[Oe List ...] 7/06/17, Fox/Spong: Time for a New Spiritual (not Religious) Order?; Spong revisited, Pt VI

Jean Long via OE oe at lists.wedgeblade.net
Mon Jul 10 08:53:40 PDT 2017


Greetings - jean here -

This dialogue is why I am proposing that we call the NRM the New Mode of
the Religious??

Jean

On Mon, Jul 10, 2017 at 5:15 AM, James Wiegel via OE <
oe at lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:

> Thanks to Ellie for her constancy in passing these on.  When was the
> Polity document written?
>
> Jim Wiegel
> 401 North Beverly Way, Tolleson, Arizona 85353
> Tel. 011-623-936-8671 or 011-623-363-3277
> jfwiegel at yahoo.com <marilyn.oyler at gmail.com>
> www.partnersinparticipation.com
>
> We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.
> Ernest Hemingway
>
> On Jul 9, 2017, at 20:33, Lynda C <lynda860 at outlook.com> wrote:
>
> Thank you for finding this for us, Jim.  I had it on my list of things to
> look for after our conversation.  Powerful reminders to hear again and to
> be of help to others looking for building similar community,
>
> Lynda
>
> From: OE List <OE at lists.wedgeblade.net>
> Reply-To: Jim and Judy Weigle <jfwiegel at yahoo.com>, OE List <
> OE at lists.wedgeblade.net>
> Date: Sunday, July 9, 2017 at 8:05 AM
> To: Judi White <sophiacircle at gmail.com>, OE List <OE at lists.wedgeblade.net>
> Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] 7/06/17, Fox/Spong: Time for a New Spiritual
> (not Religious) Order?; Spong revisited, Pt VI
>
> Thanks for the response, Judi.   Here is how we tried to describe the
> Order Ecumenical in 1974 or so . . .
> https://wedgeblade.net/gold_path/data/sprm/101610.htm
>
>
> Jim Wiegel
> 401 North Beverly Way, Tolleson, Arizona 85353
> Tel. 011-623-936-8671 or 011-623-363-3277
> jfwiegel at yahoo.com <marilyn.oyler at gmail.com>
> www.partnersinparticipation.com
>
> We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.
> Ernest Hemingway
>
> On Jul 9, 2017, at 08:35, Judi White via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net>
> wrote:
>
> Communicating how we  were living out our lives was understandable to
> others when I said Spirit Movement. Secular religious family order drew
> images of historical monastic images. Spirit Order communicates inclusive
> and today, especially if an  Earth image included in the name. Judi
>
> On Jul 6, 2017 9:50 AM, "Ellie Stock via OE" <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net>
> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>
>> <http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=00b81a3625&e=db34daa597>
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>> Time for a New Spiritual (not Religious) Order? By Matthew Fox
>>
>> <http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=1e357af82c&e=db34daa597>
>> Speaking of a need for a Reformation makes me question whether the time
>> has arrived for a new religious order that is in fact not tied to a
>> particular religion but is a Spiritual Order, one that might help people of
>> various religious faiths and none to gather around a common value and
>> focus. I think our times call for a focus on the sacredness of the Earth
>> and all her creatures. Therefore I propose a new order called “The Order of
>> the Sacred Earth.” Its members may come from any and all life-styles,
>> married, single, celibate, gay, straight and from any and all occupations
>> so long as their work mirrored the values of honoring and supporting the
>> Earth and her creatures. Blue collar and white collar workers would be
>> welcomed. People of all religious traditions and none would be welcome.
>> What then would bind them together as a community? A common vow. One that
>> reads like this: “I promise to be as good a mystic (that is, lover) of
>> Mother Earth that I can be and as good a prophet or warrior defending
>> Mother Earth that I can be.” The Order would be established on this common
>> vow and it would provide both a focus for our life decisions and our
>> citizenship but also a community of support to assist one another in the
>> living out of our values and commitment. It would represent a new stage in
>> religious history actually, a leap forward in our spiritual evolution
>> because it would take us beyond denominationalism and hurl us into the
>> deeper calling to be mystics (lovers) and prophets (defenders of what we
>> cherish). It would allow people to stay in their respective traditions or
>> to move beyond them or to be one foot in and one foot out. Thus it would
>> set a new standard for Deep Ecumenism or Interfaith, Interspirituality
>> existence and work.
>> Why am I so confident that the time has come for such a new kind of
>> order? First, because it is clear, as Bishop Spong has pointed out, that
>> Christianity must change or die—but I also believe other religions are
>> equally challenged today to move beyond their literal teachings to a deeper
>> expression of the very essence of religion—Gratitude and Compassion, Awe
>> and Creativity, Justice and passing on the Earth as the splendid and
>> grace-filled being that it truly is. Whether we talk of the Earth and her
>> creatures as the “Cosmic Christ” or the “Image of God” or the “Buddha
>> Nature” all traditions are trying to wake us up to a sense of the sacred
>> which surrounds us and feeds and nurtures us but which we can all to
>> readily take for granted.
>> How can we possibly say that we love our children (and their children and
>> grandchildren to come) if we are leaving them a despoiled planet, a
>> diminishing planet, a sick planet with untold species going extinct and
>> with seas rising and great cities soon to be inundated with salt water? How
>> can we possible say we love God if we are oblivious to our neighbor—whether
>> that neighbor be another two-legged one or a grand species such as the
>> elephants or tigers or polar bears and others? Once we get over our
>> anthropocentrism (what Pope Francis rightly calls our “narcissism” as a
>> species), we recognize not just the good Samaritan serving his ailing
>> neighbor but we recognize all who are working to heal the plight of so many
>> species being threatened by humans pre-occupied with their own agendas.
>> I am also convinced that it is time for such an Order, an Order of the
>> Sacred Earth (OSE), because of my reading of Christian history. Ours are
>> not the only times that the Christian religion found itself running out of
>> steam, hijacked by forces eager to use it for their own political and
>> economic ends, boring the young people on a regular basis, offering up
>> stale and often dead and idolatrous forms of worship. But in other eras
>> when the Christ path was hijacked or sold out, the response was to reinvent
>> life styles that more clearly mirrored the message and person of Jesus.
>> Such was the case in the fourth century when the “desert fathers and
>> mothers” withdrew from the cities after the marriage of the church and the
>> empire to seek a more authentic life style. Such was the case in the sixth
>> century when St Benedict gave birth to the monastic system which was to
>> preserve much of culture and healthy religion for many centuries during the
>> cold and “dark” ages in Europe. Such was the case when, at the end of the
>> twelfth century the marriage of feudalism and monasticism was choking
>> healthy religion and new leaders such as Francis and Dominic sensed the
>> need to break from the privileges of monasticism and get more real and more
>> involved in the poverty movement that backed the serfs and the young and,
>> with Dominic, the newly “secularized” university system which separated
>> education from the monastic establishment for the first time in many
>> centuries.
>> A similar cultural upheaval in the sixteenth century that grew out of
>> cultural breakthroughs such as the invention of the printing press and that
>> gave birth to the Protestant Reformation and to the opening up of new
>> markets and new continents and encounters with new peoples in the newly
>> “discovered” Americas and in Asia. I think a good argument can also be made
>> than in many respects the various Protestant denominations that began in
>> the sixteenth century were a kind of “lay orders” insofar as they arose in
>> response to corruption in the dominant church structure (what we know today
>> as Roman Catholic Church) but that each denomination, like many of the
>> Orders through the centuries, had their unique form of polities and of
>> worship and training of clergy, etc. The Jesuit Order founded by St.
>> Ignatius in the sixteenth century was another response to the corruption of
>> the dominant religious paradigm.
>> One important lesson to learn from the history of religious orders is
>> that they can be very readily co-opted by powers that be, both ecclesial
>> and secular powers and combinations of the two. No better example of this
>> need be offered than the fact that within one generation of the founding of
>> the Franciscans they were enrolled by the Vatican to partake in the
>> Inquisition. The same is true of the Dominicans. I maintain that Francis
>> saw the handwriting on the wall when the ecclesial powers took his order
>> from him (including his desire that his brothers not become priests but
>> stay out of that clerical status and mindset) and that his being stripped
>> of the very brotherhood he had launched brought about his broken heart, his
>> stigmata, and the end of his life.
>> This lesson from history is one reason I insist that an Order today ought
>> to be *spiritual and not religious*, that it should owe no allegiance to
>> any particular religious hierarchy or headquarters but should pick up the
>> sign of our times which is the reality that human consciousness is
>> outpacing religious institutions and that the very essence of religion,
>> spirituality, is what needs to be preserved at its best and carried on. And
>> this is what the Order of the Sacred Earth would be about surely. And this
>> would happen on a post-denominational plane, in a time of deep ecumenism
>> and interfaith and interspirituality. This sense of interfaith would also
>> lie at the heart of the new Order. What unites the members is not their
>> particular religious affiliation or identity (or lack thereof), but their
>> common vow to protect Mother Earth and her creatures, humans included.
>> One’s allegiance will be to that reality and that shared value and that
>> criterion that will become the litmus test for being a participating member
>> of said community or Order. Agnostics and atheists I could see as part of
>> the movement.
>> The late Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heshel declared that there are three ways
>> to respond to creation: To exploit it; to enjoy it; or to accept it with
>> awe. This latter way is the starting point for recovering the sacred. And
>> recovering the sacred lies at the heart of the Order of the *Sacred*
>> Earth. To recover the sacred means not to take nature or creation for
>> granted and to explore that part of ourselves that rejoices to be in the
>> presence of the Holy even on a daily basis. But it also means to fight and
>> carry on the pursuit of preserving the Sacred, preserving Mother Earth in
>> all her beauty and diversity. It means taking on those enemies of the Earth
>> from Climate Change and pumping of CO2 into the atmosphere to destroying
>> forests and soil and rainforests and countless species headed for
>> extinction. One’s way of battling on behalf of Mother Earth may vary
>> broadly—from supporting political movements to running for office oneself
>> to employing sustainable ways of living in one’s life style and work places
>> to educating others, to raising money for eco causes, etc. etc. What it
>> does not mean is doing nothing. Or remaining silent. Or contributing to the
>> ongoing pollution of our greatest inheritance and our greatest gift we
>> bequeath to our descendants—the health and well being of Mother Earth.
>> The Order of the Sacred Earth (OSE) is scheduled to launch this Fall.
>> Indeed, we intend to have the first day of public vow taking to be winter
>> solstice, 2017, and we hope to live stream it from many sites where people
>> might gather to make a commitment. (2017 is the 500th anniversary of the
>> launching of the Protestant Reformation marking Luther’s pounding of theses
>> at the church door in Wittenburg, Germany). While I am a founding elder and
>> intergenerational wisdom is at the core of the vision, still its leadership
>> needs to come from 30-somethings whose generation is called to stand up at
>> this critical moment in Earth history in a special way. Currently a couple
>> of 33 years old, Jan Listing and Skylar Wilson, are leading the project
>> with me. A book entitled *Order of the Sacred Earth: An
>> Intergenerational Vision of Love and Action* in which Skylar and I offer
>> essays laying out its philosophy and Jan and a number of other responders
>> offer short essays of vision and hope for OSE will be available in the Fall
>> in a private edition and publicly in the Spring from Monkfish Publishing
>> Company.
>> ~ Matthew Fox
>>
>> Read the essay online here
>> <http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=7ecbe05650&e=db34daa597>
>> .
>> *About the Author*
>> Matthew Fox holds a doctorate in spirituality from the Institut
>> Catholique de Paris and has authored 32 books on spirituality and
>> contemporary culture that have been translated into 60 languages. Fox has
>> devoted 45 years to developing and teaching the tradition of Creation
>> Spirituality
>> <http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=08400559cd&e=db34daa597>and
>> in doing so has reinvented forms of education and worship. His work is
>> inclusive of today’s science and world spiritual traditions and has
>> awakened millions to the much neglected earth-based mystical tradition of
>> the West. He has helped to rediscover Hildegard of Bingen, Meister Eckhart,
>> Thomas Aquinas. Among his books are *Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of
>> the FleshTransforming Evil in Soul and Society*
>> <http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=78f3b5bf40&e=db34daa597>,
>> *The Pope’s War: Why Ratzinger’s Secret Crusade Has Imperiled the Church
>> and How It Can Be Saved* and
>> <http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=1eac400b8c&e=db34daa597>*Confessions:
>> The Making of a Postdenominational Priest*
>> <http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=5019c90e33&e=db34daa597>
>> ------------------------------
>> Question & Answer
>> MaryAnn from the Internet, writes:
>> Question:
>> I am choosing one of Rev. Spong's books for our newly formed group. Do
>> you have a suggestion for a particular book?
>> Thank you for your help.
>>
>> Answer: By Fred Plumer
>>
>> <http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=005f98a11b&e=db34daa597>Boy
>> you are asking a tough question that begs for a good response. I suppose
>> that is why this ended up on my desk. Frankly the choice would depend on
>> the level of sophistication of your group. I believe two books would work
>> if you are moving your group into a new way of thinking, I would start with Why
>> Christianity Must Change or Die
>> <http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=9d44eb8e5c&e=db34daa597>
>> or a later book, A New Christianity for a New World
>> <http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=4300cbabf1&e=db34daa597>
>> written several year later.
>> If you think your group would like to tackle some specifics, Rescuing
>> the Bible from Fundamentalism
>> <http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=6b2fa4a756&e=db34daa597>
>> or The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic
>> <http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=1f031287e9&e=db34daa597>
>> would be terrific reads.
>> And finally for an overview of how the Bible is been misused,
>> misinterpreted, misleading, Re-Claiming the Bible for a Non-Religious
>> World
>> <http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=c563129617&e=db34daa597>.
>> This book was first published in 2010 and reprinted in paper back in 2013.
>> It is considered by some theologians as one of Spong’s best books.
>> I hope this is helpful. I did narrow it down a bit but it really depends
>> on your audience.
>> ~ Fred Plumer, President
>> ProgressiveChirsitanity.org
>> <http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=fdaab7b775&e=db34daa597>
>>
>> Read and share online here
>> <http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=35e04e62bf&e=db34daa597>
>> __________________________________________________
>> *Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited*
>>
>> *The Terrible Texts: The Attitude of the Bible Toward Women – Part VI*
>>
>> [image: Spong]
>> "In Christ Jesus...there is neither male nor female (Gal. 3:26,28)."
>> The apostle Paul was a man of great ability, passion, and energy and yet
>> his writings reveal enormous turmoil. He comes out of a rigid, patriarchal
>> background which he reflects again and again when giving instructions to
>> his churches: Women are to keep quiet in church; men ought not to marry
>> unless they cannot control their passion; women are to have their heads
>> covered as a sign of respect; women are forbidden to hold authority over a
>> man, etc. etc. As women have come increasingly into leadership roles in
>> Christianity, they have vented their anger at this misogynist Paul. I know
>> women clergy today who dismiss him as an enemy who had to be defeated
>> before they could be accepted in the Church. Paul, however, was not single
>> minded. In almost every area of his life, he lived in conflict. The
>> prejudices that Paul possessed, the training he had undergone, the rigidity
>> of his pious practices, all were countered by a conversion experience that
>> kept him in internal tension. There was a war, he said, going on between
>> his mind and his body, his past and his present, his tradition and his
>> future. Luke described his conversion in Acts as "scales falling from his
>> eyes." In many places Paul does not appear to be anti-female, expressing
>> his appreciation to women like Priscilla, Lydia and Chloe, who were his
>> colleagues and sending greetings to various women in his epistles.
>> The place where Paul's perceived negativity toward women is most overtly
>> countered is found in Galatians, probably Paul's most passionate and
>> revelatory epistle. Scholars date this work in the early fifties. In a
>> rather strange way, it reveals an authentic unfiltered Paul, whose anger at
>> those who wished to separate Jewish Christians from Gentile Christians
>> prohibits the luxury of thinking about what he is saying. His Christ
>> experience, he asserts, has removed all the boundaries inside which he once
>> found security. He listed those boundaries as tribe, gender and economic
>> bondage. "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female,
>> for you are all one in Christ Jesus." Please note that latter phrase. As a
>> result of his Christ experience, he states, the power equation between men
>> and women has been broken. That equation, presumably built on the will of
>> God, as found in the story of creation, was the justification for the
>> woman's second class citizenship, which historically had included periods
>> in which women were considered to be property. Laws informed by this
>> attitude enabled polygamy, wife beating, the right to put one's wife to
>> death, and the refusal to allow divorce as an option for women. The
>> assumptions were that women were neither educable nor intelligent enough to
>> be full citizens. Paul was suggesting, however, that a new reality had
>> broken into the world in Christ that had rendered these definitions no
>> longer operative.
>> When we move to the Gospels evidence suggests that this new insight was
>> present before the Church used the authority of the 'Terrible Texts' to
>> suppress it. In Mark, the earliest Gospel, we read the story of a woman
>> who, in the last week of Jesus' life, intruded herself on a dinner in
>> Bethany at the home of one called Simon the Leper. First, she poured over
>> his head an expensive perfume. This act was a violation of every Jewish
>> patriarchal custom and if allowed, all norms would be forever broken. The
>> men at the banquet thus moved quickly to condemn her behavior. Jesus,
>> however, is portrayed as rebuking her tormentors. "She has done a beautiful
>> thing to me," Jesus is quoted as saying, "She has anointed my body
>> beforehand for burying (Mk. 14:3-9)."
>> That same story echoes three more times in other gospels, but with
>> interesting variations. In Matthew, it is recounted almost identically (Mt.
>> 26:6-12). In Luke, however, there is a dramatic shift (Lk. 7:36-50). This
>> episode does not occur in the last week of Jesus' life and it is not a
>> prelude to his burial. Luke locates it, rather, in the early Galilean phase
>> of Jesus' ministry, and not at the home of Simon the Leper but at the home
>> of Simon the Pharisee, that is, one who is known for upholding the moral
>> norms and taboos of the tradition. The woman's character has also been
>> heightened, but in a very negative direction. She is "a woman of the city,"
>> a prostitute. As such, she is unclean and unwelcome. Her actions, according
>> to Luke, are much more bizarre than those recorded by any other gospel
>> writer. They are overtly sensual and clearly violate the social norms for
>> women. Only in Luke does this woman wash Jesus' feet with her tears and dry
>> them with her hair. One cannot perform such acts without fondling the feet
>> of the recipient. In a society where a woman would never touch a man in
>> public, this was an act of dramatic challenge. Once again, the value
>> systems of the past emerged in the emotional responses of the male dinner
>> guests, who condemn her roundly. They also condemned Jesus for allowing
>> this outrage to happen to him. "If this man were a prophet, he would have
>> known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him." Because
>> Jesus did not condemn her, his credentials as a holy man were obviously
>> compromised. Since he had allowed this 'intimacy' at the hands of an
>> unclean woman, he was now ceremonially unclean. But again Jesus sets aside
>> the patriarchal rules with its doctrines of cleanliness and affirms the
>> woman, accepts her action and tears down the barrier that would cause her
>> to be rejected. He was acting out the Pauline insight that in Christ there
>> was neither male nor female. A new humanity, transcending ancient
>> definitions, ancient rules and ancient religious barriers, was being born.
>> The 'terrible texts' of the past that had relegated women to a position of
>> inferiority were being set aside.
>> The same story was also told in John (Jno. 12:1-8). This time the
>> anointing of Jesus, while still in Bethany, occurs at the home of Mary and
>> Martha. All of Jesus' disciples are present as well as the family of Mary
>> and Martha, including a brother named Lazarus, who had been, this Gospel
>> alone asserts, recently raised from the dead. In this very public setting
>> Mary is the woman who anoints Jesus' feet. There is no sense here of
>> scandal and certainly there is no rebuke. How very strange, one thinks.
>> Where did the patriarchal rules go? Why was this action suddenly
>> acceptable? The only thing that in that day would have allowed this act to
>> occur in a public setting without rebuke, would be that everybody present
>> at this gathering knew that Mary was Jesus' wife! Is this a new insight?
>> Maybe. But I suggest it is merely the lifting into the open of a long
>> repressed gospel tradition, which contradicted later Church teaching that
>> Jesus' anti-female bias led to his commitment to celibacy.
>> In another revealing story, told by Luke, the ability of Jesus to break
>> open the negative definitions that had always surrounded women is once
>> again related, but in an enigmatic way. Jesus is again a dinner guest at
>> the home of Mary and Martha. Martha is busily engaged in the work of
>> preparing the meal. Mary is sitting at Jesus' feet listening to him teach.
>> This means that Luke has cast this woman in the role of a learner, a pupil,
>> perhaps even a rabbinic student. These, obviously, were roles that in first
>> century Jewish society, women were not allowed to play. Martha enters the
>> room and rebukes Mary, demanding that Jesus order her to help in the
>> kitchen. Jesus refuses, going so far as to suggest that Mary has chosen the
>> "higher way." He was asserting that a woman could be a student. Nothing can
>> rule this possibility out since in Christ "there is neither male nor
>> female." The suppression of truth regarding Jesus' relationship to Mary is
>> again present in this narrative. Please note that Martha asked Jesus to
>> order Mary to the kitchen. Why did Martha not speak directly to her sister?
>> Her demands of Jesus would be appropriate only if, as Mary's husband, he
>> had the authority to command and Mary had the duty to obey.
>> Now, suppose this Mary was the same woman who came to be called
>> Magdalene. Mary Magdalene was portrayed in the gospels as the leader of the
>> female disciples who had followed Jesus all the way from Galilee (see Mk.
>> 15:41, Mt. 27:55, and Lk. 23:49). What kind of women would accompany an
>> itinerant band of men in the first century Jewish world? They would have to
>> be either wives or prostitutes. There were no other options. Mary Magdalene
>> was both the flesh and blood woman at Jesus' side during his life, and the
>> chief mourner at his tomb in his death. Magdalene was portrayed in the
>> Fourth Gospel's resurrection narrative as calling him both "my Lord." and
>> "Rabboni," intimate titles, appropriate in Jewish society to be used by a
>> woman for a respected teacher only if he was also her revered husband. She
>> was the same Mary who demanded access to his deceased body from the one she
>> thought was the gardener, an act appropriate only if she were the nearest
>> of kin.
>> Finally, suppose the word "Magdalene" has no reference whatsoever to a
>> village of Magdala, a village that no one has yet been able to locate in
>> any ancient source, but was, rather, a play on the Hebrew word "Migdal" -
>> which means "large" or "great." Migdal was once a word that referred to a
>> tower from which shepherds could view the fields in which their flocks were
>> grazing. This would suggest that by calling this Mary "Magdalene," the
>> earliest Christian community was asserting that this was "the great Mary,"
>> the female partner and wife of Jesus, to whom he gave a dignity and an
>> honor that broke the barriers of the sexist definitions of the past. For
>> those who live 'in Christ,' Paul was suggesting, no barrier can be erected
>> against women, and no definition of the past can be used to suggest that
>> women are somehow less than fully human. Jesus called and empowered people
>> to step beyond every debilitating definition of our survival-oriented
>> humanity to claim the new humanity that lies beyond the gender boundaries
>> of the past. The Church, once the enemy of this new day, quoting and acting
>> upon the basis of these 'terrible texts' might yet, through this vision,
>> become the ally of the oppressed and the community in which a new humanity
>> is lived out. That is my dream!
>> ~ John Shelby Spong
>> Originally published February 4, 2004
>> ------------------------------
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>>
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>> <http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=bfdd41e12c&e=db34daa597> offers
>> our most popular children's books deeply discounted for the month of July.
>> Perfect timing for summer reading or to purchase now and put aside as
>> future gifts - at 70% off it's time to stock up on your favorites. *
>>
>> *Click here and use Coupon Code JULYBOOK
>> <http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=598e6b7a9b&e=db34daa597>to
>> receive 70% off select children's books - discount expires 7-31-17. *
>>
>>
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