October 2017 - 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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10/26/17, Wolsey/Spong/Dowd:Theological Violence toward the Divine Feminine: Praying for an end to Rape Culture; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 26 Oct '17

26 Oct '17

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR Theological Violence toward the Divine Feminine: Praying for an end to Rape Culture Rev. Roger Wolsey If you have a Facebook account you are no doubt abundantly aware by now of the “Me too” campaign that has been taking place. It’s a powerful way for women to convey to the world that they have been the victim of sexual harassment or sexual assault at the hands of men. It is quite clear that nearly all women have experienced either of those – some on a daily basis. They’re trying to show us the great extent of this problem by simply posting “Me too.” My initial response was simply this: “I believe you and it’s not OK.” But as I’ve pondered this more, it occurs to me that there is a direct correlation with men’s violence toward women with the theologies purveyed and adopted many men – a theology that commits violence against the feminine Divine – to the point of relegating it to invisibility, obscurity, and outright non-existence. Note: many women subscribe to such misogynist theologies – as unwitting victims and purveyors of their own internalized oppression. It should be obvious that if a major swath of society embrace no feminine aspect of God, then this leads to a minimizing of the status and role of women in the world – and their essential worth. Such results include glass ceilings, discrimination, and harassment in the workplace; glass ceilings, discrimination, and harassment in the domestic home life; and glass ceilings, discrimination, and harassment in religion. As a religion that emerged from several patriarchal cultures, Christianity has a long history of ill treatment of women in too many quarters of the Church. It seems to me that one of the things that many of the parts of the Church share in common is familiarity with, and use of, the Lord’s Prayer. I suggest that that prayer is due for a software update. Let’s face it, the world has changed. That is, understanding of it has changed – and how we perceive things – is reality for humans. For the first few centuries of Christianity, many people believed in a cosmology that had a 3-tiered universe; i.e., one where Heaven was (literally) above us. Earth is where we dwell now. And below us, for unfortunate souls, a (literal) Hell. That view no longer makes sense to most people in the 21st century. We know that pretty much every point in the universe can claim to be “the center” of the universe. And we know that there isn’t any literal heaven “above” the earth – as we know the earth isn’t flat, but round, and that every point on the earth can claim to be “the center” of the earth. Every point that is “above” every point on the earth is equally “above”; and every point in the universe can claim to be “the center.” We adapted our views of reality based upon new information, needs and circumstances. Similarly, there are over 38,000 different Christian denominations and none of them are exactly the same as the way the early Christians practiced their faith – nope, none of them. Indeed, each of those denominations wouldn’t even exist today if they hadn’t adapted and evolved along with the changing times. Christianity of most every stripe is waning in the Western nations. This is largely due to many people mistakenly thinking that conservative evangelicalism or fundamentalism are the only forms of Christianity out there (many have never heard of progressive Christianity) — and they are rejecting the supernatural theism and substitutionary theories of the atonement that go with them — that is, they reject the notion of a magical, specifically male, god who lives in the sky who we should fear and who punishes us to hell if we don’t believe that Jesus’ death on the cross is what saves people’s souls. People today experience God just as keenly out in nature as they do in Church — increasingly, even more so. People today know that no one religion has a monopoly on all of the truth. People today know that God is just as present within and among us, as God is transcendently beyond us (panentheism). People today know that God isn’t a boy – they know that Spirit is both (and neither) male and female — and beyond. People today know that theology is poetry – and that it provides meaning – not facts. Finally, people today realize that human-aggravated global warming is a very real and present danger and that taking care of the earth and our environment is a deeply spiritual matter – and that it’s part of being faithful to God. With all of this in mind, it seems to me that the single most important thing that could help Christianity to become more relevant and viable to today’s people who are increasingly wary of it and off-put by it — would be to adapt the Lord’s Prayer. It’s already the case that there is no one “correct” version of it. Some of us say, “and forgive us our trespasses” — others say “debts”, and others say “sins.” Some add “and ever” after most of us say forever. Moreover, none of the liturgical versions of the Lord’s prayer are exactly the same wording as the (varying) wordings that Jesus taught his disciples to pray according to the various gospels. And, it should go without saying, that Jesus didn’t speak in King James English and that he never uttered a “which art”, “thy,” or “thou.” We’ve been changing the tune, and the wording of it, since the get-go. Specifically, I would like to suggest that congregations adapt the Lord’s prayer such that it adds a few, specific, words – see bold: Our Father and Mother who dwells in Heaven and Earth, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Help us to avoid temptation and deliver us from evil, for Yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen. In this version, I’ve changed “Lead us not into temptation” to “help us to avoid temptation” – as that just plain makes more sense. God doesn’t lead us into temptation – we do that ourselves. Some might wish to change kingdom (seems antiquated) to “kin-dom” or “beloved community.” I tend to favor going with the literal translation of the Greek baselia – “empire” – as it helps point out the subversive nature of following Jesus that goes against the claims to power of worldly empires. I realize that some may wish to jettison the parental imagery altogether, yet to the extent that there is an essential goodness in maintaining some aspect of traditional lineage and metaphors, the two primary changes that I’m suggesting are the inclusion of “and Mother” (which many congregations are already doing) and “and Earth.” Those two changes alone would help billions of people realize that our faith is seeking to remain viable and relevant. Over half of the people on the planet are female and any Christian leader today jolly well better acknowledge that. If there’s an Abba, there’s an Ama. Long gone are the days when one could say “but male words such as he and his are ‘gender neutral in English’ and therefore women (and men) shouldn’t have a problem with seeing the Divine only referred to with male terminology.” I’m sometimes asked by college student’s “Is God actually genderless?” I respond saying that I think there’s something to be said for the Divine feminine & the Divine masculine. Certain other world religions embrace both of those energies and seek to foster and tap into each. Our Jewish friends embrace the Divine feminine through the concept of shekina and also el Shaddai – literally, “the breasted one. That said, as Christians we also embrace the notion that “in Christ there is no east or west, male or female, slave or free, Jew or Greek,… for all are one.” If we’re all one, and if God is immanent within each of us, when we harass or assault one another – we harass and assault God. May those who have ears to hear, hear; and eyes to see, see. And may those who are willing say, “Me too” to needed evolution of our theological language. Shalom, Salaam, Peace. Namaste. Amen and Amin. Blessed Be. ~ Rev. Roger Wolsey p.s. I refer to God as She and Her about as frequently as I do as He and His/Him in my book “Kissing Fish” It is handicapping for English to not have a gender neutral pronoun. Sometimes, I think it might be a good idea to refer to God as “Y’allweh.” This has the added benefit of reminding us of the Trinity – the relational aspects of the Divine.) About the Author Rev. Roger Wolsey is an ordained United Methodist pastor who directs the Wesley Foundation at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and is author of Kissing Fish: christianity for people who don’t like christianity Read the essay online here. Question & Answer A Reader from the Internet asks: Question: After reading your essay, “The Way Home for the Prodigal Species,” last week, I was left with a desire for further clarification. What would you say is the heart of your message — the essence of what you’re sharing with secular and religious audiences these days? Answer: The Rev. Michael Dowd Dear Reader, We are living in a time of unprecedented evil, yet we don’t see it; we can’t see it. Not only has industrial civilization lost the ability to distinguish good and evil, we typically confuse the two and casually treat things that are downright anti-future as good. Q: Wow, that’s a bold claim. Can you give some examples of things that are accepted and standard today that you actually regard as evil? As I said in my essay, it is not just immoral, it is evil to pursue one's own short-term personal or institutional gain in ways that diminish or destroy the long-term future. Here are some examples… * It is evil to use renewable resources faster than they can be replenished. * It is evil to use nonrenewable resources in ways that harm and rob future generations. * It is evil to introduce substances into the environment that are not food for some other life form. * It is evil to alter the climate and devastate habitats in ways that drive millions of other species to extinction. All these things, and more, are patently anti-future and thus evil. Yet religion — the one institution charged with the responsibility of naming as “good” that which promotes personal wholeness, social coherence, and ecological integrity, and as “evil” that which diminishes or destroys the same — is asleep at the wheel. Why? Anthropocentric idolatry. To speak religiously, if measuring progress and success in human-centered ways casts us out of the Garden, measuring progress and success in Gᴏᴅᴅᴇ-centered (bio-centric or eco-centric) ways is our way home. My mentor Thomas Berry regularly reminded us that “The universe is primary; humans are derivative.” In mythic language, “Reality rules—i.e., Gᴏᴅ is Lord” That’s a fact, not a belief. When we honor primary reality as primary — as more important than us — our species can thrive. But when human wellbeing is put ahead of the health of the air, water, soil, forests, and life, we ensure the condemnation not only of our grandchildren but of generations centuries to come. It turns out that the Judgment Day is real; it’s just not otherworldly. Q: Can you offer any hope? Surely! Those of us who sacrifice our privilege, power, and conveniences today for the sake of future generations may be revered not reviled. To my mind, that’s what being a Christ-ian means. It’s got nothing to do with “believing in” ancient miracles and supernatural entities so that I get to avoid everlasting torment and go to some special place when I die. It’s got everything to do with whether I continue living in an anti-future (anti-Christian) way, or whether I choose to follow Jesus and live with a commitment to save the future and thereby redeem humanity. ~ The Rev. Michael Dowd ********* Deep Sustainability Resources Click here for links to text and audio files ... William R. Catton, Jr.: Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change Tom Wessels: The Myth of Progress: Toward a Sustainable Future William Ophuls: Immoderate Greatness: Why Civilizations Fail; Plato’s Revenge; Sane Polity John Michael Greer: The Long Descent; Dark Age America; Not the Future We Ordered; The Retro Future; Collapse Now and Avoid the Rush; After Progress Richard Heinberg: The End of Growth; Afterburn: Society Beyond Fossil Fuels; A New Covenant with Nature Nate Hagens: Youtube — Blindspots and Superheroes; Guide to Being Human in the 21st Century Thomas Berry: The Dream of the Earth; The Great Work; The Universe Story (w/ Swimme); The Christian Future and the Fate of Earth Joanna Macy: Active Hope; Coming Back to Life; World as Lover, World as Self Bron Taylor: Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future James Howard Kunstler: The Long Emergency; Too Much Magic Robin Wall Kimmerer: Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants David Fleming: Surviving the Future; Lean Logic: A Dictionary for Surviving the Future The Dark Mountain Project: Walking on Lava: Selected Works for Uncivilized Times Richard Adrian Reese: Sustainable or Bust; Understanding Sustainability Michael & Joyce Huesemann: Techno Fix: Why Technology Won’t Save Us or the Environment Charles A.S. Hall: Energy Return on Investment; Energy and the Wealth of Nations (w/ Klitgaard) Read and share online here About the Author The Rev. Michael Dowd is a bestselling evolutionary storyteller, eco-theologian, and pro-future evangelist whose work has been featured in The New York Times, LA Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Newsweek, Discover, and on television nationally, including CNN, ABC News, and even FOX News. His book, Thank God for Evolution: How the Marriage of Science and Religion Will Transform Your Life and Our World, was endorsed by 6 Nobel Prize-winning scientists, noted skeptics and atheists, and by dozens of religious leaders across the theological spectrum. Michael and his science writer, evolutionary educator, and fellow climate activist wife, Connie Barlow, have spoken to more than 2,200 groups throughout North America since April 2002. A former pastor and sustainable communities organizer, Rev. Dowd has delivered two TEDx talks and a program at the United Nations. His commitment to the legacy-work of his colleagues has resulted in two online conversation series: “The Advent of Evolutionary Christianity,” and “The Future Is Calling Us to Greatness,” and recording nearly 1,500 hours of, what he calls, “deep sustainability scripture.” Dowd’s passion for proclaiming a pro-science message of inspiration — what he calls “the gospel of right relationship to Reality” — has earned him the moniker Rev. Reality, as he speaks prophetically in secular and religious settings about our sacred responsibility to future generations. Videos of his most popular sermons and longer programs can be found here. His and Connie’s 2017-18 itinerary can be found here. __________________________________________________ Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited The Bible, Corporal Punishment and Human Guilt - Part 4 Is it accident, coincidence or strange fate that Christianity has managed to preside over centuries of history in which physical punishment has been the primary means of discipline in so many parts of our society? Or is there something within the Christian story itself that pushes us toward abusive behavior? These are the questions to which our study of biblically justified corporal punishment now drives us. The idea of God as a punishing, heavenly parent figure is certainly present in the heart of the Christian story, though originally it was not nearly so prevalent or rampant as Church history and practice might lead us to believe. The picture of God as the judge assigning people to the eternity of hell with its ever-burning flames is surely found in the gospels, but it was never a major theme. It is not mentioned in Paul or in John. It is introduced to the New Testament by Mark by having Jesus say that if any part of one's body - the hand, the foot or the eyes - causes that person to sin, then that body part must be removed lest the whole body go to the unquenchable fires of Gehenna or hell (Mk. 9:43-48). A 3rd century Christian theologian of enormous influence, named Origen, took this Marcan text quite seriously and had himself castrated. Origen never revealed just how it was that his male organ caused him to sin! Matthew is the only New Testament writer who gives hell more than a single reference. Yet the uncontested idea that permeates the Christian story as it enters history is that human beings are fallen, baseborn and in need of rescue, and without that rescue they are doomed. How punishment is to be dispensed properly is a major Christian theme. If one begins with the definition of human life as a fallen creature who deserves punishment, then the system will surely develop a cure for that diagnosis. That is what has happened in the way the Christian story has been told historically, so the need for punishment entered the tradition and found a compatible dwelling place. The way the Hebrew myth of creation, which opens the Bible, was interpreted in Christian history served to place this definition of human evil squarely into the Christian arena. That story was traditionally understood to say that human beings are not what God intended. We are fallen, willfully disobedient sinners who deserve divine wrath. Listen again to that story. In the beginning God created a perfect world, but human life, endowed with the unique qualities of freedom and self-consciousness, disobeyed God and plunged God's perfect world into sin and evil. In that fall, the definition of human distortion and depravity developed. Not only were we fallen, but we also had no power to rescue ourselves from these self-inflicted wounds. Even our attempt at virtue only exacerbated our sense of being separated. As direct descendants of Adam and Eve, we bear the stains of their disobedience as our birthright. The sin of the fall showed up in the biblical narrative time after time. It was seen when Cain killed Abel (Gen.4:8), when people decided to build a tower so high it could reach into heaven where they might be restored to God (Gen. 11), in the story of the flood in which every living creature on the earth except for the righteous Noah and his family was destroyed (Gen.7,8). Presumably given the sense that God is just, human beings must have merited that destruction. Yet even that divine effort to eradicate the evil so endemic to human life failed. The Bible says that it was manifested in Noah's drunkenness after he disembarked from his boat (Gen.9: 20). Next the Bible says that God intervened to give people the law (Exodus ff.), to raise up prophets and finally to enter human history in the person of Jesus, who was understood to be the divine life who accomplished the rescue by paying the full price of human sin with his death on Calvary. The operative assumption in the biblical story is that human life is flawed; that this flaw is the source of evil; that only God can save so evil a creature and that the price of that salvation is costly indeed. It involves punishment even if it is done vicariously. To know oneself, according to the way the Bible has generally been read, is to know that one is evil, to experience guilt and finally to stand in need of punishment. I want to return now to the biblical story of our beginnings as a human species to examine the definition of human life as fallen and sinful that is found there. As the tradition developed this founding myth was seen as an attempt to explain adequately aspects of the human experience and to answer human yearnings. Why am I not content to be who I am? Why do I seek more? Why am I inadequate? Why do I experience guilt and jealousy? Why am I separated from God? Why am I victimized by sickness and pain and ultimately, why am I mortal? Why do I die? Accepting the reality of the human fall from God's grace, religious leaders began to organize the world so that human beings would recognize the necessity for our punishment and the human need constantly to implore God to save us, to rescue us from our sins and to redeem us. The stated goal of the Christian life was to live forever in that divine presence from which our ancestors had been banished in the Garden of Eden. Proper punishment for our sins thus becomes the prerogative of the heavenly parent and was necessary if we hoped to achieve our goal. Moderate suffering here and now was a blessing to be endured as necessary, if sinful people wished to avoid eternal suffering in the world to come. To state it bluntly, human beings were taught to understand themselves as the children of God who deserved God's punishment. Though most of the educated people of the world now dismiss this biblical story of Adam, Eve and the Garden, with its interpretation of human origins, as a myth not to be literalized, that story has nonetheless continued to set the tone of the way our religious systems relate to human life in our world. Christianity, in both its Catholic and Protestant forms, has been constructed around its presumed unique ability to deliver forgiveness and thus to rescue hopeless, lost sinners. Enhancing guilt thus became the necessary prerequisite for the maintenance of institutional power once the Church had convinced the world that it was the sole place through which the gift of forgiveness was obtainable. Auricular confession, required as one of the seven sacraments, kept guilt ever visible in each human life. The minute ecclesiastical rules with their emphasis on such things as days of solemn obligation and the prescribed set of inescapable religious duties made guilt inevitable and thus proper punishment from God mediated through the Church as penances became the essential means of salvation. The power of religious guilt is hard to overestimate. In Protestant Christianity the sense of human depravity was portrayed perhaps even more graphically. Human life was denigrated by the revival preachers as wretched, miserable, worm-like and hopeless so that the glorious grace of the rescuing deity could be more fully appreciated. When the 18th century Protestant revival in America known as 'the Great Awakening' swept across American life, led by the noted Massachusetts evangelist, Jonathan Edwards, it was ignited by his portrait of God, dangling sinners by the singed hairs of their heads over the fiery pits of hell. It was preaching designed to elicit a proper confession and to win a full rescue. The head of the evangelical Moody Bible Institute in Chicago repeated the mantra of his religious conversion in a radio broadcast with me some years ago, as he stated this theme of depravity over and over again: "The one thing I know is that I stand condemned before the throne of grace." The power found in the phrase "Jesus died for my sins," used in some form almost every Sunday in evangelical circles, is located in this same source of our human depravity. We, though the children of God, are disobedient children who deserve to be punished. This was the 'Word of God' heard regularly from the Church. Human beings in both Catholic and Protestant Christianity were defined as deserving sinners, standing in need of punishment. A righteous heavenly parent figure was presented as the judge prepared to be the disciplinarian. That message is at the heart of Christianity, which makes it easy to understand why the sinful child standing before the parent prepared to apply corporal punishment is so neat a fit in Christian history. We raised our children with a style modeled after our understanding of how God was relating to us. That is also how violence and an unconscious sado-masochism entered the Christian story, causing a major religious emphasis to be the neurotic need to suffer. To that story we turn next week as the next segment in this section on "The Bible, Corporal Punishment and Human Guilt" unfurls. ~ John Shelby Spong Originally published July 7, 2004 Announcements Moving Beyond Life’s Hurts Starting October 30th, this e-course is a collaborative venture with Spirituality & Practice and Sage-ing International to guide us on a restorative, enlivening journey. It consists of 12 emails — one every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for four weeks — each providing reflective tools and support for focusing on such topics as: – The role of life review – Reframing the past with current wisdom – What to do about regrets – Forgiving self and others – Healing painful memories and relationships Click here for more information/registration

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Re: [Dialogue] [Oe List ...] movie conversation
by Ellie Stock 23 Oct '17

23 Oct '17

In the PC(USA), our son's church in the Cleveland, OH area just became a sanctuary church. PC(USA) church we attend since retirement is an open, welcoming, becoming more diverse congregation, with multifaceted local outreach to the community--racial justice, food justice, environment, transition from prison ministry, girl scouts, fair trade, minimum wage, etc. Ellie elliestock(a)aol.com -----Original Message----- From: George Holcombe via OE <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> To: Mr. Marshall Jones <synergi(a)yahoo.com>; James Wiegel via OE <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> Cc: George Holcombe <geowanda1(a)me.com>; ICA Dialogue Dialogue <ica-dialogue(a)igc.topica.com> Sent: Sun, Oct 22, 2017 5:45 pm Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] movie conversation Good go Marshall, should be an interesting and promising event. My take on the UMC is that it went off the rails a while back by adopting a business model, more members - more money, disguised behind the notion of making disciples. Unfortunately, few had any real training in what the Xian faith was all about. Fortunately, there are clergy and congregations striving to live the faith. We have a growing number of reconciling congregations in the Austin area (plus several sanctuary congregations) and some clergy and laity who are making quite a witness. Sadly the Bishops and “leaders” with a few exceptions are lagging and tied to a failing model. We have a Presbyterian church in our neighborhood, St. Andrews, Jim Rigby, pastor, who currently houses an immigrant family and is inclusive. Let us know how the conversation comes out. George Holcombe geowanda1(a)me.com "Whatever the problem, community is the answer. There is no power greater than a community discovering what it cares about." Margaret Wheatley On Oct 20, 2017, at 12:20 PM, W. J. via OE <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote: Sometimes, even after we're been put out to pasture, the old guard is called upon to teach our tried and true old stuff to a new crowd. So here's my latest simplified take on how to structure a movie conversation--boiled down from the Golden Pathways, but with a few updates ("Where did you see transformation in the movie?"). Turns out there wasn't anything this simple in the archives that I could find. So tonight I'm facilitating a planning/screening group that will develop a film discussion series for a local church. Given that it's a UMC--with all the angst and cultural warfare that's been swamping us--the topic will be 'human sexuality.' Next Wednesday we kick off the series with a screening of An Act of Love. Here's the key conversation questions I came up with (for Methodists who are moved to show the film): What for you was the key human issue in the film? (get a variety of answers from across the group) What triggered the underlying conflict in this church? What was this conflict really about? (push for deeper insights here) How was the conflict handled or not handled by the conference leadership? How did you respond emotionally to the film? What emotions did you notice? Did you feel sleepy? wide awake? distracted? uncomfortable? upset? bored? relaxed? on the edge of your seat? or what? What in the film made you feel that way? Where did you notice the group's emotional response? How would you be a reconciling presence in Frank Shaefer's church? Imagine that you are the bishop. As a minister of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:18), what would you say to the members of this church who were opposed to Frank Shaefer? As a bishop, how would you honor a rule in the Discipline with which you fundamentally disagree? (incongruence/paradox/double bind) Where did you see transformation in the film? Where did you see hope in the film? Where did you see Divine Activity (or the work of the Holy Spirit) happening in the film? What do you see as Frank Shaefer's true calling? What did he discover about God's intention for him? What have you realized about your true calling? What has deepened your understanding of your true calling? An Act of Love Film "An Act of Love" (2015) is an award-winning documentary about Rev. Frank Schaefer and the divisions in... Marshall _______________________________________________ OE mailing list OE(a)lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net _______________________________________________ OE mailing list OE(a)lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net

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10/19/17, Spong/Michael Dowd:The Way Home for the Prodigal Species; Vosper; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 19 Oct '17

19 Oct '17

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR The Way Home for the Prodigal Species The Rev. Michael Dowd “Human society is inextricably part of a global biotic community, and in that community human dominance has had and is having self-destructive consequences.” ~ William R. Catton, Jr. “The most difficult transition to make is from an anthropocentric to a bio-centric norm of progress. If there is to be any true progress, then the entire life community must progress. Any progress of the human at the expense of the larger life community must ultimately lead to a diminishment of human life itself.” ~ Thomas Berry * * * Here is a short story. The theme: how human-centeredness alienated us from primary reality (Gᴏᴅ) and how ecology — the interdisciplinary study of the way, the truth, and the life of the living biosphere — can lead us home. We begin by taking stock of our species’ situation. After centuries of profligate living, we have exceeded what ecologists call the carrying capacity of the biosphere. We have extracted more resources and exuded more wastes than Nature can sustainably provide and process. Overshoot is the ecological term for our species’ predicament, and nothing in heaven or on Earth can spare us from the troubles ahead. We know this because Reality has revealed it through evidence. By dishonoring material grace limits, we have made a Great Reckoning inevitable. In the words of Robert Louis Stevenson, “Sooner or later we all sit down to a banquet of consequences.” The Great Reckoning will be experienced as bad news by most of us alive this century. It is, however, soul nourishing to remember that a roll-back of the human imprint on Earth’s ecologies will be good news for other species — and eventually for ours, too. That turn will be the Great Homecoming. After squandering a multi-billion-year inheritance, the prodigal species will come home to Reality, humbly returning to the community of life of which we are part and upon which we depend. The vital — indeed, essential — key to this turn is that we will have learned to measure progress and success in bio-centric and eco-centric (Reality/Gᴏᴅ-centered) terms. Our descent into species narcissism will be a harsh memory, a clear warning, while stories of collective repentance and atonement become the bright new myths. Reality Is GOD “The most profound insight in the history of humankind is that we should seek to live in accord with reality. Indeed, living in harmony with reality may be accepted as a formal definition of wisdom. If we live at odds with reality (foolishly), we will be doomed. But if we live in proper relationship with reality (wisely), we shall be saved. Humans everywhere, and at all times, have had at least a tacit understanding of this fundamental principle. What we are less in agreement about is how we should think about reality and what we should do to bring ourselves into harmony with it.” ~ Loyal Rue “Reality is that which, when you stop believing it, doesn’t go away.” ~ Philip K. Dick * * * Words create worlds and worldviews shape human behavior, individually and collectively. Sometimes a single word or redefinition of an existing one can help usher in a new concept or paradigm that shifts how we see and experience reality. The new way of seeing solves problems the previous paradigm couldn’t because it transcends and includes the older way of seeing. I suggest that Gᴏᴅ (small caps) or perhaps Godde (pronounced God, yet spelled the Old English, gender-neutral way, as some Roman Catholic nuns and others already do) may offer just such a reframe and fresh way of perceiving reality. Divinity, of course, is the Universe+, Time and Nature+, the Biosphere+. Plus what? Plus, at the very least, an authoritative voice! Plus whatever transcendent beliefs about ultimate reality a person may already hold. After all, any God who merely transcends time and nature is less than a God who includes (i.e., is revealed or incarnate within) time and nature. Worse, a transcendent-only notion of the divine has over the past 500 years resulted in an Earth bereft of respect, bereft of honor, bereft of devotion — and therefore inevitably stripped and assaulted. Imaging Gᴏᴅ, or primary reality, as unnatural rather than undeniable has led us to overshoot Earth’s carrying capacity, or grace limits, and thereby betray future generations. A limited and ultimately impotent notion of the divine is directly responsible, I suggest, for the demonic, anti-future economic system that now dominates human affairs. Demonic economic system? Yes, but I’ll say more about that shortly. I first need to emphasize that the issue of what we call, and how we regard, primary reality (i.e., everything that is necessary for our existence and wellbeing) is far from trivial. The name we choose influences, and possibly even determines, whether or not our way of life will be sustainable. The I-It, “Man, Conqueror of Nature,” relationship we have forged in recent centuries clearly is not. In contrast, I-Thou relating to primary reality fosters a mutually enhancing human–Earth relationship. As Thomas Berry was fond of saying, “The environment is not our surroundings, it’s our source.” Our name (or names) for primary reality — our living creator, sustainer, and end — dictates the health or sickness of our relationship to that which brought us into existence, nourishes and supports us, and receives us when we die. Naming may also determine whether we live in a pro-future or anti-future way, and whether we can even distinguish good and evil. “God,” of course, means different things to different people in different traditions. By offering nuanced spellings — Gᴏᴅ or Godde — the meaning I intend is this: Reality with a personality, not a person outside reality. What is gained by spelling Gᴏᴅ with small capital letters or by going back to a spelling left behind some 600 years ago? Just this: an opportunity for each of us to nurture a personal relationship to the Nature part of Nature+, not just the + or transcendent aspect. Consider the words of James Hillman, one of the more influential psychologists of the past half-century: “Loving is a way of knowing and for love to know, it must personify. Personifying is thus the heart’s mode of knowing. It is not a lesser, primitive way of apprehending, but a finer one. To enter myth we must personify. To personify carries us into myth.” Nothing, I would argue, is more consequential than how we think of primary reality. Why? Because it matters, ultimately, whether our relationship to the biosphere is characterized by humility or hubris! As renowned systems thinker Gregory Bateson warned decades ago: “If you put God outside and set him vis-a-vis his creation, and if you have the idea that you are created in his image, you will logically and naturally see yourself as outside and against the things around you. And as you claim all mind to yourself, you will see the world around you as mindless and therefore not entitled to moral or ethical consideration. The environment will seem to be yours to exploit. Your survival unit will be you and your people against the environment of other social units, other races, and the brutes and vegetables. If this is your estimate of your relation to nature and you have an advanced technology, your likelihood of survival will be that of a snowball in hell. You will die either of the toxic by-products of your own hate or simply of overpopulation and overgrazing.” Anthropocentrism Is Idolatry “The world we live in is an honorable world. To refuse this deepest instinct of our being, to deny honor where honor is due, to withdraw reverence from divine manifestation, is to place ourselves on a head-on collision course with the ultimate forces of the universe. This question of honor must be dealt with before any other question. We miss both the intrinsic nature and the magnitude of the issue if we place our response to the crises of our planet on any other basis. It is not ultimately a political or economic or scientific or psychological issue. It is ultimately a question of honor. Only the sense of the violated honor of Earth and the need to restore this honor can evoke the understanding and energy needed to carry out the renewal of the planet in any effective manner. ” ~ Thomas Berry * * * The core of my message is simple and can be expressed in both secular and religious ways. In secular language it sounds like this: Primary reality is primary; human-centeredness is self-terminating. Said religiously: Ecology is the heart of theology; anthropocentrism is idolatry. Idolatry is nothing so trivial as bowing down to statues or worshipping the wrong god. Idolatry is maintaining an unreal notion of Gᴏᴅ, one not inclusive of — indeed, synonymous with — that which is necessarily and inescapably real. In contrast, an eco-theological or ecosophia perspective encourages lifeways that respect the integrity of the soil, forests, water, and life that in turn give us life. We naturally live as a blessing to posterity. Human-centeredness is idolatry because it excludes all but a smidgen of reality from matters of ultimate concern. It fosters hubris rather than humility. Anthropocentrism is idolatry because it makes the entire universe little more than a stage upon which the human drama plays out. Therein lies the danger. Surely, one reason the ancients warned so vociferously against idolatry is because human-centeredness is an insanity our kind cannot survive; it is inherently anti-future. As Edward Goldsmith details in The Way: An Ecological Worldview, every sustainable culture that we know of held three things in common: (1) they related to primary reality in a humble, indeed mythic, I-Thou way; (2) they treated the Biosphere+ as the source of all benefits and thus the source of all real and lasting wealth; and (3) they embraced as a sacred responsibility preservation of the health and wellbeing of the body of life and “critical order of the cosmos.” In other words, Gᴏᴅ first! permeated every aspect of culture. The way home for the prodigal species is to return to this deep and profound intimacy with the living world+. Why Good People Engage in Great Evil “For the present to have meaning, it must see the past as legacy and the future as bequest. What makes societies great is not conquest or consumption but their dedication to something grander then themselves.” ~ William Ophuls “We are talking only to ourselves. We are not talking to the rivers. We are not listening to the wind and the climate. Most of the disasters that are happening now are a consequence of that spiritual autism.” ~ Thomas Berry When we trivialize primary reality as an otherworldly clockmaker (Creator) outside a clockwork cosmos (Creation), we contribute — albeit unintentionally — to our species’ demise. When Gᴏᴅ is either dead or otherworldly, doing evil is almost guaranteed. It is not just immoral, it is evil to irreparably harm the future for short-term personal or institutional gain. Yet we have a global economic system, supported by governments on every continent and accepted by adherents of every faith, ensuring that it is not only legal to betray posterity; it’s profitable - highly profitable. This is precisely what history teaches: when religion fails, greed reigns and economics becomes demonic. Good and evil is discerned, at the very least, by this: how the actions of an individual or group impact the larger community and how those impacts ripple into the future. At the extremes, that which consistently leads to personal wholeness, social coherence, and ecological integrity is good, and that which harms or endangers personal wholeness, social coherence, and ecological integrity is evil. Granted, shades of gray take up a large swath in between — but if we lose the scale, we lose our bearings. Unsustainable, after all, is just a bland and deceptive word for evil. Our global, industrial-growth economy rewards the few at the expense of the many, measures progress by how fast resources can be turned into waste, and seduces billions to betray the future just by pursuing ‘the good life’. Is this not collective madness? Is this not, in truth, demonic? Let us now repent of our human-centeredness and return to Gᴏᴅ. The Great Work of our time is to do whatever it takes to bring forth an economic system that embodies the wisdom of ecology. First and foremost we must shed our addiction to fossil fuels. Rebuilding topsoil, restoring forests, recovering wetlands — returning to balance becomes our sacred duty. The Great Work is a time for letting go of extravagances, for re-localizing, and for rekindling the simple joys of living within the grace limits of this planet. We are the prodigal species, and this is our way home. ~ The Rev. Michael Dowd Read the essay online here. About the Author The Rev. Michael Dowd is a bestselling evolutionary storyteller, eco-theologian, and pro-future evangelist whose work has been featured in The New York Times, LA Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Newsweek, Discover, and on television nationally, including CNN, ABC News, and even FOX News. His book, Thank God for Evolution: How the Marriage of Science and Religion Will Transform Your Life and Our World, was endorsed by 6 Nobel Prize-winning scientists, noted skeptics and atheists, and by dozens of religious leaders across the theological spectrum. Michael and his science writer, evolutionary educator, and fellow climate activist wife, Connie Barlow, have spoken to more than 2,200 groups throughout North America since April 2002. A former pastor and sustainable communities organizer, Rev. Dowd has delivered two TEDx talks and a program at the United Nations. His commitment to the legacy-work of his colleagues has resulted in two online conversation series: “The Advent of Evolutionary Christianity,” and “The Future Is Calling Us to Greatness,” and recording nearly 1,500 hours of, what he calls, “deep sustainability scripture.” Dowd’s passion for proclaiming a pro-science message of inspiration — what he calls “the gospel of right relationship to Reality” — has earned him the moniker Rev. Reality, as he speaks prophetically in secular and religious settings about our sacred responsibility to future generations. Videos of his most popular sermons and longer programs can be found here. His and Connie’s 2017-18 itinerary can be found here. Question & Answer Fred from Canberra, Australia writes: Question: What titles do I use for God when I pray? Does prayer do any good? Answer: By Rev. Gretta Vosper Dear Fred, My son, many years ago, came from school with an assignment he was required to complete. The creative writing project asked for one hundred different ways to say “said” other than, of course, “said.” At first glance, it seemed a daunting task but within minutes, the lines were filled and the list compiled. The truth is that, although mostly oblivious to the fact, those of us who read fiction are exposed to many, many different ways an author indicates that someone has just “said” something. The hours and hours of bedtime story reading his dad had shared with him had embedded those many words in his vocabulary already. So, when writing my first book With or Without God: Why the Way We Live is More Important than What We Believe, I challenged myself to come up with one hundred words that could be used instead of the word “god”. I didn’t want to suggest that the concept of god had any power to act in the world, but included words that could be interpreted by the reader in whatever way was helpful; that is, with or without agency. I encourage you to do the same. There may be words that are quick to come: “grace”, “courage”, “love”. And there may be words that require more thought. For me, the word “god” lays out a broad terrain that cannot be limited by a single person’s perspective. I understand god to be a concept rather than a being, a word I once used to convey an amalgam of our best and highest ideals. I now no longer use the word as it too readily invites ideas of the supernatural, of blessing or judgment, of a privileged or capricious intervention, depending on whether the hearer’s own life has weighed out on the side of privilege or blight. My understanding of god necessarily impacts on the concept of prayer, a topic I go into in depth in my second book, Amen: What Prayer Can Mean in a World Beyond Belief. Whether the person engaged in the act of prayer believes in a supernatural deity or force or the benevolence of the universe, we are the only answer we’ve got to the challenges facing our world. Some will work toward solutions compelled by the god in whom they believe. Others will work toward solutions compelled by theirs own sense of compassion and responsibility. Goodness comes into the world through our own hands, voices, and actions. I believe prayer is a very important component to a balanced and engaged life though I do not believe there is a god listening to us. We listen to ourselves. We sort out what is happening in our lives. We honour the beauty we’ve encountered, express gratitude and awe. We trouble ourselves toward making a difference wherever we are able. We sit within the reality of our lives and explore them. Even believing that no deity exists who cares a whit for us, we can enrich our lives by the daily practice of prayer or, as I prefer to call it – again, to avoid confusion - meditation. Using the four broad categories around which much Christian liturgy is built, we can craft a daily ritual that invites us to perceive awe (adoration), reflect critically on our relationships with our own self, others, and the planet (confession), recognize how fortunate we are even in the midst of adversity (thanksgiving), and lament that we and those we love still suffer want, pain, sorrow (supplication). Traditional prayer grew up around human need, not the other way around. Acknowledging each of these aspects of our lives is an important facet of well-being. There are many practices that can be powerful additions to one’s life and take the place of meditative prayer. Some prefer to journal, finding their own way to solutions by writing them out. I write poetry and often only understand what I was saying to myself hours or days after getting a poem out onto the page. Some find vocal music, chant, drumming or tonal vibrations help to balance their attentions and calm their minds. Mindfulness has proven to be an incredibly helpful way to tend to one’s mind and well-being. I encourage you to look for what works for you, trying this or that, rejecting what doesn’t “feel” right and leaning in toward what resonates with you. ~ Rev. Gretta Vosper Read and Share online here About the Author The Rev. Gretta Vosper is a United Church of Canada minister who is an atheist. Her best-selling books include With or Without God: Why The Way We Live is More Important Than What We Believe, and Amen: What Prayer Can Mean in a World Beyond Belief. She has also published three books of poetry and prayers. ________________________________________________ Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited The Bible, Corporal Punishment and Human Guilt - Part 3 In the most deeply patriarchal part of our male-dominant Western history, women were also considered to be fit subjects for corporal punishment at the hands of their husbands. This exercise of power was carried out with the full approval of both State and Church. In that day a husband could beat his wife whenever the husband deemed it necessary. She was, if not his property like a slave, at best his ward with no more status than a dependent child. Physical abuse of one's spouse is not unknown today, but it is now called "domestic violence" and is recognized as a crime for which both arrest and incarceration are deemed appropriate. That, however, has not always been the case. Reading a book written by Suzannah Fonay Wemple, a medieval historian, was the first time I was made aware that one of the primary functions of nunneries in the early Middle Ages was to be a safe haven to which abused women could retreat. Not even the power of the male in a rigidly patriarchal society could invade the domain of the Mother Superior! Modern people, whose sense of history is rather short, blink in disbelief when reading of the accepted domestic violence during this period of history. Perhaps they need to be reminded that the word 'obey,' as a part of the bride's sacred vows to her husband, was in almost every wedding ceremony in every part of the Christian Church until early in the 20th century. The word 'obey' is a word that implies dependent submission to the authority of the one who requires it, and it carries with it the implicit threat that the failure to obey will bring upon the disobedient one the power of the authority. Society in that day deemed physical discipline the necessary means of enforcement. The word 'obey' was not removed from the wedding ceremony in the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer until 1928. It was mandated for the bride alone, since it was inconceivable that the groom would take a vow of obedience. Because the 1662 Prayer Book of the Church of England is still in use in both England and throughout the nations that once constituted the British Empire, the word 'obey' is still, to this day, required of the bride in many English speaking marriage ceremonies. Wherever it is used, wherever obedience is assumed to be appropriate, the subservient person is deemed to be dependent, childlike and by implication an appropriate recipient for discipline. There is no question that the definition of a woman, as a dependent child subject to her husband's authority, is one of those legacies from the Christian past that had to be challenged first and dismantled second before women could be free. Perhaps that helps to explain why it was that the conservative parts of the Christian Church resisted so deeply the women's liberation movement with its goal of the total emancipation of women. In the Catholic tradition women are still treated as second-class citizens. The embarrassment of this attitude in a world, where consciousness has been raised on this issue, has resulted in some rather convoluted rationalizations that hint at an ecclesiastical version of the old racist slogan "separate but equal" as this Church seeks to defend present anti-female practices. In the evangelical wing of Protestant Christianity Pat Robertson accused "women's lib" movements of being "home breaking, family violating, godless and lesbian assaults on traditional values." At every stage along the way, from the suffrage movement that won for women the right to vote in 1920, to the battle to make birth control and abortion legal, the Christian Church has been a vigorous opponent. Only in an ecclesiastical setting would it ever have been deemed appropriate for an all male group of clerics, mostly in the middle or post-menopausal years of life, to sit in solemn assembly, dressed in vestments called 'frocks,' to pontificate in the name of a God called 'Father,' about what a woman can do that is moral with her own body. The Women's Liberation Movement has sought to free women and their bodies from such domination by males, a domination that at one stage in our history gave men the right to punish physically the bodies of women. That movement declared that women are not children, that women are not dependent or subservient and that women are not designed to be submissive to men or to anyone else. The power to define oneself as adult, competent and independent became the ticket out of a world where discipline and physical abuse were considered to be appropriate patterns of interpersonal behavior. Other adults who were subjected to corporal punishment during the days of Christian history were members of religious orders. Once again, the justification for that violence was found in the vows of the religious life in which obedience joined poverty and chastity as sacred obligations. Obedience lends itself to the creation of a childlike and dependent person, who is subject to the discipline of his or her superiors. That understanding of human life has led to the abuse of the bodies of those in religious orders in some form of corporal punishment. When that understanding is combined with the religious sense of universal human sinfulness, then physical discipline offers a 'therapy' for an evil situation. If God's revealed word in the Bible called for such discipline to be administered to children and to those under authority as an act of love, and if this discipline was regarded both as a virtue and a sacred obligation owed to one's religious superior, then all arguments against it were stifled. So corporal punishment has often marked the relationship of the religious superior to the monk, nun or penitent. Sometimes this punishment of the body was ordered by the superior, but was self-inflicted by the penitent. It made the penitent feel more noble, more virtuous. In the 14th century in response to the bubonic plague, known popularly as 'the Black Death,' a movement arose among Christians who called themselves 'the Flagellants." They walked through the streets of the cities of Europe sometimes in numbers 10,000 strong, lashing themselves with whips in an act of public penitence. It was an age in which people knew nothing about viruses, germs or bacteria that might bring sickness. They only knew that they were living through a fearful period of history in which up to one fourth of the adult population of Europe was to die in this epidemic. The common explanation for this devastation was that God was angry with the people for some real or imagined sin. The hope of the Flagellants was that by brutally lashing their own bodies with whips they could punish themselves so severely that God would withdraw the divine punishment of the plague from their families. It was a strange practice based on a faulty, but deeply believed, premise; namely, that punishing their bodies would somehow win for them divine approval. The idea was that if they punished themselves, God would not have to do it. Yet this practice grew out of and reflected that belief so deeply in the Western Christian world, that God was a punishing deity and those who were disciplined by God deserved it because of their sinfulness. That was long ago we tend to say, until we read a more contemporary writer like Karen Armstrong. This brilliant woman who has authored such best selling titles as A History of God, and The Battle for God spent the first years of her adulthood in a convent in England, leaving as recently as the late 1960s. In her autobiography she described her experience as a Sister going to confession. On occasions, as her penance, she would be given a small whip and told to go to a private place and there to lash herself for her sins, if she deemed that appropriate. There is ample reason to suggest that corporal punishment was practiced in the religious life and that disciplining the body physically was taught by the Church to be an act pleasing to God, since the body was normally judged in religious circles to be sinful. The path followed in our own religious history started with a definition of human life as fallen or sinful. Step two would involve developing the practice of combining that definition with the appropriateness of punishing the sinful body physically. Step three was to validate the practice by pointing to a text in a book called the "word of God," that would demonstrate God's approval of these tactics. Step four was to expand the definition of the child to include all the powerless and thus child-like adults: prisoners whose behavior had caused society to strip from them adult rights and to relate to them as those in need of punishment; slaves who had no rights at all and who by law and custom were required to be obedient to their masters; women, regarded as inferior, not fully human adults, who were childlike and dependent and incapable of maturity so they had to pledge to be obedient to their husbands; and finally religious figures who lived under the authority of their superiors and who believed themselves deserving of physical discipline because of their own sins or in order to force God to withdraw the divine wrath which was believed to be causing their suffering. Next week I will seek to lift that portrait of God into full consciousness so that it might be banished along with the terrible texts from the "Word of God" that have been used to justify abusive behavior for far too long. ~ John Shelby Spong Originally published June 30, 2004 Announcements Rev. Matthew Wright: “Reclaiming Wisdom: How Christianity Is Evolving in the Third Millennium.” First Congregational United Church of Christ of Hendersonville, NC - Friday October 20th Friday, October 20th, at 7pm with “How We Lost Our Wisdom: Recovering the Christian Contemplative Path and Reclaiming Jesus as Wisdom Teacher.” On Saturday, October 21st, 10 am the topic is “The Gospels of Thomas and Mary: Restoring Wisdom Texts and Teaching.” At 1 pm is “Christianity in a Second Axial Age: Teilhard de Chardin and Raimon Panikkar as Prophets of an Evolving Path.” On Sunday, October 22nd, Rev. Wright will speak at the 9 am Adult Forum and 10:30 amWorship Service, both in the Sanctuary. 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Re: [Dialogue] [Oe List ...] 10/12/17: Spong/Vosper: REFORMERS, ALL; Spong revisited
by jlepps39 16 Oct '17

16 Oct '17

Jim et al. I believe Neibuhr's other 2 categories were prophet and priest. John from Paris. Sent from my T-Mobile 4G LTE Device -------- Original message --------From: James Wiegel via Dialogue <dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> Date: 10/13/17 23:49 (GMT+01:00) To: dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net, oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net Cc: James Wiegel <jfwiegel(a)yahoo.com> Subject: Re: [Dialogue] [Oe List ...] 10/12/17: Spong/Vosper: REFORMERS, ALL; Spong revisited As always, thanks, Ellie for passing these on . . . This one seems a cry for Niebuhr's 3rd social responsibility of the church, the social pioneer. Yea. What about the other 2 -- the part of the paper we skipped over to get to that last page . . . Jim Wiegel “That which consumes me is not man, nor the earth, nor the heavens, but the flame which consumes man, earth, and sky." Nikos Kazantzakis 401 North Beverly Way,Tolleson, Arizona 85353623-363-3277jfwiegel(a)yahoo.comwww.partnersinparticipation.com On Thursday, October 12, 2017, 7:31:46 AM MST, Ellie Stock via OE <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote: Homepage My Profile Essay Archive Message Boards Calendar REFORMERS, ALL By Rev. Gretta Vosper We’ve been anticipating the celebration of the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation for some time. Now that the month is upon us, it seems more like a private birthday party than something worthy of global attention. In truth, I suppose it is. With the global number of Reform Tradition Protestants diminishing, the celebration of the dramatic and cataclysmic leave-taking that was our birth seems of little interest to any but those enchanted by the history of such things and the few others taking advantage of the liturgical and party possibilities offered up by the date. The Lutheran-Roman Catholic dialogues of the past few decades culminated in the document From Conflict to Communion, published in 2013. Within it, Five Ecumenical Imperatives are laid out, providing a base from which the two traditions could ramp up together for a joint celebration of the Reformation, a healing of the centuries old rift between them. Shoving a new foundation of respect under the violence and rancour of the past, the Catholic and Lutheran ecumenists have demanded a new and generous spirit from their adherents: choose unity over disunity; start from a place of agreement rather than focusing on easily spotted differences. They seem simple and wise choices. If only we had managed to get to this place four hundred and ninety-five years earlier. So much hatred, horror, and bloodshed may have been avoided. There is no doubt that our great faith traditions have provided the human family much that has been of benefit. Perhaps their most important work was built of the evolutionary advantage provided humans by what we might nowadays call “group think”. Religion gave us a bigger and stronger clan than family. Members would die for us just as quickly as we would die for them; we were no longer alone but had the safety of our religious affiliates to add strength to our prejudices and personal desires. And those prejudices and personal desires were, in turn, further refined by our religious beliefs. Put in such a way, it is easy to see how, in the early 16th century, neighbours could turn against one another to the point of death, uncovering allegiances that damned an individual or family to the ultimate exclusion from God’s grace and forgiveness for all of eternity. Taking leave of an institution with that much power was a risky thing to do. The rhetoric continues to be chilling to this day. Bishop Spong has presented visionary work on what a new reformation might look like, what it might provide humanity in the third millennium, and how we might get there. His forthcoming book will take that work further, providing much more than the meticulously negotiated but necessarily simplistic Lutheran Catholic Imperatives. I expect this book will crown the past four decades of his leadership in this progressive Christian landscape, a terrain still tragically unknown to so many. CHOICE At any point in time, a range of possibilities lie before us. We make the best decisions we can, given the information we have at the time. Decades later, we sometimes realize that a single choice resulted in a myriad of other choices, each circumscribed by the first, and all resulting in a reality that, had it been clear to us from the beginning, we may have refused. We cannot see what the future brings and we are very poor at extrapolating our possibilities out much further than our immediate creature needs. And so we end up in situations, relationships, jobs, communities, social structures, or a whole world we may not have chosen had we been able to see the extrapolated implications of our every choice. But you don’t need to keep going in the same direction just because that is the direction you happen to be going. You certainly can and many do. But others, either because of a sudden reorientation of their perspective or because they were just born without a personal comfort zone, refuse to just keep on keeping on. To them, the cost is too high. In fact, it is idiocy. Enter, the Reformer. Many are the times I’ve heard Martin Luther compared to Jesus in the work they both undertook. They didn’t start dramatically; reformers rarely do. It may have been a conversation here or a private rant there. It may have begun in whispers and only risen to an audible level over many months or even years. It may have been with or without design, beginning with a broad, unfocused list of laments or emerging from the womb, so to speak, with a well-honed mission. But both Luther and Jesus, at some point in time, and very likely supported by the gifts of countless unnamed others who listened, shared, cajoled, and criticized, noticed that the faith traditions they cherished had veered in directions that were unacceptable to them. Choices made by those in leadership developed norms for the practices, thinking, attitudes, and prejudices embraced within the tradition, each chosen from the creative potentialities of time and place. For most believers, all was accepted as it was received. But for Reformers, what is normal for the masses is anathema to them. Both Jesus and Luther honoured their traditions. Though we long assumed Jesus was Christian, we now know he wasn’t; he was a Jew. Luther learned the only acceptable religion of his day, a Rome-centred Catholicism. They were steeped in their traditional religions, born into and formed by them. Like everyone around them, they were supposed to fit in. Their education, far above the level of the average believer, was supposed to further hone their beliefs. It was not supposed to expose the little hypocrisies and gross abuses that had been so artfully woven into the everyday business of religion. Once noticed, however, the normal way of doing things became unacceptable. There were no options for Jesus or Luther but those that would bring about catastrophic change in their religious traditions. Even as others fought to maintain the status quo, forcing banishment or conspiring toward more final solutions, the Reformers laid out and presented their arguments. And the world changed. LEGACY We stand on the shoulders of great men and women. Countless Reformers dared challenge the norms of their day – religious, political, economic, and social. And they did it at great cost. We are grateful to them for their struggles, for their lives, for their blood, and for the first discomfort noticed that set them on their course. They created the world in which we live, the freedoms we cherish, the perspectives we are welcome to embrace or refuse, the right to make our own decisions, whether wise or foolish. They set in course the possibilities from which we have chosen our new realities and so have become, with them, co-creators of the world we know. They also, however, created gross disparities and abuses that yet plague humanity and the planet: the economic enslavement of whole nations for the provision of privileges assumed by others; the legal jargons that entrap indigenous peoples in politically ritualized battles for sovereignty; the lines that set out who is worthy of the right to choose their own lifestyle and who is not; the notion that humanity is separate and above the natural world rather than enfolded within and vulnerable to it; the entertainments by which we anaesthetize ourselves to the truths that quake around us; the cruelties endured by herded, caged, and crated animals so we might pleasure our taste buds and sooth our sun-scarred skin. And we, in making our choices, remain co-creators, complicit in a litany of normals that, had we the heart of Jesus or Luther or the millions of unnamed men and women who have poured their lives out in the pursuit of justice and compassion and the building up of love in the world, would make every one of us a Reformer. There is a legacy in the Reformation that I believe belongs in the middle of our work, calling out the power brokers, the hegemonists, the deceivers. Ours is not the work of complacency or settling for imperatives that take decades to conjure only because it takes that long to soothe the sensitivities of those still wielding ecclesial powers that make no difference to the challenges facing our world. Our reforms must be much bolder, our work in the world more creative than what those beyond our walls believe is all we do. It may be that humanity is facing the greatest crises of its too-brief history as it reels with the challenges of global warming and climate change, exponential population growth, and resource depletion. There may be no future moment for us to step up. Now may be all there is. Literally. Change is our very birthplace. It is our right and responsibility as heirs of the Reformers, to stare down every comfortable “normal” that sings its siren song and refuse to be enchanted by it. It is our right and responsibility to count up every ease and privilege we enjoy and educate ourselves about its source – what makes it possible? Who pays for our pleasures and how? And when we find that “normal” is built on the subjugation of others – our tea, our chocolate, our party-ready shrimp rings – work to redistribute or limit those pleasures until all have access to shelter, security, food, clean water, and the joy of planning for their children’s futures. ECLESIA AS REFORMER But change is costly and few have the strength or fortitude to bring about its grander accomplishments. That’s why those usually identified with the most highly evolved faith in James Fowler’s Stages of Faith, a Universalizing Faith, are so few, so well known, and all assassinated: Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. We aren’t that strong, most of us. We might start out heartily, but we then draw up far short of our goals, beaten by our own fears, our own comforts, our own weakness. We may be legion but we are ordinary, too. Throughout the New Testament, the word translated to “church” is originally ecclesia. It’s a poor translation. Rather than “church”, it shared the idea of government. In Greece, the ecclesia was the council of elect elders who governed the city. It’s use in the early Christian writings was a radical refusal to live according to the rules of the day by a ragtag group of people who believed they had a better way. They believed they were called to a bolder and more perfect reflection of the dignity of humanity as they had seen it represented in or inspired by a heretical Jew who’d once moved among them and left a residual and radical idea of what community should look like. Perhaps it is not we, frail and human as we are, but our ecclesia that can set out upon the sea of change and call us forward. Perhaps we can use the New Testament ideal of an alternative ecclesia to set the standards, the ideals, the vision by which the corrective to human destruction of the earth might be realized. Perhaps my United Church of Canada and your United Church of Christ, United Methodist, or Disciples of Christ could be called to this greater and most urgent vision that lies in the roots of all our Christian traditions. Perhaps the sacramental traditions, Reformed and Roman, might step up together in this celebratory year and cry out the words that need to be heard by all, challenging us to notice that normal isn’t acceptable, even if it is the culmination of all our choices. We need our religious institutions to be the ecclesia they were called to be, to be great for us and challenge us to be the reform we want to see in the world. Perhaps this is the year for our ecclesial institutions to step into the role of the Reformer and built a vision we can work toward. Isn’t this the nature of the gospel call, that our ability to notice provides us the challenge to change for the better, to take and make good news and not simply welcome it? Like most, I’ve been largely indifferent to the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. It seemed to esoteric, to trivial in the face of what challenges us today. But perhaps it is exactly the opposite. Perhaps, like Jesus and Luther before us, it is time to challenge the traditions by which we have been formed. We would challenge them to reawaken to the purposes set out in their deep, deep roots: to bring the people together, to be the assembly of Christians and call us all to the frightfully challenging tasks ahead of us. To be sacrificial in their work, giving everything even if it leads to death. Or perhaps the Reformation anniversary is, more personally, a reminder that to each of us that we are a people born of cataclysmic change and inheritors of its demand: notice what lies all about you, what humanity’s choices have led to, what a continued trajectory might mean. Notice, and then stand up and make your stand. ~ Rev. Gretta Vosper About the Author The Rev. Gretta Vosper is a United Church of Canada minister who is an atheist. Her best-selling books include With or Without God: Why The Way We Live is More Important Than What We Believe, and Amen: What Prayer Can Mean in a World Beyond Belief. She has also published three books of poetry and prayers. Read the essay online here. Question & Answer Lesley from Minnesota, writes: Question: What are your views about so many Christians being in favor of gun ownership? Doesn’t that completely contradict the Jesus of peace we read about in the Bible? Answer: By Eric Alexander Thanks for your question Lesley. This is a timely question for me as I was in Las Vegas during the recent shootings. Being so close to an event like that made this issue feel even more urgent than it already did to me. What made the Las Vegas shooting so interesting to me is that it involved a large group of mostly white conservative casualties. It made a large demographic of people suspend their NRA sponsored talking points and deal with the reality of the situation in their own hearts and minds. And I should note here that I enjoy a good skeet shoot as much as the next guy, but that is not the issue at hand here. I think it’s an absolute perversion of the U.S. 2nd amendment to allow nearly anyone who can fog a mirror to have a cache of assault rifles. In my mind, there is no way America’s founding fathers intended that. And even if they did, they may not have imagined what the world would come to hundreds of years later. People say “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” and I say fine “let’s not put the guns that kill people in the hands of those people that kill people…” There are many sensible steps we can take to find a more sustainable footing here. The bottom line is that many Christians are not all that interested in Yeshua of Nazareth. Rather they follow a Jesus who has been morphed into a pawn of radical right-wing political agendas. I don’t think there is any way a disciple of Jesus, or someone who was brimming with love, compassion, and forgiveness in their hearts, would feel a need to accumulate military grade weapons and thousands of rounds of ammo. Disparate militias have no place in 21st century American politics, especially in a nation with over 325,000,000 people. No hunter alive needs to take more than one shot per second to put dinner on the table. And even though full automatic weapons are now illegal in many cases, it is quite easy to master or manipulate a semi-automatic weapon to inflict mass destruction. We need more stable progressive voices countering the NRA arguments within Christian circles. And as a side note, this was a key reason why I started the Progressive Christianity and Politics group on Facebook a couple years ago. It is now over 2000 members strong and we are propagating progressive principles out to compassionate and thoughtful people all across the world. If you or anyone else reading this would like to join, please feel free to register at www.JoinPCP.com ~Eric Alexander Read and Share online here About the Author Eric Alexander is an author, speaker, and entrepreneur. He is a board member at ProgressiveChristianity.org, and is the founder of Jesism, Christian Evolution, and the Progressive Christianity and Politics group on Facebook. Eric holds a Master of Theology from Saint Leo University and studied negotiations at Harvard Law School, and is the author of Teaching Kids Life IS Good. ________________________________________________ Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited The Bible, Corporal Punishment and Human Guilt - Part 2 The physical abuse of children under the guise of "proper discipline" has been practiced in western history so frequently as to be thought of as normative. It has had the approval of those recognized sources of cultural value - tradition, Bible, Church, School and family. It found expression in popular novels written by such noteworthy authors as Charles Dickens and Mark Twain in the 19th century and by no less a person than the 20th century's ultra-conservative political pundit, William F. Buckley. When some of these novels were turned into motion pictures, the corporal punishment scenes were quite graphic. In the schools of western history, which were normally church-related parochial or church-influenced public schools, corporal punishment was regularly employed until quite recently, certainly within my lifetime. Almost always this discipline was administered with parental approval. In boarding schools of the 19th and early 20th centuries this disciplinary activity sometimes had about it a quality of a ritualistic act and even came to be thought of as a kind of "liturgical observance." That is, the act of discipline was carried out at a time-certain. It was scheduled on a particular day for all offenders during a specified period of time for which the school staff prepared the instruments to be used, such as a bunch of bound switches or a freshly prepared cane. It was followed through in a prescribed, unchanging and traditional manner. The intended victim or victims would have to wait in fearful anticipation until the proper moment when the price of their misbehavior was exacted. The disciplinary act clearly defined boundaries and made all aware of where authority resided. In my own experience, as a public school boy growing up in the Southern Bible Belt, corporal punishment was employed, but much less ritualistically. It was administered on the spot whenever it was deemed essential to control the classroom and as a response to a particular act of misbehavior. Yet it also followed a set form that we all recognized. It was not used frequently. I recall that in my seventh grade class, which was the last time I knew it to take place, only two of my classmates were subjected to this discipline during the entire year. The fact, however, that I can still recall both instances some sixty years later, indicates that each of these occasions made an indelible, albeit not a positive impression, upon my young mind. Most of us who were not the actual recipients of the punishment were in fact intimidated by it. The offending student, in both cases, a boy 12-13 years old, would be asked to accompany the teacher who had ruler in hand, to the room adjacent to the principal's office, which was reserved solely for this purpose. That room also happened to be next door to our classroom, so even though we could not observe the act of discipline, we could not fail to hear it. The students remaining in the classroom sat in silence during the period of time it took the teacher and the pupil to reach the required location and to assume the proper positions for discipline. Then the noise of the ruler landing on its target resounded. No cries were ever heard because proving that "he could take it" preserved the pupil's last shred of dignity. Finally the blows would cease and in a few minutes the chastened student would return to the class, followed by the teacher, still gripping her ruler. The student would take his seat saying something about it "not hurting at all," a brave attempt to reestablish his place in the social fabric of the class. The teacher would then use this episode as a teaching moment by warning the other students that a similar fate awaited each of them if their behavior made it necessary. It seemed to me that it took the disciplined child a day or so to absorb the humiliation before he began to ease back into the life of his school community. The ever-present threat that the ruler would be employed again, however, instilled apprehension, fear and developed something of a herd instinct among us all. Instead of enhancing life, it seemed only to bruise a fragile ego. It certainly taught by example that physical force was a proper way to deal with those who are smaller and weaker. It surely issued in a more controllable classroom, but it was never, in my opinion, a pathway into maturity. It is interesting to note who, besides children, have been subjected to corporal punishment in the history of our Judeo-Christian world. There were basically four types of adults on whom corporal punishment was deemed to be appropriate discipline, at least during some part of our history. The one thing each of these four groups of people had in common was that they were thought to be deserving of the status of a child. The first category was adult prisoners. Those who had violated the rules of the society in such a way as to be judged a threat that must be removed, jailed and punished. I suppose the reasoning process was simple. If physical punishment made school children more pliable and obedient, to say nothing of being easier to control, then why should the same tactic not be used on those adults who consistently disrupted the well being of society's life? So the right to use corporal punishment was written into the penal codes of most Western, and by implication, Christian nations. The public whipping post was a regular feature in the criminal justice system in nations like Great Britain and the United States until the 20th century. The last state to make it illegal in America was Delaware. It is still employed to this day in Singapore and in several Muslim nations like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The familiar jail diet of "bread and water" was just another form of corporal punishment; that is, the punishment of the body. By extension from the penal codes physical discipline was used in situations where control was deemed essential to survival. It was a standard practice, for example, on the ships of the colonial powers in the 18th and 19th centuries when the whole world was shrunk to the dimensions of an individual boat, with the captain exercising the decision making responsibility for discipline, indeed sometimes for life and death, with no further appeal. Physical discipline was also employed on the Lewis and Clark expedition across the Continental United States on their journey to the Pacific Ocean, opening the West. The diaries from that journey describe what they thought were its salutary effects. The second class of adults to be treated in this physically abusive manner during our history was the slave population. Christians must never forget that the institution of slavery was accepted as normal, even in the New Testament. Paul directs a runaway slave named Onesimus to return to his master Philemon, not with the request for his freedom, but with the request that he be treated kindly. In the Epistle to the Colossians (3:22), slaves are ordered to "obey in everything those who are your earthly masters" and masters are urged to "treat your slave justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a master in Heaven (4:1)." With no rights accruing to the slaves, who were defined as sub-human and therefore childlike, it followed that disobedience was to be punished in slaves in the same manner that it was deemed to be appropriate in children. It is worth noting that even the popes have historically been slaveholders. No one denies that slaves were lashed in the United States for everything from disobedience to running away. The master had the right to do to his property whatever he wished. When slavery ended following the Civil War, these tactics of intimidation continued to be employed against powerless blacks in the South by quasi-religious organizations like the Ku Klux Klan. It is not as large a step as people now think to move from the corporal punishment of a slave or former slave with the bare back absorbing the lash while the victim was tied to a tree, to the ultimate act of corporal punishment called lynching, where the victim was hanged from the tree. Violence is always violence. The degree of violence is the only difference. What the inmate or prisoner and the slave had in common was that neither had power and no vestige of adulthood accrued to their status so they could be treated like children who had no rights. If it was the proper thing to do to powerless children, it must be appropriate for powerless adults. That was the reasoning. Violence is never contained. It always seeks new victims. Corporal punishment was and is legalized violence. Corporal punishment has been used on two other types of adults in our history: women and people in religious orders. To their story we will turn next week. ~ John Shelby Spong Originally published June 23, 2004 Announcements 5th Annual Climate and Creation Stewardship Summit The 5th Annual Climate and Creation Stewardship Summit will be Saturday, October 28 from 9:30 am – 4:30 pm in Hamden, CT. The focus of this summit is on water, both on land and the oceans. It will consists of speakers, panels and workshops on different aspects of our current climate change crisis and other critical environmental issues ... Click here for more information/registration _______________________________________________ OE mailing list OE(a)lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net

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10/12/17: Spong/Vosper: REFORMERS, ALL; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 13 Oct '17

13 Oct '17

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR REFORMERS, ALL By Rev. Gretta Vosper We’ve been anticipating the celebration of the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation for some time. Now that the month is upon us, it seems more like a private birthday party than something worthy of global attention. In truth, I suppose it is. With the global number of Reform Tradition Protestants diminishing, the celebration of the dramatic and cataclysmic leave-taking that was our birth seems of little interest to any but those enchanted by the history of such things and the few others taking advantage of the liturgical and party possibilities offered up by the date. The Lutheran-Roman Catholic dialogues of the past few decades culminated in the document From Conflict to Communion, published in 2013. Within it, Five Ecumenical Imperatives are laid out, providing a base from which the two traditions could ramp up together for a joint celebration of the Reformation, a healing of the centuries old rift between them. Shoving a new foundation of respect under the violence and rancour of the past, the Catholic and Lutheran ecumenists have demanded a new and generous spirit from their adherents: choose unity over disunity; start from a place of agreement rather than focusing on easily spotted differences. They seem simple and wise choices. If only we had managed to get to this place four hundred and ninety-five years earlier. So much hatred, horror, and bloodshed may have been avoided. There is no doubt that our great faith traditions have provided the human family much that has been of benefit. Perhaps their most important work was built of the evolutionary advantage provided humans by what we might nowadays call “group think”. Religion gave us a bigger and stronger clan than family. Members would die for us just as quickly as we would die for them; we were no longer alone but had the safety of our religious affiliates to add strength to our prejudices and personal desires. And those prejudices and personal desires were, in turn, further refined by our religious beliefs. Put in such a way, it is easy to see how, in the early 16th century, neighbours could turn against one another to the point of death, uncovering allegiances that damned an individual or family to the ultimate exclusion from God’s grace and forgiveness for all of eternity. Taking leave of an institution with that much power was a risky thing to do. The rhetoric continues to be chilling to this day. Bishop Spong has presented visionary work on what a new reformation might look like, what it might provide humanity in the third millennium, and how we might get there. His forthcoming book will take that work further, providing much more than the meticulously negotiated but necessarily simplistic Lutheran Catholic Imperatives. I expect this book will crown the past four decades of his leadership in this progressive Christian landscape, a terrain still tragically unknown to so many. CHOICE At any point in time, a range of possibilities lie before us. We make the best decisions we can, given the information we have at the time. Decades later, we sometimes realize that a single choice resulted in a myriad of other choices, each circumscribed by the first, and all resulting in a reality that, had it been clear to us from the beginning, we may have refused. We cannot see what the future brings and we are very poor at extrapolating our possibilities out much further than our immediate creature needs. And so we end up in situations, relationships, jobs, communities, social structures, or a whole world we may not have chosen had we been able to see the extrapolated implications of our every choice. But you don’t need to keep going in the same direction just because that is the direction you happen to be going. You certainly can and many do. But others, either because of a sudden reorientation of their perspective or because they were just born without a personal comfort zone, refuse to just keep on keeping on. To them, the cost is too high. In fact, it is idiocy. Enter, the Reformer. Many are the times I’ve heard Martin Luther compared to Jesus in the work they both undertook. They didn’t start dramatically; reformers rarely do. It may have been a conversation here or a private rant there. It may have begun in whispers and only risen to an audible level over many months or even years. It may have been with or without design, beginning with a broad, unfocused list of laments or emerging from the womb, so to speak, with a well-honed mission. But both Luther and Jesus, at some point in time, and very likely supported by the gifts of countless unnamed others who listened, shared, cajoled, and criticized, noticed that the faith traditions they cherished had veered in directions that were unacceptable to them. Choices made by those in leadership developed norms for the practices, thinking, attitudes, and prejudices embraced within the tradition, each chosen from the creative potentialities of time and place. For most believers, all was accepted as it was received. But for Reformers, what is normal for the masses is anathema to them. Both Jesus and Luther honoured their traditions. Though we long assumed Jesus was Christian, we now know he wasn’t; he was a Jew. Luther learned the only acceptable religion of his day, a Rome-centred Catholicism. They were steeped in their traditional religions, born into and formed by them. Like everyone around them, they were supposed to fit in. Their education, far above the level of the average believer, was supposed to further hone their beliefs. It was not supposed to expose the little hypocrisies and gross abuses that had been so artfully woven into the everyday business of religion. Once noticed, however, the normal way of doing things became unacceptable. There were no options for Jesus or Luther but those that would bring about catastrophic change in their religious traditions. Even as others fought to maintain the status quo, forcing banishment or conspiring toward more final solutions, the Reformers laid out and presented their arguments. And the world changed. LEGACY We stand on the shoulders of great men and women. Countless Reformers dared challenge the norms of their day – religious, political, economic, and social. And they did it at great cost. We are grateful to them for their struggles, for their lives, for their blood, and for the first discomfort noticed that set them on their course. They created the world in which we live, the freedoms we cherish, the perspectives we are welcome to embrace or refuse, the right to make our own decisions, whether wise or foolish. They set in course the possibilities from which we have chosen our new realities and so have become, with them, co-creators of the world we know. They also, however, created gross disparities and abuses that yet plague humanity and the planet: the economic enslavement of whole nations for the provision of privileges assumed by others; the legal jargons that entrap indigenous peoples in politically ritualized battles for sovereignty; the lines that set out who is worthy of the right to choose their own lifestyle and who is not; the notion that humanity is separate and above the natural world rather than enfolded within and vulnerable to it; the entertainments by which we anaesthetize ourselves to the truths that quake around us; the cruelties endured by herded, caged, and crated animals so we might pleasure our taste buds and sooth our sun-scarred skin. And we, in making our choices, remain co-creators, complicit in a litany of normals that, had we the heart of Jesus or Luther or the millions of unnamed men and women who have poured their lives out in the pursuit of justice and compassion and the building up of love in the world, would make every one of us a Reformer. There is a legacy in the Reformation that I believe belongs in the middle of our work, calling out the power brokers, the hegemonists, the deceivers. Ours is not the work of complacency or settling for imperatives that take decades to conjure only because it takes that long to soothe the sensitivities of those still wielding ecclesial powers that make no difference to the challenges facing our world. Our reforms must be much bolder, our work in the world more creative than what those beyond our walls believe is all we do. It may be that humanity is facing the greatest crises of its too-brief history as it reels with the challenges of global warming and climate change, exponential population growth, and resource depletion. There may be no future moment for us to step up. Now may be all there is. Literally. Change is our very birthplace. It is our right and responsibility as heirs of the Reformers, to stare down every comfortable “normal” that sings its siren song and refuse to be enchanted by it. It is our right and responsibility to count up every ease and privilege we enjoy and educate ourselves about its source – what makes it possible? Who pays for our pleasures and how? And when we find that “normal” is built on the subjugation of others – our tea, our chocolate, our party-ready shrimp rings – work to redistribute or limit those pleasures until all have access to shelter, security, food, clean water, and the joy of planning for their children’s futures. ECLESIA AS REFORMER But change is costly and few have the strength or fortitude to bring about its grander accomplishments. That’s why those usually identified with the most highly evolved faith in James Fowler’s Stages of Faith, a Universalizing Faith, are so few, so well known, and all assassinated: Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. We aren’t that strong, most of us. We might start out heartily, but we then draw up far short of our goals, beaten by our own fears, our own comforts, our own weakness. We may be legion but we are ordinary, too. Throughout the New Testament, the word translated to “church” is originally ecclesia. It’s a poor translation. Rather than “church”, it shared the idea of government. In Greece, the ecclesia was the council of elect elders who governed the city. It’s use in the early Christian writings was a radical refusal to live according to the rules of the day by a ragtag group of people who believed they had a better way. They believed they were called to a bolder and more perfect reflection of the dignity of humanity as they had seen it represented in or inspired by a heretical Jew who’d once moved among them and left a residual and radical idea of what community should look like. Perhaps it is not we, frail and human as we are, but our ecclesia that can set out upon the sea of change and call us forward. Perhaps we can use the New Testament ideal of an alternative ecclesia to set the standards, the ideals, the vision by which the corrective to human destruction of the earth might be realized. Perhaps my United Church of Canada and your United Church of Christ, United Methodist, or Disciples of Christ could be called to this greater and most urgent vision that lies in the roots of all our Christian traditions. Perhaps the sacramental traditions, Reformed and Roman, might step up together in this celebratory year and cry out the words that need to be heard by all, challenging us to notice that normal isn’t acceptable, even if it is the culmination of all our choices. We need our religious institutions to be the ecclesia they were called to be, to be great for us and challenge us to be the reform we want to see in the world. Perhaps this is the year for our ecclesial institutions to step into the role of the Reformer and built a vision we can work toward. Isn’t this the nature of the gospel call, that our ability to notice provides us the challenge to change for the better, to take and make good news and not simply welcome it? Like most, I’ve been largely indifferent to the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. It seemed to esoteric, to trivial in the face of what challenges us today. But perhaps it is exactly the opposite. Perhaps, like Jesus and Luther before us, it is time to challenge the traditions by which we have been formed. We would challenge them to reawaken to the purposes set out in their deep, deep roots: to bring the people together, to be the assembly of Christians and call us all to the frightfully challenging tasks ahead of us. To be sacrificial in their work, giving everything even if it leads to death. Or perhaps the Reformation anniversary is, more personally, a reminder that to each of us that we are a people born of cataclysmic change and inheritors of its demand: notice what lies all about you, what humanity’s choices have led to, what a continued trajectory might mean. Notice, and then stand up and make your stand. ~ Rev. Gretta Vosper About the Author The Rev. Gretta Vosper is a United Church of Canada minister who is an atheist. Her best-selling books include With or Without God: Why The Way We Live is More Important Than What We Believe, and Amen: What Prayer Can Mean in a World Beyond Belief. She has also published three books of poetry and prayers. Read the essay online here. Question & Answer Lesley from Minnesota, writes: Question: What are your views about so many Christians being in favor of gun ownership? Doesn’t that completely contradict the Jesus of peace we read about in the Bible? Answer: By Eric Alexander Thanks for your question Lesley. This is a timely question for me as I was in Las Vegas during the recent shootings. Being so close to an event like that made this issue feel even more urgent than it already did to me. What made the Las Vegas shooting so interesting to me is that it involved a large group of mostly white conservative casualties. It made a large demographic of people suspend their NRA sponsored talking points and deal with the reality of the situation in their own hearts and minds. And I should note here that I enjoy a good skeet shoot as much as the next guy, but that is not the issue at hand here. I think it’s an absolute perversion of the U.S. 2nd amendment to allow nearly anyone who can fog a mirror to have a cache of assault rifles. In my mind, there is no way America’s founding fathers intended that. And even if they did, they may not have imagined what the world would come to hundreds of years later. People say “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” and I say fine “let’s not put the guns that kill people in the hands of those people that kill people…” There are many sensible steps we can take to find a more sustainable footing here. The bottom line is that many Christians are not all that interested in Yeshua of Nazareth. Rather they follow a Jesus who has been morphed into a pawn of radical right-wing political agendas. I don’t think there is any way a disciple of Jesus, or someone who was brimming with love, compassion, and forgiveness in their hearts, would feel a need to accumulate military grade weapons and thousands of rounds of ammo. Disparate militias have no place in 21st century American politics, especially in a nation with over 325,000,000 people. No hunter alive needs to take more than one shot per second to put dinner on the table. And even though full automatic weapons are now illegal in many cases, it is quite easy to master or manipulate a semi-automatic weapon to inflict mass destruction. We need more stable progressive voices countering the NRA arguments within Christian circles. And as a side note, this was a key reason why I started the Progressive Christianity and Politics group on Facebook a couple years ago. It is now over 2000 members strong and we are propagating progressive principles out to compassionate and thoughtful people all across the world. If you or anyone else reading this would like to join, please feel free to register at www.JoinPCP.com ~Eric Alexander Read and Share online here About the Author Eric Alexander is an author, speaker, and entrepreneur. He is a board member at ProgressiveChristianity.org, and is the founder of Jesism, Christian Evolution, and the Progressive Christianity and Politics group on Facebook. Eric holds a Master of Theology from Saint Leo University and studied negotiations at Harvard Law School, and is the author of Teaching Kids Life IS Good. ________________________________________________ Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited The Bible, Corporal Punishment and Human Guilt - Part 2 The physical abuse of children under the guise of "proper discipline" has been practiced in western history so frequently as to be thought of as normative. It has had the approval of those recognized sources of cultural value - tradition, Bible, Church, School and family. It found expression in popular novels written by such noteworthy authors as Charles Dickens and Mark Twain in the 19th century and by no less a person than the 20th century's ultra-conservative political pundit, William F. Buckley. When some of these novels were turned into motion pictures, the corporal punishment scenes were quite graphic. In the schools of western history, which were normally church-related parochial or church-influenced public schools, corporal punishment was regularly employed until quite recently, certainly within my lifetime. Almost always this discipline was administered with parental approval. In boarding schools of the 19th and early 20th centuries this disciplinary activity sometimes had about it a quality of a ritualistic act and even came to be thought of as a kind of "liturgical observance." That is, the act of discipline was carried out at a time-certain. It was scheduled on a particular day for all offenders during a specified period of time for which the school staff prepared the instruments to be used, such as a bunch of bound switches or a freshly prepared cane. It was followed through in a prescribed, unchanging and traditional manner. The intended victim or victims would have to wait in fearful anticipation until the proper moment when the price of their misbehavior was exacted. The disciplinary act clearly defined boundaries and made all aware of where authority resided. In my own experience, as a public school boy growing up in the Southern Bible Belt, corporal punishment was employed, but much less ritualistically. It was administered on the spot whenever it was deemed essential to control the classroom and as a response to a particular act of misbehavior. Yet it also followed a set form that we all recognized. It was not used frequently. I recall that in my seventh grade class, which was the last time I knew it to take place, only two of my classmates were subjected to this discipline during the entire year. The fact, however, that I can still recall both instances some sixty years later, indicates that each of these occasions made an indelible, albeit not a positive impression, upon my young mind. Most of us who were not the actual recipients of the punishment were in fact intimidated by it. The offending student, in both cases, a boy 12-13 years old, would be asked to accompany the teacher who had ruler in hand, to the room adjacent to the principal's office, which was reserved solely for this purpose. That room also happened to be next door to our classroom, so even though we could not observe the act of discipline, we could not fail to hear it. The students remaining in the classroom sat in silence during the period of time it took the teacher and the pupil to reach the required location and to assume the proper positions for discipline. Then the noise of the ruler landing on its target resounded. No cries were ever heard because proving that "he could take it" preserved the pupil's last shred of dignity. Finally the blows would cease and in a few minutes the chastened student would return to the class, followed by the teacher, still gripping her ruler. The student would take his seat saying something about it "not hurting at all," a brave attempt to reestablish his place in the social fabric of the class. The teacher would then use this episode as a teaching moment by warning the other students that a similar fate awaited each of them if their behavior made it necessary. It seemed to me that it took the disciplined child a day or so to absorb the humiliation before he began to ease back into the life of his school community. The ever-present threat that the ruler would be employed again, however, instilled apprehension, fear and developed something of a herd instinct among us all. Instead of enhancing life, it seemed only to bruise a fragile ego. It certainly taught by example that physical force was a proper way to deal with those who are smaller and weaker. It surely issued in a more controllable classroom, but it was never, in my opinion, a pathway into maturity. It is interesting to note who, besides children, have been subjected to corporal punishment in the history of our Judeo-Christian world. There were basically four types of adults on whom corporal punishment was deemed to be appropriate discipline, at least during some part of our history. The one thing each of these four groups of people had in common was that they were thought to be deserving of the status of a child. The first category was adult prisoners. Those who had violated the rules of the society in such a way as to be judged a threat that must be removed, jailed and punished. I suppose the reasoning process was simple. If physical punishment made school children more pliable and obedient, to say nothing of being easier to control, then why should the same tactic not be used on those adults who consistently disrupted the well being of society's life? So the right to use corporal punishment was written into the penal codes of most Western, and by implication, Christian nations. The public whipping post was a regular feature in the criminal justice system in nations like Great Britain and the United States until the 20th century. The last state to make it illegal in America was Delaware. It is still employed to this day in Singapore and in several Muslim nations like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The familiar jail diet of "bread and water" was just another form of corporal punishment; that is, the punishment of the body. By extension from the penal codes physical discipline was used in situations where control was deemed essential to survival. It was a standard practice, for example, on the ships of the colonial powers in the 18th and 19th centuries when the whole world was shrunk to the dimensions of an individual boat, with the captain exercising the decision making responsibility for discipline, indeed sometimes for life and death, with no further appeal. Physical discipline was also employed on the Lewis and Clark expedition across the Continental United States on their journey to the Pacific Ocean, opening the West. The diaries from that journey describe what they thought were its salutary effects. The second class of adults to be treated in this physically abusive manner during our history was the slave population. Christians must never forget that the institution of slavery was accepted as normal, even in the New Testament. Paul directs a runaway slave named Onesimus to return to his master Philemon, not with the request for his freedom, but with the request that he be treated kindly. In the Epistle to the Colossians (3:22), slaves are ordered to "obey in everything those who are your earthly masters" and masters are urged to "treat your slave justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a master in Heaven (4:1)." With no rights accruing to the slaves, who were defined as sub-human and therefore childlike, it followed that disobedience was to be punished in slaves in the same manner that it was deemed to be appropriate in children. It is worth noting that even the popes have historically been slaveholders. No one denies that slaves were lashed in the United States for everything from disobedience to running away. The master had the right to do to his property whatever he wished. When slavery ended following the Civil War, these tactics of intimidation continued to be employed against powerless blacks in the South by quasi-religious organizations like the Ku Klux Klan. It is not as large a step as people now think to move from the corporal punishment of a slave or former slave with the bare back absorbing the lash while the victim was tied to a tree, to the ultimate act of corporal punishment called lynching, where the victim was hanged from the tree. Violence is always violence. The degree of violence is the only difference. What the inmate or prisoner and the slave had in common was that neither had power and no vestige of adulthood accrued to their status so they could be treated like children who had no rights. If it was the proper thing to do to powerless children, it must be appropriate for powerless adults. That was the reasoning. Violence is never contained. It always seeks new victims. Corporal punishment was and is legalized violence. Corporal punishment has been used on two other types of adults in our history: women and people in religious orders. To their story we will turn next week. ~ John Shelby Spong Originally published June 23, 2004 Announcements 5th Annual Climate and Creation Stewardship Summit The 5th Annual Climate and Creation Stewardship Summit will be Saturday, October 28 from 9:30 am – 4:30 pm in Hamden, CT. The focus of this summit is on water, both on land and the oceans. It will consists of speakers, panels and workshops on different aspects of our current climate change crisis and other critical environmental issues ... Click here for more information/registration

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Global Buzz October 2017
by ICA International 07 Oct '17

07 Oct '17

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 latest issue of the Global Buzz Global Buzz Report: October 2017 or copy and paste this URL into your browser's address bar http://globalbuzz.icai-archives.org/7dayreport-17/2017-10-01.php ICAI Communications

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10/05/17, Spong/Alexander: What Can A Donkey Teach Us About Jesus?; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 05 Oct '17

05 Oct '17

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR What Can A Donkey Teach Us About Jesus? By Eric Alexander This series begins an exploration into the real Jesus. By which I mean, that character historically known as Yeshua of Nazareth. Which is in contrast of course to the other character more popularly known as Jesus Christ. I make a distinction there because I think Yeshua of Nazareth and “Jesus Christ” are two very different icons. And in my opinion, it is doubtful that future institutions will last much longer around the Jesus Christ icon, but it’s possible (and maybe very beneficial) that the historical Yeshua of Nazareth could sustain. This series is going kick off an exploration into those contrasting portraits, and seek to identify what the “real” Jesus might have been like, and how that might change the way we do Christianity, church, and spiritual community in our modern times. Before going further though, I will readily acknowledge that some of you may react to what I’ve just said by noting that we cannot know if Yeshua of Nazareth ever really lived. And I concede that. I know we have smart readers here, and I freely acknowledge that we are always on amorphous ground when talking about a historical Jesus. But for the purposes of this series we won’t worry about that. We will simply focus on discovering the figure called Yeshua of Nazareth, who was chronicled throughout the early biblical tradition. If you don’t happen to think Jesus was real, then perhaps we can just settle for finding the real fictional Jesus here. One of the most important things in understanding how “Jesus Christ” came into being is to look at some very specific examples within the Bible to uncover some real clues. That’s what Bible scholars (should) do. So today I want to explore an interesting truth about the triumphal entry, and this will help establish the paradigm for later installments. I want to begin with a scripture lesson from a donkey. Well, not directly from a donkey because donkeys don’t actually talk. (Or do they? Num 22:28 ) In the Book of Zechariah, written by a prophet from the region of Judah around 520 BCE during the reign of Darius of Persia, it states: “Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” The author of Zechariah wrote this to comfort the people who were returning from exile, and who were awaiting a proper homeland and king. This verse is germane to our first smoking gun, because many Christians today, and at the time of the writing of the gospels, believed that this passage was fulfilling a messianic prophecy. But the author of Zechariah was not thinking about a future messiah who would come hundreds of years later. The story was written to provide hope and encouragement to those folks who were alive during the time of its writing. Zechariah was offering them assurance that they would soon have a great king who was worthy of God’s trust and abundance. Back then, donkey’s symbolized peace and humility – as opposed to a horse which symbolized conquest and power. The author of this passage was talking about a king who would bring peace in their current age, not a king that would arrive over five hundred years later. After-all, how or why would a king showing up five centuries later be of any interest to them in their moment of need? I can’t think of a single human being who could find relevance in anything happening five hundred years in the future. So let’s look at that verse more closely to see what clues we can uncover about how this interpretation came to be. The passage from Zechariah states that the messiah would come “riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” Now consider for a moment what that might be saying? Would the messiah be on a donkey? Or would he be on a colt? Or on both a donkey and a colt? Here’s what the gospel writers thought: The authors of Mark and Luke recorded that Jesus said “go to the village ahead of you, and just as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden…untie it and bring it here.” Of interest in this version was the addition of the line “that no one has ever ridden on.” That could have possibly been added to imply that the donkey was young. Or maybe it was to imply some supernatural powers of Jesus being able to just hop on an unbroken donkey and gallop through town without a hitch. That verse was written verbatim in both the gospels of Mark and Luke, so it was likely taken from an earlier source, or maybe one of the authors copied the passage over from the other. It gets more interesting though. The writers of John kept it simple and recorded: “Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, “as it is written, your king is coming, seated on a donkey’s colt.” This is a nice and basic paraphrase of the event, and we can see that the writers of John cleaned it up a bit to more closely match their interpretation of the original verse in Zechariah. Nothing too controversial there, just making their case for one young donkey. But the creator of Matthew records it differently. He writes: “Jesus said, go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me… They brought the donkey and the colt and placed their cloaks on them for Jesus to sit on.” As it is written “your king comes to you, gentle and riding on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” When contrasting the other three gospels with the gospel of Matthew, this exercise illustrates how the gospel writers took creative liberties as it related to prophecies, either by adding to historical stories or even completely redesigning stories from scratch to fit their evangelical perspectives. And here’s why this situation is a solid example of that: Matthew’s misunderstanding of the original scripture from Zechariah highlights that the author of Matthew was not at that event in person; nor was he even hearing about an event via credible word of mouth – but rather he was attempting to retrofit the event to his (misunderstood) interpretation of the Old Testament scripture having two donkeys. He was creating his evangelical case, not documenting Jesus as a historian or eye witness. Once we can come to terms with what the gospels are, and what the intent was of those who designed the gospels, we can then look at these stories in new and exciting ways. In this case, whether some derivative of the triumphal entry ever historically happened or not, one of the most informative truths that we can glean is that Jesus was indeed a humble and peaceful type of leader. Therefore, from this account we can at least learn that Yeshua of Nazareth was a peaceful man who rejected his role as king and powerful leader. And that is a good first clue to work with in discovering the real Jesus, and hopefully also a good review of the ways we can learn more by reading between the lines. Next time we will look at what Jesus meant by “the Kingdom of God / Heaven,” and why it may still matter for today. ~ Eric Alexander About the Author Eric Alexander is an author, speaker, and entrepreneur. He is a board member at ProgressiveChristianity.org, and is the founder of Jesism, Christian Evolution, and the Progressive Christianity and Politics group on Facebook. Eric holds a Master of Theology from Saint Leo University and studied negotiations at Harvard Law School, and authored the popular children’s emotional health book Teaching Kids Life IS Good. Read the essay online here. Question & Answer Evelyn from Wayzata, MN writes: Question: Do you have any reliable estimates of the number of Christians worldwide who do not subscribe to the viewpoint that "salvation comes only through Jesus Christ”? I just wrote a letter to the editor (Minneapolis Star-Tribune) challenging such a statement, but then wondered how many of the >2 million Christians in the world (2011 Pew Research estimate) share a less conservative belief. Thank you for your attention, and thank you for your witness in the world! Answer: By Fred C. Plumer Dear Evelyn, You ask a very difficult question that I do not think anyone can answer accurately. There are a several things that get in the way, but let me try. First, there is the general challenge of people not wanting to talk about their religious beliefs, regardless of what they are, unless they are evangelical and believe it is their mission to share the gospel from their own perspective. Secondarily, there is the complicated issue of terminology. What do you mean by “salvation,” or being “saved?” If I was leading a difficult or maybe a self-destructive life, and I read a book about Jesus, maybe I would change my self-destructiveness. The book or books might be by a progressive author that made no promise of an afterlife, but focused on Jesus teachings about loving our neighbor, or about not being afraid to live life, or about sharing or maybe about learning there are no enemies, or…well, you get the idea. Maybe there was something about those teachings that gave me new insight and I changed my life. Have I been saved? I might think so. But most people who call themselves Christian would want something more. Thirdly, how far do you take that question? For example, after forty years of serious study, I no longer hold the belief that Jesus died for my sins or that believing something like that can purify or “take away” my sins. However, I view Jesus as a fully human being who lived in the history of his time and was one of several enlightened beings throughout the ages, who left us with some amazing life lessons. Does that make me a Christian? Does that make me a believer? I believe in what Jesus taught but not the 3rd century idea of personal salvation. For example, I am a follower of Jesus, but how would I show up in the PEW report? That being said, your numbers are a little skewed. Christians remained the largest religious group in the world in 2015, making up nearly a third (31%) of Earth’s 7.3 billion people, according to a new Pew Research Center demographic analysis. (In the last two years, the Muslim faith has slight outdistanced Christianity). A large percentage of Christians, roughly a 1/3, live in the African and Asian countries. The African, and I suspect the Asian, slant on Christianity is often like nothing we have seen in modern USA. Most likely this is true for developing nations. However, Christians make up roughly 70% of the USA population. That is a drop from 80% a little over ten years ago. Now of course we have to ask, “What do they mean by calling themselves, Christians.” For example less than 45% of those claiming to be Christian attend church on a regular basis. Then, of course, we have to ask what church do you attend? What do they believe? And are you saved? Now I can tell you that there are more people like me who no longer attend church. In fact church attendance has dropped so much that they are closing churches every week, all over the country. Right now less than twenty percent of the population go to church on a regular basis and researchers are telling us that only 7% of the millennials will be attending church in the future. That does not bode well for Christianity or any of the institutional religions in our country. How many people are like me and the numerous authors we post on our website regularly? How many people are like the authors we pay to write for us weekly? There really is no way to tell, but our website attracts over 300,000 people a year, we have 11,000 people on our mailing list and our Progressing Spirit (previously called John Shelby Spong) weekly goes out to over 5,000 people every week. Bishop Spong wrote a book, Why Christianity Must Change or Die, in 1998. I think that says it all. Thank you for writing, Fred C. Plumer, President ProgressiveChristianity.org Read and share online here Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited The Bible, Corporal Punishment and Human Guilt - Part 1 .."He who spares the rod, hates his son; but he who loves him ..is diligent to discipline him. (Prov. 13:24)." .."Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you beat him ..with a rod, he will not die. If you beat him with a rod, you ..will save his life from Sheol (Prov. 23:13,14)." "Folly is bound up in the heart of a child; but the rod of discipline drives it far from him (Prov. 22:15)." "Spare the rod and spoil the child" is the typical way that these texts are usually quoted. This shorthand version has become a popular saying, referred to often enough to enable it to be passed on to the next generation as self-authenticating folk wisdom. Most people do not know either its source or its literal form. That is not surprising. These texts are located in a seldom-read part of the Old Testament called Proverbs, which is quite frankly a rather boring book and is generally ignored by most Ecclesiastical Lectionaries. A few sayings from Proverbs are, however, still quoted by people, who usually have no idea of the source: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Prov. 9:10);" "A soft answer turns away wrath (Prov. 15:1);" and calling a friend "closer than a brother (Prov. 18:24)." The great film, focused on the 1925 Scopes trial in Tennessee, bore the title Inherit the Wind, which was a phrase, lifted from Proverbs (11:29). When Paul wrote in the 12th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans (v.20), "If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty give him drink, for in so doing you will heap burning coals upon his head," he was quoting Proverbs 25:21,22. The author of the Fourth Gospel, when composing his opening hymn to the divine logos or the "word," appears to be leaning on a text from the 8th chapter of Proverbs (v.22-31). So the book had its influence in Christian history. Yet the words that affirm the rightness of corporal punishment are still the best-known part of this book. They seem to touch something deep in either the human psyche or the human experience. If one is the victim of corporal punishment, these words suggest 'deserving' and they seem to play into a self-negativity that rises from a definition of humanity that is deemed sinful or fallen. If one is a perpetrator of corporal punishment, these words seem to feed a human need to control, to exercise authority or even to demonstrate that forced submission is a virtue. If a child is assumed to have been born in sin, it is clearly the duty of parents or their surrogates to curb that tendency toward evil. It matters not that child psychologists and child development experts generally condemn this style of parenting. Since the responsibility to punish children for their misdeeds fits comfortably into a view of God who is also perceived as a parental figure ready to punish sinful adults, it becomes easy to justify. It is of interest that Christians from the very beginning have applied the image of the "Suffering Servant" from II Isaiah to the story of Jesus, so that it is said of him, "With his stripes we are healed," (Isa.53: 5) and that "the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all (Isa. 53:6.)" It sounds very much as if God has a heavenly woodshed reserved for the physical disciplining of God's "wayward children," or at least for Jesus, our surrogate. Physical discipline has been supported through the centuries by a variety of pious claims, allowing it to wear the mask of intellectual credibility. Only in recent decades has Western consciousness been raised on this subject, and corporal punishment has begun its inevitable retreat into the past. Yet the glorification of physical discipline for children still lingers in those pockets of our culture that, not coincidentally I believe, are identified with conservative Christian churches. Parochial schools are notorious for their use of physical discipline. The nuns were quite clearly feared by the students. When that reality is augmented by the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests that now appears to have been present in almost epidemic abundance, the sickness present in the attitude of the Church toward children becomes very clear. Not to be outdone in this evil by the Roman Catholic tradition, we discover that corporal punishment is still defended today in Protestant fundamentalist circles in the United States by such people as Dr. James Dobson and his "Focus on the Family" organization. To press the connection one step further, Philip J. Greven, a Rutgers University professor, has written a book entitled, Spare the Child, in which he seeks to demonstrate that, almost to a person, the popular radio and television evangelists in American history have revealed approvingly in their preaching or in autobiographies that they were physically punished as children. Dr. Greven has suggested that this life experience is not just coincidentally related to their message, which portrays an angry God standing ready to punish sinful people through all eternity unless they repent. It is rather part and parcel of their thinking. During the late 90's a task force on children in the Episcopal Diocese of Newark, made a report to the Diocesan Convention. This report included the following resolution offered for adoption: "Resolved, that there are no circumstances in which corporal punishment is appropriate as a method of disciplining children." The news of this report and its resolution began to circulate through the pre-convention meetings designed to inform delegates of the issues coming before them. We then discovered that the secular press wanted to follow this debate quite enthusiastically. Covering the typical church convention is not normally on the agenda of most daily newspapers unless there is some hint of scandal. When the resolution was placed before the assembly, the debate was quite revealing. It was for me, as the presiding officer, like watching over 600 people engaged in group therapy. We had people justifying publicly their own behavior as parents by praising their methods of discipline and the ways their own parents had disciplined them. "My father beat me regularly," said one gentleman well in his 70's, "and it made a man out of me." Another said, "My children have said to me that the discipline I meted out to them was the best thing I ever did for them." Still another used the old cliché, which attempts to turn violence into virtue by insisting "I did it for their own good and it always hurt me more than it hurt my children." Other delegates to this convention, however, spoke with very different tones, as childhood memories emerged through adult voices, to speak of their sense of being violated and humiliated in ways that were so deep they had never spoken of it publicly before. They told of the psychic damage they had sustained, the rage they had felt and the residual anger they still felt. They shared openly feelings of being humiliated a second time when their parents would speak of this disciplining session to their friends and family in a casual manner, as they sought to gain approval for their form of parenting. The debate was interesting in one other detail. This was a relatively well-educated, socially prominent assembly of approximately 150 clergy and 450 lay people. Yet, no consensus ever emerged and they were not willing to vote the resolution up or down. Finally, in a face-saving leap toward easing the assembly out of this dilemma, one priest offered an amendment. For the words "corporal punishment," he moved to substitute the words "injurious or humiliating treatments" so that the resolution then read: "Resolved, that there are no circumstances in which injurious or humiliating treatments are appropriate as a method for disciplining children." No one thought their use of corporal punishment was either "injurious or humiliating," and amendment passed almost unanimously, which in church gatherings means that it falls into the same category as resolutions opposing sin and extolling virtue or what politicians call, "God, motherhood and apple pie" resolutions. It committed, to use an improper but expressive double negative, "no one to nothing." Yet the emotions expressed, the anecdotal stories shared, the anguish and anger that were revealed painted an unforgettable portrait of inner conflict and provided insight into unresolved feelings. It also revealed a deep cultural ambiguity about who we are as human beings, what it is that we think we deserve from God, and why it is that we are taught that the physical punishment of children is somehow validated in a book we call the "Word of God." Violence is a constant presence in our world. What begins with helpless children facing their parents expands to helpless students facing their teachers or principals, then stretches to include helpless adults facing authority figures. Finally it confronts us with the picture of helpless sinners facing an angry God. The journey into this text will continue next week. ~ John Shelby Spong Originally published June 16, 2004 Announcements 6 Steps to Finally, Truly Loving Yourself with Margaret Paul Are you convinced that loving yourself is THE key to your healing, liberation and living in joy? Yet, do you find yourself repeatedly caught in the trap of trying to “get love” outside of yourself? If so, psychologist Margaret Paul’s has tools and practices for receiving deep, unconditional love… from within - Wednesday, October 4th. Click here for more information/registration

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Jimmy Kimmel's monologue on Las Vegas
by Ellie Stock 03 Oct '17

03 Oct '17

Thought this was good. Contact your legislators. Ellie elliestock(a)aol.com Must-see TV: Jimmy Kimmel's monologue on Las Vegas

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Fwd: A Prayer after Las Vegas
by Ellie Stock 02 Oct '17

02 Oct '17

Forwarding this prayer after Las Vegas from the pastor of our church. Our great niece goes to college there but fortunately was not at the concert but could see the police commotion and lights from her dorm room. Now, more talk about gun control...deja vu all over again... <div>Ellie elliestock(a)aol.com <div id="AOLMsgPart_2_f69bb959-b50e-4a74-8c02-2296762947d1"> <style scoped="">#AOLMsgPart_2_f69bb959-b50e-4a74-8c02-2296762947d1 td{color: black;} @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;}@font-face {font-family:Calibri; panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;}.aolReplacedBody p.aolmail_MsoNormal,.aolReplacedBody li.aolmail_MsoNormal,.aolReplacedBody div.aolmail_MsoNormal {margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;}.aolReplacedBody a:link,.aolReplacedBody span.aolmail_MsoHyperlink {mso-style-priority:99; color:#0563C1; text-decoration:underline;}.aolReplacedBody a:visited,.aolReplacedBody span.aolmail_MsoHyperlinkFollowed {mso-style-priority:99; color:#954F72; text-decoration:underline;}.aolReplacedBody p.aolmail_msonormal0,.aolReplacedBody li.aolmail_msonormal0,.aolReplacedBody div.aolmail_msonormal0 {mso-style-name:msonormal; mso-margin-top-alt:auto; margin-right:0in; mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; margin-left:0in; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;}.aolReplacedBody span.aolmail_EmailStyle18 {mso-style-type:personal; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif; color:windowtext; font-weight:normal; font-style:normal; text-decoration:none none;}.aolReplacedBody span.aolmail_EmailStyle20 {mso-style-type:personal-reply; font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif; color:windowtext;}.aolReplacedBody .aolmail_MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; font-size:10.0pt;}@page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in;}.aolReplacedBody div.aolmail_WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;}</style><div lang="EN-US" class="aolReplacedBody"> <div class="aolmail_WordSection1"> <p class="aolmail_MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">God of Pain and God of Promise:</span></p> <p class="aolmail_MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </span></p> <p class="aolmail_MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Once again we are stunned by the cruelty and ugliness of gun violence.</span></p> <p class="aolmail_MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Once again our national obsession with guns has led to excruciating pain and death.</span></p> <p class="aolmail_MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Once again we feel broken and helpless and so very, very sad.</span></p> <p class="aolmail_MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Holy One, come to each of us – and give us clarity and compassion.</span></p> <p class="aolmail_MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Wrap your arms around grieving families and terrified victims, and traumatized first responders.</span></p> <p class="aolmail_MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Forgive us for failing to stop this madness.</span></p> <p class="aolmail_MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Forgive us for putting individual rights above community wholeness.</span></p> <p class="aolmail_MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Forgive us for our silence in the face of evil.</span></p> <p class="aolmail_MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Remind us of your promise to never forsake us.</span></p> <p class="aolmail_MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">And renew our promises to be agents of reconciliation and healing in this world.</span></p> <p class="aolmail_MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">We pray in the name of the One who endured pain and transformed pain into energy for change. Amen</span></p> <p class="aolmail_MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </span></p> <p class="aolmail_MsoNormal"><b><span lang="EN" style="color:blue">The Rev. Susan R. Andrews</span></b></p> <p class="aolmail_MsoNormal"><b><span lang="EN" style="color:blue">Interim Pastor</span></b></p> <p class="aolmail_MsoNormal"><b><span lang="EN" style="color:blue">Second Presbyterian Church</span></b><span style="font-size:12.0pt"></span></p> <p class="aolmail_MsoNormal"><b><span lang="EN" style="color:blue"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="mailto:Ipastor2PC@secondchurch.net"><span style="font-weight:normal"></span></a><a href="mailto:Ipastor2PC@secondchurch.net">Ipastor2PC(a)secondchurch.net</a></span></b></p> <p class="aolmail_MsoNormal"><i><span lang="EN" style="color:blue">Serving Others. Changing Lives</span></i><span lang="EN" style="color:blue"></span></p> <p class="aolmail_MsoNormal"> <span lang="EN" style="color:blue"></span></p> <p class="aolmail_MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="color:blue">4501 Westminster Place</span></p> <p class="aolmail_MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="color:blue">Saint Louis, MO.</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt"></span></p> <p class="aolmail_MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="color:blue">314-367-0366</span></p> <p class="aolmail_MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="color:blue"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://www.secondchurch.net/"><span style="color:blue"></span></a><a href="http://www.secondchurch.net" target="_blank">www.secondchurch.net</a></span></p> <p class="aolmail_MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="color:blue"> </span></p> <p class="aolmail_MsoNormal"><b> </b></p> <p class="aolmail_MsoNormal"> </p> </div> </div> </div></div>

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