characters is named Joseph. In the genealogy he was said to be both the son of Jacob and the man who was betrothed to Mary, the mother of Jesus. His role, as defined by Matthew, will be to act as the male protector of the Christ Child and thus to name him, which in Jewish society served to legitimize him. With this Matthean introduction, the character of Joseph enters the Christian tradition and he has remained deep in our affections from that day to this. He is immediately recognized as a strong silent presence standing behind Mary and the baby in a manger in the crèche scenes. We turn our focus now to Joseph, the earthly father of Jesus.

I begin this look at Joseph with some biblical facts. First, Joseph as the name of Jesus’ presumptive father had never been mentioned before in any Christian source of which we are aware. Joseph received no mention in Paul, who died before any gospel had been composed. He received no mention in Mark, the earliest gospel. He was not mentioned in Q or the gospel of Thomas, both of which some people argue were written prior to Mark (I am not one of them!). So Matthew is the first person ever to refer to one called Joseph as the father of Jesus.

Second, as soon as the birth narratives are complete, Joseph disappears from the Christian scriptures forever. Luke stretches his birth narrative out long enough to relate the account of the boy Jesus, at age twelve, going up to Jerusalem with Mary and Joseph. That is the closest Joseph comes to appearing in the adult life of Jesus and that Lucan story, which seems to be based on a story drawn from the life of Samuel, is widely questioned. The fact is, however, that Joseph never again appears in any gospel account.

When I was a child attending Sunday school in my evangelical Episcopal Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, this absence of Joseph from any mention in the life of the adult Jesus was explained by suggesting that Joseph probably died while Jesus was still a lad. The tradition of this early death was reinforced by the nativity scenes painted by the master artists through the centuries. All portray Joseph as a much older man, thus enforcing the possibility of his death in Jesus’ childhood. Joseph’s elderly depiction, however, came into Christianity primarily through a late second century apocryphal gospel known as the Proto-Gospel of James. This narrative purported to tell of the early life of the mother of Jesus, prior to her introduction in the gospel tradition as the bearer of the messiah. This obviously mythological Proto-Gospel of James reflected much later and highly developed ideas about Mary’s virginity, but it became popular as it filled in the gaps of what was at that time thought of as a literal story. In this late second century work, Mary at her birth was handed over to some holy women to raise so that she would be prepared to serve as the vessel in whose womb the Christ Child would be formed. So Mary was not just protected in these early years, she was also formed in holiness.

When she reached the age of puberty, however, Jewish society required that she have a male protector. There was no father of Mary in the story, who might have served in this role so these holy women set up a process by which they would choose a proper husband for Mary and thus bring a male protector into the picture. There was one problem, however. Mary’s virginity would have to be honored and protected by whoever was to become her husband. Thus these holy women decided to look only at older men, perhaps widowed men with grown children, and thus presumably too old to be interested in sex. I don’t know how old that is, but it is old! So the pursuit of the perfect husband for Mary was conducted and through a series of miraculous signs, such as his staff sprouting flowers, Joseph became the one chosen. With this story in the tradition, Joseph was forever afterwards portrayed as elderly. So, it was said, his absence in the adult life of Jesus might well be explained by his death early in Jesus’ life.

There is, however, another possibility to which I have already hinted, which I would like to examine in more detail. Perhaps Joseph was a literary character created by Matthew to fill a role in the miraculous drama that he was creating about the birth of Jesus to a virgin mother. In his scenario, there was no father to name the baby Jesus and to serve as his protector. Without this protective male presence, this child would have had to deal with the enormous prejudice and social hostility that accompanied one whose paternity was in question. Let me urge you not to resist this idea on first hearing, but to hold your judgment until the evidence is presented.

If Matthew was going to create a literary character to serve as the earthly father of Jesus, is there some compelling reason why Matthew would choose to name him Joseph? Well, yes, there is, but one would not know this unless one was aware of Jewish history, as both Matthew, an obvious Jewish writer, and the community for which Matthew wrote, certainly were.

The Hebrew people had always been divided into two camps. After the reign of King Solomon, these people split into two competitive nations, Judah in the south and Israel, which came to be known as the Northern Kingdom, in the North. This division of the Hebrew people, however, was far older than even that. Biblical folklore accounted for it by saying that while Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel, was the common father of all the Hebrew people, the two segments of this nation had had separate mothers.

Recall the Genesis story in which Jacob was tricked into marrying Leah, the sister of the woman, Rachel, for whose hand in marriage he had worked for seven long years. Leah then became the mother of Judah, whose progeny formed the nation of Judah, while Rachel became the mother of Joseph, whose progeny formed the Northern Kingdom. Recall that the heirs of Levi, who was also a son of Leah, did not form a tribe, but became the Levites, the holy people who crossed all tribal boundaries. So to keep the number of the tribes of the Hebrew people at twelve, Joseph was given two tribes named for his two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh. The other Hebrew tribes were gradually melded into these Joseph tribes. So dominant was the tribe of Ephraim in the North that the Old Testament actually uses the name Ephraim as a synonym for the nation called Israel. So the two major patriarchs in Jewish history were Judah and Joseph. Hebrew folklore portrayed them always as rivals. This is revealed in the Genesis story of Joseph’s favoritism reflected in his coat of many colors, while his brother Judah was portrayed as the one suggesting that he be sold into slavery.

Part of the messiah’s task, according to Matthew, was to bring the covenant people together which meant that messiah must unite the tribe of Judah with those of Joseph making a single whole. In the genealogy Matthew had just traced, Jesus’ lineage through David and Solomon to the kings of Judah, which secured Jesus’ connection with the Judah part of the Hebrew nation. To make Joseph the name of the earthly father of Jesus would bring the other half of that nation into the picture. So the heir of the Judean King David was protected and legitimized by a father named Joseph. It was a perfect solution. Judah and Joseph were brought together in this first story of the birth of the messiah. So in Jesus at his birth, Matthew was claiming, that the divided “chosen” nation had become once more in this messiah, one people.

Now, if you have journeyed with me this far, let me explore a second question. If Matthew is the creator of the character Joseph, who serves as Jesus’ earthly father, from where did Matthew get the biographical data that he used to build this literary figure? To answer this we look at the details provided for us in Matthew 1 and 2, which are the only places in scripture where we are told anything about this Joseph. There we discover three things. First, Joseph has a father whose name is Jacob. Second, according to Matthew, God only speaks to Joseph in dreams. In a dream God tells Joseph to take his wife for the child within her is holy. In a dream Joseph is warned to escape the wrath of King Herod. In a dream he is told when it is safe to return to their home in Bethlehem. In a dream, he is directed to move the messianic child from Bethlehem to the safety of Nazareth in Galilee. Everywhere in Mathew’s narrative his Joseph is associated with dreams. Last, the role that Matthew assigns to Joseph in this drama is to save the life of the messianic child by taking him down to Egypt.

Now go back to the story of the patriarch Joseph in the book of Genesis (37-50) and see what biographical details we can learn about this earlier Joseph. We discover there three things. First, this Joseph has a father named Jacob. Second, this Joseph is overwhelmingly identified with dreams. He is called “the dreamer” and he rises to political power in Egypt by interpreting the dreams of the Pharaoh. Third, his role in the drama of salvation is to save the people of the covenant from death in a famine and he does this by taking them down to Egypt.

Do you think these things are coincidental? Or are you beginning to understand the interpretive clue that unlocks the gospels. The gospels are Jewish books that weave the stories of the Hebrew Scriptures around Jesus of Nazareth as the primary means of claiming that he is the expected messiah. To read the gospels literally is to misunderstand them totally. Literalism is a Gentile heresy! The gospels are Jewish books that must be read with Jewish eyes. Nothing reveals this more clearly than the story of Joseph, the earthly father of Jesus. So Joseph is established in the birth narrative. The holy child is born to Mary and when this series resumes, we will turn to the star in the east and the journey of the Magi.

~  John Shelby Spong
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In 1503, in Northern Spain, just like she did the year before, Angelina de Leon kneaded dough of flour, eggs, olive oil and flavored it with pepper and honey. She flattened small cakes and pricked them with a fork so they wouldn’t rise. Angelina wondered for how many more years would she have to do this in secret. Celebrating Passover was against the law. Her preparations were seen by her maid, Maria Sancho, who testified this matter to the Inquisition. Angelina and her family were found out to be secret Jews.    READ ON ...  |

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