November 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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11/30/17, Plum/Spong: Back to the Forties; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 30 Nov '17

30 Nov '17

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR Back to the Forties Fred C. Plumer Well here we go again, friends, facing another Christmas. The big stores are posting huge advertisements, notifying us of major sales, playing Christmas music and of course wherever you go there is a Santa Clause. It has been that way for a couple of weeks. It seems to me that this phenomenon starts earlier every year. I cannot help but wonder what Jesus would say if he returned today and observed the way we celebrate his so-called birthday. He was born poor, was always poor, and spoke primarily to the poor. Obviously large shopping malls are fighting for every dollar they can find, now primarily for survival as the on-line competition grabs more of the sales every year. Literally hundreds of big store malls have closed in the last few years. CNN Money recently posted a report by Credit Suisse, suggesting that between 20% and 25% of American malls will close within the next five years. That kind of plunge would be unprecedented in the nation’s history. But that does not stop the internet from picking up where the big stores left off. And we cannot avoid it. It is currently impossible to go online for a simple search without contending with Christmas ads, telling us about all of the money we can save by buying more things. And beware, if you click on any of these ads, you are doomed to seeing more and more advertisements about that product, or something similar, every time you go back on your computer. We are spending more money at Christmas per capita every year accept for 2008-9 which was the lowest point in our modern depression. Consumers say they will spend an average $967.13 this year, according to the annual survey conducted by Prosper Insights & Analytics for the National Retail Federation and released this week. That’s up 3.4 percent from the $935.58 consumers said they would spend when surveyed at the same time last year. That totals somewhere around a trillion dollars consumers will spend for the Christmas season. This occurs in spite of the fact that nearly 40% of our populations is under water-if they had to pay off the credit cards, student and auto loans. The current average credit card debt is approximately $11,000 per household. We are a consumer society, there is no way of getting around it. And there is no better time to observe it than right now. And the really sad thing is most of the things we buy, will become some form of junk that needs to be disposed of in a few months. And we call Christmas a time for joy, happiness, peace on earth, and good will to all. But if it is such a happy time, why do so many people fall apart during the Christmas season. Mental health professionals refer to the holiday season as the most difficult time of year for them. People just seem to get mentally sicker this time of year. On top of whatever has caused this run away consumerism, as a progressive Christian, I have some other issues with Christmas. First, why are we celebrating Jesus’ birth on December 25th? We know he was probably born between 6 and 4BCE and we also know he was not born in December. One of the things scholars point to in order to justify a different date is from the book of Luke, Chapter 8. It states “The shepherds were in the fields keeping watch over their sheep.” There were no shepherds in hills of Israel during the winter. There were other reasons but the point is that we do not know when his birthday actually is. This may have been why the early Christians did not celebrate Jesus’ birthday until the fourth century. Up until that point, the most important holiday on the Christian Calendar was Easter. Then as Christianity began to grow in the Roman world, church leaders had to contend with a popular pagan holiday, commemorating the “birthday of the unconquered sun” (natalis solis invicti)–the Roman name for the winter solstice. At the same time, Mithraism–worship of the ancient Persian god of light–was popular in the Roman army, and the cult held some of its most important rituals on the winter solstice. It was around this time the Roman Emperor Constantine I converted to Christianity, in 312. He soon sanctioned Christianity, and more than likely instructed church leaders to appropriate the winter-solstice holidays and thereby achieve a more seamless conversion to Christianity for his subjects. So December 25 became the birthday of Jesus Christ. So the fact is, we are celebrating natalis solis invicti, not Jesus’s birth or even Santa Claus’ birth. And then there are the carols. When I go to a candle light service, which I truly hold dear in my heart, we are sometimes lucky enough to hear a decent sermon. Then we start to sing about the “virgin birth,” or the King of All, Joy to the World, or Silent Night Holy Night, or O Holy Night. Well you get the idea. Yes, I do go now and then, and I have learned to view the words symbolically not literally. I tell myself that this is just a song and some of them still stir something in my soul, even if my head is spinning. Now do not get me wrong. I love Christmas. My wife thinks I am a “Bah Humbug” kind of guy, but in most of my adult years I have struggled with many of these thoughts. What happened to the birthday of Jesus who was definitely poor and spoke intelligently of ways to survive when poor? What happened to the Jesus, the compassionate one? What happened to a simple Christmas that we have turned into a shopping frenzy? Where is the spirituality of the season or even the day? What happened to the Christmas of my youth? OK, that was a long time ago. I was reared in the early forties and fifties when we were either in a war or were trying to recover from the war. But I remember a very different kind of Christmas. My earliest memories of Christmas happened a couple of years before WWII came to halt. My father was working at Douglas Aircraft, helping build bombers, and was given a deferment as a result. Although I did not know it, I suppose we were poor, certainly by today’s standards. In the very beginning my parents would wait until Christmas Eve, after we had gone to bed, to decorate the tree. I learned much later in my dad’s life, he had made a deal with a friend at the tree lot to get a “free tree” if he waited until the last day before Christmas. My brother, sister and I always got one special present and something in our stocking. Sometimes it was a pair of jeans or possibly a whole outfit, which means we were also gifted with a matching shirt or blouse. We also knew we were going to get some candy in our stocking, along with a couple of tangerines and some nuts. We could not have been happier. But our real Christmas started when we got to my grandparents’ house. This is where my happiest Christmases happened. My mother had two sisters and a brother. She was the oldest of the four, so it seemed like every year there would be another cousin to play with. The adults had a family rule. Usually at our Thanksgiving dinner, each of the parents in our families would pull a name from a hat, with one of the other family’s name. They were to give that family a gift and that was the only one they would give to the rest of the family for Christmas each year. The kids would get little presents from the families but it was not about gift giving, it was about being together. The gift exchange did not take us very long. We would have a wonderful meal, clear the tables and sing all of the Christmas carols for at least an hour. Every one of my mom’s family were members of a church, so it was beautiful music, usually sung in two or three parts. We kids would always have a play or a song to sing for the adults. It was delightful and rewarding and I will never forget it. Most of all it was simple, with no stress. I spent every Christmas at my grandparents’ house until I was in my senior year of college. I never wanted to miss it. I still dream of a Christmas like that. So is there any way to solve my dilemma. OK, I can ignore the incorrect birthdate of Jesus. It is just a day and I just have to give up trying to bend it to my understanding of his birth. Like I said, I actually like celebrating Jesus’ birth. I guess I am just tired of the craziness that seems to go along with it. I know I am not going to change the way other people celebrate Christmas. But I do not have to spend $967.13 on gifts this year, or contribute to the trillion-dollar total that we will spend as a society. This may be the answer for a few of us but I am still having a hard time with the Jesus we are celebrating. I do not have to get involved with the Christmas chaos. I can avoid shopping malls and the Black Friday specials. Although my wife does most of our Christmas shopping, she does 90 percent of it on-line today. That is one problem solved. Secondarily, I might feel better if I got more in touch with the historical Jesus as opposed to the Christ of faith. Jesus of Nazareth was born a human and died a human. However, by the second and third centuries we turned him into a god or part of a god. Throughout the centuries, he became a multifaceted icon. He could be a soldier or a pacifist, a teacher or poet, a powerful ruler or servant of the needy. “The historical Jesus has not only been overwhelmed by the theologically inspired Christ, but for all practical purposes has been replaced by a culturally driven image.” (1) Today serious scholars and progressive Christians recognize most of the differences between the Jesus of history and Christ of faith, except around Christmas time. If we want to look seriously at the story of Jesus of history, we must first let go of the idea he was God or part of the Godhead. Only when we move toward the more real Jesus, can we begin to understand why we celebrate his name every year. Remember Jesus was a prophetic teacher and preacher, and was a man of extraordinary faith. For us to truly understand this, we have to let go of the idea that as God he would have no need for faith. But we have a pretty good idea that Jesus struggled, he doubted and he wept just like the rest of us. And when we begin to understand this, only then can we understand what an incredible thing it was for him, as a moral person, to maintain his deep faith, in spite of his difficult life. Like other Jews of his time, Jesus had to reconcile his faith in a God who promised freedom, while he was experiencing living in a hostile, occupied country. I can celebrate that. Thirdly, I need to be reminded that Jesus was poor, worked with the poor, preached and taught the poor. He set an example that can be followed today. His incredible faith carried him through some extraordinary times and events. When I was in seminary, in the early 1980s, I worked for a year and a half at the Potrero Hills Neighborhood Center. I was one of two whites, on a staff of over twenty people who worked at this very busy center. We primarily serviced the large black community that lived in the projects nearby. I became literally blind to my color, sometimes to a fault, and every day felt a sense that I was really doing something important and meaningful. I have never felt closer to Jesus. When I graduated, I was offered fulltime job at that center. I contacted one of my black friends at my seminary and told him I wanted some advice. He had observed me at work at the center, and one time when I taught a class in his mostly Black church. When I asked him what he thought I should do, he asked me if I read Malcom X’s book. I told him yes. Then he proceeded to remind me of the passage when Malcom X was talking to an interviewer. He had been asked about a negative comment Malcom X had made years before. Malcom X then said, “I wish I had told them come do what you can do but when you learn something, go back to your people and teach them what you have learned.” I got his point and proceeded to find another job opportunity. And I did teach what I had learned. There are many opportunities to work with the underprivileged and the poor. I think if I do more of that, Christmas could be more real, more productive and bring me closer to the real Jesus. And finally, when we celebrate Christmas, we celebrate a very important birth. And no matter what we have done with his story, my guess is young Jesus would have had no idea about his life, what he would achieve, or its ending. But as he evolved and moved through the stages of his life, his faith grew, his wisdom developed, and his absolute trust in whomever he perceived as God, was strengthened. Although he never intended to start a new religion, it happened. As a result we inherited a safer, more loving, and more just society. Now I can celebrate that. ~ Fred C. Plumer, President ProgressiveChristianity.org Read the essay online here. About the Author In 1986 Rev. Plumer was called to the Irvine United Congregational Church in Irvine, CA to lead a UCC new start church, where he remained until he retired in 2004. The church became known throughout the denomination as one of the more exciting and progressive mid-size congregations in the nation. He served on the Board of Directors of the Southern California Conference of the United Church of Christ (UCC) for five years, and chaired the Commission for Church Development and Evangelism for three of those years. In 2006 Fred was elected President of ProgressiveChristianity.org (originally called The Center for Progressive Christianity - TCPC) when it’s founder Jim Adams retired. As a member of the Executive Council for TCPC he wrote The Study Guide for The 8 Points by which we define: Progressive Christianity. He has had several articles published on church development, building faith communities and redefining the purpose of the enlightened Christian Church. His book Drink from the Well is an anthology from speeches, articles in eBulletins, and numerous publications that define the progressive Christianity movement as it evolves to meet new challenges in a rapidly changing world. (1) Rescuing Religion, John Van Hagen, Polebridge Press 2012 Question & Answer Janet from Adelaide, Australia writes: Question: Are there parts of the Old Testament that are said to be relevant today and why? Answer: Bishop John Shelby Spong Dear Janet, The question you pose is far too complex to lend itself to a simple yes or no answer. The Old Testament is a library that contains 39 unique and different books. These books were written over a period of perhaps a thousand years. They represent a wide variety of types of literature. Some are descriptions of tribal history. Some are filled with liturgical and ethical injunctions; some are interpreters of history; some are wisdom literature; some are poetry; some are the writings of prophets; some are protest literature. There is no doubt that parts of this body of sacred literature are eternal and therefore relevant to us today. Other parts are so clearly time bound as to be totally irrelevant to our world today. The issue is how does one separate the wheat from the chaff. The first step is not to impose a literal agenda on this literature that comes from a nation of storytellers. The second is to recognize the time span between the event being described and the description. For example, if Abraham actually was a person of history, he lived about 1850 B.C.E. but the stories about Abraham were not written for at least 800 years. Moses lived around 1250 B.C.E. but everything we know about Moses was written some 300 years later. Third, one should expect the attitudes and knowledge of the past to be reflected in ancient records. So it is that in the Bible women are inferior; women are the property of men; homosexuals are to be executed; slavery is morally possible; sickness is caused by sin; the earth is the center of the universe; God lives above the sky, etc. etc. None of these assumptions do most of us today find either relevant or edifying. But when Moses escaped his tribal identity and began to see God as a universal presence; when Hosea discovered that he loved his wife even when she had become a prostitute and recognized in that experience the love of God for his wayward nation; when Amos saw justice as the other side of worship and worship as the other side of justice, that book is profound and relevant. The Bible in this way leads us through its very human words to glimpse the reality behind all that is. Those are the moments when we hear the "word of God" in the biblical tradition. I treasure the Old Testament. I do not read it literally nor should you. I reject much of it as no longer having relevance for my life. But I read it seriously and ask what does this mean? Why was it preserved? Where does this touch life? That is how its insights emerge. ~ John Shelby Spong Originally published March 10, 2004 Read and Share Online Here __________________________________________________ Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited Do we have the moral right to choose to die? Is death a natural and normal part of human life or is it an enemy that we must always seek to defeat? That is an issue being debated today in religious circles, pitting traditional religious groups, most notably the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church and leading Protestant Fundamentalists, against the rapidly growing movement of those who seek to secure the option that has been called "death with dignity" or "compassion in dying." Both of these are titles of organizations made up of people who advocate the legalization of physician-assisted suicide. In the state of Oregon this debate has reached the status of becoming an option guaranteed by law. Attorney General John Ashcroft has thus far made two unsuccessful attempts to overturn this decision that was ratified twice by the voters of Oregon. This is interesting behavior for a representative of an administration that claims to stand for the rights of states and consequently for decreasing the power of the federal government. One should not, however, expect consistency in politics. As medical science continues to push back the barriers of finitude and expand the possibilities of longer life, the intensity of this battle is bound to rise and these two vastly different points of view will more and more find themselves on a collision course. Let me begin this discussion by acknowledging that there is no doubt that, given the way the Judeo-Christian faith story has traditionally been understood, the religious establishment of the western world will normally be opposed to making changes in this arena. The creation story, with which the Bible opens, says that life is the property and gift of God. The decision, therefore, as to how and when a person is to die is not one, this point of view asserts, that any human being can ever take from God's hands. This theme is confirmed again and again throughout the pages of Holy Scripture in the distinct negativity that is expressed toward suicide. So, this religious mentality tells us, physician-assisted suicide can never be defended as a human choice or a human right by Christian people. That is why many religious leaders regard it as an immoral decision that must not only be avoided, but should not even be debated. As the religious argument develops, the case is made that in the Bible death is defined as God's punishment for human disobedience of the divine will that corrupted the perfect creation. In the ancient, primeval legend of the first human beings, Eve, who was presumably born to immortality, responds to the tempting serpent with these words: "God said that if we eat of the fruit of this tree, we will surely die." Death was contingent on her behavior; it was not her natural destiny. But this story proclaims that she and her husband Adam in fact did eat of this forbidden fruit and, true to God's promise, they lost eternity and entered mortality. From that day to this, says the tradition, the inevitably of death has been the punishment and fate of us all. Paul, a major architect of the early Christian faith, built on that definition when he wrote in his first Epistle to the Corinthians that death is the "last enemy" to be destroyed. Paul saw the life of Jesus as one who had, on the stage of history, taken on this enemy and defeated it, thus breaking the power of death that had plagued human life from the dawn of creation. As Christian theology developed, these ancient Hebrew narratives, which Paul viewed as literal events in history, came to be thought of as founding myths or legends, but their hold on truth was still not disputed. The Church almost universally taught that people were born with the stain of Adam and Eve's "original sin," and it was our destiny to endure its consequences. So all were to be victimized by death. That is still today bedrock, traditional Christian thinking. Christian baptism was developed to wash away the damning stain of 'original sin' into which each newborn infant was born, and thus to enable each baptized Christian to participate in Christ's victory over death. That is why the Church taught for centuries that the unbaptized baby was doomed though all eternity. It was a very effective fear tactic that the Church used to enhance its power. The fourth century theologian Augustine gave this concept of original sin its ultimate power, when he used it to develop what most people still regard as traditional Christian doctrine. The fact that all human beings died was proof to Augustine that all lives were lived in the sin of Adam, with no capacity to save themselves. He then portrayed Jesus as the divine rescue operation, sent from God to accomplish what only God could do. Jesus' death on the cross became the moment when the price of sin was paid, and the story of Jesus' resurrection became the sign that the punishing power of death had, in fact, been broken. The Eucharist, the Lord's Supper or the Mass became the liturgical re-enactment of this drama of salvation, which had been effected on Good Friday and Easter. Each generation could, in worship, newly appropriate the salvation that God had wrought. It was a neat and consistent system and it gave order to western religion for almost 2000 years. It has only one major problem, but it is of such magnitude that it now renders this whole theological viewpoint both dated and inoperative. This understanding of the origin of evil is simply not true either literally or metaphorically. We were not created perfect; we have rather evolved from lower forms of life. We did not fall into sin; we are rather just not yet fully human. We do not need to be rescued from a fall that never happened, nor can we be restored to a status we have never possessed. Life is naturally mortal. Immortality is not something that human beings have lost. The unique thing about human life is that we live in the constant knowledge that it is our natural destiny to die. If Christianity is going to survive in a generation with a very different consciousness, it must address these key issues. Today, it is easy for us to understand how ancient people related to the ever-present specter of death. It was a constant reality. No one seemed to die in his or her old age. Death always seemed premature whether it came in battle or by way of sickness. In a world that knew nothing of germs or tumors, death was always interpreted as a punishing visitation from God. Sickness was treated in those days with prayers and sacrifices to appease an angry Deity. It is hard for us to step into these presuppositions of our ancestors; so profoundly different is our understanding of the world. Slowly over the centuries, sickness and disease have been both demystified and secularized. If germs cause sickness, antibiotics are developed to counter the germs. If tumors grow abnormally in our bodies, we discover them with x-rays or MRIs, then we shrink them with radiation, treat them with chemotherapy or excise them with surgery. If our blood becomes infected, we transfuse the whole system or cleanse that blood outside the body. If kidneys fail, we hook the body up to a dialysis machine to do their work. In these processes we have pushed death not out of life but at least to the edge of life, where we might look at it with more objectivity than our ancestors were able to do. The result is a radical transformation in the way modern people think of death and this has tempered our long-standing obsession with and fear of death. The first conclusion we have to draw is that St. Paul was surely wrong about death. Death is not an enemy, not even the last enemy. Death is an inevitable part of life and even of creation, which is called good. It is not the first time, nor the only time, that Paul has been declared wrong although those, who have turned the Bible into a semi-divine inerrant book, are always bothered and defensive about such charges. Nonetheless, in the western world today, it is widely assumed that Paul was wrong about women and wrong about homosexuality. He is also now seen as wrong about death being punishment and thus the final enemy to be defeated. Death is in fact the power that gives life its urgency, its ultimate meaning. It is a natural and normal part of the life cycle that must be embraced as a friend not resisted as an enemy. As the shadow side of life, death walks with us from the moment we are born. Death pressures life, making it imperative that we not postpone saying "I love you," or fail to rush to heal a broken relationship. It urges us to struggle now, not tomorrow, to build a better world. Death rings the bell on all our procrastination. It keeps life from being what someone called "an endless game of shuffleboard." We rejoice when medicine pushes back the domain of death and expands the length and quality of our days. When the skills of modern medicine, however, reach the edges of their competence, they cease this noble task and begin only to postpone the inevitability of our natural dying. That is a very different reality. It is this reality that makes it necessary to face radically new choices and to make radically different decisions. This is the frontier that modern men and women are now confronting, and it is the source of the tension in the current religious debate. When life meets its ultimate limits and is threatened with a choice between unbearable pain and a meaningless state of existence, it should be, I believe, the patient's choice to embrace death by directing the doctors to end that existence. Those of us, who have taken from the hand and mind of God the power to expand life's boundaries so dramatically, must now also discover the appropriateness of taking from God's hand the right to decide how and when we will die. It is a salute to life's beauty; a tribute to life's sacredness, and that makes it, in my mind, a profoundly ethical decision. It is a decision based on the definition of life as holy, while still taking seriously the new consciousness to which human life is only now awakening. The right to end one's life with dignity and with appropriate medical assistance is still a minority opinion opposed by most religious systems. However, I believe it is destined to become a majority opinion that will be embraced by the people of God, newly emancipated from fear. I welcome it. ~ John Shelby Spong Originally published October 6, 2004 Announcements It’s easy to become disheartened by the injustice, tragedies and natural disasters unfolding in our communities and around the world… join the FREE online Vision 2020 Summit, presented by The Shift Network — December 5-7, 2017 — where you’ll discover a laboratory for the future, an incubator of genius, a catalyst for birthing new possibilities to create a world that works for ALL. You’ll find more than 60 leaders — including Dolores Huerta, Marianne Williamson, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, Sister Jenna, Stephen Dinan, Rev. angel Kyodo williams, Joan Blades, Shariff Abdullah, Michael Lerner, Andrew Harvey and many others — revealing bold visions and strategies for shifting our world, scaling up our influence and impact and making new possibilities as attractive, successful and imitation-worthy as possible. 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Death of Yap Kim Hao
by Dharmalingam Vinasithamby 16 Nov '17

16 Nov '17

DearColleagues, Yap KimHao, the man who provided the Ecumenical Institute the umbrella for itsactivities in Malaysia in the 60s and 70s , died at the age of 88 in Singaporethis morning. He became the first Asian bishop of the Methodist church inMalaysia and Singapore in 1968.Those of us who worked in Malaysia and Singaporein those years will know how important his support was to us. Thanks to him, wewere able to use Rev Kjell Knutsen’s residence as the KL Religious House. Hewas a progressive thinker in a denomination stuck in the two-storey universe.He spent the last few decades of his retirement in Singapore where he workedwith various groups such as the Inter Religious Organisation and those fightingfor gay rights. Dharmalingam

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Forrester/Spong: Participating in the Song of Life; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 16 Nov '17

16 Nov '17

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR Participating in the Song of Life Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D. ...After days of labor, …mute in my consternations, I hear my song at last, and I sing it. As we sing, …the day turns, the trees move. ………………“I go among trees and sit still,” Wendell Berry The first lines of John’s gospel proclaim that “in the beginning was the Word,” and that “all things came into being through the Word.” We can hear these words literally as an historical assertion claiming that at some distant point in ancient times – the initiation of time – the Word (whatever that might mean) came into being as a kind of medium through which all else that has come to be was created. My sense is that misses the poetic thrust of this mystical writer. Rather, I understand John to have experienced that not only in the beginning of each and every experience we have, but in the middle and culmination as well, there is this mystery he identifies as “the Word.” But for most of us, most of the time, the beginning, middle and end of our experience is not experienced as of some mysterious Word (again, whatever that might mean). Rather the vast majority of our experiences are generated by, sustained by, and understood in terms of, fear (that is usually unconscious). Fear cannot only paralyze us, fear can thrust us into fight or spur us into a hasty retreat. Peter Levine, in his magisterial and at times elegantly written book on trauma, In An Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness, offers a testament in part to the power of fear to compel and compromise us, body and soul. When some animals are threatened with death by a predator, such as an opossum, we commonly describe their paralyzed reaction as “playing dead.” But there is no play involved here at all. The overwhelmed nervous system is thrown into a last resort for survival, and all but shallow breathing shuts down as the brain stem takes control. Sometimes it works, and the predator loses interest. Sometimes it fails, and the opossum is some other creature’s meal. More often, the last-ditch survival mechanism of paralysis is not necessary. Rather, as the large and swift savannah cat attacks its prey, the hearts of the antelopes accelerate their beat, sweat pours forth, breathing becomes rapid, pupils dilate, and the animals instinctively run or actively defend. As humans, when our nervous systems become overwhelmed we can become catatonic. We don’t choose to become immobile. Rather, our system shuts down as a last-ditch effort to survive. As with our evolutionary relatives existing on the Serengeti, more often than not, such extreme reaction isn’t necessary. But all too often we experience our interactions of day-to-day life as if we were still striving to survive in the wild; at least that is how our experiences register in our nervous system. We have an interaction with our boss; we have an argument with our spouse; our daughter fails to arrive at home with the family car by 11 pm and now it is 2 in the morning; our parent is suffering from dementia. More often than not, before we are even aware, our hearts have quickened, our breathing stopped or accelerated, we sweat, our head aches, and we are primed to flee or quarrel. We feel compelled to at least do something to change what we currently experience as untenable. Fear, whether manifesting as flight or fight, expresses itself in and through the compulsion “to do” something to change what is. Ironically, we would rather die than not do, because we experience our non-doing as a kind of death by being overwhelmed by life. And so, fear compels us to find something we can do to change the circumstances we find to be too much to handle. We don’t know how to receive what life is presenting us. To take this one step further, fear, which surrounds and imbues our experience, has us convinced that the mystery we call God is not present in our frightening condition. We feel compelled to act in some way in order to get to a place where we hope God will be present. If God were present, fear-controlled reason concludes, then we would able to rest and let be where we are. To begin to get a sense of how pervasive fear is in Western culture, we need to recognize how thoroughly we have become a society of doers. We are utterly convinced that thru doing will we be saved. As I said, we would rather die than not do. To fail to do – and to not do does register in our beings as failure – is to leave us in the seemingly intolerable position of vulnerability and at the apparent whim of a capricious universe. Even more, in our fear, which compels us to be beings who try to control life, we reduce the mystery of God, the Beloved, into a divine-doer; just like us, only much bigger and much stronger, and invulnerable. All of which brings us back to the reforming experience and spiritual insight of the community in which the gospel of John was written. This vulnerable group, feeling besieged in a turn-of-the-century culture whose seams are somewhat frayed, somehow realizes that before fear, and more profound and powerful than fear, is their experience of the Word, holding everything they are undergoing: threat from Imperial Rome, discord with the Jewish Synagogue, tense relations with other fledgling communities of the early Christ movement. But what is meant by “the Word”? We hear that phrase and it sounds like some “thing.” In the beginning was some thing, some object, called “the Word.” This is an instance where way too much is lost in translation. The Hebrew dabar and the Greek logos connote not some thing, but a dynamic and vibrant mystery. We would do much better to say that “in the beginning was wording.” But that is so clumsy in English and still misses the mark. We draw closer by saying, “in the beginning was speaking.” Using the gerund, which is both a noun and a verb, helps us approach what John’s community was touching upon – a dynamic presence in their lives, always there. We can draw even closer to the true nature of this dynamic by expressing the realization poetically: “in the beginning there was singing from out of the Absolute depths.” When the Divine depths express, what arises is song. Life, John’s gospel is proclaiming, is a singing forth of Being. If you consider a note of music, we can perceive it as an inanimate mark of notation on a page. But as physics reminds us, any thing we observe can be appreciated as a particle or as a wave, so too a note of singing. Each note of life is a divine wave of Being. We, each and every creature, are notes of vibrant music. Creation itself is a symphony Being spontaneously composes moment-to-moment. The intimate quality of this music, however, invites us to experience this singing, so loving and so tender in its true nature, as divine cooing; like a mother humming softly and sweetly to her infant. Neither is really doing anything. They are not doers. They are fluidly participating in one another’s being as the song that is their common life resonates throughout their bodies. The opening words of John’s gospel are an invitation to grow into the wisdom of participating in life as song. Each and every creature that exists is a pulsating note; all things come into being as a wave of divine presence manifesting in unique sonorous beauty. We never know what movement will arise on the breath of the next intonation – a tragedy of Wagner, the joy of Beethoven, the mourning and loss of a Fitzgerald, the playful love of Ellington. We have no control over life’s spontaneous unfoldment. But however Being manifests, the breath of each note is a wave of Boundless Love; the presence within each note is always a tenor of Undying Compassion. The invitation we receive, regardless of the movement of the song, is to learn to participate in, is to learn how to sing, the irreplaceably unique song that is us. ~ Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D. Read online here About the Author Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D. is an Episcopal priest, a student of the Diamond Approach for over a decade, as well as a certified teacher of the Enneagram in the Narrative Tradition. He is the founder of the Healing Arts Center of St. Paul’s Church in Marquette, Michigan, and the author of five books, including “I Have Called You Friends“, “Holding Beauty in My Soul’s Arms“, and “My Heart is a Raging Volcano of Love for You” and “Beyond my Wants, Beyond my Fears: The Soul’s Journey into the Heartland“. Question & Answer Sharon via the Internet, writes: Question: An Alabama politician just compared Judge Roy Moore’s “dating” of teenagers to the relationship of an adult Joseph to a teenaged Mary. What does the Bible actually say about Joseph and Mary’s ages? Answer: By Rev. David Felten Dear Sharon, The short answer is, “Nothing.” True, the historical and anthropological evidence suggests that people got married at younger ages back in the day. But outside the brief stories describing how each of them dealt with Mary’s unexpected pregnancy (Luke for Mary and Matthew for Joseph), the Gospels just don’t say much about Joseph and Mary’s everyday lives. But just because there’s nothing in the Bible about their ages hasn’t stopped theologians from speculating on the matter – especially when there are wobbly early church doctrines in need of shoring up. As early as the 2nd century CE, a developing reverence for the figure of Mary led to the creation of the doctrine of her “perpetual virginity,” the idea that Mary was always a virgin, before, during and after the birth of Jesus. This may seem all fine and good, but there’s a fly in that ointment. In Mark 6:3 and Matthew 13:55–56 (along with Galatians and 1 Corinthians), there are clear references to “Jesus’ brothers and sisters.” So, if the church was going to defend the idea of the perpetual virginity of Mary, they had a problem. Where did Jesus’ brothers and sisters come from? Easy. Make Joseph an older man who had children from a previous marriage! Voila! These notions were bolstered by various non-canonical gospels written in the early centuries of the Church. The Protoevangelium of James, probably written around the end of the 2nd century, is one source of the stories suggesting that Joseph was older. At first, Joseph refuses to marry the girl, saying, “I have children, and I am an old man, and she is a young girl. It also makes mention of Joseph’s sons: “And [Joseph] found a cave there, and led [Mary] into it; and leaving his two sons beside her, he went out to seek a midwife in the district of Bethlehem." Add to that the Gospel of Peter and other sources referring to an older, previously married Joseph and whew, Mary’s perpetual virginity is preserved. This narrative not only designates Jesus’ “brothers and sisters” as step-kin, but in a pre-Viagra age, also suggests that a decrepit old Joseph would have been unlikely to even have the capacity to compromise Mary’s virginal state. And that’s the mindset of many conventional Christians to this day. Ironically, most Conservative Christians would condemn the Protoevangelium of James and The Gospel of Peter as illegitimate non-canonical writings, not to be trusted. And yet the only mention of Joseph being an older guy with kids from a previous marriage is from these texts, NOT the New Testament. Oops. But none of this matters for pious blowhards who pronounce pompous claims about the Bible with the expectation that their political power naturally extends to grant them exalted theological credibility, as well. As you’ve mentioned, the latest example of pious blowhardery is one of Judge Roy Moore’s compatriots, Alabama State Auditor, Jim Zeigler. Yes, it’s true. He defended Moore by comparing the beleaguered candidate to Joseph, who he believes was a noble older man who took unto himself the teenaged Mary. So, says he, there’s no problem with Moore’s actions, claiming that it’s all “much ado about nothing,” even if the accusations are true. (?!?) So, despite what appears to be Moore’s increasingly obvious guilt, Zeigler and his ilk leave me asking a question that frequently comes to mind: just how gullible are self-proclaimed Conservative Christians? At the very least, how gullible do the people who claim to represent Conservative Christians think their constituents are? This is not a prejudiced generalization. According to the Tuscaloosa News, Zeigler was the former Chair of both the Conservative Christians of Alabama AND the conservative League of Christian Voters. He has officially, publicaly, and without question, been an official spokesperson for Conservative Christians. So let me ask one more question. How many of these conservative, Bible-believing Christians in Alabama are going to call out Jim Zeigler for misquoting the Bible for his own political gain? I reckon not many. Why? Because, although they claim to revere the Bible and follow its “inerrant truth,” they clearly don’t read it. Well, maybe Revelation. Daniel and John, too. OK, and parts of Genesis – and the juicy bits they claim are about how bad homosexuals are. But the rest? Not so much. The bottom line is that they don’t know enough about the Bible or history or theology to correct Jim Zeigler in his blatant, ignorant, child-molestation-supporting pomposity. He’s a white Republican male in a position of power. In Alabama, it’s clear that they can say or do whatever they want without consequences – even if what they say or do is demonstrably contrary to the very faith they claim to embrace (cf additional scandals involving the Governor and Speaker of the House). And while it now appears that Roy Moore’s wife faked continued support from 50 Alabama pastors, the silence from hapless Conservative Christians and their leaders is deafening. Suffice it to say that Jim Zeigler has absolutely no idea what he’s talking about. Is he just another callous politician making a “hail Mary” reference to what he thinks is in the Bible in order to appeal to his low-information Conservative Christian base? After all, this guy’s stock-in-trade has been, in large part, his Christian bona fides. Unfortunately, whatever he thinks Christianity is about seems a far cry from what Jesus demonstrated in his teaching and actions. When it comes to the alleged molestation of teen girls, Zeigler can’t even seem to muster the empathy inherent in the Golden Rule, let alone a grasp of what the Bible actually says about Joseph and Mary. So here we have yet another cautionary tale supporting my conviction that if you don’t know what’s in your Bible, people like Jim Zeigler can (and will!) take advantage of you. They will make up anything they want about “what’s in the Bible” to support their own narrow political and cultural prejudices. And with no help from their totally compromised and culturally-accommodated pastors, people simply don’t know enough to call #BS or #fakenews. In situations like these, my dream is that some earnest reporter would know enough to ask a follow-up question like, “Mr Ziegler. Your statement claims to suggest that Joseph was an older man in a relationship with a teenage girl. That’s actually nowhere in the Bible. As a Conservative Christian, would you like to comment on why it’s OK to perpetuate something that’s not in the Bible for your own political gain?” Ahh, to dream. Ziegler says of Moore’s situation, “There’s just nothing immoral or illegal here. Maybe just a little bit unusual.” That’s right, just another example of the unusual dynamics of pious Conservative Christians misrepresenting the Bible and defending the authority of older white men to do whatever they want without consequence. I can only hope that Judge Roy Moore’s run for Senate is doomed. Even before the latest revelations of alleged molestation and sexual assault, Moore’s record is a debris-field of oppression, exclusion, and prejudice that lays bare his reactionary, theocratic, and hateful agenda. I suspect that someone like Alabama State Auditor, Jim Zeigler, is too far down the rabbit hole to ever be anything but what he is. But the people of Alabama – especially the Conservative Christians of Alabama – still have a voice. Rejecting such obvious unchristian behavior and hypocrisy seems like a no-brainer. But it will take courage from pastors and others to rise above partisan politics and take a stand for basic human dignity. Thanks for your question – and don’t forget to vote (early and often!) on December 12th! ~ Rev. David Felten Read and share online here About the Author David Felten is a full-time pastor at The Fountains, a United Methodist Church in Fountain Hills, Arizona. David and fellow United Methodist Pastor, Jeff Procter-Murphy, are the creators of the DVD-based discussion series for Progressive Christians, “Living the Questions”. A co-founder of the Arizona Foundation for Contemporary Theology and also a founding member of No Longer Silent: Clergy for Justice, David is an outspoken voice for LGBTQ rights both in the church and in the community at large. David is active in the Desert Southwest Conference of the United Methodist Church and tries to stay connected to his roots as a musician. You’ll find him playing saxophones in a variety of settings, including appearances with the Fountain Hills Saxophone Quartet. David and his wife Laura, an administrator for a large Arizona public school district, live in Phoenix with their three often adorable children. ___________________________________________________ Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited Were there twelve disciples? – Was Mary Magdalene one of them? Dear Friends, Sometimes I receive a question that requires a whole column to answer. Such was the case with a question received late this summer. I am happy to devote this column to the answer and hope that you find it worthwhile. ......................................................~ John Shelby Spong John Schwally, a journalist film maker in New York City, currently doing research for a film on the future of Christianity writes: “In my research, I have come across some pretty wild propositions regarding Mary Magdalene as Jesus’ wife and apostle. Some of them are quite convincing. Your June 9 column entitled “The Ultimate Source of Anti-Semitism,” seems to have solved a mystery of sorts for me. The Church does not recognize Mary Magdalene as part of the “original 12″ apostles. Well, I have been trying to reconcile the claims that Mary Magdalene was in fact an apostle but how does that work when the number 12 has been consistent in all the writings through the centuries. The answer: Judas is a fiction! By writing Judas into the scenario, the early Jewish Christians were able to separate themselves from the Orthodox Jews under attack from the Romans. At the same time, they were able to relieve themselves of the embarrassment of having a woman, Mary Magdalene, as a leader in their community, all the while keeping with the number of 12 Apostles of Jesus! I was wondering if you thought this theory has any validity.” Dear John, Your theory makes so many assumptions that I need to separate them out and deal with them one by one. First, Mary Magdalene is clearly a significant figure in the Jesus movement. Without doubt she was the leader of the women disciples. The women disciples were not visible in the New Testament until the story of the crucifixion and resurrection scenes where they suddenly emerge, perhaps because we are told that all “the (male) disciples have forsaken him and fled.” However, the texts of Mark (15:41), Matthew (27:55) and Luke (23:49) all attest that these women have followed Jesus ‘all the way from Galilee.’ That is, they have always been part of his movement, but, as was the fate of women in that patriarchal society, they were not thought worthy of mention until they became unavoidable. The second thing needing to be examined is what kind of women are these that they were following an itinerant band of men led by an itinerant teacher. Under the prevailing social norms of that place and time, these women could be only one of two things: the wives of the men or prostitutes. Third, Mary Magdalene is certainly portrayed in the gospels, written between 70 and 100 C. E., as a major force in the Jesus Movement. She is the only person that all four gospels agree was at the tomb at dawn on the first day of the week. The Fourth Gospel, which is the only gospel that claims to be based on a first hand eye witness account, says that she was the only mourner at the tomb. This gospel also portrays her as having immediate access to Peter and the other disciples, who were presumably hiding for their own safety after the crucifixion. She knows where they are, goes immediately to them and is granted entrance. Fourth, in this Gospel of John, Mary Magdalene is said to have referred to Jesus with two rather familiar forms of address. To the angels she was said to have answered their question of why she was weeping with the words, “They have taken away ‘my Lord’ and I do not know where they have laid him.” ‘My Lord’ was the title of respect a rabbinic student might use for a revered rabbi. It is also a common title a Jewish woman might use in reference to her husband. Later, when she believed herself to be confronting the Risen Christ, she is said to have responded to him with the title ‘Rabboni’ which is once again the kind of intimate respectful title a woman might use for her revered husband. Fifth, also in John’s Gospel, Mary Magdalene is portrayed as demanding from the person she thinks to be the gardener, not just access but ownership of the body of the deceased Jesus. “Sir, if you have taken him away, tell me where you have laid him and I will go and take him away.” Once again, in Jewish society of the first century, for a woman to demand access to the deceased body of a Jewish male would be quite out of bounds unless she was the nearest of kin. When I put these things together, I think they point to a strong possibility that Mary Magdalene might have been the wife of Jesus, an idea that I published in a book entitled Born of a Woman: A Bishop Rethinks the Virgin Birth and the Place of Women in a Male Dominated Church. This book came out ten years before the Da Vinci Code! There is also some reason for thinking that such an idea would be increasingly uncomfortable when the Church began to move into the dualistic world of Greek thinking that regarded bodies and flesh as something generally evil, and the body and flesh of a woman particularly evil. From the earliest days there was increasing theological pressure on Christian thinkers to see Jesus as the sinless one who, like the sacrificed lamb in the ritual of the Jewish Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, would be the perfect sacrifice to God. That is Jesus, like the sacrificial lamb, had to be physically perfect with none of his bones broken and morally perfect or, as it would be written about him in the Epistle to the Hebrews, he was “tempted in all things and yet without sin.” Perhaps this assumption is what helped to create the story from the cross, which states that Jesus’ legs were not broken because he had already died. These same expectations would also lead to the suppression of any knowledge about his marriage to Mary Magdalene should they have been married. I think a strong case can be made for the fact that Mary Magdalene’s authority came from her relationship with Jesus as his wife and that is why she was close to his disciples. The next assumption that I think needs to be challenged is that there were ever twelve apostles. That number is certainly present in the tradition and is reflected in the gospels, but as we shall see it was always a rather unstable tradition. Was that an historic memory or was it an apologetic attempt to portray Jesus as the founder of a new Israel, a title by which many in the early church began to call the Jesus Movement? The old Israel had twelve tribes who were said to have been formed by the twelve sons of Jacob, whose name had been changed to Israel after he wrestled with an angel by the river Jabbok. So the New Israel must also have twelve patriarchs who were the disciples of their founder, Jesus. There are many other traditions in the ancient world where religious leaders had twelve disciples who may have been likened to the twelve signs of the zodiac. I am therefore suspicious of the historicity of the number twelve. Even in the New Testament there is confusion about that number for two primary reasons. First the gospels do not agree on who the twelve were. Mark (3:13 -19) and Matthew (10: 1-4) have one list while Luke (6:12-16) and Acts (1:12-14) have another. John never says who the twelve were but has names like Nathaniel who was closely identified with the Jesus movement but who was not on anybody else’s list. In John’s last resurrection story (Chapter 21) he lists only seven disciples. Both Luke and John make reference to a disciple named Judas who was ‘not Iscariot.’ Matthew and Mark seem to know of no such person. If the earliest records we have do not agree on who constituted the twelve apostles, one is forced to wonder about the historicity of the number itself. If the number twelve was added to the tradition after the fact then confusion as to who constituted the twelve would be understandable. John may well have been leaning on an earlier tradition when he used the number seven instead of twelve. My second reason for being suspicious of this number is that even when we have a list of twelve, at least half of them are included by name only. The only apostolic details that we have that would give us any biographical data would be on Peter, Andrew, James, John, Matthew and Thomas. All of the rest are faceless names, necessary to round out the number twelve but not essential to any gospel story line. So I would feel no need to count Magdalene as a disciple in order to restore the number to twelve after the defection of Judas, as if that number had some real meaning. It is worth noting that Luke, writing in the Book of Acts, does say that Judas had to be replaced and that was done by the choice of Matthias, but we need to keep in mind that the Book of Acts was not written until the 10th decade at the very earliest. Given the social norms and the way women were defined in first century Jewish society, it is hard to see how a woman might become part of a male group of disciples. Recall that Mark in chapter six, refers to Jesus’ brothers by name but only says he also had ‘sisters.’ That plural word means more than one but the sisters were deemed not important enough to have their names recorded. Thank you for your question and your interest. I hope you will find these comments helpful in your pursuit of a new understanding of this woman whom the Church has tended to trash throughout history. There is no biblical evidence that Mary Magdalene was ever a prostitute unless you assume that all of these camp following women were prostitutes. I don’t think that case can be made historically. ~ John Shelby Spong Originally posted September 22, 2004 Announcements How would you like to receive a Digital Version of Bishop John Shelby Spong's book The Birth of Jesus for free? ProgressiveChristianity.org, our partner organization that administer's this weekly newsletter, is offering a free copy to anyone who donates $25 or more - now through Thanksgiving as part of their annual campaign. Click here and receive your free copy when you help support ProgressiveChristianity.org's mission to be a portal for all spiritual believers and the authors, scholars, theologians and liturgists who share their resources for the progressive spiritual journey.

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Death of Peggy Heng
by Dharmalingam Vinasithamby 14 Nov '17

14 Nov '17

Dear colleagues, Peggy Heng(Heng Tsu Chen) died yesterday in Sydney, Australia. She was part of the KLReligious House in the 70s and was a member of the Sahaja Yoga group in Sydneywhen she died. Sahaja Yoga has posted a lovely photo tribute to her onFacebook: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXeZE7eK_E8&feature=youtu.be regardsDharmalingam

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11/09/17, Felton/Spong/Fox: A New Template for Religion: A Conversation with Michael Morwood, Part 3 - Worship, Prayer, & the Other Side of the Story; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 09 Nov '17

09 Nov '17

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR A New Template for Religion: A Conversation with Michael Morwood, Part 3 Worship, Prayer, & the Other Side of the Story Rev. David Felten What follows in interview form is the final installment of three columns inspired by a presentation Michael Morwood offered at the Common Dreams Conference in Brisbane, Queensland, in 2016. In this final segment, Morwood offers a new perspective on worship and prayer – along with some concluding thoughts on religion in general and recommendations on a way forward. ____________________________________________ David Felten: We’ve moved away from using the word “worship” in our local faith community, opting for words like “celebration” or “gathering” instead. The concept of “worship” has so much baggage: all those ancient formalities and royal protocols that don’t fit post-Enlightenment ways of thinking – yet people are somehow loathe to give it up. Michael Morwood: Personally, I would stop using the word “worship,” too. The notion of “worship” belongs to an old paradigm, an outdated template for religion. I was in Canada not long ago conducting a weekend for a progressive United Church community. The audience was very on-side with what I presented. At the end of the weekend, I asked some of the community leaders, “Why, with such a progressive community, do you have the large ‘WORSHIP HERE 10:00 am SUNDAY’ sign outside the church?” I was met with puzzled looks, as if to say, “Why wouldn’t we have this sign?” So I asked some questions: .....• Worship whom? .....• For what reason? .....• What do you imagine is at the other end of your worship? A deity taking notice? A deity taking some delight in homage being paid? .....• Is your Sunday gathering for God’s sake? .....• Where did this imagination come from? I’d ask the same questions regarding “the Mass” and what Catholics imagine “Mass” is all about (but I don’t get invitations to Roman Catholic parishes these days!). Overall, I prefer to use words like “liturgy” or “service” for a new template. The roots of the word “liturgy” (leit, people; ergon, work), means the “work of the people.” For me, this understanding of liturgy expands beyond ritual to mean participation in a sacred or divine action. David Felten: So what’s the “work of the people” and the “divine action” you have in mind? Michael Morwood: I think our primary task is to gather around the story of Jesus and seek to understand its full implications for all human interactions. Our challenge is to let it reveal to us the truth of who we are, to challenge us to commit ourselves to being the best possible human expressions of the Great Mystery, and to do this as faithfully and as courageously as Jesus did. And none of this has anything to do with reception of a sacred object, with a priesthood with special powers, or being “fed” at an altar – it certainly has nothing to do with Jesus shedding his blood for the sins of the world. It has nothing to do with singing songs to or addressing prayers to a listening deity. What it does include is: .....• Remembrance of Jesus and of others who shared his vision .....• Awareness of the presence/power within us .....• Commitment to working for a better world. David Felten: So, what about the songs we sing and our liturgical prayers? What about the efficacy of the prayers we offer in our faith-sharing groups? Michael Morwood: What are we being asked to imagine when we ask God to listen? When we thank God? When we address God with personal pronouns? We know where this imagination comes from. The question is, how does this image resonate once the notion of a “God in the heavens” has been abandoned? By all means, let us sing hymns and address prayers to “God” that suggest this divine “being” is listening in and taking note. But, let us do so mindful that whatever words we use are metaphor and poetry. They’re not to be taken literally, but as a means of giving expression to longing, pain, gratitude, joy – all those movements our minds and hearts struggle to convey otherwise. Then let us embrace one of the key challenges that faces us today: to shape prayers (the hymns may take a lot longer!) that affirm a “presence” within and among us. We need a growing collection of metaphors and images that help develop our awareness that this “presence” is not only here with us in the ordinariness of our everyday lives but challenges us to live out the best possible human expression of this “Great Mystery.” David Felten: For as long as I can remember, one of my mentors, Bill Nelson, has advocated that we simply stop using the word “God” altogether. We need images that are free from so many centuries of the theistic and human-centric God that is “out there” somewhere. Michael Morwood: Exactly! In practice, stop addressing prayers to “God.” Just stop doing it. If you still practice a traditional style of spoken prayer, all it takes is the determination to not begin as if you’re speaking to a theistic God. Try it and see what happens! I resolved to do this 15 years ago. It resulted in my book, Praying a New Story which Spirituality & Practice included in its list of “Best Spiritual Books” of 2004. With regard to their own private prayer, many people ask me, “If I let go of the idea of praying to “God,” how do I pray now?” One way I think about it is remembering a Syrian monk known as “the golden speaker.” St John Damascene was born and raised in Damascus in the early 8th century, but he’s given the church words that have been carried down through the centuries: “Prayer is the raising of the mind and heart to God.” Today, if we substitute “great mystery” or “power” or other similar concepts for the word “God,” the definition still holds – understanding it to mean raising our minds and hearts to a presence here, all around us; in the depths of our being. So a key concept for any prayer becomes “awareness.” The goal of my personal prayer is to deepen my awareness, to be conscious of the reality that I embody this “great mystery” in human form. It’s also important to acknowledge that my personal prayer is not for God’s sake. It is for my sake, it is meant to change me. Someone recently asked me, “Can prayer change the world?” and I said, “Of course! If prayer is intended to change us, then we can change the world.” Otherwise we become trapped in the religious cop-out version of prayer: “Let’s leave the fate of the world in God’s hands.” I think Jesus had the same conviction about personal prayer. It’s what motivated his ministry to “the crowd.” He wanted people to become aware of the power and the presence within them and use it to change the world. That was his dream. What a pity that this fundamental stance of Jesus has been buried beneath a layer of prayer asking God to “deliver us from evil.” That’s not God’s task; it’s our task. David Felten: Well that should give the proponents of conventional Christianity heartburn. The Church has thrived for centuries convincing people that they are but loathsome sinners and depraved worms, incapable of any good without Jesus vouching for them. It sounds like your new paradigm puts some pretty high expectations on us lowly humans. Michael Morwood: The major shift in my theological thinking and prayer life in the past 25 years has stemmed from a growing – and a completely new – appreciation of what it means to be human. Much of my appreciation is grounded in the scientific story of our origins in stardust and the four billion years of atoms undergoing transformation after transformation until the 60 trillion atoms that are Michael Morwood enable me tell the story of who and what we really are. Now that’s a truly remarkable story. But what I find just as remarkable is to have discovered that throughout human history the other side of this story – without the great scientific story we have today to back it up – has made itself known. Call it “enlightenment”; call it whatever you will, but there has been this constant awareness, insight, revelation – in both religious and non-religious people – of an awareness of a power, an awesome reality beyond our imagination, within and among us, a presence that binds together everyone and everything. Rumi, the great Muslim scholar, teacher, and poet said it well 800 years ago, “You are the fearless guardian of Divine Light, so come, return to the root of the root of your own soul…”. “Why are you so enchanted by this world when a mine of gold lies within you? Open your eyes and come, return to the root of the root of your own soul.” Here is the proper focus for religion, today and in the future. Here is where religion can get beyond dogmatism, thought control, the disregard for common decency, and claims of exclusive access to the divine. Jesus is not alone in urging men and women to “return to the root of the root of your own soul” and use what is discovered there to create a profoundly better human community. And here is why the “Christ” religion needs to change its thinking about Jesus so dramatically: Jesus is not and was not a god-figure essentially different from the rest of us because only he could gain access to God’s dwelling place. Rather, he presents a movement, a presence, a reality – a great mystery – that is within every woman, man, and child. That is the good news that needs to be proclaimed and acted upon. David Felten: So what’s next? Can the Church – can we – actually change our thinking? Michael Morwood: Thirty years ago I wrote that if I were to recommend one book for Catholics to read, it would be Karl Rahner’s The Shape of the Church to Come, written in 1974. Rahner is regarded as one of the greatest Roman Catholic theologians of the 20th century – and while much of his writing is too academic for the people I had in mind, this book is a gem from such an academic. Rahner wrote: “Our present situation is one of transition … to a Church made up of those who have struggled against their environment in order to reach a personally clear and explicitly responsible decision of faith. This will be the Church of the future or there will be no Church at all.” “It seems to me that the courage to abandon positions no longer tenable means asking modestly, realistically, and insistently, whether it is always possible to take with us on this march in to the Church’s future all the fine fellows whose out of date mentality is opposed to a march into an unknown future … we shall also estrange, shock, and scandalize not a few who feel at home only in the Church as they have been accustomed to see it in the past.” And, he writes, “If we are honest we must admit that we are to a terrifying extent a spiritually lifeless Church.” Overall, Rahner lamented the failure of the Church to address the life experience and questions of the faithful. And along with this failure, he said we fail to proclaim Jesus “vigorously.” We neglect, he wrote, to start with “the experience of Jesus” and we talk about Jesus and God “without any real vitality.” Rahner’s words inspired me 30 years ago when I was naïve enough to think that institutional Roman Catholicism could and would change. The ensuing 30 years have taken me on a journey I could never have envisioned – not in my wildest dreams! I’m not so naïve now, but his words still inspire me to work for a more relevant, dynamic, realistic faith or spirituality, faithful to what Jesus really believed and was ready to die for. Theologically, I think we’re living through the greatest theological challenges the “Christ” religion has ever experienced: the old template, used for the past two thousand years, is hopelessly outdated. At the same time, I believe this new template offers a way ahead for humanity – the opportunity for vitality, for engagement with peoples’ lives and questions, for engagement with the exciting scientific knowledge we have on hand, for wonder and appreciation for being human, and a way to bring the message of Jesus – and other men and women of spiritual insight – to a world that is in desperate need of a new template to heal the harm and divisions caused by religion. I love working with this new template. It has proven to generate just the kind of excitement and challenge that opens up the possibilities and dreams that a vital future demands of us. — Rev. David Felten with Michael Morwood About Michael Morwood With over 40 years’ experience as a sought-after retreat leader and educator, Michael Morwood is well known around the world. Bishop John Shelby Spong writes: “Michael Morwood…is raising the right and obvious questions that all Christians must face. He provides fresh and perceptive possibilities for a modern and relevant faith.” With a dozen books to his name (two of which were banned before he resigned from the Catholic priesthood), Morwood brings an extensive background in spirituality to what he sees as the urgent need to reshape Christian thinking for a new millennium. Be sure to visit Michael Morwood’s website by clicking HERE. ~ Rev. David Felten About the Author David Felten is a full-time pastor at The Fountains, a United Methodist Church in Fountain Hills, Arizona. David and fellow United Methodist Pastor, Jeff Procter-Murphy, are the creators of the DVD-based discussion series for Progressive Christians, “Living the Questions”. A co-founder of the Arizona Foundation for Contemporary Theology and also a founding member of No Longer Silent: Clergy for Justice, David is an outspoken voice for LGBTQ rights both in the church and in the community at large. David is active in the Desert Southwest Conference of the United Methodist Church and tries to stay connected to his roots as a musician. You’ll find him playing saxophones in a variety of settings, including appearances with the Fountain Hills Saxophone Quartet. David and his wife Laura, an administrator for a large Arizona public school district, live in Phoenix with their three often adorable children. Read the essay online here. Question & Answer Roland from Sydney, writes: Question: How can the clergy educate its members into contemporary theology and attract back the church alumni without alienating the aging conservatives that finance the local church? Answer: By Rev. Matthew Fox Dear Roland, Thank you for your question. I think it is a very big one as it poses many issues of real importance such as the relationship between generations that is often problematic but especially in our time since we have one foot still in the modern era (most of our institutions are still there including the Reformation churches) and another foot in the postmodern era (where so many young people are located and where pre-modern wisdom is welcomed, not shunned as during modern times). Science and Education also find themselves in this ‘in between’ place today. The British Scientist Rupert Sheldrake told me recently that at Oxford and Cambridge today there is a huge gulf between the professor class and the students specifically around the topic of religion or spirituality. Most professors surrendered all interest in religion generations ago but today’s students are eager to learn more about it. I have written about the difference between modern and postmodern consciousness at the end of my short book on A New Reformation. You might find some food for thought there. It is, I think, imperative for the survival of our species that we learn anew to develop intergenerational wisdom. This means elders must wake up to their calling as elders and must learn to sit down and listen to the younger generation. The benefit will be mutual I am sure. It also means that it is past time to establish rites of passage for elders to assist elders to wake up to their responsibilities. Our secular culture likes to put elders out to pasture after they have passed the age of peak consumer capitalism and are “retired.” I insist however that we retire the obscene word “retirement” and replace it with “refirement.” What we are talking about here—recovering true eldership—could constitute a whole new example of refirement in our churches. In our book on Occupy Spirituality Adam Bucko (who worked for 15 very fruitful years with young adults living on the streets of NYC) and myself interviewed many young adults (ages 21-33) and one of the questions we asked was about elders in their lives. 98% said: “We want elders but can’t find them…..And the few we do find talk too much.” Elders have to get off the golf course and out of their couches and/or playing the stock market and make themselves available to young people. The young today are facing issues of climate change and eco-destruction and gross have/have not discrepancies that are unprecedented. A moral and survival imperative exists to radically change education, religion, politics, economics, art, farming and energy resourcing on this planet. We need all the wisdom they can get. The young and old can and need to put their heads and hearts together in this search for wisdom. In an elder rite of passage ceremony that Creation Spirituality Communities conducted a year ago the young adults assisted in creating it. Of course the young also need rites of passage (and confirmation, I’m sorry to report, rarely cuts the mustard). Our Cosmic Masses, going on now for over 23 years, have proven very valuable for bringing young and old together in a post-modern form for celebrating Liturgy, one that incorporates post-modern art forms (and pre-modern ones) including dance, dj, vj, rap and more. It is not enough that elder worshippers are “at home” or “comfortable” with their (modern) forms of worship that are pre-packaged in Liturgical books. Jesus never said “Blessed are the comfortable” (neither did the Buddha). The question is this: How will future generations—including their grandchildren and great grandchildren—pray? It will not be from merely reading from books and sitting in pews and daring the preacher to keep them awake—that is all very modern because the modern age emerged with the invention of the printing press. It must include the body; the senses; beauty; and grieving together. Yes, there is much to grieve as well as to give birth to. Our new Order of the Sacred Earth, which launches this month, is another effort to bring old and young together around a new (and ancient) vision of spirituality in practice. The book’s subtitle is “Intergenerational Love in Action.” You might check it out on line as well. Best wishes in lighting the fire, Rev. Matthew Fox Read and share online here About the Author Matthew Fox holds a doctorate in spirituality from the Institut Catholique de Paris and has authored 32 books on spirituality and contemporary culture that have been translated into 60 languages. Fox has devoted 45 years to developing and teaching the tradition of Creation Spirituality and in doing so has reinvented forms of education and worship. His work is inclusive of today’s science and world spiritual traditions and has awakened millions to the much neglected earth-based mystical tradition of the West. He has helped to rediscover Hildegard of Bingen, Meister Eckhart, Thomas Aquinas. Among his books are Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the FleshTransforming Evil in Soul and Society, The Pope’s War: Why Ratzinger’s Secret Crusade Has Imperiled the Church and How It Can Be Saved and Confessions: The Making of a Postdenominational Priest A new school, adopting the pedagogy Fox created and practiced for over 35 years, is opening in Boulder, Colorado this September. Called the Fox Institute for Creation Spirituality it is being run by graduates of his doctoral program and will offer MA, D Min and Doctor of Spirituality degrees. See www.foxinstitute-cs.org __________________________________________________ Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited The Bible, Corporal Punishment and Human Guilt - Part 6 If God is not a punishing and rescuing deity, then who or what is God? If the biblical explanation of the source of evil is no longer operative, then from where does evil come? What is its origin? Can the way evil is viewed be changed or transformed? Can we human beings escape our need to view ourselves negatively, which is the interior situation that makes the punishing God necessary? If the task of the Christian faith is not about rescuing and restoring the fallen sinner, then what is the task of this religious system? If behavior control is not the Church's primary social agenda, then so much of the way we portray the content of the Christian faith simply falls away. Can Christianity survive without its doctrines of Atonement, and Incarnation, both of which hang on the sin and rescue themes? Is there any other way to see the divine presence of God in the life of Jesus other than to view Jesus as the incarnate sinless one who entered from the realm of heaven into the arena of the fall to pay the price God required for our sins and thus to rescue us from that fall? Can we dismiss once and for all the ancient Christian symbol of Jesus as a blood offering, a human sacrifice required by God? I believe that we can and must. This riddance will furthermore, cut the ground out from under the manner in which violence has been justified on the basis of this religious system. It is thus a reformation eagerly to be sought. The deconstruction begins by recognizing that the story, which opens the Bible, is not an accurate interpreter of life as we know it. It is a bad, false and inoperative myth. There never was a time, either literally or metaphorically, when there was a perfect and finished creation. That was an inaccurate idea that has helped to develop a guilt producing, dependency seeking, neurotic religion. Whatever else we know about creation, we are now certain that it is an evolving and still incomplete process. So there was no perfect beginning, no Garden of Eden and no first man and woman. We have evolved. We have not fallen from perfection. 'Original Sin' must go! With it goes the superstructure of doctrine, dogma, and theology. The psalmist was wrong. We were not created a little lower than the angels. Rather, we have evolved into a status that is just a little higher than the apes. It is a vastly different perspective. There is an enormous contrast between whether we are fallen creatures or incomplete creatures. Our humanity is not fallen, it is incomplete. The fact is we do not yet know what it means to be human since that is a status we have not yet fully achieved. What human life needs is not to be saved it is to be called and empowered to enter a new being. The idea that Jesus had to pay the price of our sinfulness becomes an idea that is bankrupt. When that idea collapses, so do all of those violent, controlling and guilt producing tactics that are so deeply part of traditional Christianity. The dominos begin to topple. Baptism, understood as the sacramental act to wash from the baby the stain of that original fall, becomes inoperative. The Eucharist, developed as a liturgical act to reenact the sacrifice that Jesus made on the cross that paid the price of our sinfulness, becomes empty of meaning. Those disciplinary tactics, from not sparing the rod with our children to the use of shame, guilt and fear to control the behavior of childlike adults, become violations of our life. They apply the wrong therapy to the wrong diagnosis. The uses of afterlife symbols to motivate behavior, by promising either eternal reward or eternal punishment, lose their credibility. When the plug is pulled on the definition of human life as something infected by the sin of the fall, then the whole superstructure of Christian doctrine is revealed as a human control system. That is when we will recognize that Christianity will either change or die! If change is to be adopted, it has to be so total and so radical, that many will call it impossible. It would be easier they will say to build an entirely new religious system than it would be to seek to reform anything this totally. They may be right, but I am not yet convinced of that. The Christianity of the catacombs in the first century of the Church's life could never have envisioned its future being capable of producing either Christendom or its dominating cathedrals. Yet the Christians of the 13th century looked back and saw as their ancestors the Christians of the Catacombs. Our task is thus not to build tomorrow's church. That is something into which we have to live a day at a time. Our task is rather to face the need for radical change and take the first step necessary to erect a totally new foundation. That step, I believe, comes in the acknowledgement of our evolutionary origins and dismissing any suggestion that sin, inadequacy and guilt are the definitions with which we were born. We must also rid ourselves simultaneously of the idea that the world was created for human beings, or that the planet earth is somehow different or special in the universe. Anthropocentrism is a product of a pre-evolutionary mind set. We human beings are simply the self-conscious form of life that has emerged out of the evolutionary soup. We are kin to both the apes and the cabbages. Homo sapiens were not made to dominate the world, but to enrich it by living out our role in a radically interdependent world. We might be a dead end in the evolutionary process, like the dinosaur, destined for extinction. But we also might be the bridge to a brilliant future that none of us can yet imagine. Our task is first simply to be what we are, and then to adapt and finally to be a link to that emerging new being. That is quite different from the role generally assigned to human beings in the ongoing story of our religious teachings. Whence then comes this evil that we see it every day? It rises not from a fall, mythical or otherwise, but from the incompleteness of the evolutionary process. It is not appropriate then to wallow in our inadequacy or to accept as our due being denigrated by religion or having our behavior controlled or our guilt expanded. What we need is the power to take the next step into a new and more complete humanity, to transcend our limits, to walk beyond our insecure humanity. We need to face the trauma of self-consciousness, the self-centeredness of that hysterical struggle for survival that leads to the erection of security systems, which finally destroy our emerging humanity. We need to see the evil things we do to one another as the result of our incompleteness. This evil cannot be controlled by threats or by discipline, parental or divine. Security can never finally be built on violence. To be 'saved' does not mean to be rescued. It means to be empowered to be something we have not yet been able to be. Is there any role for Jesus in this new vision of reality? Does the Christian story finally die in this ditch? I do not think so. Jesus emerges rather as a symbol for a humanity that is not defined as fallen or sinful. It is a humanity that is portrayed as so whole, so complete; it is experienced as God infused. Jesus cannot be a divine visitor from the heavenly realm. As John A. T. Robinson argued some fifty years ago, Jesus cannot be "A cuckoo inserted into the nest of humanity." He was created out of the gene pool of humanity. Our doorway into divinity must be found on this path, since there is no other. We are beginning to understand that divinity is a human concept that can only be found in humanity. I see in Jesus one so radically human and free, so whole and complete that the power of life, the force of the Universe that I call God, becomes visible and operative in him and through him. It is a new way to travel theologically. It has been built on a new premise about the origins of life itself. It leads me ultimately back to that original assertion on which later theology would be built: somehow, in some way, through some means, God was in Christ and that this God presence can still be met in the depths of our humanity. Incarnational and Trinitarian doctrines were necessitated in traditional Christianity by the premise of the fall. God alone could overcome the fall. Jesus, perceived as the rescuer, had to be divine since he accomplished this task. When the fall is dismissed, traditional Christology cannot help but go with it and a new Christianity must emerge, as a phoenix rising from the ashes of the past. It will be based on the call to wholeness, the power of love and the enhancement of being. That is obviously not all that can be said on this subject, but it is as far as space allows me to go in this column. I am content now only to expose the negativity in the terrible texts that have for so long fed the neurotic human need to justify both suffering and violence as our due, as something earned by the fall into sin over which we had no control. There is surely a better way than this to love God with one's heart, soul, mind and strength and to love our neighbors as ourselves. There is also surely a better way to speak of Christ as the "human face of God," in whom we meet the source of life, the source of love and the ground of being. That is the Christ I seek and that is the Christ to whom I am still powerfully drawn. ~ John Shelby Spong Originally published July 21, 2004 Announcements 5-Day Intensive: The Reinvention of Work with Matthew Fox Matthew Fox leads the 5-day intensive, “The Reinvention of Work,” at the Fox Institute for Creation Spirituality in Boulder, CO - November 13th - 17th. The readings and discussions and occasional guests who have reworked their professions will examine these important questions: How do we infiltrate our work worlds with values that inspire sustainability? We will call on teachings from various spiritual traditions for their wisdom on work, its meaning and deeper purposes. Click here for more information/registration

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ICAI Global Buzz November
by ICA International 07 Nov '17

07 Nov '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: November 2017 or copy and paste this URL into your browser's address bar http://globalbuzz.icai-archives.org/7dayreport-17/2017-11-01.php ICAI Communications

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Birthday Celebration
by James Wiegel 02 Nov '17

02 Nov '17

Hard to believe, Shanker Wiegel is turning 40 (so is his brother Dhondiram) Jim Wiegel Hi,I am sending an evite to everyone that might want to send a card or email to Shanker for his birthday. I'm sure there are people you all know that I don't have email address for.Could you send them this link to the evite, or ask that they email a birthday wish that you could pass along. I know many people can't attend, but there is a request in the message that people who are far away send a card, email, or video. Thank you,Lisa http://evite.me/tBudaEhtty | | Tap to RSVP to Join us for a fun evening to celebrate ShankerYou're invited to Join us for a fun evening to celebrate Shanker - Click here to RSVPevite.me | I

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11/02/17, Matthew Fox/Spong: Earth, Air, Fire, Water in Struggle with the Evils of our Times; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 02 Nov '17

02 Nov '17

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR Earth, Air, Fire, Water in Struggle with the Evils of our Times Rev. Matthew Fox Last night I returned from a conference in Jamaica about Men and Masculinity—they are dealing with a veritable epidemic of violence among young men and killings of men by men. Not unlike El Salvador and many other places around the globe. Here at home we have our own violence, much of it also spawned by reptilian brain action/reaction responses, efforts of striving to be “number one” at all costs, buttressed by sins of greed and denial and of patriarchy gone berserk. When I left my town of Vallejo five days ago there was everywhere the smell of smoke in the air due to forest fires untamed; when I returned late last night the smell was still there, indeed my flight from Miami had been delayed three hours because planes could not land at San Francisco airport due to the smog caused by massive fires north of the city not far from where I live. Fairmont, a modest sized town twenty minutes from mine, was under evacuation notices. A few months ago, during the raging hurricane and floods occurring in Houston, I flew to a filming in Missoula, Montana, a beautiful town in the green mountains and valleys of the Blue Sky state. But as we flew in there were no blue skies, indeed no skies at all—only a grey pall that hung over everything. From the plane one could see nothing of the greenery or the vegetation of the area: Only a complete grey fog. It turns out that fire had taken over the entire area. Later, when I talked to a friend who lived there she told me all citizens were told to stay inside and “to breathe as little as possible.” What sort of an instruction is that? A sign of our times. On leaving Missoula I flew to Portland to catch my plane home to the Bay area but there too, that green and wet state was unrecognizable from the plane. Only grey, only smoke when one looked outside the airplane window. No green visible. Why? More forest fires; more smoke; more haze; more hazardous air. Imagine what this is doing to children and babies breathing in such toxic poisons on bodily organs still developing, still coming into their own. Not unlike my home in Vallejo last night. First thing I did on arriving near home at 1:30 am was to go to a 24 hour drug store to buy a face mask to protect my lungs somewhat from the rancid air. Clearly, we can no longer take healthy air for granted. At a conference I attended this summer of 150 scientists around the topic of Climate Change one lesson laid bare was this: That in the future areas that are extremely wet (such as Houston, Florida, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico) water and floods will be more in abundance; and areas that are dry (such as California and Montana and Africa and Syria and Central America to name a few) will become more and more dry. We in California have technically just emerged from a seven year drought; but we are now immersed in a forest fire explosion that will affect our air for a very long while even while it has killed over forty people and destroyed over 5000 homes and businesses. As usual, first responders are brave and generous in their devoted work. But where are the politicians who make a lurid living selling denial and attacks on science and on facts of climate change? Where are they hiding their bravery and truth telling and generosity? Where are the politicians so eager to strut their religious chops yet wallowing in lies by denying the obvious moral and political facts of climate change during election campaigns and the evil it brings with it? Politicians who shout their Christian credentials when campaigning but—even when Roman Catholic as in the case of Paul Ryan—totally ignore the Pope’s fine encyclical “Laudato Si” that shouts out the truth of the moral issue of our time, namely neglect of our common home, Mother Earth? We know where they are: They are in bed with the Koch brothers and other billionaires and Wall Street apologists like Exxon etc who make a fat living perpetuating the myth that fossil fuels are not a problem and that dirty energy can blithely continue as is. It is not just the air that is poisoned and not fit to breathe and that we have been taking for granted forever; it is not just the waters that are scarce in many places and becoming scarcer and overflowing and flooding and killing and ravaging in other places that we can also take for granted. It is the fire—that is our sources of energy that we once took for granted as simply beneficial but which have proven to be disastrous for ourselves, our children and grandchildren and the air we breathe and waters we love to live near to. We cannot take energy or the way we harness fire for granted any more either—we can and must find safer and saner and more sustainable ways to bring energy into our homes and businesses and transportation. There is also the bigger picture of Mother Earth herself. How much do we take her for granted? How much are we in denial about the rapid extinction spasms that are happening all around us—the disappearance of habitats for the sacred elephant and polar bear and tiger and lions and whales and fishes and rainforests and trees and soil and birds and so much else that is unrepeatable in the universe? How can we say we love our children and grandchildren if we neglect to love these other beings so special and sacred in our midst? Clearly we cannot take a healthy Mother Earth for granted any longer. The crisis of climate change is a moral and ethical and spiritual/religious crisis before it is a political crisis. It is a health crisis also—not only because bad air is poisonous for our lungs and brains and bodies but also because much of our mental health relies on spiritual interaction with all the wonderful beings of our planet. Are we being instructed to take that for granted too? Economic health also depends on healthy and reliable and sustainable earth systems. The number one industry in Jamaica where I just visited is the tourist industry. How completely will that be shattered if seas continue to rise and beaches are wiped out as is already happening to many islands around the globe? How much disruption and unemployment—and immigration—will result from that disaster? Our government has not informed us–nor has the media for that matter–that much of the Syrian Civil War that is ravaging the Middle East and expelling millions of displaced persons into Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Greece and European countries, was triggered by the move from farms to cities by so many Syrian citizens. Why? It was global warming and drought-like conditions in Syria that drove farmers from the land. This trend will multiply many times over in many more countries of the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Southeastern Asia if climate change continues on pace. Instead of denouncing immigrants we should be addressing the climate change that drives them from their lands. There is something else besides Earth, Air, Fire and Water that we can no longer take for granted. And that is Democracy. Rantings about love of country and national anthems and military forces and ball players choosing to kneel and genuflect to bring awareness of social and racial injustice [Idolatry and Anthems vs. Kneeling for Justice] not withstanding, democracy is in grave trouble. Not only America but in Europe too the siren call of xenophobia and neo-fascism is falling on eager ears. As the president of the United States equates anti-semitic chanters and Ku Klux Klan members marching in Charlotesville with “fine people” (his father was an active member of the KKK) and leads an intended exit from Paris Climate Change Conference and threatens to shut down media outlets that dare to criticize his decisions, German right wing parties win seats in parliament and President Putin seeds poisonous pills to democratic elections from Washington to France and beyond. The end of democracy as we know it is visible on the horizon. Yale historian Timothy Snyder warns that “We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.” What is the medicine for all this “taking for granted?” For all this Evil that is raising its very ugly head? I believe the opposite of taking for granted is recognizing anew the sacredness of things. Authentic mysticism is the refusal to take for granted. It means standing up to defend the sacredness of clean air; of clean waters that stay in their boundaries more or less; of clean energy that is renewable and sustainable; of a healthy Mother Earth where all her children thrive; and the sacredness of human intelligence manifested in good science and in sound government that is overseen by alert and concerned citizens who hold it accountable. The neglect of the sacredness of all these things constitutes the bottom-line evil of our time. It is not too late to turn things around. But time is running out. ~ Rev. Matthew Fox Read the essay online here. About the Author Matthew Fox holds a doctorate in spirituality from the Institut Catholique de Paris and has authored 32 books on spirituality and contemporary culture that have been translated into 60 languages. Fox has devoted 45 years to developing and teaching the tradition of Creation Spirituality and in doing so has reinvented forms of education and worship. His work is inclusive of today’s science and world spiritual traditions and has awakened millions to the much neglected earth-based mystical tradition of the West. He has helped to rediscover Hildegard of Bingen, Meister Eckhart, Thomas Aquinas. Among his books are Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the FleshTransforming Evil in Soul and Society, The Pope’s War: Why Ratzinger’s Secret Crusade Has Imperiled the Church and How It Can Be Saved and Confessions: The Making of a Postdenominational Priest A new school, adopting the pedagogy Fox created and practiced for over 35 years, is opening in Boulder, Colorado this September. Called the Fox Institute for Creation Spirituality it is being run by graduates of his doctoral program and will offer MA, D Min and Doctor of Spirituality degrees. See www.foxinstitute-cs.org Footnote: Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century NY: Tim Duggan Books, 2017), 13. Question & Answer Maria from Wichita, Kansas writes: Question: What can we do about a preacher in our state whose website is "Godhatesfags.com” and who is constantly harassing churches that seek to be open to new knowledge about homosexuality? Answer: Rev. Roger Wolsey Dear Maria, First, I hear your pain. I hear how embarrassing it is to have such a ministry in the state that you live in. I hear your desire to try to do something. You’re no doubt referring to the Westboro Baptist Church that, until recently, was founded and led by the late Fred Phelps. I actually met him. Spoke with him. Was yelled at by him. Yelled at him. And … had communion with him. The way you worded your question suggests to me that you primarily want to “do something about” that church. Understandable. With that in mind let me remind us that we have freedom of speech in this country and if we were to somehow censor their preachers or ban that ministry, that sets up a dangerous and unacceptable situation whereby we could be censored or banned by others in the future. There are limits of course to free speech such as inciting to riot, threatening violence, or urging others to commit violence. Many of the members of that congregation are attorneys and they know how to avoid crossing that line. Indeed, a case can be made that they are so savvy that they actually hope counter protestors who show up take swings at them – so they can sue their pants off and further fund their hateful ministry. That said, there are certain helpful things that have worked in various communities around the nation “when Westboro comes to town.” One tactic is to seek to enact local ordinances, or even laws at the state level, whereby protests of any sort are not allowed within 500 feet of local churches, cemeteries, etc. Another strategy is to do as Soul Force has done; i.e., to amass large groups of volunteers standing between the hateful Phelps clan (and their “church” largely consists of their family members) wearing very large angel wings to prevent grieving families from seeing the ugly signs held by the Westboro gang. And, several communities have informed the Westboro thugs that for every minute that they protest in their town, $500 or so will be donated to the NAACP, the ADL, Reconciling Ministries Network (organizations that they loathe). Such funds and pledges are secured days before the Westboro gang shows up – and… there has been a marked reduction in the frequency of WBC showing up in other states as a result. We can also take a page out of Jesus’ playbook by engaging in radical hospitality. In the same way that Jesus invited himself to share a meal with a hated tax collector, we can seek to interact with the members of that church, ideally one–on-one over coffee (holding warm beverages helps), to learn why they think the way they do. Help them feel heard. Validate how that may have made some sense in the past – well, any small part at least. Normalize things by sharing how we too have had certain tendencies toward bigotry and prejudice in our lives (and we all have if we’re being honest). And then share “and yet, I can no longer think in that way as I’ve come to know X, as I’ve come to experience Y, as I’ve come to know and be in relationship with Z..,” etc. Zacchaeus changed, so apparently did Fred. Never write anyone off as “irredeemable” or “beyond hope.” To do so would be to deny Jesus and our faith. I would invite us to go beyond scheming about “what we can do about them” and consider how we are like them. It is often the case that we humans seek to turn some ugly group or person into a scapegoat to exorcise us of the parts of ourselves that are like the person/group we seek to kill or banish. It is a truism that we criticize most in others that which we struggle most with ourselves. In fact, given the insight that “the people who annoy us the most are our most important spiritual teachers” there can even be much merit in considering how the WBC are one of our best spiritual teachers. And we do well to take seriously Nietzsche’s observation “Beware that when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster, .. for when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.” And, there’s something to be said for the notion that the best response to encounter with the bad, is intentional commitment to the good. Please know that the WBC does not define the good people of Kansas. We tend to think of y’all as wholesome and reasonable. We know that WBC is an embarrassing outlier. Be the best Christians and the best Kansans that you can be. If you clicked on the first hyperlink that I posted above (me having “communion” with Fred Phelps) you’ll see how the Holy Spirit intervened in a truly unique and unexpected way. For those who don’t click on it, I’ll share the ending of it here: Fred, human history will not remember you kindly. There are reasons for that. I thank you, however, for sharing that moment in the Sun on that plaza that day. I thank you for having cookie communion with me. I thank you for your prayers – and for that fleeting glimpse of your higher self – your true self – the loved, forgiven, accepted Child of God – who loves, forgives, and accepts others. Perhaps that’s the true self that allegedly got excommunicated by the hateful “church” that you created. Their loss is heaven’s gain. ~ Rev. Roger Wolsey Read and share online here 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; The Kissing Fish Facebook page; Roger’s Blog on Patheos “The Holy Kiss” ________________________________________________ Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited The Bible, Corporal Punishment and Human Guilt - Part 5 "Those whom I love, I will reprove and chasten so be zealous and repent (Rev.3: 19)." Can you imagine that something as life denying as sado-masochism is overtly a part of the Christian story? Impossible, you say! Christianity is about life and love, not about pain and punishment. Well, let's examine that thesis. Listen first to the words from a hymn found in the Episcopal hymnal: "Before thy throne, O God, we kneel; Give us a conscience quick to feel, A ready mind to understand, The meaning of thy chastening hand; Whate'er the pain or shame may be, Bring us, O Father, nearer thee. Search out our hearts and make us true, Wishful to give to all their due, >From love of pleasure, lust of gold, From sins which make the heart grow cold, Wean us and train us with thy rod; Teach us to know our faults, O God." Is there no sado-masochism present here? Listen now to the self-deprecating words of Christian liturgies: "We were born in sin! We are miserable offenders. There is no health in us. We can do nothing good without you. Have mercy, O Lord, have mercy!" Are these not the words of a frightened child before a punishing parent? Over and over in the forms of our worship, words of penitence, guilt and pleas for mercy are heard. They are liturgical admissions that we deserve the wrath which is judged to be our due. These elements are deeply written into our faith story. During Lent, church bulletins tend to feature instruments of torture like whips and nails. The Bible portrays a wrathful God intent on punishing. When the Jews do not obey, God raises up enemies to subdue them or a pestilence to torment them. The Bible describes human beings as sheep gone astray; and God as the parent whose righteousness must be served. We tremble before this deity. Worshipers are expected to act like school children waiting in anxious dependency for the moment when the price of our sinfulness will be exacted. We cover these neurotic aspects of our religious tradition with layers of piety, but when we listen to our liturgy, this is what it seems to say: "I have been a bad boy or girl. God either punishes me directly or Jesus takes my place and God gives him what I deserve. That is how I am saved." That is what the substitutionary doctrine of the Atonement proclaims. Is that healthy? Does it enhance life? Is being asked to watch Jesus die on the cross for my sins anything more than an act of sado-masochistic voyeurism? Is it not time that we Christians raise these issues to consciousness? If this is not yet visible to religious people, it is because they do not yet want to see it. We are forced, however, by a rising consciousness to look anew at the way we tell the Jesus story. Perhaps the violent sadism seen in the blood from the crown of thorns streaming down the face of Jesus or the beating scenes from Mel Gibson's film, "The Passion of The Christ," will finally be enough to make us see the violence that traditional Christianity has constantly fostered. The understanding of the cross turns God into a divine child-abuser. The Father punishes the Son instead of us. Does that not sound strange? The Christian Church invites the faithful to meditate on Jesus' vicarious pain, to revel in his shed blood In Protestant evangelical circles we are told that his blood washes away our sins. In Catholic devotion we learn that the blood of Jesus received in the sacrament has the power to cleanse us from within. Either way, our evil is said to be so excessive that only the suffering of Jesus can overcome it. This in essence turns the bleeding Jesus into a grotesque guilt-producing icon and rivets our attention on the Cross. That is the story scraped clean of its piety so that its horror can be viewed with full awareness. It is barbaric, fashioning for us a sadistic God who is served by masochistic children. Is that not what is being said when Protestants use the words, "Jesus died for my sins," or, "We are saved by the blood of Jesus?" Is that not what is being said when the Catholic mass proclaims that in the Eucharistic action, the sacrifice of Jesus is re-enacted in a timeless way so that people in every generation can appropriate his saving death on the cross? Jesus suffers while the sinners, watch and cringe and are reduced to bowls full of quivering guilt-filled jelly. What an incredible way to torture ourselves. If our guilt is total and inescapable, however, this becomes the perfect answer. We suffer eternally. The Church has always sought to control its people through guilt that stymies our growth and keeps us child-like and penitent. Listen to the words of a Lenten hymn: "Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon thee? Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone thee. Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee: I crucified thee." When guilt becomes unbearable or intolerable we have to rid ourselves of it. The normal way people do that is to project it on to others. We become unloving and judgmental. We reject others when we cannot accept ourselves. We hide our violence under a thick veneer of righteousness. We build enormous, hurtful barriers to keep ourselves safe from any self-revelation. How often religious people manifest exactly those characteristics. This diagnosis of our intrinsic evil requires either punishment or vicarious redemption, that is, someone else suffers in our stead. Either way it validates violence as the price of salvation. Perhaps that is why religious people can so quickly turn so hostile. Perhaps that is why history is dotted with religious persecution, intolerance and wars; with things like the Inquisition and with sermons on the fiery pits of hell to which, the preacher asserts, all who do not respond to him will suffer through all eternity. Is not it rather amazing how we tend to create God in our own image? The punishing God is replicated in the punishing parent, the punishing authority figure, and the punishing nation. Violence is viewed as redemptive. War is justified. Bloodshed is the way of salvation. It all fits together so tightly, so neatly and it justifies the most destructive and demeaning of human emotions. Look at the places of violence and war in the world today and ask yourself whether or not each has a religious dimension. There is no Christian or even religious future unless we understand this dimension. So let me, speaking to the violence within Christianity, issue the call to Reformation with what I hope will be heard as the good news of the gospel: Jesus did not die for your sins or mine! That is theological nonsense! It is an improper prescription in an attempt to deal with an incorrect diagnosis. We must get rid ourselves of both. One can hardly refrain from exhorting parents not to spare the rod, if the portrait of God at the heart of the Christian story is that of an angry parental deity who punishes the divine son because he can take it and we cannot. I hope my readers see that connection. This interpretation of Jesus is a human creation, not a divine revelation. It was shaped by the first century world in which Christianity was born. It was influenced by the liturgy of the Jewish followers of Jesus. Seeking to make sense out of the violence of the Crucifixion, they borrowed images from the Jewish Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. In the observance of Yom Kippur an innocent lamb was slaughtered as a symbolic payment to God for the sins of the people. These people would then have the cleansing blood of that sacrificial lamb sprinkled on them to "cover their sins with the blood of the Lamb." In the second act of Yom Kippur an innocent goat would have the sins of the people symbolically laid upon its back; then this goat, called the 'scapegoat,' would be run out into the wilderness. It became the sin-bearer that 'took away the sins of the world.' Yom Kippur was a worship-filled drama designed to relieve human guilt, at least symbolically. Jesus was captured by these liturgical images. But they are all based on an understanding of human life that is quite simply wrong. Yom Kippur and the Christian Atonement doctrines both assumed that to be human was to be fallen, to be alienated from God and to be banished from our true purpose as citizens of the Garden of Eden. That was the only way these ancient people could make sense of the human experience. But it is not true either historically or mythologically. We are not fallen, sinful people who deserve to be punished. We are frightened, insecure people who have achieved the enormous breakthrough into self-consciousness that marks no other creature that emerged from the evolutionary cycle. We must not denigrate the human being who was willing to eat of the fruit from the tree of knowledge in the Genesis story. Our sense of separation is not a mark of our sin. It is a symbol of our glory. Our struggle to survive is not a mark of original sin. It is a sign of emerging consciousness. It should not be a source of guilt. It is a source of blessing. We do not need to be punished. We need to be called and empowered to be more fully human. Jesus did not die for our sins. Jesus demonstrated that it is by giving that we receive and by loving that we enhance life. Guilt, judgment, punishment, orthodoxy and creedal purity are the manifestations of an angry deity who judges human life from some heavenly throne. That god image must be broken and then the door will open to a healthy religious future. ~ John Shelby Spong Originally published July 14, 2004 Announcements ...Sacred Revolution with ...Diana Butler Bass and ...John Dominic Crossan November 9 - 12th in Asheville, NC AwakeningSoul hosts spiritual gatherings offering a time of sanctuary, sustenance, and inspiration. We invite you to a Sacred Revolution – daring to understand and live the stories of our heritage in a new way, revitalizing our relationship with God and our world. Click here for more information/registration

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Thanksgiving: A Native American View
by Ellie Stock 01 Nov '17

01 Nov '17

Dear Friends, In this month of Thanksgiving and also designated by some as Native American Month, I invite you to read the article below, a reflection on Thanksgiving by Native American Jacqueline Keeler. Much to ponder.. Also, below, a prayer of the Chippewa: For Hope, from the PC(USA) Book of Common Worship. Ellie :) elliestock(a)aol.com Thanksgiving: A Native American View - Pure Water Gazette purewatergazette.net/nativeamericanthanksgiving.htm Thanksgiving: A Native American View ... Jacqueline Keeler, ... Her work has appeared in Winds of Change, an American Indian journal. For Hope We pray that someday an arrow will be broken, not in something or someone, but by each of humankind, to indicate peace, not violence. Someday, oneness with creation, rather than domination over creation, will be the goal to be respected. Someday fearlessness to love and make a difference will be experienced by all people. Then the eagle will carry our prayer for peace and love, and the people of the red, white, yellow, brown, and black communities can sit in the same circle together to communicate in love and experience the presence of the Great Mystery in their midst. Someday can be today for you and me. Amen.

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