September 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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9/28/17, Spong/Plumer:Have Our Mainline Churches Failed Us?; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 28 Sep '17

28 Sep '17

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Plumer</h3> <p><a style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb2…"><img align="left" class="aolmail_alignleft aolmail_size-medium aolmail_wp-image-49823" height="124" style="border: 0px;width: 125px;height: 124px;margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;line-height: 100%;outline: none;text-decoration: none;text-transform: capitalize;display: inline;" width="125" src="https://johnshelbyspong.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Fred-Plumer-300x298.…"></a>I have been wondering lately, if we are really missing the conscience of our mainline churches in our country. Most of us are aware of the political, social and personal conflicts that are going on in our country right now. And most of us are aware of the sad numbers of our dying churches. I have been wondering if there is a connection.</p> <p>With some rare exceptions, churches all over the country are in serious decline or are actually closing. Many churches have merged with other churches and those combined churches are still in decline. Although there is some debate about the actual numbers, we know that on any given Sunday less the 22% of people in the country attend church. This is a national average taking into consideration the much higher reported attendance in the Southern states. Most of us are aware that in west coast and east coast cities, these statistics are much lower, probably closer to 10% of the population attending church on any Sunday.</p> <p>Denominations are also in serious decline, including our beloved mainline denominations. Although there are many false rumors, evangelical and conservative and even mega-churches are slowly declining as well. And according to at least three researchers and authors who have done extensive studies on the millennial generation-who could now be in their late thirties-the number could fall to less than 7% as the older generation dies.(1) By and large, millennials have rejected going to church when they are free of parental control.</p> <p>The reign of clergy, just for being clergy, is over. A few years ago I came upon a survey that was done by a magazine in 1962. In this article the authors explained they were reporting the outcome from the month before. They had asked the readers to rank the most trusted people in jobs in the US. They explained that this would include not only trust, but esteem. Clergy were ranked number 3, with an 84% approval rating after doctors and military. A recent Pew Research poll (2014) found that the favorable view of clergy had declined to 37 percent of those surveyed and had dropped to 6th position beating out artists and lawyers.</p> <p>Aside from these facts, almost anyone who attends church today can see that it is an ageing population. And yet many of our mainline denominations are still fighting over things that the country as a whole favors. I am referring here, in part, to gay and lesbian marriage, gay and lesbian pastors and other LGBTQ issues. We have just recently read about the negative fall-out from a UCC minister talking positively about Black Lives Matter and wondering out loud with his congregation about “white privilege.” This young man resigned as pastor because of the reaction from his congregation. If not in a church community, where are these subjects supposed to be discussed? It makes me want to shout, “It is over folks.”</p> <p>The net result of this change in our society is a little scary for me. Where are the voices of reason? Where are the clergy who have enough influence in our society to be invited to the White House to offer advice or input? Where is the public conscience of people like a Gandhi or Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.? I am not referring here to the Evangelical ministers who were recently invited to the White House to praise and pray for President Trump. Nor am I thinking about the prosperity preachers, like Joel Osteen, who reluctantly opened the doors of his church in Houston after a firestorm of criticism for keeping them locked during the first few days of the floods. I am talking here about the hard working, sincerely loving, real ministers who work in the trenches. The ones who talk, preach and act from the position of: “Do on to others as you would like them to do to you;” clergy who believe in equitable treatment for all people, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, or income. Clergy who truly care about our environment, our animals, and our water supply, for example.</p> <p>I believe it was 1992 when I heard the founder and former president of the Alban Institute, Loren B. Mead, speak to a large group of clergy from Southern California. We were meeting in the Southern California Conference office of the UCC denomination in Pasadena. We had all gathered to hear about the future of the church based on his research for his recently released book, <em>The Once and Future Church</em> (Alban Institute, 1991). He was an engaging speaker, but most of us there were looking for answers, or at least ideas, about ways to grow our struggling churches. Rev. Mead was clear that the public had changed and old ways of doing church or attracting people to church no longer worked. Certainly it would not work for the next generation. He spoke at some length about clergy no longer being held in high esteem unless they had done something worthy on their own. As an example, he talked about the fact that clergy were seldom called to the White House to give advice to the President or Cabinet members.</p> <p>Well, it was just about that time that three uniformed officers came into the church hall. We were all startled and most of us thought the building was on fire, or there was a crazy person with a gun on the loose somewhere in the large building. Then one of the three officers came up to the podium and told us in no uncertain terms we had 15 minutes to move our cars if we were parked in a particular city parking lot. Most of us had parked in this lot since we had been informed by people sponsoring the conference that it was set aside for us. As it turns out, it was a city parking lot that the church had been given permission to use on Sundays, but not, as it turned out, during the week. Since this was the middle of the week, we did not have permission to park there. So off we trudged, in hopes we could find a place to park our vehicles in the busy city.</p> <p>After we had gathered back together again, Rev. Mead looked out at the group, most of us hot and sweaty, and said, “This was a perfect example of what I have been talking about. This would not have happened 30 years ago.” Remember this was over twenty five years ago.</p> <p>I do not mean to suggest that our churches are failing simply because clergy are no longer held in as high esteem as they were fifty years ago. It could simply be the fact that fewer and fewer people have decided to attend church. Our mainline churches have been losing members at an average rate of 1% a year since the 1960’s. Do the math.</p> <p>Nor am I certain the reasons our clergy are no longer held in high esteem is our country’s focus on making money. It is a rare clergy person today who makes a lot of money. Many clergy I know are either part time, are traveling clergy with two and even three churches, or are dependent on their spouse to financially survive.</p> <p>No, I am afraid the main reason our churches are declining and closing is because we are usually telling the same story about Jesus that we have been telling for sixteen hundred years. And while we are doing that, the world has changed around us. We change a little here and little there but basically we are preaching the same platitudes, the same lessons and treating Jesus as if he was indeed God. We are reading the Bible as if it held holy secrets, ignoring the parts that are clearly obscene.</p> <p>And all the while, scholars are telling us a whole, different story. They are telling us that Jesus was a peaceful, radical, and a revolutionary peasant. His birth signaled a new way of relating to others, through agape, that is, through radical love and forgiveness.</p> <p>Interestingly, our colleges and universities no longer teach religion and western civ classes the same way they used to, at least in our public colleges. Any college student who has had a “western civ” class or a class on religion in America, in the last four or five decades, has probably heard a challenge to the old way of interpreting the Jesus story. For these students, listening to a preacher talk about Jesus as if he was a god who performed miracles, was killed on a cross, was buried in a tomb, and three days later arose to meet his disciples again, will just not work.</p> <p>If a college professor has done his homework, he can come up with over a dozen gods/saviors over the past four thousand years or so, who have much in common with what has become “our Christian story,” some more than others. Here are a few examples:</p> <p>Thulis, or Zulis, of Egypt, 1700 BCE, who died a violent death, was buried, then arose, ascended to heaven to judge the dead and souls of the future. He then was resurrected to help the underprivileged.</p> <p>Next is Tammuz of Mesopotamia. He was popular in Assyria, Samaria, and Babylonia, around 1200 BCE he was killed but offered atonement out of his loins as he arose from his grave.</p> <p>Another one of interest is Indra of Tibet. He was nailed to a cross, with four wounds on his hands and feet, and was pierced in his side. His mother was a virgin. He had a life of celibacy, could walk on water and on air and was a god who would exist through all eternity.</p> <p>And finally, my last example is Mithras of Persia, popular sometime around 600BCE. Mithras was crucified on a tree to atone for the sins of all “mankind” and to take away the sins of the world. He, along with half a dozen other examples, was born on December 25. These stories, and eight or ten more are all available in books and yes, online. Feel free to look them up.</p> <p>Now can you imagine trying to convince a young, college educated couple that Jesus died for our sins, was resurrected and if we believe this, not only will we be saved from hell, but Jesus will return…someday? What about their friends, their relatives? People are getting smarter about how to approach the Jesus of a new age.</p> <p>Can clergy change the story in an existing church? It is hard work, full of pitfalls, but it can be done, especially if the clergy person is respected as a teacher, among other things. What if the community agreed that the Jesus story was full of myth and they began together, as a team, to figure out what those myths were trying to tell us? What if the pastor held classes every week and the community worked together to sort out what they felt was good for the community and what was not? What if in another class the pastor allowed us to decide what parts of the Bible the class felt were important and which parts they could let go.</p> <p>But it does not end there. Between the Jesus Seminar and other modern scholars today, there is a plethora of books that challenge the old Jesus story. There is a very real possibility that if enough people do the work and come up with some new ideas about how to approach Christianity, we can discover new and lasting ethical and moral guidelines based on the teachings of Jesus, that make sense in 2017. It is possible that working that way, a church community could come up with new standards of behavior that we could all live with. And maybe we could have a combined voice that would have some impact in our relationships, our communities and our government.</p> <p>Then I would not have to ask the question that I started with. Have our mainline churches failed us? Right now I would have to answer “yes.”</p> <p>~ Fred C. Plumer, President ProgressiveChristianity.org</p> <p>Footnote: (1) <em>Millennials Rising</em>, Neil Howe, William Strauss, Vintage Books, New York, N.Y, 2000, <em>Millennial Momentum</em>, Morley Winograd, Michael D. House, Rutgers University Press, 2011 <em>The Millennials</em>, Tomas S. Rainer, Jess W. Rainer, B&H Publishing, 2011</p> <p>Read the essay online <a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" rel="noopener noreferrer" 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;"><hr> <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">Annie from Rhode Island, writes:</span></p> <h4 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 22px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;"> Question:</h4> <p>With the #TakeAKnee movement growing, what do you think the Church's role in racism in the US is?</p> <p> </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: By Rev. Mark Sanlin</h4> <p><a style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb23…"><img align="left" class="aolmail_alignleft aolmail_size-full aolmail_wp-image-49705" height="125" style="border: 0px;width: 125px;height: 125px;margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;line-height: 100%;outline: none;text-decoration: none;text-transform: capitalize;display: inline;" width="125" src="https://johnshelbyspong.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Mark-Sandlin.jpg"></a>Dear Annie,</p> <p>What it is and what it should be, unfortunately, aren't always one in the same.</p> <p> </p> <p>A recent analysis led by Wendy Wood, Provost Professor of Psychology and Business at USC College and the USC Marshall School of Business, found a positive correlation between religiosity and racial bias.</p> <p>The analysis looked at data from 55 different studies on religion and racism in America dating back to the Civil Rights Act. Combined, the studies include more than 22,000 participants, mostly white and Protestant. (And that's important: Protestant. Much of the current support for our racially biased government comes from the more conservative Evangelical Christian movement, not the Protestant).</p> <p>As the study reports: "A meta-analytic review of past research evaluated the link between religiosity and racism in the United States since the Civil Rights Act. Religious racism partly reflects intergroup dynamics. That is, a strong religious in-group identity was associated with derogation of racial out-groups. Other races might be treated as out-groups because religion is practiced largely within race, because training in a religious in-group identity promotes general ethnocentrism, and because different others appear to be in competition for resources. In addition, religious racism is tied to basic life values of social conformity and respect for tradition.”</p> <p>Recognize here that the study did not find that religion causes racism. It's findings say that religion is fertile soil for those who have tendencies toward racism. Progressive, Christian, author Anne Lamott puts it this way, “You can safely say that you've created God in your own image when it turns out God hates all the same people you do.”</p> <p>Or as I've said, "If your religion doesn’t challenge you to care for people you might otherwise be dismissive of and, instead, reinforces your negative feeling about them, you don’t have a religion – you have a formalized structure for institutionalizing your biases."</p> <p>Basically, when it isn't practiced with intelligence and compassion, religion can easily be used as an authoritative confirmation of our biases – without the humanist perspectives of critical thinking and the innate value of individuals, perverting religious outlooks to suit personal prejudices is far too easy. Add to it the dogmatic environment of most churches and it can be the perfect petri dish for growing cultures of racism.</p> <p>Putting racism into the hands of God also makes life easier when you are confronted with social injustices. If you can blame a group's oppression on the retribution of an angry god or some inherent deficiency, then you really not only have no responsibility in it but you'd be foolish to go against God. Not only that, you don't have to feel bad about the privileges that are given to you when you choose not to extend those same privileges to people who've already been judged by God.</p> <p>The harsh reality of race and religion in America is that religion has become a cover for racism.</p> <p>The reality is that racial discrimination is now being touted as "religious freedom."</p> <p>You can wrap the law around it any way you want. You can call it religious freedom, freedom of speech... whatever you want. No matter what you call it, it remains morally repugnant and devoid of any god that I ever care to worship. There is no space in a healthy spiritual community for racism, or for that matter anything that pits one group of people over another.</p> <p>That kind of thinking, that kind of acting, stands over and against everything that can grow a person or a community spiritually. That kind of thinking plays to the lowest forms of human pettiness and uses religion as a weapon rather than as a balm. It is a bastardization of spirituality and must be actively resisted at every turn and cast out like the demon that it is.</p> <p>It does not mean that we stop seeking to care for those who practice it. That would put us in a similar place of denying people for being different than us, but it does mean not sitting silently by as it is being practiced. It does mean actively resisting it in our churches and communities.</p> <p>~ Rev. Mark Sandlin Read and share online <a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb23…">here</a> </p> <p><strong>About the Author</strong></p> <p>Mark Sandlin is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) from the South. He currently serves at Presbyterian Church of the Covenant. He is a co-founder of <a style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb2…">The Christian Left</a>. His blog, <a style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="about:blank">RevMarkSandlin, has been named as one of the “Top Ten Christian Blogs.” Mark received The Associated Church Press' Award of Excellence in 2012. His work has been published on "The Huffington Post," "Sojourners," "Time," "Church World Services," and even the "Richard Dawkins Foundation." He's been featured on PBS's "Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly" and NPR's "The Story with Dick Gordon.” Follow Mark on </a><a style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb23…">Facebook</a> and Twitter @marksandlin</p> <p style="text-align: center;">__________________________________________________</p> <h3 style="text-align: center;color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 26px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;"><strong>Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited</strong></h3> <p style="text-align: center;"><strong>The Ultimate Source of Anti-Semitism - The Circumstances That Brought Judas Into the Jesus Story</strong></p> <p><img alt="Spong" class="aolmail_wp-image-49832 aolmail_alignleft" height="128" style="border: 0px;width: 121px;height: 128px;margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px;float: left;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;line-height: 100%;outline: none;text-decoration: none;text-transform: capitalize;display: inline;" width="121" src="https://johnshelbyspong.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Spong-283x300.jpg"></p> <p>I return today to a subject that I have covered before. It is essential however, to this series on the sources of anti-Semitism, so I ask my reader's indulgence while I once again bring Judas into focus. My request to you is a simple one. Suspend for a moment your critical faculties, as well as your traditional presuppositions, and assume with me that the story of Judas Iscariot was a late-developing, contrived story and not a remembered bit of objective history. If this speculation is correct, as I think it is, then I must deal with two additional questions. The first one is: where did the gospel writers get the content that they wove into the Judas story? If it has all been borrowed, as I think I can demonstrate, then is any part of that story history?</p> <p>I find it fascinating that every detail that has been written into the story of Judas has been lifted almost directly out of other betrayal stories in the Hebrew Scriptures. The very words "handed over," which we somewhat loosely translated "betrayed" when Paul first used it (I Cor. 11), was lifted out of the story of Joseph and his brothers (Gen. 37). Rather than kill Joseph, the brothers agreed to hand him over for money. Of particular note is the fact that the brother who proposed that they secure this payment for their act of treachery was Judah. If written in Greek, it would be Judas!</p> <p>Second, a story in the book of Zechariah has the shepherd King of Israel being betrayed for thirty pieces of silver. This money says Zechariah was thrown back into the Temple treasury, which is exactly what Matthew, who is the only gospel writer to mention 'thirty pieces of silver,' says Judas did with his money when he repented (compare Zech. 11:12-13 with Mt. 27:5). This shepherd King in the book of Zechariah was betrayed, interestingly enough, to those who bought and sold animals in the Temple (11:15)!</p> <p>Third, there is a narrative in the David saga of stories in which a royal advisor named Ahithophel, who even though he ate at the table of the King, nonetheless raised his hand in betrayal against "the Lord's anointed," as King David was called. When this treachery backfired, he went out and hanged himself. It is this episode, cited by the book of Psalms (41.9), that John quotes to demonstrate that when Jesus identified Judas at the Last Supper as the traitor, the expectations of the prophets were being fulfilled.</p> <p>Next we are told that Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss. A similar act is also found once again in the David cycle of stories. David, after putting down a rebellion led by his son Absalom, felt he could no longer trust his former military chief Joab, so he replaced him with a man named Amasa. Joab, under the guise of wanting to congratulate his successor, sought out and found Amasa. Drawing Amasa's face by the beard to his own, in order to extend to Amasa the kiss of friendship, Joab disemboweled him with a dagger (II Sam. 20:5ff). That was the content of the phrase 'the kiss of the traitor' before the story of Judas entered the tradition. Perhaps this story about Joab and Amasa also colored Luke's account in the book of Acts in which it was suggested that Judas died with all his bowels gushing out (Acts 1: 18).</p> <p>My point in this first exercise is to show that every detail of the Judas story has been lifted directly out of the Hebrew Scriptures, where it was originally part of a narrative about other traitors in Jewish history. This causes me to wonder if any part of the Judas story is history.</p> <p>The second question I wish to raise is: What was going on at that time in history that might have made it convenient or even necessary to create the Judas story? This leads me into an exploration of the world of the Middle East after the year 70 C.E. when the gospels were being written. One of the more obvious themes in the earliest passion narratives is the shifting of the blame for Jesus' death from the Romans to the Jews, for that is what the story of Judas seems to accomplish. Let me set that stage for you.</p> <p>From the time of Jesus on (30 C.E.), Jewish guerilla fighters had roamed the hills of Galilee doing hit and run attacks on the occupying Roman army. To the Jews, these guerillas were heroic freedom fighters. To the Romans, they were terrorists and killers. These guerillas were called Zealots. The fact that one of Jesus' disciples was known as Simon the Zealot (Lk.6: 15), may indicate a closer connection between these guerillas and Jesus than Christians have yet been willing to admit.</p> <p>In the year 66 C.E., this guerilla activity escalated into a full scale Galilean war between the Romans and the Jews that finally ended at Masada in 73 C.E. in total Jewish defeat. The climax of the war, however, occurred when the Romans decided they could not defeat the guerillas unless they destroyed Jerusalem and the Jewish state. Led first by a general named Vespasian, and later by his son Titus, the Romans moved into siege positions around the Holy City and pounded it until Jerusalem fell in 70 C.E. The Romans moved in, smashing its walls, razing its buildings and demolishing the Temple. The Jewish state disappeared from the maps of history, and did not re-appear again until 1948 when the United Nations brought into being the State of Israel under the authority of the Balfour Declaration.</p> <p>In that war against Rome, the Jews lost everything they had: their nation, their holy city, their temple, and their priesthood. Jewish identity thus came to be attached to their sacred scriptures, which was all they had left. They invested these scriptures with both an absolute authority and a literal accuracy. The whole truth is in the Torah, they asserted. Nothing more is essential, or necessary. The Jews thus became increasingly rigid, fundamentalist and doctrinaire about their Bible. That always occurs when survival is at stake.</p> <p>In that same tragedy the followers of Jesus, who were still predominantly Jews, found themselves suffering the fate of all Jews at the hands of their Roman conquerors. Seeking to separate themselves from the Orthodox Party of the Jews, whom they blamed for starting that destructive war, the followers of Jesus sought to make the case that they should not be punished for the foolishness of the Jewish fanatics who constituted the Orthodox Party. It was a difficult case for them to make, however, since Jesus, the one they followed, had also been executed by the Romans.</p> <p>But suppose, they said to the Roman authorities, that the Romans only crucified Jesus at the behest of the Orthodox Party of the Jews, who sought to get rid of his threatening teaching by portraying Jesus as a political revolutionary, who wanted to set up a rival Kingdom. Recall the sign that Pilate ordered to be placed over the cross: 'This is Jesus the King of the Jews.' The Orthodox Party had twisted his message, they contended to the Romans, since the Kingdom of which Jesus spoke was not of this world. The same religious fanatics, they argued, who started the Roman war had earlier been instrumental in the death of our leader. It was a skillful use of that old adage: 'we should be friends since we have a common enemy.' Your wrath, they wanted the authorities representing Rome after that war to know, should not fall indiscriminately on all Jews.</p> <p>How better could they accomplish that purpose than to tell the Christ story with the chief person responsible for the death of Jesus bearing the name of the entire Jewish nation?</p> <p>How better could they seek Roman favor than by whitewashing the Roman Procurator Pontius Pilate, in their narrative of Jesus' final days, exonerating him of any blame in his death?</p> <p>So Pilate, in the developing gospel story, was portrayed as washing his hands, claiming his innocence and referring to Jesus as "this just man in whom I find no fault." The Jewish crowd was portrayed as accepting the blame, by saying: "His blood be upon us and upon our children." The shift in blame was complete. The Jews did it. Judah/Judas did it. They are the enemy. He is the enemy. Pilate and the Romans are our friends.</p> <p>So the deed was done. That is the ultimate seed out of which this Christian prejudice of anti-Semitism has grown. That is the source out of which all the hostility toward the Jews has flowed. That is what allowed Christians to tolerate and even to celebrate a violent, killing anti-Jewish undercurrent that would emerge in chilling horror in the writings of the Church Fathers, in the Crusades, in the Inquisition, in the response to the Bubonic plague, in the writings of reformers like Luther and in the Holocaust. Judas is our clue. Christians took the life of one disciple who bore the name of the entire Jewish nation and made him the anti-Christ, thereby avoiding their own persecution as Jews by the conquering Romans and in that act, anti-Semitism was transformed into a virtue in Christian history.</p> <p>The only purpose in raising the sources of our prejudice into consciousness is to enable us to expel them. The biblical texts that we Christians have used for centuries to justify our hostility toward the Jews need to be banished forever from the sacred writings of the Christian Church. The way to begin I believe is to return to the Christ consciousness that caused the early Christians to assert, as Luke does in the Pentecost story, that to be filled with the Spirit is to transcend all tribal boundaries and to speak the universal language of love (Acts 2). It is to recover the power in Paul's words to the Galatians, that "in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek but a New Creation" (Gal 3:28).</p> <p>To enter that new creation may well be what is required if the human race is to survive.</p> <p>~ John Shelby Spong Originally published June 9, 2004</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;"><hr> <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> <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;"> </h2> <h2 style="text-align: left;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;"><a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb23…"><img height="267" style="border: 0px;width: 200px;height: 267px;margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px;float: left;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;line-height: 100%;outline: none;text-decoration: none;text-transform: capitalize;display: inline;" width="200" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/b51b9cf441b059bb232418480/images/1fadbb51-d76…"></a> <span style="font-family:georgia,times,times new roman,serif"><span style="color:#000000"><span style="font-size:16px"><strong>FaithandReason® presents The Challenge of Paul, featuring John Dominic Crossan</strong></span> <span style="font-size:16px">The D. L. Dykes, Jr. Foundation (DLDF), producers of FaithandReason®, will distribute, free of charge, <strong>The Challenge of Paul</strong>, an extraordinary video learning experience with J<strong>ohn Dominic Crossan</strong> (Themes 1 and 2, plus a digital resource guide – a $150 value) to 1,000 or more churches across the country. Congregations or organizations interested in participating in <strong>The Challenge of Paul Gift Program</strong> area asked to email: <a href="mailto:jennifervail@faithandreason.org">jennifervail(a)faithandreason.org</a> and simply state, “Yes. I am interested in participating in The Challenge of Paul Gift Program.” <a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb2…">Click here</a> for more information</span></span></span></h2> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> </td> </tr> <tr> <td align="center" valign="top"> <table border="0" cellpadding="10" cellspacing="0" width="600" id="aolmail_templateFooter" style="background-color: #FDFDFD;border-top: 0;"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top" class="aolmail_footerContent"> <table border="0" cellpadding="10" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr> <td colspan="2" valign="middle" id="aolmail_social" style="background-color: #FAFAFA;border: 0;"> <div style="color: #707070;font-family: Arial;font-size: 12px;line-height: 125%;text-align: center;"></div></td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" valign="middle" id="aolmail_utility" style="background-color: #FDFDFD;border: 1px dashed #d3d3d3;"><div style="color: #707070;font-family: Arial;font-size: 12px;line-height: 125%;text-align: center;"><div class="aolmail_vcard"><div class="aolmail_adr"><div class="aolmail_street-address"></div></div></div></div></td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" valign="middle" id="aolmail_utility"><div style="color: #707070;font-family: Arial;font-size: 12px;line-height: 125%;text-align: left;"></div></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></center><center><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" id="aolmail_canspamBarWrapper" style="background-color:#FFFFFF; border-top:1px solid #E5E5E5;"><tbody><tr><td align="center" valign="top" style="padding-top:20px; padding-bottom:20px;"> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <style type="text/css">#AOLMsgPart_2_338c839d-c995-4569-8ea9-81a75158de18 td{color: black;} @media only screen and (max-width: 480px){ .aolReplacedBody table#aolmail_canspamBar td{font-size:14px !important;} .aolReplacedBody table#aolmail_canspamBar td a{display:block !important; margin-top:10px !important;} } </style> </center> </div> </div>

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conversation on white trash racism
by W. J. via Dialogue 25 Sep '17

25 Sep '17

Last night I was stunned to overhear my next-door neighbors sitting on their front porch and loudly spewing forth their toxic honky racist shit.This was in the wake of Trump's Alabama comments that stirred up a lot of racist indignation that denied there was anything 'racial' involved in protesting against racism. It was not just the nasty content, but more the tone of their comments and their South Carolina accents that were just so offensive to have to overhear. I closed my window, but that didn't stop their conversation from seeping into my living room like sewage in a Texas flood.Among their themes:1. They're still fighting their version of the Civil War, which was not about slavery, since "poor white folks had to pick cotton too".2. They still hate Martin Luther King, Jr. and resent the fact that everywhere they go, there has to be a 'Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard' in town.3. Their sense of white entitlement allows them to consider themselves 'better than' black people or more 'civilized'.4. Their cultural values--including their racism--are considered normative. Thus their racist biases are invisible to them.5. Other racial groups are considered intruders (unless they are 'silent' and subservient and don't 'rock the boat' of white superiority).6. Genocide is implicitly OK--especially if it can be justified under 'war' conditions. There was a story about Marines wiping out one quarter million Muslims on an island. That was a good way to 'fix that problem'. Other racial/ethnic/religious groups are considered subhuman and can be treated accordingly.I could go on, but my point is that I just don't like these neighbors. Fortunately, they're not around that often. And since they're old, they will soon die off, taking their racist prejudices with them. They are shrinking minority desperately holding out against cultural change.But they--and millions like them--elected Donald Trump. So we have to deal with a white racist cultural backlash with global implications.So here I am, surrounded by Trump voters like Davey Crockett at the Alamo (yes, I'm aware of the racist imagery here). And even if these folks never say another word, they still think like racist 'poor white trash' who had to compete with other economically disadvantaged groups.I realize that I benefit enormously from 'white male privilege'--including the advantages of a perspective informed by global experience, advanced education, a multicultural context, and a determination to examine and confront my own implicit/unconscious assumptions of white racist privileging. I'd like to begin a conversation that will explore how to survive and thrive and even support cultural change/transformation in this context--without getting pot shots aimed at my living room.Marshall Jones

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Making White America Great Again
by W. J. via Dialogue 25 Sep '17

25 Sep '17

Last week a French teacher at a public charter school in Wake Forest, NC caught a lot of flack for posting this poster, which links 'Make America Great Again' to covert white supremacy.Fox News didn't like it. Neither did many parents. This 'white supremacy pyramid' (or 'iceberg') chart was adapted from http://www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/olcese.pdf that reflects an understanding of the 'intersectionality' of oppression. I highly recommend this document.Marshall Jones

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Fall Equinox~Native American Day Greetings
by Ellie Stock via Dialogue 22 Sep '17

22 Sep '17

Fall Equinox Greetings! In the Presbyterian Church Program Calendar, the day of the Fall Equinox is also designated as Native American Day. Columbus Day, Thanksgiving, and other days and months also have such designations. In once sense every day is a day to designate and remember the ancient wisdom that we have forgotten but that Indigenous Life Ways continue to teach us about living as part Earth and all Creation. The racial inequities and white privilege still rearing its ugly head in St. Louis and throughout the American society; the continued mistreatment and disenfranchisement of Native Americans; and the ramifications of political and economic colonialism which continue to lead us into wars (check out Ken Burns PBS series on Vietnam War); and the degradation of the Earth are rooted in the 15th Doctrine of Discovery which remains to this day part of US organic law and foreign policy. The words/prayers and music below were some of the liturgy we used at Second Presbyterian Church's (St. Louis) Celebration/Care of Creation service that wove together perspectives from science, Christian Faith and Indigenous Life Ways as they call humanity to live sustainably, compassionately, and justly as part of this emerging creation. Attached are copies of the service and a reflection I shared: "A Declaration of Interdependence." Blessings as a new season is upon us... Ellie :) elliestock(a)aol.com Every part of this earth is sacred, every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clearing and humming insect is holy. the rocky crest, the juices of the meadow, the beasts and all the people, all belong to the same family. Teach your children that the earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the children of the earth. The water’s murmur is the voice of our father’s father. We are part of the earth, and the earth is part of us. The rivers are our brothers; they quench our thirst. The perfumed flowers are our sisters. The air is precious. For all of us share the same breath. The wind that gave our grandparents breath also receives their last sigh. The wind gave our children the spirit of life. This we know, the earth does not belong to us; we belong to the earth. This we know, all things are connected, like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected. Our God is the same God, whose compassion is equal for all. For we did not weave the web of life; we are merely a strand in it. Whatever we do to the web we do to ourselves. ~ Chief Seattle Now I Walk In Beauty (Navajo Prayer) arr. by ... - YouTube www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGXI93Z6ieM Now I Walk In Beauty ... Play now; Mix - Now I Walk In Beauty ... Jane Valencia - Celtic harp & song - "I Walk In Beauty" ... Now I Walk In Beauty - Saint Anselm College www.anselm.edu/Documents/Academics/Departments/Nursing Continuing... Now I walk in Beau ty. ... - - - Beau-ty is be - hind me, a bove and be - - low me. Now I Walk in Beauty traditional. Title: Prayer to TheFour Directions by Chief Seattle Great Spiritof Light, come to me out of the East (red) with the power of the rising sun.Let there be light in my words, let there be light on my path that I walk. Letme remember always that you give the gift of a new day. And never let me beburdened with sorrow by not starting over again. Great Spiritof Love, come to me with the power of the North (white). Make me courageouswhen the cold wind falls upon me. Give me strength and endurance for everythingthat is harsh, everything that hurts, everything that makes me squint. Let memove through life ready to take what comes from the north. GreatLife-Giving Spirit, I face the West (black), the direction of sundown. Let meremember every day that the moment will come when my sun will go down. Neverlet me forget that I must fade into you. Give me a beautiful color, give me agreat sky for setting, so that when it is my time to meet you, I can come withglory. Great Spiritof Creation, send me the warm and soothing winds from the South (yellow).Comfort me and caress me when I am tired and cold. Unfold me like the gentlebreezes that unfold the leaves on the trees. As you give to all the earth yourwarm, moving wind, give to me, so that I may grow close to you in warmth. Mandid not create the web of life, he is but a strand in it. Whatever man does tothe web, he does to himself.

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9/21/17, Spong/Sandlin: Dogma and the Perpetuating of a Dead God; Spong revisited; free Crossan resources
by Ellie Stock via Dialogue 21 Sep '17

21 Sep '17

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR Dogma and the Perpetuating of a Dead God By Rev. Mark Sandlin In 1966 the cover of TIME magazine asked the jarring question, “Is God Dead?” It was the first time TIME used only text on it’s cover and the impact only added to the striking question. “Is God Dead?” Three simple words that for a brief time created quite a stir throughout the United States. Many angry sermons were delivered in rebuttal. Even Bob Dylan got in on the action in a Playboy interview saying, “If you were God, how would you like to see that written about yourself.” The National Review even asked the question if perhaps it was TIME that was dead. The reality was that the article, written by TIME‘s religion editor John Elson, was much more nuanced than the magazine cover suggested, but those three words and what they might mean garnished all the attention. Americans were shocked. They were outraged. Some were dismayed and others were simply worried. In reality, it wasn’t even a new question. In 1882, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche had already famously (or infamously) put forth the statement that “God is dead.” And before that, another German philosopher, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, had considered the death of God in his book, Phenomenology of Spirit/Mind. I suppose the question of “God” is really an age old question. As Nietzsche pointed out, before the age of Enlightenment, it was perhaps a much needed concept which helped establish morals, values, the order of the Universe, and even gave legitimacy to governments. But with the rise of science and philosophy, the role of or even need for God was lessened. For Nietzsche, not only was God dead, but humanity was the murderer. Our desire and pursuit to better understand the world had killed God. Nietzsche didn’t understand the death of God to be an entirely good thing, he realized that for many people the death of God would bring on despair and meaninglessness. He realized that for all practical purposes the understanding of God that humanity once believed in was of little use in an age of Enlightenment, but he also realized that humanity was not likely to let go of God all that easily. As he put it, “God is dead; but given the way of men, there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown.” He couldn’t have been more correct and the modern understanding of God couldn’t be more damaged because of it. Nietzsche, while an atheist himself, wasn’t proclaiming the ultimate death of God. He was proclaiming the death of the god that was needed pre-Enlightenment. Not surprisingly, Christians took quite a bit of offense to the statement and resisted it. What we ended up with was a pre-Enlightenment God in the age of reason and systems designed to protect and support those beliefs. As every year passed, we moved further and further into a more scientific understand of the world and the Church built up more and more dogma to prop up a concept of God that only had true relevance in a pre-scientific age. For me, “God is dead,” or more precisely, “the understanding of God we once had is dead,” should have pushed believers into a deeper pursuit of the reality of God, a deeper pursuit of the truth of God. Instead, we circled the wagons with God in the middle and clung desperately to what we thought we knew in spite of evidence to the contrary. We created “essential” confessions built upon ancient understandings and demanded unfaltering adherence. At times, the perceived threat of anyone thoughtfully challenging the religious establishment and its dearly held dogma was seen as so dangerous that the “heretics” were burned alive. Today, we simply chase such “heretics” out of the pulpit or out of the denomination – rather than taking their lives, we simply destroy them. We require full loyalty, full fealty, full submission to the establishment. In doing so, the modern Church continues to perpetuate belief systems that make little to no sense when placed next to modern advances in science, history, philosophy, literary criticism, and yes, even in theology. Many insist on adherence to a belief in the virgin birth when literary criticism and science suggest otherwise. From the Trinity to the divinity of Jesus to the concept of Hell, the modern Church dogmatically holds onto beliefs that require “blind faith” rather than the engagement of what the very same people might think of as our God given intellect. As Bishop Spong has said, “Christians must now come to understand that God does not inhabit creeds or theological doctrines shaped with human words.” It is the height of human hubris to believe that we can fully understand God, more or less contain God, in creeds and doctrines. Furthermore, our anthropomorphizing of God is a damaging attempt to package God up in something we can hold onto which further inhibits our ability to perceive the fullness of God and what God may be. So, yes. In my eyes, God is dead… or at least should be. That is, the God of most mainline Protestant churches, the God of the Catholic Church, the God of Evangelical churches is dead. It has been since the 1800’s, but yet we continue to insist on worshiping its shadowy vestige on the walls of our lives. This attachment to a God of ages past also contributes to the continue decline of the Church’s relevance in the eyes of the public, particularly to younger generations. They see the dogmatic adherence to beliefs that can’t stand up to modern discoveries as hypocritical and, frankly, absurd. The Church certainly shouldn’t ditch it’s historical beliefs simply in an effort to appease these folks in order to gain new members, but equally, it must stop ignoring these outside critiques and stop dismissing them as irrelevant or uninformed. There is a reason that the Spiritual But Not Religious are one of the fastest growing religious movements in the U.S. and, unfortunately, one of the big reasons is the Church itself. It’s long past time for the Church to shed its futile efforts to cling to a concept of God that was established prior to the scientific age. It’s time to hear the voices outside of the establishment who would like to be part of a religious movement but refuse to check their minds at the door to do so. Yes, it means there will be the need for quite a bit of deconstruction as we remove the dogma that carefully props up the dead God of the seventeenth century and before. It means that the religiously powerful will have to give up many of the rules and regulations that keep them in power. It means questioning the current human made construct of God which, less than surprisingly, makes God’s main interest that of meeting the needs of those who constructed God. It means letting go of the need to be “correct” or to have “right beliefs” and, instead, to begin valuing more seriously the pursuit of what is true and real – a willingness to not know and, in that not knowing, to be propelled into the quest for the newly revealed realities of God that advances in science, history, philosophy, literary criticism, and theology are offering up to us every day. The reality is, it is an exciting time to be seeking an understanding of God. It is an exciting time to be considering what your relationship to/toward/with God is. We live in a time when information is available to us in a way and with an immediacy that it never has been before. We can quickly and easily expose ourselves to a multitude of theological perspectives from religions all over the world and throughout history. Scientific discoveries are revealing realities of the Universe that we never could have previously imagined. We are learning more and more about how connected all of Creation is, how much we each impact others and our environment in every action we take, how fragile and surprisingly resilient life is. Technological advances and archeology are helping peal back the layers of many of our religious stories in ways that push us to new understandings of our religious ancestors. The list could go on and on. The real point is that, yes, God is dead. At least, THAT God is dead. Has been for a long time. But, it turns out, that we are in a perfect day and age to begin rebuilding our understanding of what God is. The question that remains is will our churches be brave enough to risk this exploration with us? Will they be willing to let go of all the dogma and trust in the community as we work together to reach a more modern understand of an ageless God? Up until this point, the majority of churches haven’t been willing to do so, forcing most spiritual seekers to go at it on their own. That may be the single most damage the the Church has done in this pursuit of God. I don’t claim to have much hold on the full reality of God, but one of the things I am more certain about is that God is part of what connects us all. Pursuit of spiritual knowledge on our own is certainly rewarding and revealing, but I am left to believe that there are certain realities of God that can only be revealed in the connectedness of community. It is time – it is well beyond time for the Church to lets this God of yesteryear die, lest it too dies trying to reanimate the dead. ~ Rev Mark Sandlin Read the essay online here. About the Author Mark Sandlin is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) from the South. He currently serves at Presbyterian Church of the Covenant. He is a co-founder of The Christian Left. His blog, RevMarkSandlin, has been named as one of the “Top Ten Christian Blogs.” Mark received The Associated Church Press’ Award of Excellence in 2012. His work has been published on “The Huffington Post,” “Sojourners,” “Time,” “Church World Services,” and even the “Richard Dawkins Foundation.” He’s been featured on PBS’s “Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly” and NPR’s “The Story with Dick Gordon.” Follow Mark on Facebook and Twitter @marksandlin Question & Answer A. J. from the Internet, writes: Question: “I recently received one of those emails with the sensational subject line: “ALL OF A SUDDEN MESSAGE FROM A CONCERNED CITIZEN.” It started out with the question, "Has everyone lost their ability to see what is happening in the USA?” Then it lists nearly 20 “All of a Suddens” where Muslims are allegedly doing X, Y, or Z to undermine the American way of life. Each “fact” is presented with no attribution or source reference. Some of them are obviously made-up, but others seem like they could be possible. I’m including a couple of them to see if you have any suggestions for a response.” Answer: By Rev. David Felten Dear A. J., Wow, there’s a lot to cover here – but let me start out by saying that I’ve received that same email (more than once!). Every time it arrives, I flounder between being exasperated, angry, and despondent – and not only because of the contents, but in amazement at the people who forward me this clap-trap. It makes me stop and think, “Do I really know that person so poorly that I could be unaware of the ugly prejudice they harbor (and are now advertising by forwarding me this email)?” It also reminds me of the toxic undercurrent in our culture that my Muslim friends have to deal with every day – and from which my Christian privilege insulates me. And more importantly, we need to remember that this brand of one-click armchair bigotry is not harmless. It contributes to creating an environment where more and more blatant hate-speech and discrimination are tacitly approved of – all of which has led to a very real surge in anti-Muslim hate-crimes. Despite this demonstrable increase in anti-Muslim violence in the U.S., there has been nothing resembling a collective recoil or revulsion that one would hope to see in a country that claims to stand on principles of religious liberty and diversity. Suffice it to say, I don’t think there’s much that either of us could convey that would change the minds of the people who forward this email. Sadly, the avalanche of intentionally false stories, propaganda, and fake news has rendered moot whatever capacity many people might have had for critical thought. It shouldn’t be a surprise that when the very nature of reality itself is called into question by the “alternative facts” du jour, that people choose to cling to whatever information bolsters their most primal fears and prejudices – evidence to the contrary be damned. So, despite the seeming futility of any effort on your or my part to change the minds of most card-carrying Islamophobes, I’m going to wander down what may seem like “In Vain Lane” to offer some observations on a couple of these “All of a Sudden” claims. I’ve got to believe that even the smallest effort to push back against the tide of Islamophobia is not in vain, but an opportunity to light a candle against the darkness, to speak out in defense of genuine American values, and hone our skills in standing with the oppressed. All of a sudden, Islam is taught in schools. Oh no! Islam being “taught” in our schools?! The horror! This claim is part of yet another attempt by reactionary Fundamentalist Christians and Conservative politicians to 1) stoke the flames of conspiracy and 2) attempt to discredit the government and public schools as being un-American (Oh yeah, AND raise money). It dramatically over-exaggerates out-of-context information without any references to real world situations. But there’s certainly nothing “all of a sudden” about it. The basics of Islam are indeed already taught in many of our public schools – but not as a religion class. As the Bill of Rights makes clear, that would not be allowed for any religion, including Christianity. Smart schools bring in Muslim speakers from organizations like our local Islamic Speakers Bureau of Arizona to enhance students’ understanding of Islam. If a public school is doing its job, the history and tenets of Islam absolutely need to be taught right alongside the basics of Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and any number of other traditions. Why? In part because there is hardly a political crisis happening anywhere in the world today that isn’t, in some way, driven by religious sensibilities. How much better off would we all be if every citizen had a basic understanding of world religions? But in our increasingly interconnected world, Americans who are stupid about religion will continue to make stupid decisions (just as we’ve already demonstrated over and over again). All of a sudden, we must allow prayer rugs everywhere and allow for Islamic prayer in schools and businesses. Schools may indeed be asked to flex schedules and room use to allow observant Muslim kids a place to pray, but schools are used to that – as they should be. We live in a country of diverse religious traditions. Who among the Jewish and Muslim community complains when the majority Christian culture sways school districts to take Good Friday off? Last year my kids had the day off for Yom Kippur (the Jewish Day of Atonement). Where is the outrage over our public schools accommodating a religious minority and compromising the education of our upstanding Christian children? The bottom line is that it’s not unusual for schools to allow for the practice of Judaism and Christianity – so why not other religions? You’ve got to expect that in a country as diverse as ours, public schools are just one of the institutions for whom accommodating, without favoring (or “establishing”), particular religious traditions is both a daily challenge – and an expectation. As for businesses being forced to allow space and time for Islamic prayer in general (“we MUST allow prayer rugs everywhere”?), there’s just no evidence out there to support this claim. To the contrary, there have been a number of high profile examples of companies disallowing Muslim prayer during the day. Others make allowances as part of best HR practice or as an accommodation with a union. In a related development, a number of tech giants have stepped up in opposition to the Trump administration’s Muslim ban motivated by pure practical capitalism. If you have top engineers and scientists who are Muslim, it makes sense that businesses that value a particular expertise make allowances for top talent. All of a sudden, we must stop serving pork in public places and institutions. Oh good grief. The author of these “all of a suddens” is clearly running on conspiracy theory vapors. Do they not have Google?!? Do they not read? These kinds of broad generalizations are clearly designed to simply upset impressionable people who don’t care or don’t have the capacity to make even the slightest effort at getting the facts. Keeping conflicts over menus in Europe aside (Google it), let’s look at a recent dust-up in the United States. Back in 2015, it was announced that pork would be taken off the menu in Federal Prisons, but NOT as a concession to Muslims. In a Washington Post article, the head of the prisons reported that there were several non-Muslim reasons. One was: “Pork has been the lowest-rated food by inmates for several years,” AND pork has also become more expensive for the government to buy. SO, the initial rationale to stop serving pork was, in fact, to respond to inmate preference and save taxpayer dollars. But a firestorm erupted when The National Pork Producers Council and what seemed like the whole state of pig-inundated Iowa rose up in protest. The decision was overturned in less than a week – behold the power of the oink! Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley really knows how to bring home the bacon, huh? Even the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the country’s largest Muslim civil rights advocacy group, wasn’t a big fan of the no-pork menu. Spokesman Ibrahim Hooper predicted that anti-Islam groups would spin the decision into a case of the federal government acting under pressure from Muslims. “This is just the kind of thing that drives [Islamophobes] crazy,” he said. Clearly, this “all of a sudden” entry is exactly the kind of thing CAIR predicted. So, keep in mind that for tax-payer supported institutions (be they prisons or public schools), even what seems like a simple menu decision needs to keep in mind not only the optics, but a constellation of financial and legal considerations – some of which may include religious issues. On a purely practical level, schools here in the U.S. have demonstrated remarkable commitment to accommodate kids with gluten and peanut allergies. When there are enough kids who are allergic to something (or have a religious mandate to avoid something), it makes sense that institutions would make adjustments – especially when it also means saving money and not wasting food (unless you go up against the pig lobby). In the end, the motive of someone who first publishes things like this “all of a sudden” list is unclear. Is it simply for fun? To see how many low-information consumers of current events can be stirred up with irrational fear? Is it part of some coordinated effort by racial and religious bigots to stoke Islamophobia? Is it some random self-declared internet patriot seeking to resource “the movement”? The clearly anti-Obama slant on many of the statements suggests a political motivation. Maybe it’s a combination of all of the above (and don’t forget the Russians!). Whatever the source, these hateful diatribes of misinformation and blatant lies are with us for the foreseeable future. The solution? Keep working in your own circle of influence to promote interfaith understanding and relationships. Where you have time and ability, research some of the claims Islamophobes are making in order to educate yourself. Support your local Muslims: 1) take a group to the local mosque for a tour, 2) bring a Muslim speaker in to your local church or community group, 3) offer financial support to groups like CAIR or your local Islamic Speakers Bureau. Several members of my church have been trained by the Islamic Speakers Bureau of Arizona to go into local schools as part of a three-person “Abrahamic Panel.” A Jew, a Muslim, and a Christian spend all day sharing the particulars and the similarities among the three religions – and leaving a deeply positive impression of unity in diversity. Lots of people are worked up with fear and misinformation. Sometimes it seems that facts just don’t matter anymore. But don’t give up! Keep paying your dues to the reality club and keep your Islamophobia decoder ring handy. Don’t let people who are taken in by every anti-Muslim snake-oil salesman that comes around derail your commitment to what I think Jesus would want us to do: to treat “the other” with respect and dignity. Practice hospitality. Build genuine relationships with those who are excluded or lied about. And maybe, “all of a sudden,” a whole new world will emerge. ~ Rev. David M. Felten NOTE: If you’re looking for a curriculum resource to facilitate group discussion about Islam and how to support your Muslim neighbors, check out Living the Questions’ DVD series, “The Jesus Fatwah: Love Your (Muslim) Neighbor as Yourself.” 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 Unmasking the Sources of Christian Anti-Semitism - Part 3 When I was a child attending an Evangelical Episcopal (Anglican) Sunday school in North Carolina, I was taught that it was OK to hate Jews. If I questioned this teaching the Bible was quickly quoted to validate that negativity. I was never introduced to a good Jew in any of my prepared Sunday school material. I assumed that there was no such thing. I was told that Jews were those evil people who were always out to get Jesus and get him they did. I grew up never doubting that it was the Jews who were responsible for Jesus' death and, just as many in the early church had done, I exonerated the Roman officials of any guilt in the death of Jesus. I accepted the propaganda that was so deep in our faith tradition that it was even enshrined in the creeds, that it was simply "under" Pontius Pilate, not because of Pontius Pilate, that Jesus suffered, died and was buried. There was only a vague biblical note reminding readers that the Jews did not have the power to perform capital punishment, so all executions, other than those resulting from mob violence, had to be carried out by the Romans. In the material handed out as part of our Sunday school curriculum, it was easy to identify the Jews. They were sinister, evil, plotting and scheming people who had names like Pharisees, Sadducees, Scribes, Annas, Caiaphas and Judas Iscariot. When these Jews were pictured in these leaflets, it was in dark, negative colors, complete with facial scowls. Jews, I was taught, had no principles and would do anything for money. No one told me in this Sunday school that Jesus was a Jew. That appeared to escape their notice. When I saw pictures of Jesus, he did not look like a Jew. I thought he was a Swede, or at least an Englishman. He had blonde hair, blue eyes and fair skin. No one told me that all of the disciples were Jews, as were Mary and Joseph, Paul and Magdalene. The biblical episodes were normally interpreted to portray the Christians as the good guys battling the Jews who were the bad guys. When Paul spoke negatively about the Jews, it again did not occur to me that this was a Jewish man saying these things about another part of his own people. I did not understand that Paul's enemies were not all Jews but the traditionalist Jews, that we today might call the fundamentalist Jews. I did not grasp the fact that Paul represented a contending party within Judaism that believed that they had received a new vision of God in the Jewish Jesus and that this new vision needed to be incorporated into their ongoing faith story. This is how Judaism had always evolved. The gigantic heroes of their past had themselves been visionaries who saw beyond the boundaries of their own tradition. All of them had in their own time used their vision of God to reshape and reform the Jewish story. Abraham left Ur of the Chaldees to form a new people around a new idea. Moses led Abraham's descendents out of slavery stamping on them a radical monotheism. Elijah brought into this developing Judaism the role of prophets. Ezekiel reformed Judaism during the trauma of the Exile. Ezra and Nehemiah led a remnant of Jews out of that exile to pick up the threads of their broken history and to rebuild the dream. One could also count among these heroes that nameless prophet that we call II Isaiah, only because his writings had been added to the scroll of Isaiah. This shadowy, enigmatic figure laid aside Jewish dreams of future grandeur and proposed a vocation of vicarious suffering in which the people of God would absorb human hostility, transforming it through their suffering, and bringing the world thereby to a new wholeness. It was a startling vision that would lie dormant in the Jewish sacred writings until used to interpret the life and death of a first century Jew named Jesus. So those Jewish followers of Jesus, who saw him as another in this long line of people who had made the faith of the Jews a living tradition, challenged those members of the Jewish community who believed that they already possessed, in their orthodox formulations, the final truth of God that needed no further expansion. What looks to the contemporary reader as a vehement anti-Semitic polemic in the Bible was in fact a typical ecclesiastical dispute between traditionalists and visionaries. However, we must not forget that both parties were Jews. It was not unlike the battle in Christian circles between the fundamentalists and the modernists, in which epithets are hurled back and forth with little sensitivity. Religious battles are always visceral, emotional and exaggerated conflicts, because ultimately they are about our deepest identity, which means that they involve our sense of security and well-being. The New Testament is the product of these Jewish revisionists, who were determined to open a reformed Judaism to the inclusion of Gentiles. Look at who its authors were. First there are the epistles of the Jewish Paul and some of his Jewish disciples who wrote in his name. Then there are letters attributed to such early revisionist Jewish leaders (or their disciples who wrote in their names) as Peter, John, James and Jude, who had made the transition into the Jesus vision. Next we have gospels written by Mark, Matthew and John who were Jews by birth and a gospel and the book of Acts that were written by a man called Luke, who was a Jew by conversion. The battle between the Orthodox party and the followers of Jesus was originally a battle for the future of Judaism, between two Jewish groups. Over a period of time, probably less than a century, the revisionist Jews formed common cause with the influx of gentiles into Christianity and, as a consequence, loosened their own ties with Judaism. The barriers that proclaimed that Jews must stay separate and therefore could not eat or intermarry with gentiles faded among the revisionists, while among the orthodox Jews, those very same lines were hardening. A division was inevitable and during the last years of the 9th decade, the split occurred. Traditional Judaism was not flexible enough to contain the new vision, and the revisionists more and more defined themselves outside of Judaism. So a new religion called Christianity came into being. These Christians called their sacred scriptures 'The New Covenant,' or 'Testament' to contrast it with the original covenant. This New Testament was quite simply the product of the revisionist tradition. Both of these contending sides said terrible things about each other. That always occurs in ecclesiastical fights. It was at that time, however, an intra-Jewish fight. The hostile rhetoric of the Orthodox party was vehement, but since they believed that their scriptures were complete, this rhetoric did not enter their scriptures to echo through the ages. The hostile rhetoric of the revisionists, however, was present in their telling of the story of Jesus and thus it would be read through the centuries as the 'Word of God.' This meant that negativity toward Jews would become a regular feature in Christian worship each Sunday and its hatred would permeate Christian history. Finally it would result in Christians forgetting not only their own Jewish origins, but the Jewishness of Jesus as well. The legends of his miraculous birth, which suggested that he was he was fathered by the Holy Spirit, served to make him less Jewish. Since the woman at that time was not thought to contribute anything to the fetus except the nurture of her womb, people began to think of Jesus as completely non-Jewish. With the subsequent influx of gentiles into the Christian Church and the simultaneous decline in the influence of Jews, Christians more and more shed their Jewish practices. Many intermarried with gentiles and faded away ethnically. By the first quarter of the 2nd century, Christianity had become a gentile movement and had lost the world of its origins. >From that day to this, the primary readers and interpreters of the New Testament were Gentiles who had no great sense of Jewish history, of Jewish writing styles or of the original Jewish setting of the Christian story. They identified the Jesus movement about which the scriptures spoke not as revisionist Jews but as Christians with no reference at all to their Jewish background. They identified the orthodox party in the New Testament with all Jews as the enemies of Jesus. The narratives of the Jesus movement, that began to be read in the churches, were no longer heard as negative comments that the revisionist Jews had made to the orthodox Jews; but as things Christians, including Jesus, had said about all Jews. As these "sacred scriptures" were read through the ages, the apparent hostility of all Christians toward all Jews was reinforced in every century. At each Good Friday observance the role of the Jews in the death of Jesus was recounted again and again. The presumed acceptance of the blame for this dark act of "deicide" was articulated in those scriptures by the Jews themselves. "His blood be upon us and upon our children," became the most terrible of all the terrible texts of the Bible. So the children of Abraham, the very people who produced Jesus of Nazareth, were made to suffer in generation after generation wreaking havoc throughout Christian history. Anti-Semitism, born in this distortion, was and is a gift of the Christians to the world. It is the dark underside of the gospel of Love. It is not a pretty, a noble or an inspiring picture, but Christians need to own this prejudice. We created it. One more strand of anti-Semitism must be traced, however, before this story is complete. When the Christian Gospel, climaxing as it does with the crucifixion, came to be told, the anti-hero was pictured as a quintessential Jew. His name was Judas, which is nothing but the Greek spelling of Judah, the name of the Jewish nation. He was called "Iscariot," which means political traitor or assassin. In a real sense, anti-Semitism would always focus on this character. He was destined to become the lynchpin, perhaps even the ultimate source of Christianity's darkest chapter. To his story and his part in this dreadful bigotry, we will turn next. ~ John Shelby Spong Originally published May 26, 2004 Announcements FaithandReason® presents The Challenge of Paul, featuring John Dominic Crossan The D. L. Dykes, Jr. Foundation (DLDF), producers of FaithandReason®, will distribute, free of charge, The Challenge of Paul, an extraordinary video learning experience with John Dominic Crossan (Themes 1 and 2, plus a digital resource guide – a $150 value) to 1,000 or more churches across the country. Congregations or organizations interested in participating in The Challenge of Paul Gift Program are asked to email jennifervail(a)faithandreason.org and simply state, “Yes. I am interested in participating in The Challenge of Paul Gift Program.” Click here for more information ...

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Watch: Rev. Barber on how to stop white supremacy
by Ellie Stock via Dialogue 17 Sep '17

17 Sep '17

Greetings from St. Louis... Once again, St Louis is the epicenter of social unrest catalyzed by racism and white privilege. Most of the demonstrations and disruptions following a judge's not-guilty decision regarding a white police officer's fatal shooting a black man after a car chase six years ago have been peaceful, but in evenings, less peaceful agitators become more destructive, breaking windows, throwing bricks, water bottles, paint, trashcans, etc. Then, the police (in formation with shields), some of whom have been injured, respond with tear gas, pepper spray, and arrests... Protests have been in various parts of town--business districts and shopping malls. Some protester leaders have a 30 day plan to continue disrupting the economy which has already happened with store closures, events cancellations and business hours and money spent repairing broken windows and paint stains. Monday, we plan to be part of an interfaith prayer meeting in Kiener Plaza, downtown St. Louis... I am forwarding a video/words of The Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II re stopping white supremacy. We pray for peace through justice. Ellie Stock elliestock(a)aol.com Donald Trump is not the first politician to openly stoke racism and hatred. He is a part of a much larger system of white supremacy that is reinforced in our nation election after election. In a new video, I share my thoughts on why we need to dig deeper to address structural racism—and how we move forward. You can click here to watch it and share it with friends. Don't want to watch on Facebook? Click here to watch on YouTube. It's important to pull down Confederate symbols—many of which were erected as monuments to white supremacy during the Jim Crow era, decades after the Civil War. And we must also focus on the policy violence of voter suppression, attacks on immigrants, and denial of access to health care and living wages, which continue to oppress communities of color and the poor. White supremacy is about maintaining power through the politics of division and oppression—and it impacts everyone, Black, brown, or white. Advancing a moral agenda to confront and take down white supremacy in all its forms is work we all can do together. As I and my colleagues at Repairers of the Breach tour the country with the new #PoorPeoplesCampaign, the diversity of the communities committed to reviving the heart of democracy gives me hope. Please click here to take a moment to watch and share this video—then take action to tackle the symbols and policies of racism all around us. Sincerely, Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II Pres. & Sr. Lecturer, Repairers of the Breach P.S. You can also continue this conversation by following @RevDrBarber on Twitter.

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Felton/Wolsey: A New Template for Religion: A Conversation with Michael Morwood, Part 2; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock via Dialogue 14 Sep '17

14 Sep '17

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR A New Template for Religion: A Conversation with Michael Morwood, Part 2 By Rev. David Felten What follows in interview form is the second of three columns inspired by a presentation Michael Morwood offered at the Common Dreams Conference in Brisbane, Queensland, in 2016. In this installment, Morwood offers a new perspective on revelation, a re-visioning of who Jesus was, and continues with thoughts on whether our conventional ideas of religion have any real value anymore. __________________________________________________ David Felten: It seems to me that one of the most persistent “proofs” people use to add credibility to their beliefs is the notion that God has personally communicated certain “truths” to human beings through some sort of direct – but external — revelation. Michael Morwood: Yes, since the beginning, Christians have been expected to embrace a picture of reality that imagines an external deity who, although disconnected from humanity, manages to manipulate people and circumstances to further his own devices. God “chose” the Hebrew people to be his “chosen people” to fulfill his plans on earth. But when they failed, God sent his son from heaven to reveal God to us and to open the way to heaven for us. For many Christians, an essential aspect of the revelatory process is the idea that God himself chose particular people to reveal his thinking and his opinions on a wide range of topics through “sacred texts” – and almost thirty years after the supposed reforms of Vatican II, the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992) continued to promote the same fanciful idea: “To compose the sacred books, God chose certain men who, all the while he employed them in this task, made full use of their own faculties and powers so that, though he acted in them and by them, it was as true authors that they consigned to writing whatever he wanted written, and no more.” (#106) The only way that image of reality has any credibility is when we are locked into imagining a distant male deity intervening from the heavens. Felten: Then how is wisdom or insight conveyed to humanity in this new template for religion? Morwood: If we believe that what we’re dealing with today is a mystery present and operative throughout the whole universe, then our understanding of “revelation” and “inspiration” changes quite dramatically — and has monumental consequences. Rather than coming from elsewhere, the revelation of the great mystery we are dealing with comes from the ground up, from what is all around us. The great mystery we are trying to comprehend is embedded in everything that exists. Everything that exists gives expression to it. Felten: So we move from our fixation on the peoples, texts, and stories of, say, the last 3,000 years, to a perspective that embraces the whole of creation? Morwood: Just think about it: on this small planet in a cosmic nowhere, this mystery has been given earthly expression for four-and-a-half billion years — and we can marvel at what is possible when the conditions are just right: life in abundance. Felten: And the human species is a product of this abundance of life. Morwood: Yes! And in telling the contemporary story of the emergence of the human species, the significant theological shift is to move from imagining an external deity directing that emergence to taking seriously and imagining this creative, energizing, mysterious reality being embedded within human beings – just as it is in everything that exists. The big mistake in theological thinking has been to misplace the grounding of reality in the heavens in the form of gods. Then human “middle-management” needed to be developed to deal with the gods. Case in point is the Hebrew people developing the notion of one almighty deity. This was a time when people thought gods ruled the world from above. So within this framework, they developed the most inspiring religious understanding of themselves they could imagine: a people selected by this God to create “God’s rule” on earth. This vision embodied their highest aspirations, a society characterized by justice, compassion and peace. However, along with the development of their structured, institutional religion came the distractions of power, political influence, wealth, and straying from the goals set before them. So prophetic voices of great wisdom and insight were raised to keep this religion on track. Inevitably, these voices were couched in the religious thinking of the times. God was perceived to be a heavenly deity who intervened in human affairs and made his thoughts known through human messengers. So, the insights of many a wise human being is therefore attributed to “God” and we end up reading and hearing: “This is what the Lord God says…” “This is that God wants…”. Felten: And this is another element of what you referred to earlier as the “floppy disc version”? Morwood: Yes, and if we’re to make sense of this great wisdom and insight in the 21st century, what we need is a whole new operating system. These ancient insights and wisdom are real and not to be cast aside. But they need to be understood and appreciated as being a by-product of this mystery embedded in human speakers and writers, not coming from outside or coming down to them from “heaven.” This mystery, this source of this wisdom – call it “GOD” if you wish – is embedded in humans. While Amos and Hosea and Isaiah and Ruth and Naomi were giving expression to this great mystery in human words and actions, the same was happening all around the world in all peoples, in all cultures, and in all places. Men and women gave human expression the best they could to this presence and power and mystery within them. While Jeremiah was speaking and acting and allowing this embedded reality to have its way in and through him, the same phenomenon was happening in the aboriginal people who lived throughout what is now Australia. Revelation is no longer a matter of one people hearing and giving human expression to this “GOD” reality. It is a matter of acknowledging this reality everywhere, in all people, at all times, and putting an end to exclusive institutional or cultural claims to access this mystery. Felten: You mentioned earlier that changes to our understanding of “revelation” and “inspiration” would have monumental consequences. Can you elaborate? Morwood: Briefly, here are just four consequences: First, most Christians are familiar with the response to Scripture readings, “This is the Word of the Lord.” Going forward, this “Word of the Lord” language has to be explicitly understood as metaphor or figurative language – and as such has to be expanded to include all human wisdom. Secondly, let’s pull Paul back somewhat. He was a first century Jewish theologian. Let’s treat his writings in the same way we would explore the writings of any theologian of any religion. The writings of Paul have to lose their mystique as the never-to-be-questioned “Word of the Lord.” In other words, stop trying to end all discussion about the resurrection, about “the Christ”, about the end times, about the sending of God’s Spirit from heaven, about God’s eternal plan of salvation, about justification, about God’s wrath, and about salvation with proof-texting from Paul Three. I believe the “Christ” religion – in its many official formats – is generally more concerned with defending ideas that protect and preserve its institutional identity than it is with open and honest theological thinking. It closes its thinking to new understandings of revelation because new understandings may call into question its institutional identity claims – claims that depend on the understanding that God is disconnected from humanity and the connection can only be restored through one particular interpretation of “Christ.” So, for number four, I believe that the day is over when a religion can put revelation in a box and say, “No more.” Felten: So being aware of the “everywhere” nature of revelation opens up the possibility that everything is cause for wonder – even the pedestrian task of being human. Morwood: Today we can tell the story of our beginnings in a wonderfully dramatic way, borne out of the explosion of a giant star four-and-a-half billion years ago. From the stardust of that explosion, every atom in our bodies began a long journey, through transformation after transformation, to who and what we are today. There are atoms in our bodies that were once in dinosaurs, carbon atoms that were once in the Buddha, in Jesus, in Constantine. Going forward, this scientific story will be foundational for religious thinking and imagination for future generations. Felten: So what does this scientific story say about being human? What does this new template for religion say about the nature of our humanity? Morwood: We are stardust. We are stardust become human. We are a life-form that gives the universe a way to reflect on itself. Each one of us has the gift of a lifetime to give human expression to whatever drives the universe and the evolutionary process that drives the development of life on earth – but not without some urgency. We only have one chance to do this, just one lifetime. Hopefully, religious thinking will use and build on the scientific story of our beginnings and come to the inevitable conclusion of, “Wow, there’s another, even more astonishing, dimension to the human story.” To be human is to give human expression to the great mystery that sustains and holds everything in existence. We all give this great mystery – call it “GOD” if you will – a way of coming to human expression. Felten: Ooooh. I can think of a lot of conventional Christians who would object to this idea. They’d say, “Jesus was the only human expression of God!” Morwood: OK, so let’s tell an updated story of Jesus, one that reflects the scientific story and an understanding of the world in which we actually live (instead of clinging to the institutional Christology of the creeds). Instead of telling the story about Jesus as if God had disconnected from humanity and withdrawn friendship and forgiveness, and that Jesus alone had “the Spirit of the Lord” within him, and that the Spirit of God was waiting for something momentous to happen on earth before descending onto selected humans, let’s tell a story of this great mystery, of “GOD,” being embedded in all humans. And since this great mystery is truly in every person, we would expect its presence to be revealed among all people. It would surface in the creativity of gifted men and women the way Mozart gave expression to music. Wasn’t his brilliance an expression of this great mystery in the human species? Likewise with Jesus and his religious insight. In the language of his religion and time he was able to say, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” as he knew it had been in the prophets before him. Jesus looked around and saw his reality dominated by violence, military power, greed, fear and oppression. With this Spirit in him and knowing that the dream of his religion was to create God’s rule on earth, he must have wondered, “Is this the best we can do?” Knowing that the ideal behind the Torah was to make people God-conscious in their everyday activities, Jesus must have wondered how he could be so God-conscious and so many people around him were not. How come people couldn’t see and experience what he saw and experienced? How could this dream of “God’s rule or kingdom” be realized in the reality he encountered? In the long term, the only option with any hope was to go to the populace, the “crowd,” and try to help them become aware of the “Spirit of the Lord” in them. He did this by addressing their fear of God and their sense of distance from God. He wanted to affirm a presence, a power in them. His task was to convince people that there was more to who they were than they realized. He wanted to empower them to take responsibility for making the world a better place. The way Jesus saw it, there was nothing more urgent than for people to grasp and work with the Spirit already within them. It may be like a small seed, but it had to start somewhere. He was driven by this dream and the task it presented. I doubt that Jesus ever thought he would see his dream realized in his lifetime. Human experience tells us that it can take decades for significant religious and social change to take place. I think Jesus worked on the “Go home and think about this” principle of educating people as he told parables and gave clear teaching on how God’s rule could be implemented. I think Jesus was looking well ahead to what could be in place when the Roman Empire ended and people began looking for a more satisfying way of life. Felten: But I can hear well-meaning traditional Christians asking, “What about Jesus suffering and dying to save me from the “wrath to come”? Morwood: There is nothing in Jesus’ preaching about a God whose forgiveness was conditional on some dramatic human event. There is nothing about a God disconnected from people. There is no concern whatever about saving people from God’s “wrath” or getting to heaven. There is nothing about Jesus needing to be anointed by God in heaven to become the central figure in a cosmic story about salvation and God directing the universe to its final conclusion with this heavenly “Christ” as the pinnacle of creation. The Jesus we know in the synoptic gospels focused on this world, the desperate need for people to work together to make it a better place, and a Way this could be accomplished, despite the world being organized in a way that blocked the “kingdom of God” from being realized. And for attempting to empower people so they might question and challenge the religious, social, and political status quo, he paid the price. The future for any group that gathers around the Jesus’ story has to return to and focus on these basic issues if its members are, in any true sense, to be called followers of Jesus. ~ Rev. David Felten with Michael Morwood In the final installment of “A New Template for Religion,” Felten will ask Morwood to apply his three questions to the concepts of worship and prayer. About Michael Moorwood 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 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 Janet from Adelaide, Australia writes: Question: Are there parts of the Old Testament that are said to be relevant today and why? Answer: By Rev. Roger Wolsey Dear Janet, I think a case could be made that all of the Hebrew Scriptures are relevant today. One really can’t truly understand all of the many nuances, or perceive the many allusions, contained in the books of the New Testament without being familiar with the Hebrew scriptures that they expand upon. A very high percentage of the words attributed to Jesus in the Gospels are either direct quotes from verses in the Hebrew texts, or are obvious riffs upon and variations on them. Moreover, if we seek to follow Jesus, we’d do well to be familiar with the texts that informed and inspired him. Based upon the topics he spoke most about, and which verses he tended to quote or allude to the most, it seems clear that Prophets and the Psalms were the books that Jesus spent the most time with, followed by the books of the Torah. So, one might say that the Prophets and the Psalms were Jesus’ “canon within the canon.” And he clearly employed a hermeneutic (interpretive lense) of love as he grappled with those texts that were written long before he was born and sought to make them relevant for his time. I think we’d do well to do the same. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, and the U.S. Civil Rights Movement frequently employed motifs from the Hebrew texts – especially Exodus; as well as Micah, and the other prophets. That was just four decades ago. And, tragically, that Movement still has work to do. On a related note, I’ve encountered not a few liberal and progressive Christians who say, “I don’t believe in the God of the Old Testament. I only read the New Testament.” Not only is this problematic for the reasons mentioned above, it’s actually committing the “heresy” known as Marcionism. I don’t normally use that word, but in this case I’m okay with it. Marcion felt that “the God of the Old Testament” was cruel and monstrous and that the “God of the New Testament” is markedly different and more loving. While there clearly are a few passages in the Hebrew texts that are most unfortunate and unhelpful and many of us might wish they weren’t there at all, it is unfair and intellectually dishonest to assert that there is only “one God” or “one theology about God” in the Hebrew texts. There are far more books in the Hebrew scriptures than in the New Testament (39–46 depending on who is counting) and they contain as many, and in fact more theologies about God. The books therein are in conversation with each other – and in the case of Isaiah for instance, within themselves. They are a midrash of assertions, discussions, and dissenting voices. This messy project is ongoing and very much relevant today. Finally, here is a link to a resource that I wrote that many have found helpful: “16 Ways Progressive Christians Interpret the Bible.” I hope this helps. ~ 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 Unmasking the Sources of Christian Anti-Semitism - Part 2 Intolerance and bigotry seem to be written into the very fabric of religious life, causing people to act in ways that are diametrically opposed to what they say they believe. A tremendous need for certainty that overwhelms our rationality appears to be part of our very humanity. It is visible in the excessive claims that every religious system makes for both its ultimate truthfulness and its exclusiveness. Listen to the language of religion: "We possess the only truth." "Our scriptures are the inerrant Word of God." "Our Pope is infallible." "No one comes to God except through our particular pathway." These pious claims are little more than the power assertions of frightened people. To validate these claims it becomes psychologically necessary for believers to attack and dismiss any competing religious system, setting the stage for religious persecution, religious violence and religious bigotry. Everywhere one looks in the world today, one discovers the manifestations of that human need. God is always invoked to justify our cruelty, our attacks and our prejudice. Religion began its journey through history as a dimension of tribal life, interpreting the world to a particular clan of people. In time, individual tribes merged into larger and larger constellations until in our day three major religious systems dominate the world. Hinduism and its child Buddhism are dominant in the eastern part of the world; Islam blankets the Middle East, and the Judeo-Christian faith holds sway over the western world. Judaism, while the mother of Christianity, exists today as a tiny presence in an overwhelmingly Christian world, constantly resisting efforts at assimilation. Over the centuries Christianity, as part of the dominant west, had no great need to engage the other religions of the world. Islam could be ignored at least since the eighth century, when in the battle of Tours the Muslims were driven out of Europe. The eastern religions were also generally outside the orbit of western consciousness and thus they raised no great concerns. However, Judaism as a minority tradition inside the dominant system, was a living symbol that Christian claims were not universally acknowledged. While Christians were regularly making assertions of divine revelation, of a heavenly invasion by God to save the world or claiming that they alone control the exclusive doorway into God, there were Jews in their midst constantly reminding them that not all people believed as they did. In that place deep down in our souls, where the hysteria of powerlessness collides with the security-providing mechanisms, which make self-consciousness and humanity itself possible, religious prejudice is born. Anti-Semitism is thus the constant shadow, the ever- present underside of Christian claims of certainty. In my last column, I began a walk back through history to trace the development of anti-Semitism in the Christian West. I started with the holocaust in the middle years of the twentieth century in Nazi Germany and journeyed until I reached the time of the bubonic plague in the fourteenth century. I continue that trek this week in search of the origin of this prejudice that has been a constant reality inside the Christian tradition. I come next to that bizarre period of western history that we call the Crusades. The desire to win eternal reward and the need to oppress a rising religious threat, combined with an obsession to free our holy places from the control of the infidels, fueled centuries of crusading fervor. The holy city of Jerusalem, which included such sites as the Mount of Olives, the Garden of Gethsemane, the Hill of Calvary and the place of Jesus' tomb in Joseph's garden, were all being "defiled" by Muslim control. Six miles away lay the little town of Bethlehem, the sacred birthplace of Jesus, also under Islamic auspices. Encouraged by the Vatican, local princes identified this external Muslim enemy and were easily able to rouse the population of Europe into a frenzy. Eternal reward, it was said, awaited those who led a contingent of followers to the Holy Land to kill the infidels and free the holy places. Some battalions of Christian crusaders were large, led by the ruling kings of Europe. Some were smaller, led by a local duke or nobleman. Others were organized by a single citizen who usually had more enthusiasm than wisdom. Militarily, all of them were quite unsuccessful. The Holy Land has generally remained under Muslim control until this day, but the crusades left a hatred deep in the souls of the Islamic people and nations, that plagues the western world at this very moment. In our search for the origins of anti-Semitism, we need to note that most of these fervent Christian soldiers who set off on these "romantic" crusades, never actually made it to the Holy Land. They only made it to one or two villages or towns away from their homes where they acted out their vehemence against the only "infidels" they could find in these communities that were unfortunate enough to be in their pathway. The infidels there were not Muslims but Jews. "One infidel is as good as another," became the motto of these crusaders as the Jews were killed in village after village. They deserved it the Christians said. They killed Jesus and, more than that, they had admitted it, bragged about it and accepted the consequences for themselves and their children. That is what the "Word of God" had stated. The echoes of the words penned by Matthew that had the crowds take responsibility for the blood of Jesus and volunteering that blame for their children in generations as yet unborn were not far from the minds of these Christian warriors. This persecutory mentality had also expressed itself even earlier in European history when the Christians barred the Jews from owning land. To survive economically they became bankers and jewelers. Christians were taught that usury was sinful so no Christian could charge interest on loans. This made it unprofitable for Christians to engage in banking, thus opening a rich market that allowed Jews to become the dominant financiers of Europe. Kings borrowed money from Jewish bankers to underwrite their wars and even their crusades. This enabled the Christians to feed their stereotypical prejudices that portrayed Jews as money-grubbers, who would do anything for money. If there were any doubts about this, the story of Judas Iscariot was retold. Had he not betrayed the Lord for thirty pieces of silver? It all fitted together. Christians needed the Jewish bankers but they hated them simultaneously. Banking was not a safe haven for Jews. Whenever the king's debts to Jewish financiers became excessive, it was easy for him to begin another round of persecutions in which Jewish property would be confiscated. That property frequently included those liquid assets called bank loans and the king's debts disappeared into thin air! In time, the Christians would abandon their principles about the sinfulness of interest. Banking was too lucrative an enterprise to leave in Jewish hands. Another layer of anti-Semitism is thus laid bare. Continuing this journey backward through time, we arrive at the period of Christian history in which the church celebrated its Founding Fathers -- Polycarp, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Jerome, Tertullian and John Chrysostom, just to name a few. They were the key players as the church learned how to survive in a period of persecution and to prepare their faith tradition to become the dominant religion in the Roman Empire, which happened in the fourth century. It is fascinating to discover how deep and virulent the anti-Jewish rhetoric was in almost every one of these "Fathers." Their words, when read today, are still chilling. Jews were called "evil, vermin and unclean people." They were said to be 'unfit to live.' Christians were taught that it was a virtue to hate Jews actively. They castigated and caricatured the Jewish faith in ways that would make it impossible for a faithful Jew to recognize it as his or her faith. Jews were not to be trusted, not to be allowed access to power, not be considered as potential friends, not to be people with whom any Christian would break bread. When we arrive at the second century, still searching for the origins of this prejudice that seems to have infected Christians at a very early stage, we come to a man named Marcion who did his work around 140 C.E. Marcion regarded the God of the Jews as a demonic figure. He proposed that Christians rip the Old Testament out of their Bibles and edit out of the New Testament any references to the God of the Jews. His desire was to sever Christianity from its Jewish roots and allow it, even force it, to deny its own ancestry. Marcion might be called the culmination of the first great wave of Christian anti-Semitism. The church to its credit refused to go along with Marcion, ultimately condemning him as a heretic, but Marcion's anti-Semitism was destined to continue to exert its ugly prejudice in the life of the church. Marcion forced the early church to draw up its own Canon of Scripture, which quite specifically included the Old Testament. It could hardly have done otherwise since the canonical gospels included thousands of references to the Hebrew Scriptures. Those Jewish texts had long been the primary way through which Christians had portrayed Jesus as the fulfillment of the law and the prophets. Christians even began to appropriate Jewish concepts to themselves, calling themselves "God's Chosen People, God's elect," and identifying themselves as the New Israel. To do this implied that the Jews no longer had a right to these claims, since they were defined by the Christians as God's rejected, the ones who did not live up to their calling. "He came to his own and his own received him not," is the way the fourth Gospel described it. The next step backward in this journey takes us into the New Testament itself. We Christians do not like to face the fact that anti-Semitism is present in the gospels themselves, but it is. The word of God actually teaches us to hate. Exploring that will be my topic next week. ~ John Shelby Spong Originally published May 12, 2004 Announcements CALIFORNIA VISION 2020 – ILLUMINATING OUR PATH TO A BETTER FUTURE Experience 3 Days Of Inspiration, Vision and Action, Featuring Breakthrough Solutions, Game-changing Ideas, Deep Dialogue, Dazzling Artistry and Connections to a Community Of Amazing Leaders in Social Action, Politics, Business, and Personal Transformation Click here for more information/registration

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Colleagues in Florida, Texas, maybe Oregon . . .
by James Wiegel via Dialogue 08 Sep '17

08 Sep '17

The Wiegels have two spare bedrooms available here in Arizona if needed, and only 30% chance of storms with possible flash floods. Jim Wiegel 401 North Beverly Way, Tolleson, Arizona 85353 Tel. 011-623-936-8671 or 011-623-363-3277 jfwiegel(a)yahoo.com www.partnersinparticipation.com We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master. Ernest Hemingway

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Global Buzz September 2017
by ICA International via Dialogue 07 Sep '17

07 Sep '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: September 2017 or copy and paste this URL into your browser's address bar http://globalbuzz.icai-archives.org/7dayreport-17/2017-09-01.php ICAI Communications

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