August 2016 - Dialogue - lists.wedgeblade.net

8/11/16, Spong: The Unlikely Honored Guest at the Democratic National Convention
by Ellie Stock via Dialogue 31 Jul '18

31 Jul '18

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He was surrounded in that reserved and exclusive seating area by the power-elite of the Democratic Party: A former President, the sitting Vice-President and the “second lady,” the spouses and children of the nominees, as well as those especially invited guests, who were uniquely and politically related to the convention’s eventual nominee. This unlikely guest was in his own way quite unique. He was a Republican, one who had been elected to a state-wide office as a candidate of the opposition party. He served as the governor of Virginia from 1970 – 1974 and was the first Republican governor of Virginia since 1869 in the last days of reconstruction. Later he sought his party’s nomination to the Senate of the United States, losing to another Republican, John Warner, who served with distinction from 1979 until he retired in 2008. The name of this mystery quest is Abner Linwood Holton. He is now, and has been since the day I first met him, an extraordinary man. People, unaware of the history of the Democratic Party in Virginia, find it strange that the man I regarded as the best governor of Virginia during the years I lived in that state would be a Republican. Let me tell you his story.</p> <p>Linwood Holton was born in 1923 in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, a town deep in the heart of Appalachia. He was a Republican from the moment of his birth. He was also bright and ambitious. Being a Republican in Virginia in those days was to be part of a distinct minority, perhaps even an endangered one! The Democrats of Virginia were the only cohesive political force in the state. This majority party was run by Virginia’s senior United States Senator, Harry Flood Byrd, who after serving a term as governor from 1926 to 1930, effectively ran the state until he died in 1966. It was said of Harry Byrd that he and a few of his closest political advisors would sit on the porch at his home in Berryville, Virginia, and pick the candidates for every political vacancy in Virginia from governor on down. The electorate was deliberately kept small by poll taxes, which effectively discouraged both blacks and poor whites from voting. A Byrd loyalist was in every county seat in Virginia to run the party. Racism was deep and “States Rights” was a holy slogan designed to make racism seem socially acceptable. Virginia was a one party state. Frequently the Republicans would not even nominate candidates and, even when they did, no one paid much attention to them because whoever won the Democratic primary seldom even campaigned in the general election, since Republicans simply did not win in this state! Linwood Holton made it his life’s ambition to establish two-party politics in Virginia.</p> <p>He graduated from Washington and Lee in Lexington, Virginia, and then entered the law school at Harvard University. Along the way he married a Roanoke girl, named Virginia Rogers, who went by the name of Jinks. She was the daughter of Frank Rogers, an upright, but ultra-conservative, successful and well-connected Roanoke citizen, who was the grandson of the first Episcopal Bishop in Southwestern Virginia. In his mind, the two greatest virtues were to be a conservative Episcopalian and a loyal Byrd Democrat. Jinks, the more rebellious of Rogers’ two daughters, chose to marry a Republican and a Presbyterian! Supported by this remarkable woman, Linwood began his life’s task of strengthening Virginia’s Republican Party. This party’s base, such as it was, had always been in the mountains of the western part of Virginia. As a force in opposition to Byrd Democrats, the Virginia Republican party tilted slightly leftward. There was no room to the right of the Byrd machine. The Virginia Republicans were known for their party’s efforts to improve education statewide and to develop better state mental health facilities. Linwood’s organizational efforts were so successful that in 1965 he was the Republican nominee for governor opposing the Southside, Virginia, Byrd Democrat, Mills Godwin, who had emerged as the new leader of the Democratic Party. The sickness, retirement and subsequently the death of Senator Byrd meant that the torch of party leadership had to be passed to the next generation. It is interesting that Harry Byrd, Jr., always known as “Little Harry,” who was appointed to succeed his father in the Senate, did not succeed him in the leadership of the statewide Democratic Party. Holton was defeated in that first run for the governor’s office, but he garnered a respectable total of votes and succeeded in introducing himself to the state. The day after the defeat, he began planning for his second run in 1969. The governorship in Virginia, we need to note, is limited by the Constitution to a single term.</p> <p>National issues soon began to erode the Byrd majorities. Poll taxes were declared unconstitutional in 1964. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 opened the ballot to people of color. The feminist movement began to galvanize women into an effective political force. A national- thinking Virginia Democrat, named Henry Howell, began to build a liberal political base made up of labor unions, blacks, women and young people. His challenge to the Byrd machine resulted ultimately in his election as Lt. Governor in 1971, but he could go no farther. He remained anathema to Byrd Democrats. In the Democratic Primary of 1969, the Byrd candidate, William Battle, the son of former Governor John Battle, defeated Henry Howell in a bitter contest. The party could not heal this division, so in the General Election, Linwood Holton, supported by many of Howell’s still angry voters, rode to victory with a 65,000 vote majority.</p> <p>In his inaugural address, Holton called for an end to Virginia’s pattern of racial discrimination and its racist politics. No Virginia Governor had ever uttered such words before. Words, however, were not enough. People looked for actions. They would follow soon.</p> <p>In the most dramatic step imaginable, the new governor and his wife made the decision not to put their children in the church-related or independent private schools of Richmond, where all governors’ children had previously attended, but to enroll them in Richmond’s public schools which were at that time about 80% black. It was such a startling action for a Virginia politician that the New York Times covered it with a front page story and a picture of Virginia’s Governor Holton escorting one of his daughters into a school surrounded by a host of black faces smiling broadly. In a state where the official response of the ruling Democratic machine to “Brown vs. the Board of Education,” had been to call for “massive resistance to the law of the land,” a state in which some counties chose to close their public schools rather than to integrate them, here was the highest elected official in the state escorting his children into the majority black public schools of Richmond, Virginia. No action could have announced better that a new day was dawning in what had once been the capital of the Confederacy. One of those Holton children entering those public schools on that day was their oldest daughter, Anne.</p> <p>The white population of Virginia was shocked. They believed and stated that their new governor was sacrificing his children on the “altar of integration.” Many suggested that the “inferior education” that his children would receive in those heavily black schools would cripple them for life. It was a strange argument that gave the lie to the previous white claim that all of its racially segregated schools were “separate, <em>but equal</em>.” Anne, in her early teens, would be an exemplary student. She received a fine education and upon graduation from high school would be admitted to Princeton University, from which she graduated <em>magna cum laude</em>. She seemed not to have been penalized at all in her educational achievements. After Princeton she was accepted into the class of 1983 at the Harvard Law School, from which she now holds a doctor of Jurisprudence degree. From there she went into a legal career that in time would include being a domestic relations judge and Virginia’s Education Secretary.</p> <p>While at Harvard she met, fell in love with and married a fellow law student, who was born in Minnesota and educated at the University of Missouri. His name was Tim Kaine. She lured him back to Richmond, where his earlier life experiences, including his Jesuit high school education, his year as a volunteer missionary to Honduras and his mastery of the Spanish language, prepared him to begin his Richmond law practice as a civil rights attorney. Then responding to an expressed community need, he entered politics at the most local of levels, running for a seat on Richmond’s nine-member City Council. In a majority black city, Tim not only won that seat, but was also later elected by that majority-black city council to be Richmond’s Mayor. Two years later, in 2001 he moved to the state level, being elected Virginia’s Lieutenant Governor. In 2005, he won the governor’s office. His wife, Anne Holton, became the first person to be at one time living in the governor’s mansion as the child of a Republican governor and then a second time as the state’s first lady and wife of a Democratic governor. In 2012, Tim Kaine won a seat in the United States Senate. In 2016, with two years remaining in his first term as senator, he was chosen by the presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, to be her vice-presidential running mate. Anne Holton was there with him, waving to the crowd on the final night. As Hillary Clinton raised Tim Kaine’s hand high, former president Bill Clinton was at her side and Anne Holton was at Tim Kaine’s side. The crowd roared with approval.</p> <p>In the VIP section of that vast Philadelphia arena sat the former Republican Governor Linwood Holton, now 92 years old, with his wife Jinks, both still vibrant and attractive, watching their daughter being introduced to the nation. There is sometimes a reward for integrity. Linwood and Jinks Holton, who would not allow their lives to be twisted by the prejudice of racism, challenged the distorting and debilitating social structures of his generation in Richmond, Virginia. Doing what is right sometimes carries with it intimations of transcendence and even immortality. To this day he remains one of my heroes.</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-manage1.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb2…">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">Alberto Mejia Aguilera from Mexico writes via the internet:</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 from Mexico and I would like to know your opinion about Liberation Theology. Do you think that this theology is still an inspiration for the struggle against the social injustice?</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 Alberto,</p> <p>Liberation theology was, I believe, was born in Latin America, so you should be especially proud of it. I associate the name of Leonardo Boff, primarily, with it, but there were others like the murdered Bishop Oscar Romero. It was born in an attempt to apply the principles of the gospel not just to individuals, but also to the structures of our society, which so often drive the masses into poverty. It identifies God with the poor. For those reasons it tended to be resisted in ecclesiastical circles, especially by the leaders of the Roman Catholic during the years of Popes John Paul II and Benedict, both of whom were so politically conservative that they saw it as another manifestation of Communism. I think they were both wrong in this judgment. Liberation theology, I believe, constituted a call to Christianity to see that its alliance with power, both in Europe and the new world, had corrupted the essential justice that Christianity requires.</p> <p>Christianity was born among the poor and the outcasts. It rose to dominate society and so became the religion of kings. Liberation Theology was a necessary correction.</p> <p>I wish you well.</p> <p>John Shelby Spong <a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb23…">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%;"><a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb2…"><img align="none" height="262" style="width: 350px;height: 262px;margin: 0px;border: none;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;line-height: 100%;outline: none;text-decoration: none;text-transform: capitalize;display: inline;" width="350" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/b51b9cf441b059bb232418480/images/e67ac6a0-334…"></a></div> <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;"><span style="font-size:26px"><span style="color:#000000">Bishop Spong at the Episcopal Diocese of Northern Michigan September 10th & 11th</span></span></h2> <strong>Schedule:</strong> Saturday, September 10, 2016 1:00 pm at the Reynolds Recital Hall, Northern Michigan University 7:00 pm at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Marquette Sunday, September 11, 2016 2:00 pm at the Memorial Union Building , Michigan Technological University At each location, there will be an opportunity for Q&A and book signing.</div></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr><tr><td align="center" valign="top"> </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_1c149769-41d3-4c3b-8300-eaccdde19ae7 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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"Journey Reflection" > August 2016 most viewed blog posts
by John C via Dialogue 31 Aug '16

31 Aug '16

Colleagues, friends, family and others, Please view any of the 18 most viewed of the 62 posts during August 2016 @"Journey Reflection" Blog Posts<http://rejourney.blogspot.com/2016/08/reflection-blog-posts-august-2016.html>. Namaste <http://rejourney.blogspot.com/2016/06/journey-reflection-blog-posts-june-20…> John & Lynda Cock ("Cook" online at Facebook) ________ 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 free blog posts via MailChimp email daily ... like the one below, a few days back ... View this email in your browser<http://rejourney.blogspot.com/> Journey Reflection August 27, 2016 Soon To Be Sainted [https://gallery.mailchimp.com/16fbe6261dac75a26854c8af6/images/6e85e614-087…] [On March 15, 2016] Pope Francis confirmed that Mother Teresa would be canonized a saint on September 4. Mother Teresa is one of the most beloved human beings of our modern times.* Journer: She was so revered that the Pope waived the requirement to wait five years after a person's death to begin the process of canonization. Nez: Her message is universal: embrace the suffering. More than 4,000 sisters carry on her work with the poor, especially. What a gift to the Earth community she was ... and is. Namaste. ______ * her above image with the article<http://www.mentalhealthjustice.net/blog/2016/3/14/53sdjv7bzb4g3cdwqw2b97mwi…>'s seemingly incongruous caption, "...A Suffering and Depressed Saint," taking away our excuses ***** Exemplar's Birthdate: Mother Teresa ________________________________ Xtra Blog Post: Vocational Shove<http://rejourney.blogspot.com/2010/06/vocational-shove.html> (Deepak Chopra) 3.7 million+ views from 199 countries/territories 4,458+ 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%2Fcc511n> Share<http://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Feepurl.com%2Fcc511n> [http://cdn-images.mailchimp.com/icons/social-block-v2/color-twitter-48.png]<http://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=Journey+Reflection+8.27.2016:%20http%3…> Tweet<http://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=Journey+Reflection+8.27.2016:%20http%3…> [http://cdn-images.mailchimp.com/icons/social-block-v2/color-googleplus-48.p…]<https://plus.google.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Feepurl.com%2Fcc511n> +1<https://plus.google.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Feepurl.com%2Fcc511n> [http://cdn-images.mailchimp.com/icons/social-block-v2/color-forwardtofriend…]<http://us8.forward-to-friend2.com/forward?u=16fbe6261dac75a26854c8af6&id=9c…> Forward<http://us8.forward-to-friend2.com/forward?u=16fbe6261dac75a26854c8af6&id=9c…> 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-manage2.com/unsubscribe?u=16fbe6261dac75a26854c8af…>

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8/25/16, Spong: Charting a New Reformation, Part XXXII– The Ninth Thesis, Ethics (concluded)
by Ellie Stock via Dialogue 25 Aug '16

25 Aug '16

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No words capture for me quite so well the plight of ancient codes of law like the Ten Commandments. We still, however, have to make decisions in a complex world. How are we to do that? In this column I seek only to illustrate. Conclusions are not yet possible.</p> <p>For most of my life I have contended that sex can be both good and holy only inside a relationship of ultimate commitment called marriage. This point of view has been echoed in the pronouncement of ecclesiastical institutions. If love and sex are separated, I contended, then people begin to use one another for their own gratification. When you “use” a person, you are making out of them a “thing” and thus you dehumanize them. I am still convinced that this is true in the majority of cases. A true story, however, removes this assertion’s ultimate authority.</p> <p>I met a young man once whose story showed me that “good” and “holy” are words that cannot escape being tempered by the external situation. This man was gay. He had been raised by parents who abhorred his homosexuality. They told him over and over again that his “desires” were dirty, distorted and evil. Without recognizing what they were doing, they created in him such self-hatred that he made their judgment his own. He loathed his body and its biological yearnings. He grew up refusing to admit to anyone what he knew he was. His self-definition was of one he hated. He had his first sexual encounter as a late teenager in a bathhouse in San Francisco. To this day, he has no idea who his first lover was. He only knew that he was an older man; how much older he did not even want to guess. No words passed between these two people who shared this experience. Bathhouses are not places in which relationships are formed, but where sexual needs are gratified.</p> <p>The young man was scared, but driven. Impersonal though this sex act was, he told me later, this was the first time in his life that he had ever experienced the fact that his body had value, that it could give pleasure to another. At last he had been in the presence of someone who did not define him as grotesque, but as desirable and enjoyable. We might well judge this encounter as a shallow experience in which love and sex were totally separated, but this young man found it to be life-affirming. I make no judgment. I only ask the ethical question: Was this act good or evil? My earlier moralistic standards were challenged, perhaps they were relativized.</p> <p>Experience time after time has tempered my moral judgments. My career in the ministry spanned the years between 1955 and today. An enormous revolution in sexual understanding took place during those years. I cannot remember the last wedding I performed in which the couple was not already sexually active, even living together. Sex only inside marriage may have been the norm once, but it has become the rare exception today. How am I to understand this changing pattern? Is the bitter judgment of rampant immorality my only option? I decided to look at history.</p> <p>Sex only inside marriage was the unquestioned value of the medieval Christian Church. That standard, however, was designed to fit the circumstances of that day. No effective birth control existed then, so sexual activity ran the risk of pregnancy. In that day, girls entered puberty later than they do today (14-16) and tended to get married one to two years later. Life expectancy was short. During that brief period between puberty and marriage a rigid separation of the sexes was mandated by society. A chaperone system that governed, at least the socially prominent female population, was fixed and real. The chief enforcer of sexual separation was usually an unmarried member of the parental generation, perhaps a maiden aunt. No great effort was made to guard the virtue of girls born into the families of peasants. No effort was made to curb the use of prostitutes. A double standard was clearly in place. Males were almost encouraged to act out their sexual prowess as long as they did not compromise the “virginal purity” of the girls of the upper classes. Sexual abstinence prior to marriage for proper young ladies was the standard that fit this world view. Then came the revolution.</p> <p>Democratic patterns smoothed out the class system. Girls began to be welcomed into careers from which they had previously been barred. The need for females to receive higher education then opened, which in turn began to spread significantly the time span between puberty and marriage. Better diet and better health practices began to drive the age for the onset of puberty down. Coeducational schools became the norm, not the exception. The chaperone system all but disappeared. The automobile opened new doors of mobility and privacy. Suddenly we awakened to the realization that we had stretched the time between puberty and marriage from 1-2 years to 10-15 years. Is it reasonable to expect sexual activity to be repressed for so long a period of time? Can moral rules control biology? Is such an expectation natural, healthy, possible or even desirable? The risk of pregnancy was almost totally removed by safe, effective and legally available birth control methods. Suddenly no one was listening to the words out of the old code that basically said only: “Thou shalt not!” If a sexual practice becomes almost universal, does condemning it put you into a dialogue with reality? Or does it simply reduce your voice to the fringes of society? Can a medieval standard live in a modern world in which all the cultural patterns, which undergirded the medieval standard, have disappeared?</p> <p>Is faithfulness to one’s partner in marriage an absolute or is it a relative value? Once again, I share a true story.</p> <p>I once knew a young married couple, who though deeply in love faced a debilitating tragedy. The woman suffered a stroke at age thirty-five, which instantaneously rendered her both paralyzed for life and sexually incompetent. Did that tragedy also serve to end the sexual life of her husband, who was thirty-six? He loved her and he cared for her for a long period of time with both sensitivity and compassion. As the years went by, however, he found himself increasingly resentful and even bitter. He never considered the possibility of separation or divorce. He honored the fact that their marriage vows had been to take each other “for better for worse…in sickness and in health.” Despite his best efforts, however, his relationship with his wife became fragile. Neither had much ability to give to the other what the other needed.</p> <p>Almost by accident, it certainly was not planned, this young husband met a widow who was more than fifteen years his senior. They enjoyed many of the same things, however, and their friendship grew. Ultimately, it became a sexually active relationship. That relationship in turn brought a new dimension to both of their lives. In traditional religious circles, however, this relationship would be condemned as adultery. Even this man’s paralyzed wife seemed to be a beneficiary. Her husband was less resentful, less bitter and thus a far more loving caregiver. The traditional rule of marital faithfulness was violated, but the real issue was whether one should look at this situation through moralistic eyes or life-affirming eyes. Was anyone hurt by this relationship? No one in the triangle of persons made demands on another that could not be met. If the fullness of life is the goal and intention of the traditional moral code, then when this value and that code are in conflict should the fullness of life or the moral code be followed? Must not the rigidity of the law always be set aside in the service of the fullness of life?</p> <p>Another moral debate hinges on the question of suicide. Is it ever right to take one’s own life? No, has been the answer to that question emanating from the Christian Church for centuries. Until very recently, one who committed suicide was not given the privilege of an ecclesiastical funeral. Suicide represented human failure and was thus condemned as sinful. Today, however, physician-assisted suicide is legal in several nations of the world and in some parts of the United States. The debate on this issue rages in our courts, in our legislative assemblies and even in our churches. What has changed?</p> <p>The primary change agent has been modern medicine. Disease after disease has either been defeated or the survival rate has been stretched beyond all conceivable limits. Today life expectancy is twice what it was in the middle Ages. There are, however, some unintended consequences to our medical brilliance. Where is the line between expanding life and just postponing death? When the quality of life is gone and all that remains is a breathing cadaver, is the inability to avail oneself of the release of death a virtue or has it become a vice? Is not the ultimate freedom to which life can aspire the freedom to decide when to bring one’s life to a peaceful end? Do people who are medically determined to be in the final months of their lives have no right to determine how and when they will die? This debate could not have occurred one hundred years ago. When the circumstances of life change, however, must not the rules created to guide us through life also change? Time does make ancient good uncouth.</p> <p>We have only just scratched the surface of the modern debate on ethics, but what we have established is that every rule is ultimately relativized. Does this then mean that we sink into a sea of relativity in which there are no rules, no ultimate standards? I do not think so. The ultimate law of the universe is still, I am convinced, the law of love through which the fullness of life becomes possible. The inescapable question thus becomes how will love be practiced in the circumstances of our very modern world? The burden of freedom with its relentless call to maturity is found in the juxtaposition between life-affirming principals and our existential situations. It is there that modern ethics are born.</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">Nancy Sells from Hendersonville, NC, 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>With all the information available today, why can’t biblical scholars deduce, as you do Bishop Spong, that the New Testament writings are interpretive based on Jewish writings and on traditions? Why don’t they do the comparisons between the Old Testament writings to the writings of the gospel writers</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 Nancy,</p> <p>Thank you for your questions and for being part of that great weekend at the First Congregational Church in Henderson, NC. That church is one of the great congregations in America, made so by a combination of outstanding clergy leadership and the Walter Ashley Lectureship that brings scholarly teachers into that church year after year. It was a privilege for me to be the Walter Ashley lecturer for the fifth time this past fall.</p> <p>The question you ask is so basic. The gospels did not drop from heaven fully written. During the years after the crucifixion (30 CE) and before the first gospel was written (72 CE), the story of Jesus was passed on in the synagogue. During 42 years at a minimum, the memory of Jesus was wrapped inside and interpreted through the Hebrew scriptures. The messianic images of these scriptures were applied to him; the utterances of the Hebrew prophets were used to incorporate Jesus into those utterances. The liturgical life of the synagogue was used to organize the memory of the life of Jesus – so that he was said to have been crucified at the time of the Passover and transfigured at the time of Dedications or Hanukkah. Then Jesus was made to offer harvest parables at the time of Sukkoth, the harvest season of the Jews, to cleanse and heal people at the time of Yom Kippur, to have John the Baptist proclaim the arrival of the Kingdom of God at Rosh Hashanah and to have Jesus deliver the Sermon on the Mount at the time of Shavuot.</p> <p>The gospels were thus never intended to be literal accounts of what Jesus said or did, but interpretive accounts of Jesus told against the background of the life of the synagogue. All Jewish readers of the gospel understood this. When the church became predominantly Gentile, however, around the year 150 CE, biblical literalism entered the picture. To literalize these Jewish scriptures is a Gentile heresy, born in Gentile ignorance.</p> <p>Many parts of the Christian church continue to live in that Gentile ignorance. That is why many Christians do not see these obvious comparisons. Part of what I feel compelled to do is to help people read the gospels through Jewish lenses. That is the major theme of my latest book: <em>Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy</em>. It will be at least another century before the revelation as to how the gospels were intended to be read will fully have won the day. I am confident that it will ultimately prevail. Religious ideas change very slowly, but they do change and they will change.</p> <p>I am glad you are part of this change. Share it.</p> <p>My best,</p> <p>John Shelby Spong <a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage2.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%;"><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="192" style="width: 300px;height: 192px;margin: 0px;border: none;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;line-height: 100%;outline: none;text-decoration: none;text-transform: capitalize;display: inline;" width="300" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/b51b9cf441b059bb232418480/images/bc420875-886…"></a></div> <h2 class="aolmail_null" style="text-align: center;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;"><span style="color:#000000"><span style="font-size:24px">Bishop Spong speaks at Northern Michigan University and St. Paul’s Church</span></span></h2> Bishop Spong will present two public lectures on Saturday, September 13th in Marquette with an afternoon talk from 1 to 3 p.m. at Reynolds Recital Hall and an evening presentation from 7 to 9 p.m. followed by a book signing at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.</div></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr><tr><td align="center" valign="top"> </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_0717faf4-45b7-45cc-9626-ea217f7df911 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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RS-1 as Evangelistic Tool
by Rod Rippel via Dialogue 23 Aug '16

23 Aug '16

Does anyone have any records summaries, statistics, estimates or guesses of how successful RS-1 was as an evangelistic tool (196

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8/18/16, Spong: Charting a New Reformation, Part XXXI– The Ninth Thesis, Ethics (continued)
by Ellie Stock via Dialogue 18 Aug '16

18 Aug '16

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR Charting a New Reformation Part XXXI– The Ninth Thesis, Ethics (continued) Let me review the path we have walked thus far. We have exploded the myth found in the idea that the Ten Commandments or any other ancient code of law has been, or was dictated by God. This insight also proclaims that our laws always arise out of the common experience of the people. We have examined the biblical data, which suggests that the Ten Commandments did not have a single source, but came in three versions born out of different times and circumstances. All three of these versions can be read in the Bible to this day. One has only to examine Exodus 34, Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5. Next we found evidence that this code has been dramatically edited at various points in history, destroying forever the idea that those laws were meant to be either eternal or unchanging. If the commandments have changed in the past, they are surely subject to change in the future. Thus relativity replaces certainty. The claim that we have ever possessed objectivity through the divine revelation of the laws of God becomes hopelessly compromised by every standard we apply. All of these ethical conclusions are startling to those who like to pretend that right and wrong are objective categories and not subjective evaluations. We begin now to explore these rules that we once held in such care and respect. To our dismay, we will discover the obvious fact that there is not a single commandment of the ten that is not itself both time-bound and time-warped. There are none among the “Ten” that cannot be set aside under the stress of human circumstances. Before we seek to find a way to define both good and evil in a post-religious world, we need to spend just a little more time on why the old rules do not work and why we must all become situational ethicists. We begin by doubling back on the content of the commandments themselves. If the moral code is the word or the revelation of God, then who or what is God? Earlier in the series, we noted that the traditional, theistic way of thinking about God as “a being, living externally to this world and equipped with supernatural power,” is no longer a viable option for belief among modern men and women. This God has been slain by the explosion of knowledge. We traced this explosion earlier. Once we discovered the size of the universe we understood immediately that we had now destroyed God’s dwelling place above the sky, rendering this God forever after homeless. Next, when we discovered the laws by which the universe operated, breathtakingly precise as they are, we destroyed most of the things we once suggested that God did. There was no longer any room for either miracle or magic, to say nothing for divine intervention into the realm of the human. In that process, we rendered the theistic God unemployed. God no longer had any work to do. God no longer, for example, was thought to control the patterns of the weather. What the insurance industry still calls “an act of God” is now explained as the result of a weather front, a high or low pressure system or a shift in or a collision of the tectonic plates on which our continents sit. God does not use the weather as a means of divine punishment. With that insight theism began its relentless retreat out of life. Next sickness, once believed to be an expression of God’s judgment on our sins, we discovered had to do with germs and viruses, tumors and cholesterol, coronary occlusions and cardio-vascular accidents. Then we began to realize that those things were not effectively treated by prayer and sacrifices, but by antibiotics, chemotherapy, open heart surgery, radiation and a variety of other physical things. No theistic God was involved directly in human sickness any longer. So then what does it mean to proclaim the reality of this theistic God in the Ten Commandments, saying that God is one and that we are to have no other gods? The words of the first commandment fall quickly into irrelevance. Next, what does it mean to be told not to “make any graven images”? Who among us in the 21st century is tempted to violate this ancient prohibition? The closest modern parallel that I can think of is the fact that some people today still place a statue of the Virgin Mary or perhaps of St. Francis of Assisi in their yards or gardens. While the people who do this might still be superstitious enough to attribute “good luck” to these statues, seldom do these “graven images” become objects of worship to modern people. If I were to list the ten great moral laws of the universe, “making graven images” would certainly not be among the ten. Then we come to the commandment about not taking the name of the Lord in vain. What could that possibly mean today? First, we need to state that this commandment never had anything to do with profanity. You may say, “God damn it,” when you accidentally break a valuable vase on marble counter tops, or “Jesus Christ” when you hit your thumb with a hammer. This language may not be in good taste, it may even be blasphemous as it assumes that we have the right to tell God who or what to damn, but these words, let it be clearly stated, have nothing to do with the commandment about prohibiting us from taking the name of the Lord in vain. What then was that commandment about and is it still relevant in our world today? In the primitive culture of ancient Israel, there were no lawyers to write legal contracts and no courts to enforce the terms of a legal deal. So when a business transaction was agreed to between two people, the two negotiators would clasp hands, or sometimes thighs, and swear in the name of the Lord that they would be true to the bargain to which both had agreed. If later one or the other of them failed to abide by the agreed on terms of this deal, they were guilty of having taken the “name of the Lord in vain.” That was this commandment’s original meaning. Is such a law necessary or appropriate today? The Sabbath, which we are commanded to keep holy by refraining from labor, was, in the Bible, the seventh day of the week, that is, Saturday. The Christian world (except for the Seventh Day Adventists) has, however, long since ceased to observe Saturday as a day for either rest or worship. By what authority, then, did we abandon Saturday for Sunday? There is no divine command in any authoritative source we know of, to justify this shift, but culturally we simply did it. If the Ten Commandments can be ignored whenever we wish, then it is hard to suggest that they have any binding integrity or eternal status. Should parents who are abusive to their children continue to be honored by them? If the statistic is correct that up to forty percent of adult women in America have experienced some kind of sexual molestation as children at the hands of a family member – normally a father or a grandfather– are they still under some obligation to honor their parents? How do we explain the history of war in the western Christian world that still places the commandment: “Thou shalt not Kill,” into its most sacred code? How do we understand the history of anti-Semitism by which Christians justified the killing of Jews from the time of the Church Fathers to the Holocaust? How could the Vatican have launched the crusades of the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries, which were designed to kill “infidels,” which was our name for Muslims, and still proclaim that the commandment not to kill was revealed as the law of God? How were we Christians able to give lip service to the commandment not to kill during the Inquisition, in which heretics were regularly burned at the stake? How were we in the Bible belt of the South able to resist by the filibusters of our senators the passing of an anti-lynching law? Does the commandment not to kill have any force? Are there exceptions to the 7th commandment prohibiting adultery? I was pastor to a woman once who was, unknowingly, married to a homosexual male. She was a school teacher, but because her husband appeared to have no interest in her she began to think that she must be either unattractive or unworthy of male attention. In time she had an affair which served to restore her sense of self-worth. Is adultery always wrong? The commandment against stealing seems so clear, but in Victor Hugo’s great novel, Les Miserables, Jean Valjean steals bread to keep his family alive. Was his stealing a sin or was the sin found in the social system that seemed to grind some people into such poverty that stealing was a survival technique. By what standard do we judge? Is the truth what we must always tell? What if truth is rude: “I had a miserable time at your home this evening and your dinner was inedible.” What if the truth violates another or puts another’s life at risk? What if the truth is cruel and serves no redeeming value? Can the injunction against “bearing false witness” be less than positive – less than life giving? Is desire always bad? Does “keeping up with the Jones’s” have no redeeming value? Are there circumstances in which admiring ends and coveting begins? Where does necessity stop and greed take over? Can any set of laws or rules, even one as ancient and sacred as the Ten Commandments, be invested with any kind of ultimate authority? Does not time alter circumstances and do not circumstances alter rules? When, if ever, does relative truth become unchanging truth? How do human rules become God’s laws? Can the Ten Commandments be the source of death as well as life, the source of evil as well as goodness? On what basis do we determine that good is good and that evil is evil? If it is not on the basis of some absolute standard then to what do we turn in search of ultimate answers? Does relative truth mean no truth? Does relativity in ethics mean no ethics? To those questions we will turn as this series on ethics draws to a close. John Shelby Spong Read the essay online here. Question & Answer Don Haase from Hot Springs Village, Arkansas, writes: Question: Your lectures at Bay View, Michigan, in 2004 and 2008 were life changing for my wife and me. Instead of joining the church alumni association, we are now members of the local Universal Unitarian Church. We have read nearly all of your books and look forward to your weekly emails. I have two questions about biblical names that my local theological mentors haven’t been able to help me with. 1. Why has the English-speaking church stuck with the Greek translation of Jesus’ name rather than the English translation of Joshua? 2. Joshua, Jesus’ namesake from the scriptures, was the epitome of obedience; further there is no mention of Joshua having a wife, nor is there any parental information. Wouldn’t this make Joshua the perfect name for the messiah and perhaps explain the lack of information on the marital state of Jesus? Answer: Dear Don, Thank you for your letter. Our time at Bay View, Michigan, still ranks high in our memories and we still run across friends we met there. I appreciate your bringing that time back to our consciousness. To get to your question the names for Jesus are written in Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew. As you correctly state, Jesus is the English translation of the Greek name for Joshua, which is used in the gospels. I think we continue to use it because it is the direct translation from the gospels. Joshua was the Aramaic spelling of the same name. Yeshuah was the Hebrew spelling; the name, which literally means: “God saves.” There are, however, two Joshua-Jesus figures, not just one, in the Hebrew Scriptures. The first is the well-known successor to Moses to whom you are referring. This Joshua was supposedly the author of the book that bears his name and the military leader for the Hebrew people during the conquest of Canaan. He is probably best known as the one who led the battle of Jericho when the walls came tumbling down. The second Joshua was a high priest, who is referred to in I Zechariah (Chapters 1-8) and who has an experience in which his tattered clothes are replaced with resplendent new vestments, a story that is in the background of the account of Jesus’ transfiguration. This Joshua is also mentioned in Haggai (1:1). There is no doubt that early followers of Jesus saw prototypes of Jesus in both of these Joshuas. I don’t think you can draw any inference, however, from the fact that there is no mention of either of these two Joshuas having a wife. In a patriarchal world, wives were seldom mentioned. I don’t believe that the fact that a wife for Jesus is never mentioned proves that he was not married. Indeed, I believe a case can be made for the fact that Mary Magdalene was his wife, but it is not a conclusive case, only a speculative one. I sought to lay this case out in my book, Born of a woman: A Bishop Rethinks the Virgin Birth and the Place of women in a Male Dominated Church. It is also not true that the Joshua who succeeded Moses reveals no parental information. This Joshua introduces himself as “the son of Nun.” “Nun” is a person’s name and does not mean “the son of none!” So he appears to have had a father. I would also question your suggestion that he was the “epitome of obedience.” I think for us to recognize that the names Joshua and Jesus were identical to the Jews does, however, offer us some new interpretive doors through which to walk. I doubt, however, if this will mean that the name Joshua will replace the name Jesus in our usage. My best, John Shelby Spong Read and Share Online Here Announcements John Shelby Spong challenges the doctrine of the virgin birth, tracing its development in the early Christian church and revealing its legacy in our contemporary attitudes toward women and female sexuality. Click Here to Read More and Purchase Book

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A kind of tribute to David Wood and his favorite piece from Shakespeare St. Crispins Day
by James Wiegel via Dialogue 07 Aug '16

07 Aug '16

Two links, one from Facebook, the other direct https://www.facebook.com/WisconsinPublicTelevision/videos/10153758144436538/ http://wpt.veteranscominghome.org/station_media/feast-crispian/ Jim Wiegel 401 North Beverly Way, Tolleson, Arizona 85353 Tel. 011-623-936-8671 or 011-623-363-3277 jfwiegel(a)yahoo.com www.partnersinparticipation.com "We are no longer living in an era of change. We are living in a change of era." Francis Upcoming public course opportunities click here http://partnersinparticipation.com/?page_id=10 For online registration go to http://www.top-training.net The AZ ToP® Community of Practice meets the 1st Friday, 1-4 pm, starting again on Sept 5th at ACYR, 648 N. 5th Avenue, Phoenix, AZ 85003 AICP Planners: 14.5 CM for all ToP® courses

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Global Buzz - August - Additional content
by ICA International via Dialogue 05 Aug '16

05 Aug '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 August 2016 issue of the Global Buzz Global Buzz Report: August 2016 or copy and paste this URL into your browser's address bar http://globalbuzz.icai-archives.org/7dayreport-16/2016-08-01.php ICAI Communications

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Global Buzz August 2016 Issue
by ICA International via Dialogue 04 Aug '16

04 Aug '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 August 2016 issue of the Global Buzz Global Buzz Report: August 2016 or copy and paste this URL into your browser's address bar http://globalbuzz.icai-archives.org/7dayreport-16/2016-08-01.php ICAI Communications

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8/04/16, Spong: Charting a New Reformation, Part XXX - The Ninth Thesis, Ethics (continued)
by Ellie Stock via Dialogue 04 Aug '16

04 Aug '16

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR Charting a New Reformation Part XXX - The Ninth Thesis, Ethics (continued) We have thus far relativized the mythical claims made for the code by which the people of Israel claimed to live, by noting that even the Bible reveals confusion about the source of the Ten Commandments. These laws clearly grew out of the common life of the people over a long period of time. They did not come down from on high, the revelation of the divine will. They grew over the centuries and were adapted to the new circumstances as their national life changed and developed. That is why there are different versions of these commandments in the biblical text itself. If the people themselves could not agree on the content of the code of law by which they claimed to live, then one knows that one is dealing with a human invention. Once the code is widely accepted, the mythology around it, however, begins to develop. Before pressing more deeply into the meaning of these commandments, I pause for a slight detour into that mythology. To understand this story, we go to the Exodus 20 version, which is closest to what people began to agree culturally constituted the “law of God.” Even in this version, however, the biblical narrative makes it clear that these laws were designed to meet very real human needs. Not one in a thousand people will know this story, but it is in the Bible and has been available to us for hundreds of years. Because it didn’t fit into the developed mythology around the Ten Commandments, however, we have tended to ignore it. If we are to seek to understand what the ultimate ethical demands are by which we can live, if we succeed in charting a new reformation, then it becomes worthwhile to lift this story into our conscious minds. The details are as follows. The Torah with its opening set of Ten Commandments, according to the Bible, actually arose from the suggestions of Moses’ father-in-law, Jethro, who was called in the Exodus story “a priest of Midian.” This man, a kind of elder statesman among the people of Israel, observed Moses acting as the judge, resolving all of the disputes that arose among the people of Israel. As their acknowledged leader, Moses was thought to be the only one who knew the will of God well enough to be capable of judging his people. Only Moses had talked with God face to face on the top of Mt. Sinai, so only Moses could be trusted to interpret the law accurately in human disputes. So Jethro, convinced that Moses could not continue to be the sole judge of Israel, asked Moses to set up a tiered legal system of judges. For every ten members of the nation, he suggested, one man should be appointed judge to settle disputes that arose from within this group of ten. Any problems unable to be solved at the level of ten would then be appealed to the next level – to the judge who served as the decision-maker over a group of a hundred. If the person appointed judge over a hundred could not solve the problem, it would be appealed to the judge who was set up over a group of a thousand. Under this system of tiered decision-making, only those cases which could not be settled at the level of a thousand would come to the attention of Moses. Under this system, judging the disputes of the people would not become an overwhelming task falling on the shoulders of one man, but rather a manageable task, resting on an appellate system. Its weakness, however, lay in its lack of objectivity. By what standard would the judges on each level make their decisions? The will of God needed to be objectively applied, lest subjectivity destroy confidence in both the law and the judge. Moses saw the wisdom in Jethro’s suggestion and so the stage was set for this system to be put in place and for the law of God to be dictated to Moses in objective words that all could follow. Powerful symbols were then employed around this handing down of these “divine” rules. Those symbols included “darkness, clouds, earthquakes and fire.” Mystery abounded. The people were placed into a state of high expectation as they gathered at the foot of what came to be called God’s holy mountain. They were prohibited, on pain of death, from coming too close to the mountain. Only Moses and Aaron, the high priest, who was Moses’ brother, could actually enter into the presence of God. Those who had been chosen as the judges over the people, however, could come part way up the mountain, but only after undergoing elaborate acts of ritualistic cleansing, which set them apart from the rest of the people. While they were not allowed into the literal presence of God, they could still come close enough to be validated in their roles as judges. So with the people aligned in tiers on that mountain according to their authority, with Moses and Aaron alone in God’s presence, God spoke and the Torah was formed. The Ten Commandments were the first part of the Torah and gave voice to the universal principles. Then came the rest of the Torah, designed, as it was, to cover every individual breach that might occur among the people: how to act, how to worship, what was clean and what was unclean, all were covered. The law flowed from God to Moses and Aaron, then to the priests and judges and finally to the people. God’s will for God’s people was thus objectified and written down. Now those who judged the people had to judge them not by their own whims or with their own authority, but by the written law of God. Objectivity banished relativity, for the “Law” was dictated by God and written down for all to see and to read. This provided the people with security, a single standard and with at least the illusion of objectivity. The anxiety created by subjectivity was thus minimized. The power of both truth and the will of God were now contained in written words, objective codes and articulated laws. That was always the way the laws were legitimized in the ancient world. Revelation as the source of truth is always mythological. Codes of law, mythologically attributed to God’s revelation, are always erected to minimize the anxiety of relativity. The fact is, however, that no code has God as its source and no code can or will endure forever. Knowledge changes, experiences expand, interaction with others always challenges the version of truth by which a person or a community lives. How does one balance individual rights against the corporate welfare of the people? How does one define the stranger or even the enemy within one’s gates that the law requires you to love? How does one determine justice when two virtues are in conflict? Remember the story of King Solomon, who was asked to determine who the real mother of a disputed child was? His solution was to draw his sword and to threaten to divide the child into two parts, so that each mother got equal justice! That is sometimes the nature of life. Did not both Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant pray to the same God for victory? How much relativity or situationalism can the average human life manage? The answer is not very much. The ability to have an objective standard of right and wrong, operating in every situation, is a response to authority, not to freedom. The ability to weigh the options presented in a particular set of circumstances requires a level of maturity that most people do not have and cannot embrace. As the world grows more complex, however, that is what is and will be required of us. If the God, defined theistically, is no longer a possibility for modern men and women to embrace, so is every claim that there are objective laws, which express the will of this theistic deity. That being so, then where do we go to determine what is right and good, what is wrong and evil? It can never be an objective code revealed by a theistic deity from any of the symbolic mountain tops, where God is perceived to be speaking directly to you and me. The days of claiming to know the ultimate will of the theistic deity on any subject are over. What then is left as an ethical norm for our times? Are we to be victimized by a code based on might as the ultimate arbiter of right? Is the “golden rule” to be reduced to the cynical, often quoted: “Those who have the gold, rule?” Was Nikita Khrushchev correct when he said that God is always on the side of those who have the biggest army and the most powerful weapons? Or is there another standard that we must seek to discover? St. Augustine is quoted, perhaps apocryphally, as having said that ethical behavior is to be determined by this single assertion: “We are to love God and do whatever we please!” Will that work? Not unless you define very carefully what it means to love God, but perhaps in this statement, we can find a new starting point for ethical conversations. At least we must try. If God is love, as the Epistle of John states, then how does one live out this love? If God’s call to us is to live abundantly then how do we know what abundant life is? If God is the “Ground of Being” then what does it mean to enhance the being of another? Perhaps this is what St. Paul meant when he exhorted us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. (Phil. 2:12). He added that it is “God who is working within us.” God is not a being, external to the world, prepared to invade life from on high to establish the divine will on earth. That claim, so familiar in religious circles, is nothing but an expression of the yearning present in the childhood of our humanity to explain the inexplicable. God is a process into which we live. Life, love and being are the operative words. What actions expand life? What actions increase love? What actions enhance being? That is the arena in which good must ultimately be separated from evil. It will never be found within a code of yesterday. It will always be found in the struggle to live fully, to love beyond the boundaries of our security, in the affirmation found at the depth of our being. Do we then dismiss the great eternal codes of the past? No, but we also do not install them into the status of ultimate and unchanging laws. We do, however, ascribe to them the wisdom of the ages and we give to our ancestors, who codified them, the courtesy of our attention. We now turn to look at the Ten Commandments from this perspective. They will look quite different. John Shelby Spong Read the essay online here. Question & Answer C. Hutcheson via the Internet, writes: Question: I have read and appreciated several of your books and continue to read and ponder your articles. Based on the Twelve Theses that you are developing, I fail to understand what is left of “Christianity” that merits it calling it by that name. I accept the eight Points of Progressive Christianity and do think a reformation is needed. I am an Episcopalian, confirmed in the early 1960s and though I have difficulty with literal interpretations, I do cherish the liturgy, music and message. As a post-graduate in engineering, I respect science; accepting the theories of the “big bang,” evolution, etc. I am also aware of the struggle of the early Christians in reaching an orthodoxy and the later influence of imperial Rome on Christianity. It is the old conflict faith vs. science and I harbor both beliefs leading to a great deal of angst. My inadequate solution is to compartmentalize into rational and spiritual “boxes” to stay calm and carry on. Your Twelve Theses have added weight to one of the “boxes” and increased the angst. Do help me understand if one accepts your Twelve Theses, discounting a God, Jesus, prayer, life after death, etc., why would there be a need to hold on to the term Christianity unless it is as a bridge or point of departure? What remains of Christianity that isn’t already covered in the philosophy of ethics and morality? I am confused. Answer: Dear C. Hutcheson, I suspect you will not be the only person who will respond as your letter indicates you are responding. What I am trying to do in this series is not easy. It also cannot be done in the space allowed for the answer to a question. I am challenging the traditional content that Christians have invested in the symbols of the Christian story. I am not challenging the reality of the Christ experience. I am doing that because that traditional content, as well as its frame of reference, has lost its meaning in the face of an explosion of human knowledge. There is no supernatural being who lives above the sky. There is only the vast expanse of infinite space, filled with galaxies, dark matter and black holes. That definition of God, which postulated such an external deity and was called theism, is what is dying. The question is: “Does God die when a human definition of God dies?” I do not think so. The contemporary God experience, however, requires a new understanding shaped by new words. In this series, I am trying to frame that new understanding and to create those new words. If there is no supernatural being living beyond the sky, then what does it mean to pretend that this God is active in human history? Can prayer actually turn a hurricane out to sea? Can prayer save a person from a plane crash, defend a combatant in warfare or heal a sickness? If there is no supernatural being beyond the sky, can this non-existent deity incarnate the divine self into a human form in order to live among us? Can we still then literalize the details of this incarnate one’s magical entry through the virgin birth or his majestic departure through a cosmic ascension? Once one removes the concept of God as a supernatural being, the whole superstructure of traditional Christianity begins to crumble before our eyes. Denying this reality does not make it less so. If you have identified Christianity with this dated portrait or theological construction, then you are right, there is nothing of great value remaining. I believe, however, that God is real, that God can be encountered in human life, that when we transcend the limits of our humanity, we do enter a new level of consciousness in which the divine and the human flow together as one. I do believe that this God experience can be understood in new words, that God in fact was in Christ, that human life can touch and enter that which is eternal. What I am seeking to do in this series, which I have entitled, Charting a New Reformation, is to spell out how these real God experiences can be talked about in the language of the 21st century. So what is left? A faith that makes contact with my heart and mind without playing the game called “Let’s pretend,” is what is left. It is, however, not the game that organized Christianity generally continues to play as it fades today into irrelevance. Will it work? Can I succeed in this task? Time alone will answer that. If we do not make this effort, will Christianity somehow still survive? I do not believe there is a chance. So I invite you to enter the debate. The series is far from over. The struggle goes on, but I believe “A New Christianity for a New World” is still a goal worth seeking with all my heart. John Shelby Spong Read an 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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Failure is an Option
by Len Hockley via Dialogue 03 Aug '16

03 Aug '16

Amazing TED Radio Hour's secular version of "Religious Studies I" in a nutshell at: http://www.npr.org/…/ted-rad…/487606750/failure-is-an-option <http://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/487606750/failure-is-an-option> <http://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/487606750/failure-is-an-option> "Failure is a part of all of us." - Lidia Yuknavitch

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