July 2016 - Dialogue - lists.wedgeblade.net

"Journey Reflection" > July 2016 most viewed blog posts
by John C via Dialogue 31 Jul '16

31 Jul '16

Colleagues, friends, family and other, Feel free to view any of the 16 most viewed of the 62 posts during July 2016 @ "Journey Reflection" Blog Posts<http://rejourney.blogspot.com/2016/07/journey-reflection-blog-posts-july-20…>. Namaste. <http://rejourney.blogspot.com/2016/06/journey-reflection-blog-posts-june-20…> John & Lynda Cock ("Cook" online at Facebook because they will not approve our real last name for some reason) ________ You can view Daily Blog "Journey Reflection" at these links >> Google: www.reJourney.blogspot.com<http://www.rejourney.blogspot.com/> Books Page: http://www.amazon.com/JPC/LLC<http://www.amazon.com/John-P.-Cock/e/B001K8Y5KW> Web Page: www.transcribebooks.com<http://www.transcribebooks.com/> Ask us to receive our free blog posts via MailChimp email daily (like the post below) View this email in your browser<http://rejourney.blogspot.com/> Journey Reflection July 1, 2016 A Revolutionary Religion [https://gallery.mailchimp.com/16fbe6261dac75a26854c8af6/images/3d15132b-d47…] Welcoming Church: We welcome all those who believe that religion is wider than any one sect and deeper than any one set of opinions.* Journer: That is a revolutionary step in religion. Nez: Or, we might say, an inclusive way forward for humans who would be profoundly neighborly. Namaste. ______ * Cullompton Unitarians http://www.ukunitarians.org.uk/cullompton/ Image: source<http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=love+god+and+neighbor&view=detailv2&&id…> ________________________________ Xtra Blog Post: Christian Nation?<http://rejourney.blogspot.com/2007/05/christian-nation.html> (Jon Meacham) 3.7 million+ views from 199 countries/territories 4,401+ viewable blog posts since September 2004 JPC & LLC Links: [Website]<http://www.transcribebooks.com/> Website<http://www.transcribebooks.com/> [Books]<http://www.amazon.com/John-P.-Cock/e/B001K8Y5KW> Books<http://www.amazon.com/John-P.-Cock/e/B001K8Y5KW> [Facebook]<https://www.facebook.com/pages/Journey-Reflection/263036227044839> Facebook<https://www.facebook.com/pages/Journey-Reflection/263036227044839> [Twitter]<http://www.twitter.com/transcribebooks> Twitter<http://www.twitter.com/transcribebooks> [Google Plus]<https://plus.google.com/u/0/114307312715975337692/posts> Google Plus<https://plus.google.com/u/0/114307312715975337692/posts> [http://cdn-images.mailchimp.com/icons/social-block-v2/color-facebook-48.png]<http://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Feepurl.com%2Fb72B8X> Share<http://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Feepurl.com%2Fb72B8X> [http://cdn-images.mailchimp.com/icons/social-block-v2/color-twitter-48.png]<http://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=Journey+Reflection+7.1.2016:%20http%3A…> Tweet<http://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=Journey+Reflection+7.1.2016:%20http%3A…> [http://cdn-images.mailchimp.com/icons/social-block-v2/color-googleplus-48.p…]<https://plus.google.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Feepurl.com%2Fb72B8X> +1<https://plus.google.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Feepurl.com%2Fb72B8X> [http://cdn-images.mailchimp.com/icons/social-block-v2/color-forwardtofriend…]<http://us8.forward-to-friend2.com/forward?u=16fbe6261dac75a26854c8af6&id=42…> Forward<http://us8.forward-to-friend2.com/forward?u=16fbe6261dac75a26854c8af6&id=42…> Copyright © 2016 Transcribe Books, All rights reserved. Our mailing address is: Transcribe Books P O Box 2333 Davidson, NC 28036 Add us to your address book<http://transcribebooks.us8.list-manage.com/vcard?u=16fbe6261dac75a26854c8af…> unsubscribe from this list<http://blogspot.us8.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=16fbe6261dac75a26854c8af6…>

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7/28/16, Spong: Charting a New Reformation, Part XXIX - The Ninth Thesis, Ethics (continued)
by Ellie Stock via Dialogue 28 Jul '16

28 Jul '16

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR Charting a New Reformation Part XXIX - The Ninth Thesis, Ethics (continued) One of the ways the demise of yesterday’s religious power can be determined is to notice that things, once held to be ultimately sacred, now appear in jokes that cause people not only to laugh, but also to deal with the loss of the security of yesterday’s religious symbols at the same time. When James Watt, the Secretary of the Interior in the cabinet of President Ronald Reagan, told a racial joke, he was summarily fired. Yet the racist content of that joke had been commonplace in the social practice of this nation twenty-five years earlier. Consciousness had grown. One does not make fun of something so evil as racism, was the new rule. The reverse of this consciousness-raising illustration is observed when one discovers that one does and can laugh at what were once regarded as “the eternal laws of God.” One politician came to the defense of the “inerrancy” of these laws by saying: “The Bible calls them the Ten Commandments not the Ten Suggestions.” There was also the good news, bad news joke about the Ten Commandments. Moses, returning from Mt. Sinai said to the people of Israel: “I have good news and bad news.” “Give us the good news first,” the people demanded. “Well,” said Moses in obedience to their request, “I negotiated them down to ten!” “What is the bad news?” the people demanded to hear. To which Moses responded, “Adultery is still in!” Finally there was the message on the church’s lawn sign where people received their “word for the day.” This sign boldly advertised: “This week’s special! Observe any seven of the Ten Commandments.” Humor about the Ten Commandments clearly reveals a demise in the power once attributed to this code of ethics. The other clear indicator is that the form the commandments possess becomes more important than the content. Early in my career as a bishop, I went for my annual Episcopal visitation to a congregation in Hudson County, New Jersey. On this Sunday we had about 100 worshipers gathered to greet and welcome their bishop. When the time came for the sermon, I stepped out of the pulpit and walked into the nave, the body of the church. This was going to be an informal sermon. When they were settled in their pews and adjusted to this new sermon position taken by their bishop, I began by asking: “How many of you believe that the Ten Commandments are still important?” Every hand in the church went up. No one actually in a church on Sunday morning wanted to be caught suggesting that this ancient code of conduct was not of great significance, authority and power. I took note of their unanimity. “That is good to see,” I said, in effect congratulating them on their moral judgment. Then I continued: “Since you all agree on their importance, who would now like to stand up and recite the Ten Commandments?” Every hand went down; there was not a volunteer among them. I did enhance the corporate guilt felt in that moment in a rather shameless way by saying: “You mean that you believe that the Ten Commandments are important, but none of you can tell me what they are?” I allowed that discomfort to be felt for just a moment before moving to dissipate it. “Well, let’s see if all of us together can come up with the Ten,” I suggested. There was an almost audible sense of relief. No one was now on the spot. “Who would like to begin by telling us what any one of the Ten Commandments is?” Hands went up quickly “Murder” and “adultery” were immediately mentioned. They are almost always recounted first. That was followed by another embarrassing pause. Then another hand went up, but when I recognized this person, I noticed that the commandment she referred to came out as a question: “Honor your father and mother?” Yes, I responded assuringly, that is commandment number five. I thought her tentative manner meant that it was a guess, but when it turned out to be successful, others were encouraged. Next the commandment to “observe the Sabbath” was offered. “Number four,” I declared it to be and continued to wait for more. That was when plenty of other commandments were mentioned like: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and strength” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.” I allowed that those two were very fine rules, but they had never been part of the Ten. Finally, we got” stealing,” number eight; “false witness,” number nine, and “coveting,” number 10. No one could actually define coveting, but that was not required by this exercise. The fact was slowly and somewhat painfully being revealed in an unmistakable way that these hundred or so worshipers could not, all together, name the Ten Commandments, which they had universally proclaimed that they believed to be still very important. I have little reason to think that this congregation would be much different from one in any other church on any other Sunday. This exercise revealed to me that if the average churchgoer does not know what the Ten Commandments are, then they can no longer claim, with any sense of real conviction, that the commandments themselves are still important. For me it was a sure sign of the erosion in the modern world of any real objectivity still present in the field of ethics. It also indicated to me very boldly that eternal rules designed to govern human behavior simply will never again be written in the permanence of stone, and that none of us, who claim to speak for the church, can continue to pretend that these ancient laws still provide the ethical basis on which anyone today lives. The suggestion that moral absolutes could ever be codified for all time actually violates our experience. The rules that must govern any real debate on ethics no longer appear to be obvious. Context always modifies judgment. Life is never static. No rule, no ethical norm is ever eternal. We all make our moral judgments based on the situation in which we find ourselves living, whether we can admit that or not. Who was it who proclaimed in the first place that the Ten Commandments were the voice of God speaking? At this point, we are driven to probe the mythology that has been built up around that code. Mythology is always designed to remove the subject from being discussed, questioned or getting lost in relativity. Once we understand mythology’s purpose, we can ask and access just how accurate this mythology is. “Not very” is our conclusion, after we begin to engage just the slightest bit of biblical study. In many ways I must confess that I was unfair to my New Jersey congregation, because the fact is that no one can name the Ten Commandments! This is normally a shocking statement to which people react when they first hear it. It does not jibe with what most all of us have been taught for so long. The fact is, however, that the Hebrew Scriptures have three versions of the Ten Commandments and they do not agree with each other. They cannot be rolled into a consistent ten! Tradition alone has dictated that the version found in Exodus 20 is the official version. A brief analysis of this Exodus list, however, will reveal that it is quite different from anything that Moses might have received. How do we know? Because the commandment regarding the observance of the Sabbath in the Exodus 20 list has been edited to bring it into conformity with the seven-day story of creation with which the Hebrew Bible opens. That Genesis chapter, we now know, was one of the last parts of the Hebrew Scriptures to be composed. It is the product of the Babylonian captivity that ended near the end of the 6th century BCE. The first version of the Exodus 20 list of the Ten Commandments seems to be primarily a product of perhaps the 9th century BCE. So we have to conclude that a later writer, thought to be a member of the group now known as the “Priestly” or “P” writers, had later incorporated the recently composed seven-day creation story into the Sabbath Day commandment. The reason given, requiring the people to rest on the Sabbath was to emulate God who, on the seventh day of creation, had rested from all of the divine labor and had enjoined that Sabbath day of rest on the people as a sign of their Jewishness. It is interesting that the version of the Ten Commandments found in Deuteronomy 5, which was written during the latter years of the seventh century BCE, also calls for the Sabbath to be observed, but justifies this practice on the fact that the Jews were to remember that they had once been slaves in Egypt and that even slaves, to say nothing of the cattle and other beasts of burden, deserved a day of rest. The third version of the Ten Commandments found in the Hebrew Scriptures is in Exodus 34. It is far more cultic and less ethical in its scope. The background to this narrative is that God has been forced to rewrite the commandments because Moses had smashed the original tablets of stone on the ground in disgust when, on returning from Sinai, he found the people worshiping a golden calf. This Exodus 34 version began by defining God as “merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.” One is not to imagine, however, that these writers have made God soft or easy to manipulate. The text in Exodus 34 goes on to say that this God will not sit idly by when evil needs to be punished. God would, rather, visit “the iniquities of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation.” God then goes on to promise to drive out all the current occupants of the “Holy Land.” Only then are the rules of the covenant stated: Israel is to have no other God, the Sabbath is to be observed and the sacrifices are to be done properly. The last commandment in this group of ten states: “You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.” I must confess that I have never even been tempted to violate that commandment! We can safely conclude that the Ten Commandments were never themselves meant to be an eternal code. They changed in history; they were edited. The ethical life has always been an adventure. The subject of ethical relativity is now open. We will pursue it in depth as this series unfolds. John Shelby Spong Read the essay online here. Question & Answer Keith via the Internet, writes: Question: I’ve just started reading your book Re-Claiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World and I’m finding it to be fascinating. I’ve always suspected that the Bible was a combination of folklore and revisionist history. Could you tell me how it is that you found that the virgin birth, the miracles and the ascension were all added 70-100 years later? Do you believe Jesus was the son of God or do you believe that this assertion was the product of years of embellishment? If you believe him to be the son of God, then do you think it’s possible that there were other sons and perhaps daughters of God? Answer: Dear Keith, When I read your letter, I want to say slow down, my friend. The questions you raise cannot be dealt with so summarily. Jesus lived between 4 BCE and 30 CE according to the best guess of the scholars. The first gospel, Mark, was written about 72-73 BC. The Virgin Birth story enters the tradition with Matthew in the middle years of the 9th decade (82-85 CE). The Ascension story enters the tradition with Luke about a decade after Matthew. Those dates can be pretty well demonstrated by internal references to such things as the fall of Jerusalem to the armies of Rome, which we know occurred in the year 70 CE. Yes, I believe that God was in Christ, to use St. Paul’s words, but that does not mean that the external theistic God, who lives above the sky, somehow entered him and took over his humanity. Rather I think that his humanity became so full and so complete that the meaning of God could find expression in him. I think all human beings have that capacity. I deal with these and many other questions in my book, Jesus for the Non-Religious, but it took over 300 pages to do so. There is no shortcut to discovering the truth in, behind and through the Bible, but the God is real, I believe, that we always find at the end of our study. My best, John Shelby Spong Read and Share Online Here Announcements Read Bishop Spong Favorites Now!

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7/21/16, Spong: ELIE WIESEL 1928-2016 R.I.P.
by Ellie Stock via Dialogue 21 Jul '16

21 Jul '16

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR ELIE WIESEL 1928-2016 R.I.P. He changed the conscience of the entire world, yet he never held a public office. Even Nelson Mandela, perhaps the only other 20th century figure to move the world as deeply as Elie Wiesel did, finally achieved political power and served as the president of his nation, newly born out of intense racial strife. Wiesel accomplished this task without the accoutrements of power by focusing the illuminating light of his spirit on the darkness of human depravity, while being a victim of the evil he opposed. That is what made him unique, a citizen of the world and one who snatched humanity from the pits of depravity. In the long run, he was by my standards the most influential life produced in the 20th century. His death earlier this month was mourned by people of every religious persuasion and by every ethnic strain in the human family. He was a Jew, admired by Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists. He was a white European mourned by Africans, Asians and Latinos. Elie Wiesel was born in a small town in what is now Romania, to parents who were Hassidic Jews. They lived and raised their family in what was a Jewish ghetto. Europe was at that time a deeply unstable place in which to begin life’s journey. World War I had left the country devastated. A worldwide depression had been initiated with the crash of the stock market about a year after Elie’s birth. Wars and economic depressions always have political consequences. Russia had been plummeted into a civil war that finally ended with a Bolshevik victory and the institutionalization of a Soviet style communism. A disgruntled former corporal in the German army during World War I, who was spending his time in jail for his part in an attempted coup in Munich, wrote a book entitled Mein Kampf. In this book, he identified the pain Europe was enduring with the presence of the Jews who, he claimed, had impeded the restoration of the German Empire. By 1933 this man, so very improbably, had become the Chancellor of Germany. He never achieved a political majority, but with a new imperialistic vision of a future Germany, with the Jews identified as a clear enemy and with the fear of Communism sweeping Europe, he took over the political leadership of his nation. He then dissolved the Reichstag and the German people would never vote again until after his regime was toppled. Purging Europe of its Jewish population became the official policy of the most powerful country on the continent. The roots of anti-Semitism ran deep in ostensibly Christian Europe. The Christian churches in Europe observed annually the story of the crucifixion of Jesus. In those liturgies the Jews were always portrayed as the ones responsible for his death. Biblical support for this anti-Semitism actually appeared in the New Testament. Matthew’s gospel had pictured Pilate, the Roman procurator, after condemning Jesus to death, washing his hands publicly and declaring himself “innocent of the blood of this just man.” Then, as if absolved of any guilt, he turned his prisoner over to the Roman soldiers for crucifixion. The Jewish crowd, defined by the hostile word “mob,” was made to say in response: “His blood be upon us and upon our children.” In this manner the Jews were said to have admitted and owned their guilt. In that exchange the die of history was cast. This budding anti-Semitism was then fed by the writing of the Church “Fathers,” who filled the European blood stream with negativity about Jews, describing them as “vile people, unfit for life.” They were publicly identified as the killers of Jesus. This anti-Semitism found expression in every movement in European history. The Crusades were anti-Semitic, the Inquisition was anti-Semitic, and even the Protestant Reformation was anti-Semitic. In almost every nation of Europe, the Jewish population was at one time or another either expelled or ghettoized. So Hitler’s message to his defeated nation fell on soil that had been prepared for centuries to be receptive to a killing frenzy against the children of Abraham. Politicians regularly identify and attack the “enemy” who is responsible for the people’s political and economic pain, and in the process they make this enemy’s persecution and annihilation their pathway to political power. Adolph Hitler cast the Jews in that role and, with this clearly defined purpose, he thrust all of Europe into a war that began in 1939. It was not until early 1944 that Hitler’s army rolled into the Romanian town where the 15-year-old Elie Wiesel lived with his mother, father and three sisters. That invasion would mark the end of the life that Elie Wiesel had lived up to that moment. The Jewish citizens of his town were quickly rounded up, removed from their homes and ultimately taken to waiting trains, being allowed to carry with them, as the sole reminders of their previous lives, only that which could be contained in knapsacks to which each clung tenaciously. They would never see their homes again. The trains were bound for a place of which they had never before heard —Auschwitz. There the Jewish captives were separated into two lines, one for males, the other for females. Elie Wiesel and his father thus went in one direction, his mother and his youngest sister went in the other. That was the last time he would ever see either again. His two older sisters somehow escaped this journey. This entire captive Jewish population was marked for extermination by gas, by crematoriums and by firing squads. Those who were capable of manual labor, however, like Elie and his father, were spared until they were too weak to be useful. Then they too would be exterminated. So began that descent into hell that would last for about eighteen months before release was achieved. Elie’s father did not make it. He died of dysentery and starvation about four months before the war came to an end. Elie did make it. Weak from hunger and gaunt in appearance, he had watched as these horrors cascaded on his life day after day. Death was everywhere. He endured its smell, he saw and was victimized by beatings. During his time of imprisonment he lived in a world where no shred of dignity was allowed these Jewish captives. Prisoners whose time had come to be executed would be stripped naked, marched into crematoriums, gassed until dead, then before their bodies were burned, their last vestiges of value, the gold and silver fillings in their teeth, were removed to enrich the citizens of the Third Reich. When the Russian army neared Auschwitz, the Jewish prisoners, including Elie Wiesel and his father, were marched through the snow to Buchenwald. Finally, with less than ten percent of its previous population still surviving, these concentration camps were freed by the Third Army of the United States in 1945. The nightmare was over, but the scars of the Holocaust would last forever. The world does not linger over horrors long. It prefers to shove them into the depths of the unconscious and there to be repressed or forgotten. There were, however, too many people who had endured the hell of these Nazi prison camps to think that this memory could be stamped out forever. One of those surviving, Elie Wiesel, would process this experience slowly over a decade before his traumatized psyche could finally begin to be able to talk about it. When he did, the result was an 800-page memoir that few people read. This book was later condensed into a treatise of less than 150 pages entitled Night. Still few people read it. It sold 1860 copies in its first year in print. It was the capture and subsequent trial of Adolf Eichmann that served to bring the Holocaust back into public awareness and then Elie Wiesel’s book gave it content and context, subsequently selling ten million copies. I was one of those who devoured it. It was among the most painful books I have ever read. Elie Wiesel soon emerged to become “the voice” of the Holocaust. His life and witness made it impossible for anyone to forget. The Holocaust was a reality with which human beings had to come to grips. People had to embrace the fact that human life was capable of something that grotesque. People had to see that a killing prejudice, justified by religion, based on race, tribe, ethnicity and even sexual orientation was a fact of history. People needed to recognize that human beings are capable of dehumanizing each other so deeply that one human being could not even feel the other’s pain or blink an eye when that other was destroyed. We human beings had to confront the fact that we are capable of genocide, sometimes carried out in the name of God. Since the Holocaust the world has witnessed genocide in other places like Bosnia, Burundi and Darfur. The cry of protest has been soft, sometimes barely audible. We have also now been forced to recognize such other horrors as the rape of Nanking, the kidnapping of little girls by Boco Haram in Nigeria, the calculated murder of innocent people by suicide bombers and hate-filled terrorists, the murder of black men by white policemen and the retaliatory murders of white policemen by deranged killers. All of these activities represent aspects of the same Holocaust mentality. Elie Wiesel, more than any other person I know of, shined the insight of his moral conscience on the dark places in the human soul. We dare not look away or forget the evil of which human life is capable. For that Elie Wiesel has earned our unending gratitude. Several years ago Christine, my wife, and I were invited to a Passover observance in New York at the home of Ruth and Fred Westheimer. She is better known as “Dr. Ruth,” the popular sexologist on radio and television. When Ruth was eight years old, her Jewish parents put her on a train alone and sent her to Geneva. They had no idea what or who would await her in Switzerland. They only knew that for her life to continue they had to get her out of Germany. Kissing her parents goodbye would be the last time Ruth would ever see them. At this Passover observance in her home everyone present, except for Christine and me, was either a Holocaust survivor or the child of a Holocaust survivor. It was a wrenching, moving, unforgettable evening. At that observance the two of us were embraced as Christians by those who had experienced the depravity of the anti-Semitism that Christianity had historically fostered. “Never again” became my motto that night. Elie Wiesel’s life and witness had taken over my consciousness. Rest in peace, my brother Elie, your work lives on. John Shelby Spong Read the essay online here. Question & Answer William Gilbert writes via the Internet Question: If developments in how we understand the way the world works means the death of theism and other theological revolutions, what does this mean for the welfare of those millions of Christians in the past who have believed on the basis of false concepts and beliefs? Answer: Dear William, I wonder why this issue bothers you. Do you assume that those who do not agree with today’s insights are to be punished? Do you think that it is somehow unfair for some to have to face the fact that they were wrong? Do you identify with the group you are describing and wonder what it means for you, your security or your future? Jesus is quoted as saying to us, “Judge not,” yet your question rings with a sense of judgment. That is not a human task, judgment belongs to God alone. What changes in perspective others go through is ultimately not the business of any human being. Time moves on. By our standards today both Abraham Lincoln and Harry Truman were racists. In their own time, however, Lincoln was the great emancipator of slavery and Truman pioneered the idea of bringing black Americans into equality by integrating the armed forces. He did this in 1948, long before it became “socially acceptable” to the white majority to proclaim any kind of equality between our black citizens and our white citizens in any area of our common life. Heroes are those who move before the majority is willing to move. Harry Truman was a hero. Polygamy was acceptable in parts of the Hebrew Scriptures. Solomon was said to have had a thousand wives. No one would argue for such a pattern today. The author of Colossians and Ephesians, books that we once incorrectly attributed to Paul, ordered slaves to be obedient to their masters and wives to be obedient to their husbands. When someone states these biblical passages today to suggest that those patterns still are appropriate for anyone, they are roundly and properly condemned as immoral. There are no ethical norms that are unchanging except the norm of loving and even the way we love or interpret love is never stationery. So the human task is to journey through an ever-changing world, trying to be faithful to the meaning of God as we, with our limited vision, perceive that meaning. We do not possess God, we do not possess God’s truth no matter what our religious authority claims suggest. So we do not worry about those who believed the things that we today reject. That is ultimately God’s business and God has a way of being non-judgmental that is far greater than that found in those who claim to be “true believers.” John Shelby Spong Read and Share Online Here Announcements Bishop Spong in Cleveland Ohio at The Federation of Christian Ministries National Assembly "With Open Arms" Conference Dates: August 5th - 7th Bishop Spong is the Keynote Speaker Saturday Morning & Afternoon

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7/14/16, Spong: Charting a New Reformation, Part XXVIII - The Ninth Thesis, Ethics
by Ellie Stock via Dialogue 14 Jul '16

14 Jul '16

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Contemporary moral standards must be hammered out in the arena in which life-affirming moral principles are forced to engage the external structures of reality, for this is where the ethical life is formed. No modern person has any choice but to be a situationalist.”</em></p> </blockquote> <p> Finding a basis for making ethical decisions in our contemporary world is far more complicated than most people seem to imagine. This is especially true for those who continue to insist that ultimate authority lies in some ancient code of laws like the Ten Commandments. In this section of our attempt to chart a new reformation, we bring ethical decision making into the full focus of our attention. In the process, whether we like it or not, the mythology that has grown up around all ancient codes of law will be dismantled and the necessity of ethical relativity will have to be embraced. We begin with an illustration that we invite you only to imagine not to copy. It is designed to illustrate the fact that the very same actions might be regarded as good in one context and as insensitive, inappropriate and wrong in another.</p> <p>On a Sunday afternoon in America’s “great cathedrals” of worship, our sometimes billion-dollar football stadiums, thousands of fans gather during the football season, on occasion braving extreme cold, in order to see the game in person. Simultaneously, millions of additional fans view the game around the world on television. In the clear vision of literally millions a 240 pound linebacker will be seen regularly walking back and forth between the tackles and guards, who form the football line of scrimmage. These linemen are now in a three point pose, ready to charge at the next snap of the football. This linebacker will exhort these linemen verbally and not infrequently he will even swat their upturned derrieres to urge them forward. Most of the people who see this interchange will think it so normal that they might not even notice it, much less remember it. No one watching would regard this interaction as inappropriate.</p> <p>Suppose, however, that we change the context from a football stadium to a church building during a Sunday morning service of worship. The worshipers have come forward to receive the bread and wine of the Eucharist. They are kneeling in a row at the altar rail. Now imagine an usher or even an acolyte, following the example of the linebacker, walking up and down behind these kneeling people and swatting each of them on their behinds. Would people notice? You bet they would! Not only would they notice, but this behavior would be viewed as “weird, hostile, offensive, abusive and inappropriate” Yet if we were to isolate the specific act from the two contexts, a football game and a service of worship, one would have to conclude that the deed done was identical, which leads us to our first principle. The judgment as to the goodness or badness of a particular human action depends, not just on the act itself, but on the context in which the act is carried out. Subjectivity in ethical judgments is thus inescapable.</p> <p>Look next at those substances which our human society has defined as “drugs.” One of these drugs, the one we call alcohol, is used in the form of a fine wine to give grace and elegance to a banquet table. It is thus viewed as good. Alcohol, however, can be and often is used in other forms to perpetuate the hopelessness of a lost soul living on the fringes of society. The alcohol is the same; the context in which the alcohol is used renders the moral judgment. The same thing is true when we turn our attention to other drugs. In the hands of a trained physician they are dispensed to ease pain and to facilitate healing. In that context the drug is life-giving. Sometimes, however, that same drug is used as a coping device by a desperate person. In that context it can be and often is life-destroying. Good and evil are not fixed categories; they never have been. No matter what the religious claims of the past have been, it is now quite impossible to build an ethical system on the basis of an unchanging or eternal standard. Unchanging divine rules are little more than lingering religious illusions. Those who seek to chart a new reformation must face this reality, deal with it, dismiss it and look elsewhere for guidance in determining just what it is that makes good “good” and evil “evil.”</p> <p>It is the common practice of religious people not to acknowledge these uncertainties or to face these realities. The word “relativity” in ethics is considered a “dirty” word in conservative religious circles. Relativity, nonetheless, confronts human beings at every turn and in every decision they make. One of the reasons that religious people do not want to admit relativity is that it forces adult decision-making on them. It is so much easier to remain childlike and to pretend that there is a set of eternal rules, which one just has to learn and agree to apply. Human beings want to believe that they can define the terms “moral” and “immoral.” It is, however, the existential context of life that more often than not, will determine what is good and what is evil.</p> <p>From where then, we must ask, does the human sense arise that some things are good and other evil? How do we cope with so slippery a slope, which we experience every time we seek to define ethics? This apparently bottomless pit of uncertainty appears to drive us in search of some essential norm that we hope, and sometimes pretend, will define good and evil objectively for all time. We assume that such a norm must exist. Frequently, once we think we have found it, we elevate it to a status that is beyond questioning. We treat it with great respect. In the Western Judeo-Christian world that has been the fate of the Ten Commandments. Look at the importance our whole society has attached to that traditional standard.</p> <p>In the Christian churches built in the 18th and 19th centuries, the Ten Commandments were almost universally displayed in a prominent place on the inside walls of each church. The popular form for this display was to portray these commandments inscribed on a stone tablet, for stone tablets are not only biblical, but they also give the impression of indestructibility. Not infrequently, these commandments would be on not one, but two stone tablets; the first one including what we in our Christian catechisms have called “our duty toward God.” These are the commandments (1-4) that tell us that God is one, that God cannot be imaged and that God’s name and God’s day must be honored. The second tablet would include those commandments (5-10), which were thought to spell out our “duty toward our neighbor:” Honor your parents, do not kill, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness and do not covet.</p> <p>In the early days of my life in my church, I was treated to the opportunity of hearing the Ten Commandments recited in worship on a regular basis. It happened on the first Sunday of each month. The congregation was taught to respond to this recitation with the words: “Lord, have mercy upon us and incline our hearts to keep this law.” When the final commandment was recited, we were taught to say: “Lord have mercy upon us and write all these thy laws on our hearts, we beseech thee.” Great power and authority were attached to these holy words.</p> <p>A decline in that power, however, began to set in in the 20th century. My church changed its liturgical directions to make the reading of the Ten Commandments voluntary not mandatory. The result was that the Ten Commandments quickly fell into liturgical disuse. Why did my church take this action? Perhaps it was the fact that both the new scientific discourse and the period of history we refer to as “the enlightenment” had served to erode our confidence in the supernatural deity, whose will these commandments were thought to express. Perhaps we discovered too many exceptions to the rules, which served to destroy the objectivity of this ancient moral code or at least to weaken its authority permanently. Whatever the cause, a very real demise was felt and was accompanied by a heightened sense of anxiety. To many conservative Christians rampant immorality appeared to be the only real alternative.</p> <p>A judge in Alabama, named Roy S. Moore, decided in 2001 that, in the service of his fundamentalist faith, he would install in his courtroom a two ton statue on which the Ten Commandments were inscribed. Since he believed these ten laws were dictated by God, in his mind he was doing nothing other than defending God’s truth. He was, however, charged with violating the constitutional amendment that guarantees the separation of church and state. His supporters rallied to his side. His critics were called “godless,” “immoral” and “modernists.” Moore suggested that his enemies were those who were eager to remove God and God’s words from America’s courts of justice. The law prevailed, however, and Judge Moore’s statue was removed.</p> <p>Most people do not know that there is a wide sectarian disagreement over the order and even the way the commandments are numbered. Judge Moore’s Ten Commandments were not “objective” at all, as he claimed. On his statue he had followed the order of the “Protestant” version of these commandments. I happened to be in Montgomery, Alabama, during the time of this controversy and I went to see Judge Moore’s statue before it was removed. On the back were the words: “copyright 2001 Judge Roy S. Moore.” Surely by this time, the Ten Commandments are in the public domain. Are they eternal? Are they unchallengeable? I don’t think so. We move next week to trace the difference between religious rhetoric and religious practice in regard to the Ten Commandments. They are not the same.</p> <p>John Shelby Spong</p> <p>Read the essay online <a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb23…">here.</a></p> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <table border="0" cellpadding="20" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top"> <div style="color: #000000;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><h2 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 30px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">Question & Answer</h2> <p><span style="font-size:18px">Louis Mondor via the Internet, writes:</span></p> <h4 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 22px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;"> Question:</h4> <p>I am intrigued with your series of essays, “Charting a New Reformation” – especially Parts 7 and 8 in which you develop the idea of God as “the Ground of Being,” a concept hearkening back to Paul Tillich.</p> <p>I have a couple of questions:</p> <p>Should I understand this as a form of “pantheism” where the universe and everything included in it is equal to God?</p> <p>Or, is this “panentheism,” the idea that the cosmos exists within God who, in turn, “transcends,” “pervades” or is “in” the cosmos?</p> <p>In other words, while pantheism asserts that “All is God,” panentheism goes further to claim that God is greater than the universe.</p> <p>Or, perhaps, is your notion of God as “the Ground of Being” neither of these? Your concept of God as “the Ground of Being” resonates with my thinking. I just want to be sure I am understanding it in the way in which you wish it to be understood.</p> <p>Please clarify his critically important concept for me!</p> <h4 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 22px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">Answer:</h4> <p>Dear Louis,</p> <p>Thanks for your letter. To think of God outside the limiting framework of theism vs. atheism is not easy. We have no “God vocabulary” and so we continue to shift and combine human words to provide pointers in a new direction. We can, however, no more literalize our new word combinations than we could the words of the earlier theological consensuses.</p> <p>I would not use either the words <em>pantheism</em> or <em>panentheism</em> as synonyms for “the Ground of Being.” Of the two I prefer <em>panentheism</em> because it is more flexible and therefore less capable of being literalized than is <em>pantheism</em>, but neither word has much appeal to me. No, I do not conceive of God as identical with all that is. I do not think I or anyone else has the right or the ability to tell anyone who or what God is. Panentheism states that God can be discovered in and through all that is, but is not limited by all that is. That, as I suggested, offers more flexibility, but it also tends to tell me just how God works or operates and not only are we back into theistic images, but we also come up against the human inability to define how the holy works.</p> <p>Employing language that defies explanation thus becomes an asset in pursuing truth if not an asset in creating the security of certainty which, as I have suggested, is always a delusion.</p> <p>So I go back to my distinction between an experience and the explanation of that experience. God is an experience of transcendent otherness and holiness. Theism, the Bible and the creeds are attempts to explain that experience.</p> <p>Jesus was an early first century experience of the presence of that which we call divine. The gospels are a late first century attempt to explain that experience. If we literalize any human explanation of the divine, we inevitably destroy the experience. Both pantheism and panentheism are attempts to explain the experience which cannot finally be explained.</p> <p>So with what are we left? The best we can do is to walk daily in the experience of God. We walk without road maps; we never find security. Certainty is not a possibility. Does God disappear in our inability to capture the divine in the words of the human? No, but idolatry disappears. Perhaps the best we can do is to pray for “a closer walk with God.” That is the mystical path. I choose to continue my journey into the Source of life, the Source of love and the Ground of Being without any clear or certain answer.</p> <p>I hope this helps.</p> <p>John Shelby Spong</p> <p><a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb2…">Read and Share Online Here</a></p> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <table border="0" cellpadding="20" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top"> <div style="color: #000000;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><h2 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 30px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">Announcements</h2> <a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb23…"><img align="none" height="162" style="width: 507px;height: 162px;margin: 0px;border: none;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;line-height: 100%;outline: none;text-decoration: none;text-transform: capitalize;display: inline;" width="507" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/b51b9cf441b059bb232418480/images/23bfe15c-ced…"></a> <div style="text-align: center;color: #000000;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;"> <font size="4"><strong>Creation Spirituality Communities Gathering</strong></font></div> <div style="text-align: center;color: #000000;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;">July 28th - 31st, Sacramento, CA </div> <strong><em>Generations: Honoring the Elders; Nurturing the Future</em></strong> Matthew Fox, Linda Allen, John Robinson, Judy Shook and Michelle Gordon, are a few of the presenters. <a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb23…">Click Here for More Information </a></div> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> </td> </tr> <tr> <td align="center" valign="top"> <table border="0" cellpadding="10" cellspacing="0" width="600" id="aolmail_templateFooter" style="background-color: #FDFDFD;border-top: 0;"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top" class="aolmail_footerContent"> <table border="0" cellpadding="10" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr> <td colspan="2" valign="middle" id="aolmail_social" style="background-color: #FAFAFA;border: 0;"> <div style="color: #707070;font-family: Arial;font-size: 12px;line-height: 125%;text-align: center;"></div></td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" valign="middle" id="aolmail_utility" style="background-color: #FDFDFD;border: 1px dashed #d3d3d3;"><div style="color: #707070;font-family: Arial;font-size: 12px;line-height: 125%;text-align: center;"><div class="aolmail_vcard"><div class="aolmail_adr"><div class="aolmail_street-address"></div></div></div></div></td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" valign="middle" id="aolmail_utility"><div style="color: #707070;font-family: Arial;font-size: 12px;line-height: 125%;text-align: left;"></div></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></center><center><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" id="aolmail_canspamBarWrapper" style="background-color:#FFFFFF; border-top:1px solid #E5E5E5;"><tbody><tr><td align="center" valign="top" style="padding-top:20px; padding-bottom:20px;"> </td></tr></tbody></table></center></div> </div> <style type="text/css">#AOLMsgPart_2_0df8b23a-3b22-48e8-b7d4-bc2a3d5591c7 td{color: black;} @media only screen and (max-width: 480px){ .aolReplacedBody table[id="canspamBar"] td{font-size:14px !important;} .aolReplacedBody table[id="canspamBar"] td a{display:block !important; margin-top:10px !important;} } </style>

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Request for RS-1 and/or CS-1 Manual(s)
by Dawn Collins via Dialogue 10 Jul '16

10 Jul '16

Dear colleague(s),Please check your files for either one or both of these manuals. Should you send me a hard copy (which I prefer), I will copy it at Office Depot and mail your original (plus your postal charges) promptly back to you.I want to peruse the short courses of the manual(s) conversations as a template for a piece I'm writing of 5 conversations to accompany the previous booklet disseminated, "On Becoming A Practical Theologian".Thanks again for past response dear friends, on Hesse novel and song book which was of help in fleshing out my present 'sine qua none' library. Toward a peaceful resolution in our nation to the quest for days of compassion and justice, Dawn Collins1818 N. Marion St.Apt. 811Denver, CO 80218303 388 1454collinsdawn747(a)yahoo.com P.S. Recently purchased R. Brian Stanfield's edited book from ICA Bookstore on "The Art of Focused Conversation" as a general reference. Love supporting the work of our beloved community. "We love the Source because the Source loved us first."-1 John 4:19

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7/7/16, Spong: Charting a New Reformation, Part XXVII – The Eighth Thesis, The Ascension of Jesus (continued)
by Ellie Stock via Dialogue 07 Jul '16

07 Jul '16

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} .aolReplacedBody #aolmail_templateContainer,.aolReplacedBody .aolmail_bodyContent{ background-color:#ffffff; } .aolReplacedBody .aolmail_bodyContent div a:link,.aolReplacedBody .aolmail_bodyContent div a:visited{ color:#4487cf; } </style><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: none;margin: 0;padding: 0;background-color: #ffffff;width: 100% !important;" class="aolReplacedBody"> <center> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" height="100%" width="100%" id="aolmail_backgroundTable" style="margin: 0;padding: 0;background-color: #ffffff;height: 100% !important;width: 100% !important;"> <tbody><tr> <td align="center" valign="top"> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="600" id="aolmail_templatePreheader" style="background-color: #ffffff;"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top" class="aolmail_preheaderContent"> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top"><div style="color: #505050;font-family: Arial;font-size: 10px;line-height: 100%;text-align: left;"> </div></td> <td valign="top" width="190"> <div style="color: #505050;font-family: Arial;font-size: 10px;line-height: 100%;text-align: left;"><a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: none;" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb2…"><img style="border: none;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;height: auto;line-height: 100%;outline: none;text-decoration: none;text-transform: capitalize;" src="http://gallery.mailchimp.com/b51b9cf441b059bb232418480/images/print.png"></a></div> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="600" id="aolmail_templateContainer" style="border: 1px solid #4487cf;background-color: #ffffff;"> <tbody><tr> <td align="center" valign="top"> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="600" id="aolmail_templateHeader" style="background-color: #D8E2EA;border-bottom: 0;"> <tbody><tr> <td class="aolmail_headerContent" style="color: #202020;font-family: Arial;font-size: 34px;font-weight: bold;line-height: 100%;padding: 0;text-align: center;vertical-align: middle;"> <img alt="" border="0" style="margin: 0;padding: 0;max-width: 600px;border: none;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;height: auto;line-height: 100%;outline: none;text-decoration: none;text-transform: capitalize;" src="http://gallery.mailchimp.com/b51b9cf441b059bb232418480/images/newsletter_he…"> </td> </tr> <tr> <td valign="top" class="aolmail_headerNavigation"> <h5 style="color: #202020;display: block;font-family: Arial;font-size: 12px;font-weight: bold;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 15px;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;text-transform: uppercase;"> <a style="color: #4487cf;text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb23…">Homepage</a> <a style="color: #4487cf;text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb23…">My Profile</a> <a style="color: #4487cf;text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb23…">Essay Archive</a> <a style="color: #4487cf;text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb23…">Message Boards</a> <a style="color: #4487cf;text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb23…">Calendar</a></h5></td> </tr> </tbody></table> </td> </tr> <tr> <td align="center" valign="top"> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="600" id="aolmail_templateBody"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top" class="aolmail_bodyContent" style="background-color: #ffffff;"> <table border="0" cellpadding="20" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top"> <div style="color: #000000;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><h1 style="color: #003d4a;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 34px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">Charting a New Reformation</h1> <h2 class="aolmail_null" style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 30px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">Part XXVII – The Eighth Thesis, The Ascension of Jesus (continued)</h2> <p>The gospels of Mark and Matthew were composed while the Christian movement was still part of the synagogue. The gospel of Luke may well have been written after the fracture that caused the Christians to be expelled from the synagogue, but because Luke based his gospel largely on the gospel of Mark, his work still reflects the organizing form of the synagogue. All three of these synoptic gospels were originally created, we now recognize, to provide Jesus stories for the seasons and Sabbaths of the synagogue’s liturgical year. That is why the story of the crucifixion was told against the backdrop of the Passover and why Matthew placed the “Sermon on the Mount” against the synagogue’s observance of Shavuot or Weeks, the celebration of Moses receiving the Torah from God at Mt. Sinai. That is also why John the Baptist was turned into “The New Elijah” and associated so deeply with the synagogue’s observance of Rosh Hashanah. Rosh Hashanah, also called the Jewish New Year, was the time when people prayed for the messiah to come. John the Baptist was cast in the role of Elijah, who according to Jewish messianic thought had to prepare the way for the messiah’s arrival. So John the Baptist enters the gospel tradition not as a person of history, but as a Rosh Hashanah literary figure. The stories of Jesus engaging in physical healings were then read back into the memory of Jesus’ earthly life and told first as part of the Jewish observance of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, in which goodness of health overcomes the evil of physical distress. Being made physically whole was a sign that the Kingdom of God was breaking in and that the messiah was at hand. Next harvest parables were attributed to Jesus, like the parable of the sower, who sows his seed on four different types of soil, and the wheat and tares growing together. Not coincidentally they were placed into the gospel outline against the Harvest Festival of the Jews, known as Tabernacles, Booths or Sukkoth. That is also why the story of Jesus’ transfiguration, a story that only appears in the synoptic tradition, was told against the synagogue’s observance of Dedication or Hanukah, in which it was believed that the light of God was annually restored to the Temple. When the synoptic gospels were written (72-93 CE), however, the Temple had been destroyed by the Romans, and so the followers of Jesus suggested that Jesus had replaced the Temple as the new meeting place between God and human beings. That is what is reflected when the light of God was made to fall upon Jesus in the story of the Transfiguration. In this way Hanukah was reinterpreted. Once a crack opens into the original meaning of the synoptics, we begin to see just how it was that so many of the stories in the Hebrew Scriptures were simply lifted out of the text, magnified and wrapped around Jesus of Nazareth. They are very easy to identify once the pattern is clear.</p> <p>The literary connections between Moses and Jesus was especially strong in Matthew’s gospel, and they become quite obvious once the principle has been established. Both Moses and Jesus were subjected to the attempt by a wicked king to destroy them in infancy. Both were said to have fed the multitudes in the wilderness. Both had Red Sea splitting experiences, wandering in the wilderness experiences and trials or temptations in that wilderness. Both went up on a mountain to get a new understanding of God’s law. I have examined these connections in detail in my recent book, <em>Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy</em>.</p> <p>Luke, a gospel written to a congregation of dispersed or diaspora Jews, which was just beginning to attract Gentile proselytes into its midst, had a rather different agenda from that of Matthew. So Elijah, the father of the prophetic movement, served Luke much better as the figure through whom Jesus was to be interpreted, than did Moses. So a close reading of Luke reveals this broader world into which Jesus, as the new Elijah, fitted so well.</p> <p>In Matthew’s genealogy, the lineage of Jesus went back only to Abraham, who was regarded as the father of the Jewish nation. Luke, writing for his more expansive, more cosmopolitan audience, took his genealogy of Jesus all the way back to Adam, the father of all humankind. This way Gentiles as well as Jews could be included. We also see in Luke a much deeper dependency on the Elijah narratives than anywhere else in the New Testament. In the Hebrew Scriptures we are told that Elijah raises from the dead the only son of a widow. In Luke Jesus repeats that Elijah story by raising from the dead the only son of a widow in the village of Nain. No other gospel relates that story. Elijah healed a foreigner, a Syrian, named Naaman, of leprosy. Luke has Jesus heal a Samaritan (also a foreigner) of leprosy in a story which no other gospel writer relates. The similarities abound.</p> <p>The most obvious Elijah story that Luke has retold about Jesus, however, was the story of Elijah’s ascension. Here the way Luke has used Elijah to interpret Jesus becomes quite clear. I turn now to the story of Elijah’s ascension so that everyone can see these connections. This story is told in II Kings 2.</p> <p>At the end of Elijah’s life, the text informs us, he took his single disciple, Elisha, and they journeyed together into the wilderness to have a rendezvous with God. On this journey they talk about Elijah’s imminent departure and Elisha’s succession to the role of the “prophet of Israel.” When they reached their destination, they began what would prove to be their final conversation. Elisha opens it by making a request of his master. I paraphrase: “Master, if I am to be your successor, can I make a final request of you?” Elijah responds by saying: “What is it my son? Speak on.” So Elisha continues: “If I am to do the work you have asked me to do, I need to be endowed with a double portion of your spirit!” To this request, Elijah responded: “I do not know that I have the power to grant you that,” he says, “but if you see me ascending into the sky then you will know that your request has been granted by God.”</p> <p>At that moment, according to this magnificent Jewish story, a magical, fiery chariot, drawn by magical, fiery horses, appeared out of the sky and swooped down to the ground, coming to a halt at exactly the spot where Elijah and Elisha were talking. It was as if this was a regular stop on this heavenly chariot’s bus route! Without so much as a fare-thee-well, Elijah then stepped immediately into that chariot to begin his ascension into heaven, undoubtedly waving his hand in farewell.</p> <p>Even the ancients, however, knew that some kind of propulsion was required to transcend the forces of gravity about which they knew nothing, but which they simply accepted as a fact of life. So the text says that God created a whirlwind that came roaring behind the fiery chariot. Pulled by the magical horses, this chariot bearing Elijah, was thus propelled into the sky and to heaven by a whirlwind.</p> <p>Elisha standing on the earth below watched in wonder. He cried out: “My father! My father! The chariots and horsemen of Israel.” The important detail in the story, however, was that Elisha saw this ascension, and because he saw, he knew that his request had been granted. He would be endowed with a double portion of Elijah’s powerful, unique and yet still human spirit. It was and is a lovely story. The people of the Middle East were second to none as story tellers. Luke saw Jesus as the new Elijah, but one far more filled with the presence of God than had been the first Elijah. So he magnified this story. The new Elijah did not need the help of a magical chariot drawn by fiery horses. He did not need the heaven-sent whirlwind. As one who was God-sent and God-filled, he would return to God on his own.</p> <p>He also did not, as Elijah did, have a double portion of his enormous, but still human spirit to bequeath to his disciples. The new and greater Elijah was said by Luke to be in possession of God’s Holy Spirit, which he could bequeath not just to a single disciple, but to all of his disciples then and throughout all of the ages. Luke’s Jesus was Elijah magnified in the hope that by endowing him with these expanded images, he could capture and communicate to his readers the essence of this Christ, who had made God’s presence so near and so available. So it was that Luke took the story of the ascension of Elijah and his gift to his single disciple of a double portion of his spirit and magnified it beyond all limits. The result was the story of the ascension of Jesus into heaven and the subsequent outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, both of which are uniquely Lucan stories repeated nowhere else in the New Testament.</p> <p>When one sees who it was upon whom the Holy Spirit fell at Pentecost, one sees immediately the universal message of Luke’s gospel. “Men from every nation under heaven,” Luke said, were gathered there at Pentecost: “Parthians, Medes, Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, Pamphilia, Egypt, Libya, visitors from Rome, Jews, proselytes, Cretans and Arabians.” Given the knowledge of geography available in the first century, this was a remarkably inclusive list, even if it did call human beings “men!”</p> <p>Luke knew that this ascension story was not literal history, but he also knew that the inclusive love of God was universal so he told this story. Today we are invited to hear its meaning, and to escape its literal understanding. Gospel truth can never finally be contained in the vocabulary of our humanity.</p> <p>John Shelby Spong</p> <p>Read the essay online <a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb23…">here</a>.</p> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <table border="0" cellpadding="20" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top"> <div style="color: #000000;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><h2 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 30px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">Question & Answer</h2> <p><span style="font-size:18px">Harry Bryan from Bristol, England, writes:</span></p> <h4 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 22px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;"> Question:</h4> <p>As I begin to write this message, I realize that it’s not at all clear in my mind what exactly I want to say, just that I need to say something. My name is Harry and I live close to the city of Bristol in the United Kingdom. I really hope that this message reaches you, as I’ve just watched a video that I stumbled upon after much reading and watching of other documentaries and religious talks, a series of lectures, which you delivered under the title: “Why Christianity as We Know it is Dying.” I feel the need to express my appreciation.</p> <p>I must admit that I do not describe myself as a Christian, but I would say that one of the main reasons for this is the yawning gap between what I perceive as the positive, charitable, loving message of the New Testament and the all too common face of Christianity today which is today so often intolerant, woeful and almost unrecognizable as a religion of peace or of love. Too many times I’ve found myself pushed away from the Bible by people who preach messages of hate, of prejudice and of things, which simply don’t make any sense regardless of your standing in life. When I study the biblical text, I find a lot that I admire, a lot, which I feel people could learn from today and that people should consider, but can’t reconcile that with the need for mysterious or gory symbolism, the gold finery that dresses the altar and the clergy, to say nothing of the practice of immersion in water as a cure all for previous trespasses.</p> <p>I was reading Matthew 6, where Jesus is quoted as saying “Do not worry.” I feel it is such a beautiful passage and yet where is this message in the Christian Church today? I’ve never heard it spoken of; it is absent. The Christianity I know simply doesn’t have a place for it, just as it doesn’t have a place for many things which Jesus was said to have taught. The Bible for me cannot be an entirely accurate, entirely literal account of past events nor can one reading of it be the only way to avoid eternal punishments when our lives come to an end. That the Bible exists at all means that there were followers of Christ long before it was written and compiled as we know it today, so are we to believe, for example, that all the early Christians reside in hell, given that they couldn’t have possibly followed a book to the letter, which in their time didn’t exist? There must be room to interpret and discuss the Bible in the context in which it was written and to do away with much of the now obsolete traditions and rituals which still surround it. I need to express my appreciation for your words, for your open-mindedness and also for your humor. I know you aren’t the only person who questions the faith and continues to work with the Bible as opposed to supporting fundamentalism or simply casting it aside altogether, but you are the first person I’ve seen speak (albeit via a computer screen), who has expressed views, which resonate with my own and make me feel more comfortable about reading the Bible again. I can’t deny entirely my belief in God, but I also can’t identify with “the old Christianity,” which seems totally bent on control of those people who simply want some guidance in their lives. I’m not sure where my journey will take me from here, but know that this marks an important step. So I will now watch the second lecture from that same conference, “What a New Christianity for a New World Will Contain.” I wish you well and hope that my message will be received.</p> <h4 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 22px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">Answer:</h4> <p>Dear Harry,</p> <p>Thank you for your letter. I am sorry that through your years of association with the Christian Church, you have received such a distorted and woeful view of the Bible and of Christianity itself, which you reveal in your letter.</p> <p>It is not the Bible’s fault that so many have made an idol out of the scriptures. In the name of that idol, we have over the centuries opposed democracy in the name of the divine right of kings, become oppressively anti-Semitic, justified the Crusades, as the necessary killing of “infidels,” most of whom were Muslims, burned “heretics” at the stake, enslaved people of color, forced women into being second class citizens’ oppressed homosexual people and justified many a war. If the “Word of God” results in that kind of behavior then I for one want no part in it. A literally understood Bible is not benign, it is an absolute evil.</p> <p>The Bible itself can be a great asset to faith. It asserts the holiness of life. It portrays the love of God as infinite and universal. It calls us in the Holy Spirit to be all that we can be. It is not now and never has been the literal word or words of God. One does not want to blame God for some of the things included in the Bible like the execution of disobedient children, those who worship a false God and homosexual people.</p> <p>I am glad you finally heard something different. I hope you will continue to explore the still developing Christian story. Perhaps you will help to develop that story. I will be doing a lecture tour of Scotland, Wales and England in October. I would love to meet you at one of the venues.</p> <p>John Shelby Spong <a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb2…">Read and Share Online Here </a></p> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <table border="0" cellpadding="20" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top"> <div style="color: #000000;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><h2 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 30px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">Announcements</h2> <div style="text-align: center;color: #000000;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;"><img align="none" height="193" style="width: 349px;height: 193px;margin: 0px;border: none;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;line-height: 100%;outline: none;text-decoration: none;text-transform: capitalize;display: inline;" width="349" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/b51b9cf441b059bb232418480/images/8d4503e2-0e8…"></div> <h4 class="aolmail_null" style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 22px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;"> </h4> <h4 class="aolmail_null" style="text-align: center;color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 22px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;"><strong><span style="color:#000000">Bishop Spong speaks at Unity Church Lynnwood, WA</span></strong></h4> <div style="text-align: center;color: #000000;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;"> <strong>Lecture and Q&A: Jul 15th, 2016 at 7:30PM</strong> At the Unity Church in Lynnwood 16727 Alderwood Mall Parkway Lynnwood, Washington <a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb23…">Click Here for More Information</a></div> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> </td> </tr> <tr> <td align="center" valign="top"> <table border="0" cellpadding="10" cellspacing="0" width="600" id="aolmail_templateFooter" style="background-color: #FDFDFD;border-top: 0;"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top" class="aolmail_footerContent"> <table border="0" cellpadding="10" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr> <td colspan="2" valign="middle" id="aolmail_social" style="background-color: #FAFAFA;border: 0;"> <div style="color: #707070;font-family: Arial;font-size: 12px;line-height: 125%;text-align: center;"></div></td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" valign="middle" id="aolmail_utility" style="background-color: #FDFDFD;border: 1px dashed #d3d3d3;"><div style="color: #707070;font-family: Arial;font-size: 12px;line-height: 125%;text-align: center;"><div class="aolmail_vcard"><div class="aolmail_adr"><div class="aolmail_street-address"></div></div></div></div></td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" valign="middle" id="aolmail_utility"><div style="color: #707070;font-family: Arial;font-size: 12px;line-height: 125%;text-align: left;"></div></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></center><center><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" id="aolmail_canspamBarWrapper" style="background-color:#FFFFFF; border-top:1px solid #E5E5E5;"><tbody><tr><td align="center" valign="top" style="padding-top:20px; padding-bottom:20px;"> </td></tr></tbody></table></center></div> </div> <style type="text/css">#AOLMsgPart_2_a0e9d715-4510-44b7-bb39-100c97b26de8 td{color: black;} @media only screen and (max-width: 480px){ .aolReplacedBody table[id="canspamBar"] td{font-size:14px !important;} .aolReplacedBody table[id="canspamBar"] td a{display:block !important; margin-top:10px !important;} } </style>

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by ICA International via Dialogue 05 Jul '16

05 Jul '16

Enjoy catching up with what is happening in ICAs across the globe.....If you wish to SEND a report...send to your ICA contact person OR...go to the members section on the ICA International website Please click the link below for the July 2016 issue of the Global Buzz Global Buzz Report: July 2016 or copy and paste this URL into your browser's address bar http://globalbuzz.icai-archives.org/7dayreport-16/2016-07-01.php ICAI Communications

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