[Oe List ...] 4/02/20: Progressing Spirit: Jacqueline J. Lewis: A Grown-Up God for Times Like TheseSpong revisited
Ellie Stock
elliestock at aol.com
Thu Apr 2 06:03:56 PDT 2020
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A Grown-Up God for Times Like These
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| Essay by The Rev. Jacqueline J. Lewis, PhD
April 2, 2020
I had just graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary and was serving a church in Trenton, a new church development called Imani Community Church. We were Presbyterians, hoping to grow a new kind of ministry — multiracial, intergenerational, children and elders co-leading, open and affirming, in an old building, in a dying city. It was rough. The industry that lead to the slogan, “Trenton takes; the world makes” had long dried up; business now meant government, drug-trade, policing the same, and houses of worship offering hope. We banded together across faiths against the perils of poverty, crime and, occasionally, deadly policing. Our allies were unlikely: Catholics, United Methodists, Baptists, Jews, The Nation of Islam and a splinter group, The Five Percenters. We did not agree on names for God, on how many times to pray, on how genders relate, on how to worship. We did agree that Trenton was our home and we needed to protect our home; we agreed that we were family.
Before that time, I had an intellectual appreciation for other faiths. In my childhood church our junior choir sang, Millions of stars placed in the sky by one God; millions of men lift of their eyes to one God…. walk with me brother there were no strangers after his work was done, for your God and my God are One. My parents never criticized Muslims or Jews; they were our sisters and brothers — all progeny of Abraham and Sarah. When I was a teenager, I had the understanding that Jesus himself was a Jew and was deeply confused about how anti-Semitism could be in the heart of any Christian. And in seminary, I studied the core principles of many faiths. But it was in the working side-by-side with colleagues across faiths that my personal faith became universalist.
I was a Christian; I am a Christian. But it became clear to me that God speaks more than one language. Because God wants to be known, I came to believe, by any means necessary, God speaks to the hearts of humans in the ways they can hear, inviting us to come close to be seen, known and loved. When I left Trenton to go to graduate school to study psychology and religion, my interfaith family came to celebrate me and our shared work. They came to send off an African American Christian woman. They embraced me as their sister, some breaking cultural boundaries to do so.
It was at Drew University in the psychology and religion program that I began to think more deeply about how humans come to faith, how faith sustains us, how the “God story” is one narrative that shapes our personalities. I am sure some in my discipline move in the world with certainty that God is an illusion, created (per Freud) to manage our anxieties about life and death. For me, I strongly believe in the existence of God. AND because God is a mystery, theologians, ethicists, psychologists, sociologists and every day folk have spent lifetimes trying to understand God. Who is God? What does God require of us? What is the relationship between God and the nature of goodness and evil? Does God cause natural disasters; why doesn’t God stop natural disasters? We wrestle with those questions as soon as the concept of God enters our awareness.
One of my favorite psychologists of religion, Ana-Maria Rizzuto wrote, “No child arrives at the 'house of God' without his pet God under his arm.” (Birth of the Living God: A Psychoanalytic Study).
She means that each of us has a God representation. Rizutto argues that there are parts of our God representation that are made up of what we have experienced. I agree and would say further that those experiences are often imbedded in stories. Stories shape our psychological development — stories about gender, birth order, sexuality, race, and, yes, about God/religion/faith. We learn stories about God (theology) from other people who ask the same questions as we do. Our church school teachers, pastors, imams, rabbis — are all wrestling with the mystery. They wrestle using personal experience, research and study. They wrestle while reading the “wrestling” of others — commentaries, midrash, even other sermons. They wrestle using scripture and other holy texts, which, although inspired, represent the theological wrestling of the writer!
The authors of those texts have stories, experiences, and circumstances that make them wonder, “Where is God in this? How am I to understand this in light of what I think about God?” Because the authors are different, because the circumstances are different, what they say about the “unchanging God” varies. In fact, most scholars believe there are four different theological voices in the Hebrew scriptures as they show up in the Christian bible. And, when we read the four gospels telling the story of Jesus, we get four different nuanced narratives as well.
It can feel that God is changing, but actually I think it is different than that. The way I think about this is that we project different things onto God at different times. Sometimes we want and need to think of God as a kind and benevolent being, who will forgive all things and bless us, no matter what. Sometimes we want to think of God as a powerful, angry force who is fully in charge of the universe and who will, if we ask, smite the people we call enemies. I think we often “create” the God we need for the moment. Father Richard Rohr writes,
Controlling people try to control people, and they do the same with God—but loving anything always means a certain giving up of control. You tend to create a God who is just like you—whereas it was supposed to be the other way around. ― Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For and Believe
The longer I live, the clearer it becomes to me that God doesn’t change; we do. We change individually, developmentally; the human species also evolves. Our understanding of the mystery of God changes as we mature, as we have new experiences. We speak, sing, write, read texts, and preach about our changing understanding of the mysterious, ineffable God. What we say, think and write is only a representation of the indescribable. Our pronouns for God might change (I now love “she” and “they”). Our metaphors for God might change, mine has become more intimate. Rather than “rock” or “shelter,” I think more often of God as “partner” or “bosom to rest in.” Just like God shows up in holy texts, God shows up on television, in film and in art as a representations as well. When describing God in The Color Purple, Alice Walker put these words in the mouth of a wild and wise woman, Shug Avery:
Here's the thing, say Shug. The thing I believe. God is inside you and inside everybody else. You come into the world with God. But only them that search for it inside find it. And sometimes it just manifest itself even if you not looking, or don't know what you are looking for. Trouble do it for most folks, I think. Sorrow, lord. Feeling like sh&t. It? I ask. Yeah, It. God ain't a he or a she, but a It. But what do it look like? I ask. Don't look like nothing, she say. It ain't a picture show. It ain't something you can look at apart from anything else, including yourself. I believe God is everything, say Shug. Everything that is or ever was or ever will be. And when you can feel that, and be happy to feel that, you've found it.
The older I get, the longer I live, I, too, think God is everywhere, in everything, all around us. Inside all the people, in our new grandson and his two-year old sister. In the doctors and nurses working, right now, to heal people of viruses, and of broken legs. The therapists and clergy working to heal people of broken hearts and broken hope. In the rocks, rivers and trees; in the rise and fall of an ocean, in the rise and fall of our breathing bodies.
God shows up in our lives, as part of our lives. And when I need a short-cut to describe the mystery, the Holy Other that is both outside of us and inside of us, I go to a little book in the Christian New Testament, 1 John 16: God is Love, and those who abide in Love abide in God, and God abides in them. All who love live in God, and God lives in them. That is so comforting to me. It opens my heart up, makes me less judgmental, and more curious. I believe God is Love. There have to be many paths to Love. Love. Period. Love is a grown-up God for a grown-up life. A grown-up God for times like these.
~ The Rev. Jacqueline J. Lewis, PhD
Read online here
About the Author
Rev. Jacqueline J. Lewis, PhD is the Senior Minister of Middle Collegiate Church in New York City. She is a nationally acclaimed activist, author, public theologian, and organizer of an anti-racist multicultural movement of love and justice. She has been featured in The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and on The Today Show, CBS, and MSNBC. She write The Power of Stories: A Guide for Leading Multiracial and Multicultural Communities, and also wrote a book with her husband John called The Pentecost Paradigm: Ten Strategies for Becoming a Multiracial Congregation
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Question & Answer
Q: By A Reader
Why is it so difficult to apologize? Why do some apologies heal while others fail - and even offend?
A: By Rev. Irene Monroe
Dear Reader,
One of the most healing and humble exchanges between two people is an apology. Saying, “I’m sorry!” can restore feelings of safety, dignity, and respect. Because it is a sign of strength, the words can even repair relationships, especially when based on the concept of restorative justice. However, not all apologies are the same or have any meaning behind them.
For example, Hollywood film mogul, Harvey Weinstein, was recently convicted of sexually harassing, assaulting, and raping dozens of women. Weinstein’s public and scripted mea culpa stated the following: “I so respect all women and regret what happened.” Weinstein’s apology is the classic conditional non-apology. It means the following: If you are hurt, I am sorry. Or, stated another way: I am sorry only if you are hurt.
In my hometown, members of the Cambridge School Committee, along with many students of Cambridge Rindge and Latin School - past and present - their parents, and the wider Cambridge community have been embroiled over School Committee member's use of the n-word. Many have requested her resignation as a beginning step toward restorative justice. On the surface, an apology should have extinguished the imbroglio. However, sometimes an apology inflames rather than informs, and mends the situation toward healing.
The School Committee member’s apology was experienced by many as insensitive and tone-deaf, at best, and, as racist, at worst. Her apology exacerbated fraught racial tensions; thus, creating another missed opportunity toward restorative justice.
Also, given the uneven power dynamics and racial hierarchy between the School Committee member and the students, she, as an educator, missed another teaching moment to model what to do when an apology is needed. Apologizing doesn’t always mean that you’re wrong, but instead, you value a relationship with the injured party more than trying to prove a point or delving into the minutia that inevitably compounds the chaos, confusion, miscommunication, and hurt feels. Restorative justice creates relational strategies to remedy racial disparities, institutional and implicit biases, and hurt feelings when it can build from an effective apology.
However, ineffective apologies make restorative justice impossible because they intentionally change the topic, minimize the blame, and most egregiously wait too long to be sincere or sufficient. We all have experienced these types of ineffective apologies when someone does the following: apologize to be polite; apologize to appease; apologize on demand; apologize from guilt, and apologize without apologizing. These apologies fail to recognize an offense, the aggrieved parties, and to lay a foundation toward reconciliation.
~ Rev. Irene Monroe
Read and share online here
About the Author
The Reverend 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 the Boston LGBTQ newspaper Baywindows, Cambridge Chronicle, and the Boston Globe.
Monroe stated that 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 the role religion plays in discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. Because homophobia is both a hatred of the “other” and it’s usually acted upon ‘in the name of religion,” by reporting religion in the news I aim to highlight how religious intolerance and fundamentalism not only shatters the goal of American democracy, but also aids in perpetuating other forms of oppression such as racism, sexism, classism and anti-Semitism.” 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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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited
The Church and the Flu
Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong
February 8, 2006
Dear Friends,
This week I introduce you to the first guest columnist of this year 2006. Each year I try to identify four unique voices of those who labor in the same area of life that I find myself working. They are people who either have thought about things in a new way or even those who have thought about new things. I take great pleasure in making these voices better known. Today I present to you a piece that in my knowledge no one else has addressed. It was authored by one of the most gifted clergy in this generation.
The Rev. Dr. Phillip Cato may be the most intellectually stimulating priest from my own church that I have ever known. Raised, as I was, in Charlotte, North Carolina, he did his undergraduate work at Duke University, got his Master's in Divinity degree from the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts and then after some time serving congregations mostly in North Carolina, he pursued and received his PhD degree from Emory University in Atlanta. His field of study was "The Intellectual History of the Western World." That broad and all-inclusive subject has always intrigued me just as Phillip's mind has done. In addition to serving churches Dr. Cato also had a career as a chaplain in the United States Naval Reserve
I had the pleasure of being Dr. Cato's bishop for a number of years and his incisive intellect made a profound difference to me and to our diocese. He is now retired, but in his retirement he is active in both the congregations and the intellectual life of the Diocese of Washington, D.C. Most people in this church of ours would not think about the subjects Phillip addresses but, typical of his career, Phillip has never been left at the starting gate. He is generally far ahead of most of us. Several weeks ago, the New York Times reported the one-day drop of over 25% in the price of Pilgrim Pride Corporation Class B stock that is listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The story accompanying this slide revealed that this Company, located in Texas, is the second largest poultry business in America, topped only by Tyson's Foods of Arkansas. The collapse of the stock price in Pilgrim Pride Corp. was attributed to softness in the sale of chicken in the European market, causing Pilgrim Pride to lower its guidance for the next quarter. The drop in demand was attributed to the public's move away from chicken in the light of the Avian or "bird flu" scare. On January 11, a CNBC program talked about the need for American business to prepare for the possibility of a "bird flu" pandemic. No one I know of in the Christian Church has begun to address the state of preparation inside our churches for such an eventuality. Then along came Phillip Cato and, typical of his whole career, he was on top of this neglected issue.
I welcome your responses pro and con, to this article, as I do with all of our guest columnists. I hope you will have suggestions about how the churches can operate if public gatherings are forbidden in an epidemic, or if receiving communion becomes too dangerous as a way of passing on the infection. If the volume justifies it I will print a sampling of your letters in a future column. I will also pass on all letters you write on this subject to Dr. Cato.
The Church and the Flu
Americans seem not to be much aware that we are facing a catastrophe of apocalyptic proportions and are woefully unprepared to deal with it. The October 8th New York Times carries a chilling account of our nation's present unpreparedness to deal with an
expected pandemic of avian flu. Gardner Harris provides a very detailed preview of the Bush administration's 381 page Pandemic Influenza Strategic Plan to deal with what he characterizes as "what could become the worst disaster in the nation's history." The numbers cited by the government's plan, prepared "for internal Health and Human Services use only," are that more than 1.9 million Americans would die and an additional 8.5 million would require hospitalization costing in excess of $450 billion.
The quarantines that are planned would, at best, only serve as a delaying tactic.
Our recent national experience with the hurricane disasters in the Gulf States gives us no reason to be confident that our government has the capacity to deal with such a pandemic with any degree of efficiency or efficacy. The recent photo opportunity of the President with the chief executive officers of the major pharmaceutical companies does little to still what should be real fears about the consequences of this expected outbreak.
Simply hoping that this virus will not evolve into one that has a human-to- human transmission capability is a dangerous expression of naivet
~ John Shelby Spong
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