[Oe List ...] 7/21/2022, Progressing Spirit: Rev. Jim Burklo: When Progressive Christianity Runs Wet; Spong revisited

Thu Jul 21 06:00:49 PDT 2022

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When Progressive Christianity Runs Wet
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|  Essay by Rev. Jim Burklo
July 21, 2022

“Christianity is the community following Jesus in living the love that is God.”

That is an unmarked description of Christianity. 

“Progressive Christians take the Bible seriously because we don’t take it literally.”

That is a marked description of Christianity.

Both describe the same kind of Christian faith.  But each has importantly different connotations.

In linguistics, a distinction is made in pairs of unmarked and marked terms.  The unmarked term in the pair is the standard, default, normative form.  The marked term is distinguished as a deviation from that norm.  Value is implicit in the distinction.  An example:  “man” and “woman”.  “Man” is the unmarked or default term, and “woman” is marked by the “wo” as the deviation from the male norm.  Obviously, this is a problematic feature of the English language.

If you want something to be implicitly identified as the normal, standard form of its category, then you use an unmarked term for it.  If you want to devalue other forms in that category, you give them marked terms. 

Evangelical and fundamentalist Christian leaders figured this out a long time ago.

They taught their followers to describe themselves as “just Christian” (pronounced “jst”, to make it barely audible), or to say that they are “non-denominational” Christians.  They avoid identifying themselves as “evangelical” or “fundamentalist” Christians.  They try to identify themselves as default, normative, standard Christians – implying that “marked” Christians (like “progressive” Christians) aren’t real Christians at all. 

Baloney, of course.  But we’ve been eating that baloney for years.  

It’s way past time to unmark ourselves.  That’s the message I gleaned from Brandan Robertson’s compelling post, “When Progressive Christianity Runs Dry”, published recently here at Progressing Spirit:

“…we should still embrace intellectual curiosity and honesty, but we should also recognize that there is a time for everything - and sometimes, it’s just good to suspend our skepticism and just allow ourselves to experience the mystery and possibility that our faith provokes within us… instead of placing caveats around the stories we tell or the spiritual practices we perform…”  

Often, “marked” Christianity is a faith riddled with caveats.  It’s easy for Christians of the progressive persuasion to fall into the dry habit of putting the word “but” into our descriptions of ourselves:  “I’m a Christian, but I believe in the theory of evolution…” 

In contrast, unmarked Christianity expresses the faith in bold, clear, positive terms.  Ours is a wet – as in living – faith.

Aiming to contribute to the cause of unmarking our faith, when I preach, I introduce biblical texts this way:

“Let us prepare our souls to receive the sacred myth of scripture.”

This phrase implies that the Bible consists largely of myths that are latent with great transformative power, profound mystery, and endless possibilities for interpretation.  It invites listeners to experience the allure of those sacred myths.  To soak their souls in them.  There’s no skepticism in this introduction.  No “buts”.  In one short, pithy expression, a fresh norm of Christian faith is expressed: one that is clearly distinguished from the evangelical version. 

In the year 2000, my first book, Open Christianity, went into print.  In writing it, I presumed that the reader had some familiarity with Christianity, and was looking for a progressive way to understand and practice the faith. 

Two decades and a half-dozen published books later, I realized it was time to write a new primer on progressive faith.  But times have changed.  I work at an “elite” university, where students – even those identifying as Christians – know surprisingly little about Christianity.  Religious affiliation among the young in America is precipitously declining. 

This presents a crisis and an opportunity.  It means that now, we can offer up our understanding of the faith as the Christian faith. 

So to that end, I wrote Tenderly Calling: An Invitation to the Way of Jesus.  In the book, I invite the reader into “but-free”, full-strength Christianity.  It says, in purely positive terms: this is Christianity.  Welcome to it!  If you hear Jesus tenderly calling you, if his voice resonates with the longing in your soul, join us in walking his way. 

I wrote the book because progressive Christianity has come of age.  We’re in a very auspicious historical moment: will we seize it?  Google “progressive Christianity” and it will become immediately apparent that now, for the first time, evangelical Christian leaders are taking us seriously as an existential threat.  Until now, they shrugged off our movement as insignificant, impotent, and shriveling.  No more!  They are strongly warning their followers not to be tempted by us, which, of course, is the best publicity we can get!  Progressive Christians run the country.  The President is a progressive Catholic.  President Obama was a progressive Christian member of the United Church of Christ.  A gay progressive Episcopalian now heads up the Department of Transportation.  Millions of young evangelicals, fed-up with the right-wing culture warriors leading their churches, are looking for the alternative that we offer. 

Now, more than ever, is the time to express our faith forthrightly, publicly, and invitationally.

My urging toward “unmarked” faith is not meant to suggest giving up the term “progressive Christianity”.  It is still very useful in enabling people to find our churches and our resources.  We need to project our progressive identity with vigor in the public sphere, so that people know there is a real alternative to the dominant paradigm.  But once we’ve welcomed folks into our circle, we need to share our faith with them in unqualified terms.

Here’s an unmarked introduction to Christianity:

“In the land of the Jews, over 2,000 years ago, Jesus was born in humble circumstances.  He began his three years as an itinerant rabbi, or teacher, by spending forty days in the wilderness, engaged in a powerful inner struggle for clarity about his identity and mission.  Then he wandered his homeland, healing people and preaching to growing crowds.  He found God at the center of his soul, and taught others to do the same.  He spoke and acted with an inner authority, inspiring people to rise above their fears in a time when the country was occupied by the Roman army.   He challenged the people to follow him in living out the radical, unconditional love that is God:  a love not only for friends and neighbors, but even for strangers and enemies.  He challenged the religious authorities of the day to repent from their hypocrisy.  The Romans and their Jewish elite collaborators considered his popularity a threat to public order.  So the Romans tortured him to death on a cross.  Living out divine love to the end, from the cross he asked God’s forgiveness for the people who crucified him.  After his death, at first his followers scattered, but then they regrouped to continue following him, forming the movement we now call Christianity.  They created and circulated gospel stories – “good news” – to express the overwhelming significance of his life for them.  They gathered church communities around the Roman Empire and beyond, worshipping and emulating Jesus’ boundless, timeless compassion.  The divine love of Jesus is alive within and among us today, as we walk his way of compassion together in our church.  We invite you to walk with us!”

Christians of the progressive persuasion need to get into the habit of talking about our faith without embarrassment.  And we need to revive the habit of inviting people to join us in walking the way of Jesus.  So let us step out on Jesus’ path, wet with a living faith:  wet with tears of joy and shared sorrow, wet with sweat from working together to build the kin-dom of heaven on earth!

~ Rev. Jim Burklo

Read online here

About the Author
Rev. Jim Burklo is the Senior Associate Dean of Religious and Spiritual Life at the University of Southern California.  An ordained pastor in the United Church of Christ, he is the author of seven published books on progressive Christianity, his latest book is Tenderly Calling: An Invitation to the Way of Jesus (St Johann Press, 2021).  His weekly blog, “Musings”, has a global readership.  He serves on the board of ProgressiveChristiansUniting.org and is an honorary advisor and frequent content contributor for ProgressiveChristianity.org. 
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Question & Answer

Q: By David

What are the reasons people reject theism? What do we gain by rejecting God? 

A: By Rev. Gretta Vosper

Dear David,

Ah, David. There are likely as many reasons people reject theism as there are people who reject it. Even those who often do cannot articulate exactly what they can no longer embrace. When they reach the point where they realize taking that step will have no great impact on their lives, they simply walk away from their religious communities and traditions. 

Let me answer your questions in reverse, then. “What do we gain by rejecting God?” I must assume you mean the theistic god called, God, when you ask this. Many would immediately begin waving their arms and pressing upon you the many other definitions for the capitalized god. Most, I think, are attempts to continue to use the word “God” to cover newer, less problematic religious ideas. But I think that makes things rather, if not substantially, worse than better. There is no other word so intentionally used with its interpretation so carelessly left up to the listener or reader as is the word god.  

There is much to be gained by rejecting theism, the idea of Christianity’s theistic god. Mostly, and conversely, they boil down to two things – the sense of shame and the sense of superiority. Both are integral to the theistic god program, and both cause deep pain in personal and communal lives. If you feel shame, your experiences and choices may reinforce your underserving nature. If you feel superiority, you may tend to see everyone around you as inferior, with an eye to critique rather than a desire to relate. If you begin to critique either assumption, your theistic views may soon come under serious critique. 

There’s much to be lost, too. For starters, there’s the loss of an immediate affiliation with other believers even if you have never previously met. Also, the community that has been a home to you and the potential loss of long-time, meaningful relationships. The sense of purpose achieved when performing “good works” under the banner of a church. All these are, for some, sufficient to remain in the pew long after one has lost belief in a theistic god.  

Unfortunately, when one leaves the world of belief, they sometimes experience a loss of meaning. That may be a symptom of an underdeveloped relationship with life, this brief journey we all share but experience from radically different perspectives. Exploring emotions, the world around you, family and personal relationships, the mysteries of the brain, the breadth of art, music, knowledge, local or geological history, ecosystems, the power of influence, what might make the world safe for future generations, any or all of these can bring one closer to the sense of wonder which lies at the core of any religious experience. For me, the wonder of life is enough to sustain anyone, in or outside the church, with or without belief in a theistic god.  

~ Rev. Gretta Vosper

Read and share online here

About the Author
The Rev. Gretta Vosper is a United Church of Canada minister who is an atheist. Her best-selling books include With or Without God: Why The Way We Live is More Important Than What We Believe, and Amen: What Prayer Can Mean in a World Beyond Belief. She has also published three books of poetry and prayers. Visit her website here.

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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited

"Think Different–Accept Uncertainty" Part XVIII:
The Resurrection of Jesus

Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong
October 4, 2012

The literal details are familiar: the third day, the empty tomb, the experience of seeing the risen Christ.  These details stand at the heart of the Christian story, forming its essential climax if you will.  It is celebrated annually in Easter services, normally with packed congregations.  Its secular observances involve Easter parades, Easter egg hunts and the prolific Easter Bunny.  It comes, at least in the northern hemisphere where Christianity was born, in the spring of the year when the doldrums of winter have been pushed aside by new shoots of green and new flowers to brighten the countryside.  It captures and speaks to the deepest human anxiety, the experience of mortality and finitude.  Death is a reality for every living thing, but only human beings are self-consciously aware that this destiny awaits us all.  Only human beings anticipate death, plan for it, fear and dread it and seek to avoid it.  Is it possible that the story of Jesus’ resurrection is an expression of human wish fulfillment? Or is there something about the story of the resurrection that is real, that is trustworthy and that is measurable inside the flow of history? The whole of Christianity seems to rest on the answer being “yes” to each of these questions.

We start our examination of the resurrection of Jesus by examining the biblical texts that purport to tell us about it.  The reality of resurrection is assumed in almost every verse of the New Testament, but the details that purport to describe the resurrection are consistently both confused and in many cases actually contradictory.

There are five separate sources consisting of only six chapters in the entire New Testament that purport to tell us about what happened at the time of the first Easter.  The first and earliest of these five sources is Paul and his account is found in I Corinthians 15.  That epistle was written in the mid-fifties, or some twenty-five years after the crucifixion and about two decades before the first gospel, Mark, ever saw the light of day.  Paul is, however, quite sparse in details.  He gives us the first specific time reference. It happened, whatever “it” was, he says, “on the third day,” presumably following the crucifixion.  When Paul talks about the resurrection of Jesus he always uses a passive verb form.  Jesus did not rise in Paul’s writing, he “was raised,” presumably by God, and it was done, he says, “in accordance with the scriptures.”  There being no New Testament in existence when Paul was writing, this reference was clearly to the Jewish Scriptures, which Paul, as a rabbi, knew quite well. To what particular biblical texts he was referring, however, he failed to say, leaving us only to speculate.  The primary Old Testament reference, to which most scholars now believe he was alluding, seems to be II Isaiah (40-55), but there is nothing in that segment of the book of Isaiah that hints at what we now call resurrection.  It does, however, talk about the indestructibility of the “servant” figure who gives his life away.  Then Paul proceeds to give us a list of those to whom this raised Christ had appeared, i.e., those who have been enabled to see and thus to be called “witnesses.”  To this list, however, he provides not a single narrative detail. The list includes three individuals: Peter, James and Paul and three groups of people: “the twelve,” “500 brethren at once” and “the apostles.”  Note that “the twelve” and “the apostles” appear to be two different groups, which many find surprising.  The “500 brethren at once” is a reference not corroborated by any other note found anywhere in the written Christian tradition.  The most fascinating of these witnesses, however, is Paul himself.  Most scholars, following the lead of the early 20th century church historian Adolf Harnack, date the conversion of Paul somewhere between one and six years following Jesus’ crucifixion.  If whatever it was that Paul saw up to six years after the crucifixion, was, as he claims, identical with what others saw, it could hardly have been a resuscitated body that walked out of a tomb three days after being crucified.  Literalists are thus confounded. Paul, the first figure in the New Testament to write about what came to be called “resurrection,” could not possibly have been referring to a physical body; yet whatever Paul’s experience was, he believed it was real and it was certainly life changing.  So we have in this our earliest source in the New Testament the elements that constitute an ultimate mystery.  Whatever the resurrection of Jesus was, it was real, but it was not physical.

Paul gives us a hint as to what it was to which he was referring when he writes later in his letter to the Romans that “Christ being raised from the dead will never die again.  Death no longer has dominion over him” (Rom. 6:9).  If Paul was referring to a physically resuscitated body that returned to the life of the flesh, then presumably at some point this Jesus would have had to die again. That is the nature of all things that are living and physical.  So, whatever it was that this epistle was trying to communicate, it is not about a body resuscitated and restored to the physical realm of human history. This Romans text goes on to say that “he died to sin once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God.”  The clear implication in these words is that Paul’s concept of the raising of Jesus was that he was raised into the life of God from which he “appeared to certain chosen witnesses,” among whom Paul included himself.  It also means that whatever that appearance to Paul was, it would have had to have occurred somewhere between one and six years after Jesus’ death.  Studying the biblical accounts of the resurrection is not quite as simple as literal-minded Christians want to make it.

The interpretive task became even more complicated when the first gospel was written.  The resurrected Jesus is never seen in Mark’s narrative.  All Mark gives us in his Easter morning story is an announcement made to the women at the tomb in which it is stated: “He is not here, he has been raised.” This announcement was made by a messenger, Mark says, who is not yet regarded or pictured as an angel.  So what do these words mean? Was Jesus raised back into the physical life of this world or was he raised into the life of God?  That is a question that Mark does not answer.  The messenger goes on to direct the women to go tell “Peter and the disciples” that the raised Christ will go before them into Galilee and there they will see him.  If the disciples are still in Jerusalem when this announcement was first made, as this text suggests, we need to know that Galilee was a seven to ten day journey, so the promised “appearance” in Galilee of the raised Jesus would fall outside the three day time measure.  So in this earliest gospel the promise of a future appearance is made, but in fact in this account the raised Christ appears to no one after the crucifixion. That is to many a startling reality, but it is also a biblical fact.

When Matthew writes the second gospel a decade or so after Mark, he has Mark in front of him and he incorporates most of Mark directly into his account.  He also changes, heightens and adds to Mark’s text from time to time and this happens in his account of the first Easter.  First the messenger in Mark has become in Matthew a clearly identified, supernatural angel.  Second the raised Christ actually does appear to the women in the garden in Matthew and in a form physical enough for them to “grasp his feet.”  Matthew then adds a second appearance story designed to give content to the messenger’s promise in Mark that the disciples would see the raised Christ in Galilee.  It occurred, said Matthew, on top of a mountain.  The disciples presumably trudged up the mountain, but the raised Jesus came mysteriously out of the sky.  Does this imply that he has come out of heaven or out of God?  He is transformed and clothed in the garments of the Son of Man, who, in Jewish mythology, was to come at the end of the age. For the first time in the Bible, this resurrected figure is given words to speak.  They constitute a charge: “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel,” followed by a promise: “For I am with you always, even to the end of the world.”  The resurrection story is clearly growing as the years roll by.

When Luke, the author of the third gospel, written about a decade after Matthew, pens his version of the story, the angelic messenger in Mark, who became an angel in Matthew, has now become two angels and the physicality of the raised Jesus has been enhanced to the place where we are told that he walks, talks, eats, offers his flesh to be felt and interprets scripture.  Luke also says that all of the resurrection appearances occurred in the Jerusalem area, dropping all references to a return to Galilee.  Then Luke introduces the story of Jesus’ ascension.  Having made the resurrection into the physical resuscitation of a deceased body, he has to provide a way to get this physical body out of the world without dying again.  The ascension was his answer.

Finally, when the Fourth Gospel is written near the end of the first century (95-100), its author offers new and sometimes contradictory material.  There are four apparently separate vignettes that the Fourth Gospel has woven together, sometimes rather awkwardly.  The first one stars Mary Magdalene alone at the tomb and the focus of this story is that one cannot cling to the idea of Jesus as a physical body.  The second vignette focuses on Peter and the “beloved disciple” coming to an empty tomb and we are told that the “beloved disciple” believes without ever seeing a physical body.  The third focuses on the disciples in a secured upper room on the evening of the first day of the week and that is the time for this gospel when the disciples receive the Holy Spirit; that is, Easter is viewed in this final gospel as the Pentecost transformational experience for the disciples.  The fourth episode stars Thomas and its message is “Blessed are those who do not see (a resuscitated body) and yet who still believe.”

That is a brief summary of all the specific resurrection material in the New Testament.  It remains now to weave this material together into a coherent form.  That I will do in the next episode, which will conclude this series entitled, “Think Different–Accept Uncertainty.”

~  John Shelby Spong
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