[Oe List ...] 1/20/2022, Progressing Spirit: Rev. Brandan Robertson: Why You Need to Be a Progressive Evangelist; Spong revisited
Ellie Stock
elliestock at aol.com
Thu Jan 20 06:00:24 PST 2022
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Why You Need to Be a Progressive Evangelist
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| Essay by Rev. Brandan Robertson
January 20, 2022It’s been one year since an insurrection was launched against American democracy and I find myself wondering, like so many others, how we’ve collectively arrived at such a dire moment. During the insurrection of January 6th, 2021, I had just moved back to Washington D.C. and was living in a new row home on North Capitol Street, about a half mile from the U.S. Capitol complex. As I stood outside the local Metro station that morning, I witnessed a stream of red hat wearing people emerging from the escalator and headed towards the rally outside the White House.
I took a moment to examine these people and realized that if they weren’t wearing their MAGA clothing, I wouldn’t have known that they were far-right extremists. I was deeply perplexed as to how these folks could be so caught up in the web of lies President Trump had spread and why they felt the need to travel to D.C. to support the effort to overturn the election. A couple of hours later, I like most of the country, sat in my office staring at a screen of these very same people jumping barricades, breaking windows, and breaching the Capitol. I could hear sirens and helicopters outside of my house. I was angry. I was afraid. I found myself asking once again, “how could these people get so caught up in this lie that they are willing to kill for it?”
I’ve wrestled with this question throughout the year since, and I’ve come to two conclusions: first, that when people believe there is no hope, they will do anything, and second, that progressive people, especially people of faith, have failed to share the hope embedded in our vision of the world. Let me explain. We now know that most of the people who showed up in D.C. for the insurrection were people whose own life circumstances had been anything but great in recent years. These were people who increasingly feeling left behind by a country and culture that they once felt in lock step with in regard to values.
It’s easy to forget just how swiftly social progress moved in American public life in the past twenty years; the LGBTQ+ rights movement is a great example. In the late 90’s and early 2000’s, all major political leaders stood opposed to gay marriage and equal rights for queer people. By 2012, the first black President was announcing his support for marriage equality. By 2015, gay marriage was declared legal by the Supreme Court. In fifteen years, the social stance of the nation drastically changed for the better for sexual and gender minorities. But many people who didn’t live in or near the coasts or urban centers didn’t receive the same convincing arguments, nor did they know very many openly LGBT+ people, and thus stood by wondering what had happened to their country that caused it to shift so dramatically from their strongly held values.
Now ignorance is not an excuse for injustice. But it is an explanation for it. The Jewish Prophet Hosea wrote, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” (Hosea 4:1) Those who didn’t have access to knowledge or a compelling reason to do research on a differing perspective found themselves in an unexpected defensive posture as their once generally accepted beliefs were now in the minority. And this continued to happen time and time again. They felt less understood and were increasingly critiqued for what they believed and how they lived. In 2008 and 2009, conservative politicians caught on to this sense of fear and desperation from these constituents and began to play upon it, giving birth to the Tea Party Movement which essentially claimed that America was being taken hostage by anti-American politicians and activists and that a revolution was necessary to take our country back.
For a decade, conservative political leaders and pundits played on these fears as progress continued, until the most opportunistic political leader of our lifetimes, Donald Trump, decided to step into the fray and use his showmanship-style to capitalize on these narratives for his own benefit. He convinced these people that he would fight for them and would turn back the progressive reforms that had happened in our country, returning the country to the “good old days” when his constituents’ values were the values of most of the nation. And when that power was voted away from Trump in 2020, of course, he drew on his constituent’s fear and the conspiracy theories he had spun to literally leverage them to fight- warning that if they didn’t, the end of their country and their lives as they knew them was imminent.
When fragile hope is on the line, people will do anything to maintain it- even revolt against the very democracy they claimed to love.
The thing is that we progressives had the narratives and the resources to share our hope and vision for the future with this portion of the country. We have a compelling message of what our country could become- more just and equal for us all. We spread this message effectively in urban centers, on the coasts, and in our progressive bubbles, but we rarely, if ever, did the work to share our vision with those who were not already on our team.
Now, let me issue a disclaimer here: I’m not at all claiming that progressives bear responsibility for the actions of January 6th, or the xenophobic bigotry that millions of Americans bought into during the Trump era. But what I am saying is that we must do a better job communicating our progressive, inclusive vision of the world in the years ahead. Especially those of us who are progressive people of faith.
Progressive Christians tend to shudder at the word “evangelism” because of the way it’s been hijacked by evangelicals to essentially mean “colonize and convert”. But the idea of evangelism, rooted in the Great Commission of Jesus is actually a powerful and progressive idea- to share with others a better way of living and invite them to join in. Afterall, Jesus didn’t say “go into the world and convert people to a new religion”, but rather, “go into the world and teach people to do what I instructed you to do.” It was a demonstration and invitation to a new way of living and organizing the world that benefited the individual and the society.
You see, the more I look at the people who have bought into the right-wing narrative that are hell bent on launching a revolution to stop progress in our country, the more I’m convinced that they’ve not been offered a compelling alternative. For them, it’s either right wing revolution or destruction. But what if they heard that there was another way to be Christian- one that actually understandings cultural evolution and progress as a move of the Spirit of God, one that invites them to join with God as agents of the Kingdom of God, bringing heaven to earth for themselves and for everyone? To put this in a more straightforward way, progressive people of faith have not marketed ourselves well enough- we’ve allowed our primary marketing to be the negative demonization of Trump and others like him.
But we have an unprecedented opportunity to chance this: In the virtual reality that COVID-19 has moved us all into, we are invited to use digital platforms to advocate for another way to be Christian, to be American, and to be human. A way that doesn’t fear progress but participates in it. A way that values tradition and heritage, but also strains forward to create a more beautiful world that our ancestors dreamed of. Every person reading this has the ability through the power of social media to communicate to the masses- not divisive messages and punitive debates highlighting our division, but inspirational and educational messages that cast a progressive, inclusive vision for the world and invite people to join in.
I am not naive- our divisions run deep and will require much more than a Facebook post or TikTok video. But I also do know that hearts and minds are changed through slowly introducing new stories and perspectives that stir empathy and curiosity in our hearts. I know that when hope is in short supply, I return to the simple vision of Jesus that has endured for thousands of years: if we love our neighbors as ourselves, we will transform the world. I’ve seen this change my own life. I’ve seen meditation on this message cause dramatic changes in the way my congregants live their lives.
The message of Jesus is what makes me a progressive. A parsing out of the Gospels implications for our world is what’s missing in most churches and dialogue around faith in the United States today. And if we are ever to see Christian nationalism rooted out of our country, it will happen because millions of people of faith will be compelled to adopt a more progressive, inclusive faith. And for that to happen, progressive Christians must once again heed the call of Christ and become evangelists of his progressive, inclusive vision for the world once again.~ Rev. Brandan Robertson
Read online here
About the Author
Rev. Brandan Robertson is a noted spiritual thought-leader, contemplative activist, and commentator, working at the intersections of spirituality, sexuality, and social renewal and the author of Nomad: A Spirituality For Travelling Light and writes regularly for Patheos, Beliefnet, and The Huffington Post. He has published countless articles in respected outlets such as TIME, NBC, The Washington Post, Religion News Service, and Dallas Morning News. As sought out commentator of faith, culture, and public life, he is a regular contributor to national media outlets and has been interviewed by outlets such as MSNBC, NPR, SiriusXM, TIME Magazine, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Associated Press. He leads Metanoia, a digital spiritual community at MetanoiaCenter.org. |
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Question & Answer
Q: By Roy
I come from a very conservative Christian family, and back in my younger days I believed in God. However I started losing faith in God. I can no longer believe in a God. I am still a Christian because I like Jesus and his message of peace and love. Is it possible to be a Christian and not believe in God?
A: By Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D.
Dear Roy,I have discovered in the authentic path of human spiritual development that our mature response to life is not to believe, but to question why.
Belief is usually taken to mean our mind’s assent to propositions about reality, such as we find in the various creeds (and “credo” is Latin for belief). Jesus, like Buddha, however, is a wisdom teacher who is always asking questions. He is a person of abiding curiosity. His questioning, from my experience, is rooted in his basic trust of Reality. And that trust reflects his love.
You might consider your “loss” of belief as the beginning of your journey of an authentic faith rooted in curiosity. Faith is a matter of trust in your experience, which is far different from belief. I would suggest you be curious about the questions that matter to your heart; trust that they do indeed matter and are sacred. Jesus, as a Jew, was a person who followed his heart and its deepest longings and stirrings. For me, such a path is the heart of the Christ movement. I wish you well.
~ Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D.
Read and share online here
About the Author
Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D. is an Episcopal priest, a student of the Diamond Approach for over a decade, as well as a certified teacher of the Enneagram in the Narrative Tradition. He is the founder of the Healing Arts Center of in Marquette, Michigan, and the author of five books, including I Have Called You Friends, Holding Beauty in My Soul’s Arms, and My Heart is a Raging Volcano of Love for You and Beyond my Wants, Beyond my Fears: The Soul’s Journey into the Heartland. Visit Kevin’s Blog: Essential Living: For The Soul’s Journey. |
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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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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited
Studying Christian Art in Florence Italy
Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong
November 17, 2011The Florence Museum, known in Italy as the Musei Firenze, is best known for the massive marble statue of the youthful King David sculpted by Michelangelo. Housed in the section of the museum known as the Galleria dell’Accademia, this magnificent work of rare genius was accomplished with meticulous detail designed to reveal the beauty and splendor of the human body. The David statue draws thousands to the Galleria daily. This museum, however, also houses some of the world’s best known religious paintings. My wife Christine and I spent a day there in early October and I could not fail to note, as I have done before, that these masterpieces of religious art have played a significant role in the literalizing way that most people read the gospel narratives. Most of these well known paintings were commissioned originally to hang in churches during the time we call the early middle ages up to the 18th century. Since most people in that era could neither read nor write they gained much of their knowledge of the biblical story by looking at art. It never occurred to them to think that art was an interpretive idiom and not a literal one. They thus tended to see these paintings more like photographs that supposedly captured reality rather than as pieces of art that interpreted reality.
That is also why what we call the “Stations of the Cross” were developed and became an almost universal mark of pre-reformation Christian churches. People could literally follow the final events of Jesus’ life as they walked past the scenes depicted in the paintings or wood carvings on the church walls. There was no such thing as critical biblical scholarship in those days. God was assumed to be the ultimate author of the scriptures. The people were not allowed to embrace the differences or the contradictions found in the various gospel accounts of the life of Jesus. So Christian art portrayed the mother of Jesus, frequently dressed in the garb of a nun, as present at the foot of the cross, even cradling the deceased body of her son. When Mel Gibson made his blockbuster movie, The Passion of Christ in 2004, this late developing image (and non-biblical without a gargantuan stretch) formed a central theme in his story.
A search of the four gospels, however, will reveal that the mother of Jesus was nowhere near the cross in the earlier writings of Mark, Matthew or Luke, which were the first three gospels to appear. She makes her first appearance at the cross only in the Fourth Gospel, which is generally dated between the years 95-100. Her purpose in this appearance was so that Jesus could commend her to a figure who also is unknown outside the Gospel of John, the enigmatic figure referred to as “the Beloved Disciple.” He then, we are told takes the mother of Jesus to “his own home,” so she is not at the cross when Jesus dies. For those who study the Fourth Gospel seriously there is debate about whether this author intended to suggest in this episode that the mother of Jesus was to be understood as a literal person of history or as a symbol for Judaism, the mother of Christianity, and consequently, whether the Beloved Disciple was himself a person of history or a literary creation to represent the move of Christianity beyond the boundaries of Judaism into being a new entity. By commending his mother to the Beloved Disciple, Jesus was saying that the movement he was starting had to carry Judaism faithfully into a universal vocation. To support this symbolic conclusion, with which Rudolf Bultmann, who is probably the leading New Testament scholar of the 20th century, is identified, we note that only in this gospel is Jesus made to say, “Other sheep have I that are not of this fold. Them also I must bring until there is one flock and one shepherd.” None of those interpretative nuances, however, appeared in any of the artwork that I saw in the Florence Museum. Literalism was the only visible or viable interpretation, the only way to “read” the painting.
I also saw three paintings, all dated in the first ten years of the 16th century that depicted not only Mary and the infant or youthful Jesus, but also, and always slightly larger, the youthful John the Baptist. These boys are portrayed in these paintings as closely associated in childhood, even growing up together. One of these paintings was by Bogliadini, one by Francesco Foschi and the third by Francesco de Ros. They had all painted the common myth that asserted a physical kinship between Jesus and John the Baptist. This kinship was defined by John Wycliffe in the early 14th century to be that of first cousins, his assumption being that Mary, Jesus’ mother, and Elizabeth, John’s mother, were sisters. There is only a tiny fragment in the Bible that will support such a conclusion and this single word does not appear in the tradition until the late 9th or early 10th decades. It is found in Luke alone, who is also the only writer to give us an account of the birth of John the Baptist. Typically, however, Luke compares John’s birth to the birth of Jesus, with John the Baptist always coming in less fantastic and less supernatural. It was as if Luke were saying that anything John could do, Jesus could do better. John was born to post-menopausal parents says Luke. That is pretty impressive, even though we now believe that this story was based on the Old Testament story of the birth of Isaac to his post-menopausal parents, Abraham and Sarah. Most scholars even doubt the historicity of the names attributed to John’s parents, Zechariah and Elizabeth, finding Old Testament antecedents for both. When John was born, said Luke, the neighbors all gathered to rejoice and his father Zechariah’s inability to speak was broken as he sings: “Blessed be the Lord God of our Fathers for he has visited and redeemed his people.” Jesus, however, was said to have been born of a virgin, setting him apart from every other human life and, when he was born, it was not the neighbors who gathered to rejoice, but a host of angels who invaded the midnight sky to sing to shepherds.
Luke’s tales of the biological origins of both John and Jesus were designed to bring the story of these two infants into proximity. He then embellishes this conclusion by having Mary, expectant with Jesus, go to visit Elizabeth, described as her “kinswoman,” (that is the single word) who was expectant with John. This visit, we are told, took place “in the hill country of Judea.” Even in this episode the purpose of the story is still to affirm Jesus’ superiority to John, for we are told the fetus of John the Baptist in the womb of Elizabeth leaps to salute the fetus of Jesus in Mary’s womb and that Elizabeth acknowledges the superiority of Mary’s child to her own. That is, I might add, a quite unusual thing for a Jewish mother to do!
No one that I know of regards this episode as literal history. It is based to some degree on the story of Esau and Jacob contending together in the womb of Rebekah in the book of Genesis. The facts are historically that at first the Jesus movement and the John movement were related in that Jesus was originally a disciple of John and was baptized by John. Jesus’ first disciples were formerly disciples of John. Second, there is much evidence in the book of Acts and in the Fourth Gospel that there was a deep competition between the two movements with the followers of Jesus hard put to explain why Jesus had been baptized by John. By the time we get to the Fourth Gospel, written near the turn of the century, John does not baptize Jesus at all, but simply becomes a witness to him as messiah. Surely revisionist history is at work here.
No hint of anything but objective history, however, is present in these famous paintings. They show Jesus and John as infants and as small children playing under the care of Jesus’ mother who was supposedly John’s Aunt Mary. Biblical scholarship was simply unavailable to the artists and was considered unnecessary by the people for whom they painted.
Finally, there were many generic portraits of the crucifixion. I noted that every one of them portrayed Jesus bleeding from his side as well as from the nail prints in his hands and feet. The wound in his side was once more, however, a late addition to the crucifixion story, not making its appearance until the Fourth Gospel, written somewhere between 95 to100. In this gospel alone John says that a soldier went to hasten Jesus’ death by breaking his legs, but, finding him already dead, he hurled a lance or a spear into his side as a kind of coup de grace.
The first three gospels know nothing of this spear wound. John adds it, he says, to show that it was the fulfillment of a text found in Zechariah (12:10): “They looked upon him whom they pierced and mourned for him as one mourns for an only son.” To portray Jesus as the fulfillment of the scriptures was a major theme in the early Christian movement and the memory of Jesus was frequently bent to portray that fulfillment. Indeed biblical scholars now even see the first description of the crucifixion, written by Mark in the early 70’s, not as the account of an eye witness at all, but as an interpretive piece of writing designed to portray the death of Jesus as the fulfillment of the scriptures. Mark’s account, we now recognize is not based on an eye witness, but primarily on Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53.
So what we have in the great works of medieval art is not scholarship, but an uninformed biblical ignorance designed to undergird the traditional version of the Christ story. Those images imprinted on our minds by this art have helped to squelch biblical scholarship through the ages and to teach us that any deviation from literalism is actually a deviation from “the true faith.” So in the life of the church scholarship was undermined as an act of unfaithfulness and even of heresy and those who dared to think outside the box were destined in that earlier era to be burned at the stake. In our day they are only destined to be marginalized as “troublemakers.”
If one wonders why institutional Christianity is declining, perhaps even dying, in the modern world, one has only to look at how the art of the ages was used to support the literalism that turned the Bible itself into an idol. In the battle for the soul of Christianity and for the soul of the Christian Church in the 21st century, we must rescue the Bible from fundamentalism. A visit to any great museum to view the Christian art of the past makes this abundantly clear.
~John Shelby Spong |
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