May 2018 - 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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5/31/18. Progressing Spirit: Wolsey/Vosper: A Call to Spirituality and Religious participation; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 31 May '18

31 May '18

View this email in your browser A Call to Spirituality and Religious participation. Essay by Rev. Roger Wolsey, May 31, 2018 A growing number of people who identify as progressive Christians also identify as being post-Christian, and/or post-Church, or even post-God. While this is of course perfectly okay and welcome, I experience this as less than ideal or optimal. To my mind following the way, teaching, and example of Jesus cannot truly, or at least not easily, be done without also having, nurturing, and tending to an active personal spiritual life communing with God (being present to Source/Presence) as well as an active communal/collective shared spiritual community. While some people may say that forums such as this newsletter and other online resources “meet that need” in their lives, words on a page pale in comparison to actually engaging in centering prayer, meditation, communion, shared singing, potluck suppers, organized community service, and experiencing big loving hugs from gifted kindred spirits. Bottom line: I’m saying that progressive Christians do well to find ways to not just be in our heads, but to be in our bodies and hearts – and to do so with and for others. I’m calling us to be spiritual and religious. I realize that saying this may be swimming against an increasingly common and increasingly strong current, but they each inform and complement the other. Here’s an analogy. I enjoy playing my trumpet by myself and practice it as I have time. This is like my spirituality (in fact, it is a spiritual practice for me). It’s a personal way for me to express myself and to commune with God. And yet I also enjoy and am blessed by playing my trumpet with others in bands and orchestras. This is like religion (which comes from the Latin “religare” – “to unite, to bind together.”) Humans are social creatures and when I play with others, I’m exposed to new ideas and different forms of music and styles and techniques and I play at a higher level than I would experience on my own. I feel invited and inspired to play at my best and to enjoy the exhilarating experience of being a part of something larger than myself and participating in something that I simply couldn’t on my own. It’s a bit like how giant redwood trees grow tall by intermingling their roots with each other in order to support each other. To use another analogy, if we are “fish,” spirituality is awareness of the water, and religions are the currents in the ocean that fish can choose to swim in to go faster and further than they otherwise could or would. (Flying fish are spiritually blessed in that by jumping out of the water they can perceive and maybe even fathom that they’re immersed in it.) Fundamentalisms are aquariums that keep fish confined. Humans thrive best (live longer with more happiness) when nurtured in communities that provide comfort, support, challenge, accountability, inspiration, and fellowship. A person can say that they’re a football player, but if they only practice alone by themselves in their backyard, and aren’t a part of a team that practices and plays together, they won’t be as much of one as they could be. Similarly, as a Christian, I realize that following that radical dude from Nazareth and his Way, teachings, and example – ain’t easy if attempted solo. Jesus banded people together to follow him. We need one another. Sure, it’s possible to come to a place in life where one feels that they no longer need a team. In some ways, that could be true, but there’s often some denial and self-deceit going on. Moreover, there are times when we participate in a group not so much because we need it, but because they need us. People groups don’t change unless people who care about them are willing to actively engage in them – and change them from the inside – which is the only way things ever change. All this said, I couldn’t be a Christian if fundamentalist churches were the only kind of church that there was. Happily, that isn’t the case, they’re actually in the minority. There are plenty of other churches ranging from conservative to progressive. There’s no such thing as a perfect church, and they’re all mixtures of various levels of health and dysfunction. That’s humans for you. That’s you for you. I invite us to choose a congregation/cohort that fits “well enough” and then allow it to change us – as we change it. * Daring to darken the doors of a church might feel a real stretch to many of us. Do I really want to attempt this again? Do I really expect things to be different? Won’t I just be hurt or disillusioned again? A place to start might be when you see someone in the lobby drinking coffee or eating their donut and you notice a tear welling in their eye as you speak with them, invite them to stroll with you down the hallway or to a corner of the room saying “Say, I notice some emotion welling up in you, perhaps something is alive or tender for you, would you like to talk about it?” And be ready for ministry to happen. You never know what’s going to happen, you might be there for someone, or someone might be there for you, just when it’s needed. That’s the magic of community. Blessings as we each do our private spiritual inner work and as we grow in Christ together. ~ Rev. Roger Wolsey Click here to read online and to share your thoughts — Here are links for how to find a progressive Christian congregation near you. 7 Ways to find a progressive Christian church ProgressiveChristianity.org/Progressive Christian organizations locator 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” Question & Answer Q: By Reader from the Internet Would it be fair for me to promote the notion that you - a self-declared atheist leading a United Church of Canada congregation - and your church are generally promoting humanist values as well as providing the community benefits that churches normally provide? A: By Rev. Gretta Vosper Dear Reader, Definitely! What we do is build community around humanistic values. I believe very strongly that humans flourish in community and that when humans flourish, they engage beyond themselves investing in the people and the world around them. The liberal church has hemorrhaged from the left for decades, but many who have left have not found their way to communities that support them and offer the broad perspective that the same liberal church they left often does, mostly because those communities don't exist. (The liberal church, in my opinion, had a responsibility to create them, but that is a whole other conversation!) When I speak on Sundays, I'm talking about world issues, personal well-being, parenting challenges, dying with dignity, the whole swath. We deal with it all and still do the stuff of church. For example, we celebrate the birth of a child and gather around a table for communion, served and received in a unique way, consistent with our values. We stand up and sing songs. We hold the typical church fundraising events. But what all these things really do is build relationships. In preparation for our Holiday Bazaar, for instance, a group of women met for almost a year making crafts. Another group came together the week before to put everything together. On the day of, everyone donned Santa or elf hats and laughed their way through the day, dealing with customers with happy faces. Afterward, there was a bunch of stuff left that needed to be dealt with so another group got together and cleared it all out. It sounds like ordinary volunteer work, I know. And it is. But the goodwill and serotonin that is created when people come together in community is transformational. Never let anyone underestimate the importance of what I call the "off-label benefits of religion." ~ Rev. Gretta Vosper Click here to read and share online About the Author The Rev. Gretta Vosper is a United Church of Canada minister who is an atheist. Her best-selling books include With or Without God: Why The Way We Live is More Important Than What We Believe, and Amen: What Prayer Can Mean in a World Beyond Belief. She has also published three books of poetry and prayers. Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited The Dark Side of Evangelical Religion Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong on August 31, 2005 I often wonder what Bible it is that people read in America’s Bible Belt. I wonder what the religion is that is practiced by the Religious Right. It certainly does not connect with my understanding of Christianity. Perhaps I am the one who is blind to the things they perceive, but seeing their enthusiasm for war, their lack of concern for the welfare of minorities, their overt homophobia, and their violence (as expressed in the number of legal executions in that region), I cannot help but ask those who live in the Bible Belt and those who hold membership in the Religious Right to help me comprehend the religious understanding that they espouse. This issue was raised sharply for me recently by a remark from Pat Robertson, president and owner of the Christian Broadcasting Television Network. On his 700 Club program, Robertson — one of America’s leading evangelical voices — called for the assassination of Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez. Murder, apparently, is a legitimate Christian solution when you have a disagreement with someone. Robertson, who was a candidate for the Republican nomination for president in 1988, is a major force in the religious base dedicated to the presidency of George W. Bush. (Bush’s “red state” region is the home of the most overtly religious voters in this country.) The president has represented their point of view well with his opposition to abortion, stem-cell research, homosexuality, and the right to make end-of-life decisions. Utterances emanating from Pat Robertson’s lips, however, do not sound to me like the words of a religious leader, at least not a Christian religious leader. This murder recommendation, by the way, was not his only bizarre moral lapse. Writing about the feminist movement in a fund-raising letter, Robertson said: “The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.” That does not sound like the feminists I know and is especially offensive to those feminists who are my wife and daughters. About homosexuality Robertson has not only been hostile but also uninformed and judgmental. Additionally he has combined his prejudices by adding the faint odor of anti-Semitism to his homophobia. In a Christmas Eve program, he once said: “The acceptance of homosexuality is the last step in the decline of gentile Christianity.” Now he has decided that the murder of Hugo Chavez is within his understanding of Christianity. This is the same man, I remind you, who championed the right of Chief Justice Roy Moore of Alabama to hang the Ten Commandments in his courtroom. Perhaps Robertson has not read those commandments recently, but the last time I looked they still contained the injunction: “Thou shalt not kill.” It was amusing yet frightening to watch some of this nation’s other evangelical leaders dance around these comments by their colleague. One of them tried to justify Robertson’s words by suggesting that they came during “the political side” of Robertson’s television program rather than “the religious side.” This strange logic suggests that murder is okay in the political arena, but not in the religious arena. Somehow murder seems to me to be both terminal and evil in either place. Jesse Jackson’s request that the Federal Communications Commission discipline Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network for his comments, just as they disciplined CBS and MTV over the exposure of Janet Jackson’s breast during the half-time show of the Super Bowl in 2004, was dismissed by the same evangelical leader as not being “in the same category of moral concern,” the implication being that the comments were a lesser offense. That argument’s value escapes me. A performer’s exposed breast is certainly in bad taste but no one died as a result of that insensitive act. To call for the murder of a head of state because you dislike his politics strikes me as of a totally different and far more severe moral dimension. Members of the Religious Right do seem to be more obsessed with issues of sexuality than they are about issues like war and peace or discrimination. Sometimes they remind me of the old joke that “fundamentalists are opposed to sex because it might lead to dancing!” I grew up a Southern evangelical fundamentalist in the Bible Belt. I certainly needed the security it offered me during the early years of my life, as I dealt with both death and poverty. I left that movement, however, because I found it intellectually bankrupt and morally indefensible. It was their indefensible morality far more than their intellectual bankruptcy that bothered me the most even then. Intellectual issues can be debated, facts cited, and minds changed. I know that from my own spiritual journey. When immoral activity done in the name of religion occurs, however, the scars created by both the pain of disillusionment and the loss of integrity are very long lasting. So out of the embarrassment of listening to a person identified as a Christian calling for an act of murder, I seek answers to my searching questions. What Bible do people read in that region of America we call the Bible Belt? In that part of our nation, church going is more popular than it is in any other part of America, and people living there hold to their religious affiliations very deeply. Yet that is the same part of America that engaged in slavery until they were required to give up that inhumane practice by force of arms. Is the enslavement of human beings compatible with the Christian life? Certainly quotations from Holy Scripture were used to justify slavery and to remove any pangs of guilt that might have accompanied that institution in the hearts of the “fine Christian slaveholders” of the South. Yet how does slavery square with Jesus’ words: “By this will all know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:35). Would they have me believe that slavery is simply a form of love that I do not recognize? Is the calling for the murder of a head of state also a form of love that I just do not understand? When slavery was made illegal in the Bible Belt following the American Civil War, its bastard stepchild, known as segregation, took its place. Black people were separated from white people by law. Their children were forced to go to inferior schools. They were not allowed access to public libraries, public parks, or public toilets. They were refused service in both hotels and restaurants, and they were prohibited from trying on clothes in department stores and dress shops. Black people had no standing and few rights in the white-dominated courts. Enforcing these brutal practices was an organization called the Ku Klux Klan, which used the primary Christian symbol, a cross, turning it into an instrument of intimidation and fear by setting it ablaze. The Klan was also served by a “Khaplain,” who invariably articulated the values of what was called white, gentile Christianity, while at the same time seeking to dominate and coerce people of color with physical violence. The great majority of the white people of the Bible Belt supported segregation until it was declared to be illegal in 1954 by a unanimous ruling of the Supreme Court. Even then the white Christians of the South resisted that law by every possible means, legal and illegal. “Massive resistance to the law of the land” was the motto adopted by the church-going political organization run by Senator Harry Byrd of Virginia. It was fully supported by the junior senator from that same state, A. Willis Robertson, who along with his wife, were quite overtly religious, God-fearing, church-going Christians. They were also the parents of evangelist Pat Robertson. Perhaps neither the Byrds nor the Robertsons ever read Jesus’ words describing his purpose as that of bringing life, abundant life to all (John 10:10). Or perhaps they were able to convince themselves that segregation offered enhancement, not diminishment, of the humanity of black people. What kind of religion was being practiced in the Bible Belt of the South when lynching, mostly of black males, occurred there with great regularity until the mid-twentieth century with the full support of both the white law-enforcement officials and the white dominated courts? How was it possible that Southern sheriffs, police officials, judges, and juries, who winked at this murder of black people, were also God-fearing, Bible-reading, church-going Christians? If they could square the lynching of “offensive” black males with the Christianity they practiced in the Bible Belt, then calling for the murder of an offending head of state in Venezuela by a well-known Southern Christian evangelist a generation later should be easy to understand. America’s Religious Right was appalled at the sexual misconduct of President Clinton. So was I. But again their moral compass seems askew when they are not equally appalled at the behavior of a president who has taken us into a war based on blatantly false intelligence data. He has presided over a tremendous abuse of human rights in both Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo for which no persons other than enlisted personnel have yet been convicted. His actions have cost the lives of some 1,900 American service persons, the wounding of thousands more, to say nothing of his responsibility for the deaths of uncounted Iraqis. His religious supporters appear to feel no outrage about this. Yet this president claims that his religion guides his every action. I am glad Pat Robertson got caught with his moral pants hanging at half-mast, for it is time that the citizens of country awaken to the dark side of the religious coalition that threatens, if it has not already done so, to seize power in the United States. So, I return to my questions: What Bible do they read in the Bible Belt? What kind of religion do those who are said to be members of the Religious Right practice? What kind of Christian evangelist is it who thinks it is moral to call for the murder of a head of state? I would love to have an answer. So would an increasingly larger and larger segment of the citizens of the United States. ~ John Shelby Spong Announcements Summer Intensive 1: Sacred Space, Sacred Community With Reverends Sid Hall, DMin and Bruce Sanguin, MDiv. Fox Institute for Creation Spirituality (FICS) has a five-day intensive coming up June 11-15th in Boulder, CO that is especially designed for clergy. SPECIAL PRICING OFFER: $500 for the entire five-day intensive, a 70% reduction from the normal intensive price. Click here for more information/registration...

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Re: [Dialogue] [Oe List ...] Naomi Klein book and Leap movement
by Rod Rippel 29 May '18

29 May '18

Randy, et.al., Check out “ON TYRANNY” by Timothy Snyder. ‘20 Lessons from the 20th Century. Rod From: Randy Williams via OE Sent: Tuesday, May 29, 2018 9:41 AM To: Colleague Dialogue Cc: Randy Williams ; oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] [Dialogue] Naomi Klein book and Leap movement Ellie, I read the book. To get the full impact of Trump’s “shock politics,” read also her 2007 book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Randy On May 29, 2018, at 11:34 AM, Ellie Stock via Dialogue <dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote: Hi Folks, Maybe someone has written about this before and I missed it, but just wanted to check... I just finished reading Naomi Klein's 2017 book No Is No Enough, Resisting Trump's Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need, the focus of which is that resistance to the critical issues we face today, while necessary, is not enough and needs to be addressed by a powerful positive holistic vision created and supported by a movement comprised of a broad coalition of diverse grassroots groups. Proposed action cannot be slow incremental change but must take a Leap and move rapidly and comprehensively as happened in prep for WWII and other times of radical transformative change. Much of her work has been done in Canada with groups that have come together to create "The Leap Manifesto, A Call for a Canada Based on Caring for the Earth and One Another." If you replace "Canada" with "The U.S." in the document, the issues are basically the same.. A sentence toward the end of the document reads: We call for town hall meetings across the country where residents can gather to democratically define what a genuine leap to the next economy means in their communities." Hmmm, that sounds familiar... So, just wondering if colleagues in Canada (or the US) are connected with this. Any comments on the book? Ellie elliestock(a)aol.com _______________________________________________ Dialogue mailing list Dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/dialogue-wedgeblade.net -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ OE mailing list OE(a)lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus

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Naomi Klein book and Leap movement
by Ellie Stock 29 May '18

29 May '18

Hi Folks, Maybe someone has written about this before and I missed it, but just wanted to check... I just finished reading Naomi Klein's 2017 book No Is No Enough, Resisting Trump's Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need, the focus of which is that resistance to the critical issues we face today, while necessary, is not enough and needs to be addressed by a powerful positive holistic vision created and supported by a movement comprised of a broad coalition of diverse grassroots groups. Proposed action cannot be slow incremental change but must take a Leap and move rapidly and comprehensively as happened in prep for WWII and other times of radical transformative change. Much of her work has been done in Canada with groups that have come together to create "The Leap Manifesto, A Call for a Canada Based on Caring for the Earth and One Another." If you replace "Canada" with "The U.S." in the document, the issues are basically the same.. A sentence toward the end of the document reads: We call for town hall meetings across the country where residents can gather to democratically define what a genuine leap to the next economy means in their communities." Hmmm, that sounds familiar... So, just wondering if colleagues in Canada (or the US) are connected with this. Any comments on the book? Ellie elliestock(a)aol.com

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Swamp Gravy!!
by Seth Longacre 29 May '18

29 May '18

Holy cow, folks! I’m sitting here, right now, listening to NPR’s Planet Money and it is all about Colquitt and Joy Jinks and Swamp Gravy! Very cool. Bill and Nan Grow, I hope you hear this. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/05/25/613750683/episode-843-swamp-g… <https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/05/25/613750683/episode-843-swamp-g…> Seth T. Longacre Carlsbad, CA "No one man can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices” Edward R. Murrow ———-O0ooo— ———–(——)— ————)–-/—- ————(_/- —-ooo0O—- —-(——)—- —–\-–(– ——\_)-

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"A Confession of Faith in a Time of Crisis:; Movie: "Pope Francis: A Man of His Word"
by Ellie Stock 27 May '18

27 May '18

Hi Folks, Below is a link to "A Confession of Faith in a Time of Crisis" signed on by a number of prominent clergy, including The Most Rev. Michael B. Curry, Presiding Bishop and Primate, The Episcopal Church, who delivered the homily at Prince Harry/Meghan Markle's wedding. There was a vigil last Thursday night in front of the White House where this was read. A Confession of Faith in a Time of Crisis | Christ ... www.christepiscopalchurch.com/dfc/newsdetail_2/3192508 A Confession of Faith in a Time of Crisis. We are living through perilous and polarizing times as a nation, I think the Confession is good. However, a critical omission is any mention of how the soul of humanity and America is also integrally related to the well-being of this sacred Earth and all that is in it. Which brings me to mention... 1) Today is Rachel Carson's birthday. We are much indebted to her for the consciousness of caring for creation she evoked through her scientific research, writing, and witness of her life. 2) Saw the movie "Pope Francis, A Man of his Word" (playing at the Tivoli, for those in St. Louis). thought it was beautiful. Covered many issues, but mention of women priests, abortion or birth control. If you haven't read his Encylical, Laudato Si', On Care for Our Common Home, I encourage you do to so. It is written not just for the Catholic Church but for all humanity to ponder and respond. It can be found and downloaded free at: Download "Laudato Si" | Pope Francis' Encyclical on ... laudatosi.com/watch Read Pope Francis' new encyclical online, in PDF, or in paperback form. Discover the Catholic Church's teaching on ecology, climate change, and care for creation. Hope you have a good Memorial Day Weekend, as we remember all those who sacrificed their lives in order to create a free, just and peaceful nation and world. Ellie :) elliestock(a)aol.com

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5/17/18, Progressing Spirit: Felton: A Conversation with John Shuck: Part 2 “All Shuck. No Jive.”; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 24 May '18

24 May '18

Missed sending this last week... View this email in your browser A Conversation with John Shuck: Part 2 “All Shuck. No Jive.” Essay by Rev. David Felten on May 17, 2018 What follows is the second part of an interview with the Rev. John Shuck. In this installment, Shuck offers perspectives on the risks of being honest in the “corporate church” and the struggle in dealing with other people’s worldviews when coping with personal tragedy. ___________________________________________________________ David Felten:…The first part of our conversation revolved around the necessity of telling the truth. Would you say you’re an advocate for honesty? John Shuck:…Yes. That’s it. Period. That’s the primary thing. No matter what. Whatever it is. Maybe that sounds simple, like what the Boy Scouts believe. But when it comes down to it, it’s harder than you think. David Felten:…It sounds like you’re affirming what Jack Good asserts in The Dishonest Church – that the dishonesty of clergy is in large part the catalyst for the downfall of the mainline denominations. But it seems that many clergy still feel that it’s more important to maintain a superficial expression of creedal, all-points-approved-doctrine than being honest with the congregation about where they’re at personally, theologically, and spiritually. John Shuck:…Right. The problem is the model of “the corporate church” that Diana Butler Bass talks about. Making sure all the trains run on time. I mean, the typical response I get from fellow clergy is: “I know that but I don’t want to say it, because how’s that going to help the budget?” Frankly, I disagree with the excuse that being honest ultimately hurts the budget. If you’re looking past the immediate generation, I think the very fact that we now have so many non-religious people – and they’re young – is because they’ve had enough of the dishonesty. It doesn’t take ten minutes on the internet to realize that all the things we’ve been talking about, in terms of creeds or whatever, are full of holes. David Felten:…OK, so what message would you want to tell people who are trying to be honest — be they lay people or clergy? John Shuck:…The message I want to share is surprisingly hopeful. Being honest has actually been a great thing. It’s been liberating and, for me, it’s been a matter of spiritual growth. There are many, many people who are looking for that same thing. Whether they’re lay people or clergy, you’re not alone. It kind of reminds me of what it must have been like being gay twenty years ago. David Felten:…Come out of your closets. John Shuck:…Yeah. Come out! The fruit of that is – who knows? We don’t know where it might lead. I think that’s the conservative thing, “knowing” how everything works. What’s it going to look like for us? Well, I don’t know – but it’s going to involve trust. David Felten:…And that’s okay. John Shuck:…Yeah. You’ve got to trust that however it ends up, it’s going to be what it is – and that’s okay. David Felten:…It’s going to be hard for some people to let go of the idea that Jesus had everything planned exactly the way things turned out in his life and is still intervening supernaturally in people’s lives right now. John Shuck:…My experience is that the bible comes alive when it’s released from its supernatural moorings. For instance, I always used to think that the events of Palm Sunday – where Jesus tells people to go find the donkey and if they ask this, then you tell them that – that this fulfilled some kind of supernatural prediction. But now I realize, no. Jesus is just working the system. He’s got an underground thing going. He’s hiding out in Bethany and he can only go into Jerusalem when it’s daytime because the crowds are there. It isn’t a supernatural prediction of events. Jesus has figured out how to make this demonstration work and that’s what this “find me a donkey” dialog is. So, when I started to think about scriptural stories this way – and preach them and teach them – I think they become far more authentic. The responses I’ve received are, “Yeah, this really makes sense now,” where they haven’t before. David Felten:…We just came through Easter and not that I want you to recount your sermon from Sunday, but how do you approach preaching on Easter? John Shuck:…John Shuck: It was very helpful this year that John Dominic Crossan had just come out with his book on Resurrecting Easter. In it, he basically talks about the iconography of Easter and the resurrection from the perspective of the Eastern church. David Felten:…A triumphant Jesus bringing everybody out… John Shuck:……yanking them right out of Hades, right? First, this didn’t happen. You couldn’t have taken a photo of the event. But Crossan says that this image is an advertisement. It’s promoting a way of talking about a movement – of the way that Jesus and Jesus followers can be in the world. It was violence, Roman state-sanctioned violence that put him to death. And so, he comes out with the wounds on his hands, yanking all of humanity, including Adam and Eve, out of death. So, this image, this “advertisement,” is saying “no” to whatever it is that forces us into death, yanking everybody out of death, and says “yes” to the things that Jesus stood for. David Felten:…And he stood for… John Shuck:…Compassion. He stood for justice. He stood for love. He stood for inclusion for everyone. That wins. That’s what this image is saying. David Felten:…But I can hear people saying, “The historical Jesus also embraced a theistic God – and if we don’t have an appreciation for, or a belief in, the God that evidently Jesus did, what’s the point?” John Shuck:…Well, we don’t have any idea what Jesus really believed about anything – and it really wouldn’t matter because he was a product of his century just as we are of ours. Jesus lived in a universe where everyone believed the earth was the center of a three-tiered cosmos and you could go up and you could go down in a literal manner. Whatever the gods were, they did all kinds of stuff: interfered and answered prayers. But that doesn’t work anymore. We have to translate those ideas into today’s language and include what we learn from other sources. I think just being honest with what doesn’t work anymore is important. David Felten:…Are you comfortable saying a word about the death of your son and what role being an atheist played in dealing with that? John Shuck:…Thank you for asking. Zachary died in 2012. He suicided. I’m comfortable saying it, but I oftentimes just don’t know what to say. I don’t know what effect that actually has on my theology. I’m not trying to not say anything, or not not say anything, I just really honestly don’t know sometimes. After Zach died, what bothered me was that it sometimes felt that people were more upset because I was pretty dark in terms of a lot of my writing. Had I lost my faith? That seemed to them worse than losing my son. I said, “No.” That’s an easy answer. But some people felt I needed to find comfort from heaven or whatever and I don’t. I didn’t and I still don’t. I feel that all we’re asked to do is to bear witness in our lives. The witness I wanted to give was that I’ve gone through this experience. Here it is. You can take it, you can leave it, you can have it. If it’s dark for you, you don’t have to watch it. You can turn away. But I’m not just going to cover it up with something “light” in order to make someone else feel more comfortable. David Felten:…As a spiritual leader, that’s such a complex position to be in. Everyone wants to support you, but all you get is the boiler plate clichés. You have to say, “Hang on. That, in fact, is not comforting to me. So, let’s just dial that back.” I mean, you must have had some weird encounters. John Shuck:…Oh, it’s very difficult to know where your role is. Am I always needing to be the minister? Can I sometimes be the one who just simply goes through life here? Very difficult. And lots of stuff within my own self: how can I even call myself a minister if I can’t even do my primary job of raising a son to full adulthood? This is scary stuff, but when I was still in Tennessee, I remember a local church doing one of those haunted houses where they drag you though a “Hell House” kind of thing. Well, the year Zach died, the theme happened to be – and I’m sure it was a coincidence – but it happened to be, “Those who commit suicide go to hell.” David Felten:…Wow. John Shuck:…That was also the culture there. I’d heard that stuff going around in the community: it was because I was this bad believer that this happened to my son. It’s a rough thing. Sometimes you actually take that personally. Part of me is also saying, I lost my son. There’s nothing worse – but there’s an odd sense of courage you get after that. I’m going to do what I need to do and… David Felten:……and be honest. John Shuck:…And be honest with whatever my life is and accept that at any moment things can change drastically. So, at the end, you’ve got to look back and say, are you happy with yourself? David Felten:…So, are you happy being where you are today – a non-theistic, atheist, humanist, pastor? Maybe how it’s freed you? John Shuck:…I would say, yeah. I’ve developed a great admiration for those who go and research and then tell uncomfortable truths. For example, I’m also a member of Religious Leaders for 9/11 Truth. I have been for some time. It’s basically based on a theologian, David Ray Griffin, and his work in looking at some of those issues. So, whatever. Go ahead and look at whatever it is out there and seek to be honest about it. I think it’s an incredibly liberating thing. And most importantly, talk about it with your congregation. ~ Rev. David Felten with Rev. John Shuck Click here to read online and to share your thoughts About John Shuck: Once a professional radio announcer at stations in Boise and Seattle, Rev. Shuck has served as a Presbyterian pastor for 25 years. Through his blog, Shuck and Jive, John became known in Northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia as the “Radical Reverend.” His popularity (infamy?) lead to the development of his podcast, Religion for Life, which began broadcasting in 2012. Now moved to Oregon, John is the full-time pastor at Southminster Presbyterian Church in Beaverton, Oregon. He currently hosts the radio program/podcast, “The Beloved Community” on KBOO FM in Portland, Oregon. Since 2012, John has interviewed over 250 authors, scholars, and activists about social justice issues, religious scholarship, politics, sex, science, and more. The internet version of The Beloved Community, Progressive Spirit, can be subscribed to on iTunes and Podomatic. Be sure to visit John’s website by clicking HERE About the Author Rev. David M. 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. Question & Answer Q: By Interested Readers Dear Friends: The volume of questions that this column elicits from its readers continues to amaze me. There is no doubt that this column connects with people all over the world who are seeking a new kind of spirituality that combines truth with empowerment. Sadly enough, these letters suggest that this searching, growing process is not welcomed by most institutional church leaders. It appears to threaten their sense of security and certainty. It does and they should welcome it. Is it not incredible to embrace the fact that the church so often appears to be the enemy of those who seek to develop their own spiritual dimensions? In every area of life, growth requires the ability to question, to doubt, and to look at issues from a new perspective. So any attempt to suppress questions is the enemy of growth. Whenever the claim is made by any church that infallibility is its possession, or that its sacred scriptures are the source of the inerrant word of God, or that any church is the true church or any religious system possesses the only way to God, this is a manifestation of the presence of idolatry. That is also the source of the threat that they feel. This column exists to enable questions to be raised, issues to be faced and new insights to be engaged. So your questions are its lifeblood. That is why approximately once a month I devote the entire column to the questions you have raised. At this point I am able to use about one out of every ten I receive. If you would like to pursue some of these issues further, I invite you to post your response, positive or negative, on this web site or enter one of the chat rooms limited to our subscribers and dedicated to the pursuit of religious knowledge. I appreciate this chance to be in dialogue with you through this medium. So read on! ~ John Shelby Spong A: By Bishop John Shelby Spong Margaret from Salem, Oregon asks: Our Roman Catholic Church has invited a visionary to speak to us to increase our faith. This visionary receives messages daily from the Virgin Mary. This disturbs my faith rather than enhancing it. Would you comment? Dear Margaret, Religious nuts are sometimes tolerated when they ought to be in mental hospitals! Sometimes an apparently religious framework will gain for people toleration that their behavior could never otherwise merit or command. Why would God choose this means of communication? Would the message gained through this means be about something as yet unknown? Would the agenda be so self-serving as to assist in enforcing an already believed idea? I think you are right to be disturbed. The priest who invited this man and the bishop who approved the invitation are guilty of being irresponsible charlatans. Superstition and ignorance are not transformed by pious language. That only changes them into being pious superstition and pious ignorance. I do not think that is an improvement. ~John Shelby Spong Todd of Atlanta asks: Do you believe in Christ's Resurrection? If not, what distinguishes you as a Christian vs. something else? Dear Todd, There is no Christianity apart from the resurrection. That is not the question. What you are really asking is, 'What was the Resurrection?' Was it a supernatural transformation of a three-days dead body into a resuscitated living being? It is interesting to me to note that this is not what Paul thought and Paul wrote all of his Epistles between 50 and 64 C.E., long before the story of the resurrection of Jesus achieved a narrative form. It is also noteworthy that in the first Gospel, Mark (70-75 C.E.) the risen Christ never appears. In this Gospel there is only the proclamation of the messenger to the women that Jesus had been raised, that the disciples are to be informed and that Jesus will go before them into Galilee. It is not until the 9th decade of the Common Era that resurrection, understood as resuscitation to life in this world, entered the Christian tradition. That occurred in the writing of Matthew (80 to 85), who says that the women met the risen Jesus in the garden and there they grasped his feet. The implication is clear that these feet were physical. It is interesting that when Mark related this same episode a decade earlier, the women did not see the risen Christ in the garden. Scholars know that Matthew had Mark in front of him when he wrote, so we know that Matthew has deliberately changed Mark at this point. Luke, who also had Mark in front of him when he wrote, agrees with Mark and disagrees with Matthew stating that the women did not see the risen Christ at the tomb. That means the Bible registers a 2-1 vote against Matthew's story being authentic. If you take that disputed Matthean account out of the debate, then only in the later Gospels of Luke (88-92) and John (95-100) does the definition of the Easter experience, as a resuscitated body, become the meaning of the resurrection. These data surprise people who have only heard the Easter story told simplistically for most of their lives. In my book entitled Resurrection: Myth or Reality? A Bishop Rethinks the Origins of Christianity I took over 300 pages to dissect the meaning of Easter with what I hope is scholarly precision. I think Easter is real. I do not think that Easter originally had a thing to do with a deceased body walking out of a tomb alive. What it does mean is far more profound than that. But that is as far as a question and answer format will allow me to go. I hope this much intrigues you to pursue the subject much more deeply than your defensive sounding question suggests that you have done thus far. ~John Shelby Spong Chuck from Northfield, Minnesota asks: Why is Christianity growing in its fundamentalist forms and dying where it tries to engage the thought of the present world? Dear Chuck, Statistics can lead to fascinating conclusions. Conservative churches do appear to be growing and the main line churches, or those churches that are open to engaging today's world, do seem to be shrinking. A more accurate statistic, however, is that behind these shifts Christianity itself is a declining reality in the 21st century in every developed nation of the world. Increasingly, modern, educated people abandon the church because its message no longer makes sense to them. Those who remain become more and more narrowly focused on a smaller and smaller piece of reality. They claim certainty and thus attract those in search of security. That is their primary appeal. Some of them have also developed positive public relation campaigns to promote growth Where churches engage reality and confront the thought processes of the modern world, they can no longer talk in terms of the traditional religious language of miracles, divine intervention, answered prayers and Jesus as the sacrifice that paid for their sins. They become more certain about what they do not believe than they are about what they do believe. Negative messages are never appealing. That is why the main line churches are dying. Certainty and security are, however, not gifts that conservative or fundamentalist Christian Churches can finally deliver even when they traffic in them. So eventually reality will puncture these fantasies. An organization in New York City called "Fundamentalists Anonymous" once existed to assist those who had been Protestant fundamentalists but who had become disillusioned with a certainty that is not real. Others, not dissimilar, refer to themselves as "Recovering Catholics." There are some Christian communities in all denominations, Catholic and Protestant that have begun to define themselves positively not negatively. They stand for openness, for engagement, for breaking boundaries for journeying beyond the familiar signposts into the mystery of God. They are marked by the ability to honor people's questions rather than pretending to have all the answers. These churches are also growing. An international organization called The Center for Progressive Christianity (know in the U.K. as "The Progressive Christianity Network") acts as a central office that links them loosely together. You can contact this organization in the U.S.A. by writing to JADAMS(a)TCPC.org, in the U.K. by writing to info(a)pcnbritain.org.uk, or in Australia by writing to pcnet(a)effectiveliving.org . It might be worth your while. Perhaps one of these congregations is located near you. ~ John Shelby Spong Christine in Leicester, UK asks: What do you mean when you say that we can no longer envision God in theistic terms? Dear Christine, Theism is the primary way human beings have understood God throughout history. By theism, I mean defining God as "a being, perhaps the supreme being, supernatural in power, external to life, dwelling somewhere beyond the sky and periodically intervening in history to accomplish the divine will." This is the majority but not the exclusive view of God in the Bible. In that Book God is portrayed as controlling the weather to bring about the flood in which only Noah's family was saved and all others were killed. Would those victims feel like worshipping such a God? This theistic God was also said to have killed the first born in every Egyptian household as a prelude to the Exodus. This God was pictured as splitting the Red Sea to allow the Hebrews to escape but then to have closing the Red Sea to drown the Egyptians. Could the Egyptians worship such a God? Can we? Is this not the portrait of a tribal deity that we surely have outgrown? I do not think that atheism is the only alternative to theism. I believe, however, that theism is a very inadequate way to envision the holy. I prefer to think of God as the Source of the life that flows in all of us, as the Source of the love that humanizes us and as the Ground of Being that calls us and empowers us to be all that we can be. These are not theistic images. They are words that are designed to carry us beyond the sterile debate between atheism and theism and into a new way to make sense out of our experiences of the transcendent, the holy, God. I am confident that a radical revision of the way God is conceived is the first essential ingredient in keeping Christianity alive in the future. I welcome you to the New Reformation. ~ John Shelby Spong Craig from Boston, Mass asks: Do you believe that same sex couples should be allowed to adopt children or to have children through artificial insemination or surrogate mothers? Dear Craig, There are many dimensions to your question not the least of which is the way homosexuality is still shrouded in irrational fear and ongoing prejudice. What we have to keep our focus on is the goal. Every baby whether conceived naturally or by artificial means, whether raised by his or her parents or by adoptive parents should be guaranteed proper parenting. The fact is that much parenting is ineffective and some parenting is destructive. There is, however, no evidence to suggest that sexual orientation has anything to do with making one a more or less competent parent. Overwhelming data, for example, suggest that a higher percentage of heterosexual people abuse children than do homosexual people. There is surely something to be said for every child having two parents but death, divorce, and pregnancies outside of wedlock make that ideal not universally available. If you pose the question: Would you prefer to see children raised by a heterosexual couple rather than by a homosexual couple, I suspect, given the depth of our cultural homophobia, that a large majority would vote for the heterosexual alternative. But if the question is posed: Would you rather see a child raised by an abusive heterosexual couple or a loving homosexual couple, the answer would be quite different. However, we still live in a free society so prospective parents do not need government approval to conceive. There will always be some risk to children in the fact that they are born. There is no evidence that being a gay or lesbian person adds to that risk. Perhaps my feelings about this emerge out of my own experience. I was raised by my mother, who did not complete the 9th grade, in a single parent family. She was 35 and I was 12 when my father died. My father's alcoholism and early death put the whole family into economic straits that I would not wish on any child. Yet there is no doubt that both of my parents were heterosexual. My point is that good people make good parents. Some of those good people are gay and lesbian, some are heterosexual. I favor encouraging good people who will make good parents to do so. ~ John Shelby Spong Originally published June 4, 2003 Click here to read and share online Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited Theology and Baseball Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong on August 10, 2005 Last month an anonymous member of my class at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, left this unsigned question on my lectern: “How can you be so right about religion and so wrong about baseball?” I did not have the opportunity to address this profound theological concern in the class, so I have decided to do it in this column. First, the context. The Graduate Theological Union is a Consortium of nine seminaries-five Protestant, three Roman Catholic and one Unitarian-physically located adjacent to or near the University of California in Berkeley. Each school retains its own name and denominational affiliation and gives its own degrees. The libraries of these separate institutions, however, were merged in 1962 to create one of the best theological libraries in the nation. Students enrolled in any of the Consortium’s entities may take courses offered at any other as well as at the University of California. The Consortium then formed the Graduate Theological Union to award advanced degrees (PhD and ThD) and to operate a joint summer program. I have been on the faculty of this institution at least five times, primarily responsible for one full week of the summer program. It was a very demanding week since academic standards have to be met in order for students to receive academic credit. My duties included teaching for four hours a day beginning at 8:30 a.m. During my week I gave ten one-hour lectures, presided over ten segments of 45 minutes each devoted to questions, answers, clarifications and discussion and collected, read and graded graduate level papers of some 1500 words from each student who took the course for credit. My class had an enrollment of 100 students, 65 of whom were ordained pastors doing continuing education or working on an advanced degree. The remaining 35 were theologically inquisitive lay people who fell into three categories: professionals in other fields like medicine and engineering eager to integrate theology into their lives; people describing themselves as atheists or agnostics with challenging questions; and those considering ordination and eager to taste the academic world that might be their home should they decide to move in that direction. Engaging these diverse, fertile minds is a privilege, albeit it an intensive one. I learn much from my students about the issues facing the various churches in the western part of our nation. >From one of them I received the question with which I began this column. It came as a response to the fact that each day, as the class was settling in, I did an analysis of the New York Yankees’ victory or defeat the night before. I discovered that while the Yankees are not universally loved, they are the best-known sports franchise in the land. People both admire and resent New York’s power, its wealth and its influence. They are aware that the Yankee owners spend more money on that team than is spent anywhere else in baseball. One Yankee player’s contract has been known to be bigger than the entire budget of other teams. New York’s owner, George Steinbrenner, can and does pay whatever it takes to acquire the best team that money can buy. When they win it is expected. When they lose it always has the feel of an upset, a David slaying Goliath. So, while I grieve, people across the nation rejoice when the Yankees have a difficult year, which is the situation in 2005. I have always been addicted to this game. I was raised a devoted fan of the Charlotte Hornets, a second-tier minor league team owned by the old Washington Senators, that as Charlotte’s parent club, was my favorite big league team. When the Senators were moved to the twin cities of Minnesota, I transferred my affections but they were considerably diminished. When a new team was established in Washington, my affections returned to our nation’s capital. Once again, however, D.C. fan support was lacking and that team soon moved to Arlington, Texas, becoming the Texas Rangers. Having never been enamored with Texas in any area of life, I simply severed my emotional relationship and became a fan without a team. While serving as a young priest in Tarboro, North Carolina, between 1957 and 1965, my enthusiasm for sports led me to become the play-by-play radio announcer for our local high school team, covering football, basketball and baseball. By submitting accounts of these games to our local four-page paper, called The Daily Southerner, I also became the de facto Sports Editor of that journal. Few people outside Tarboro ever read that paper or listened to WCPS-FM, so I felt free to fill my stories and broadcasts with human-interest tidbits about the players, their families and the coaches, all of whom I knew well since many of them attended my church. It was a rather unique role in a town of 7,500 people to be the local Episcopal Rector, the Sports Editor of the daily paper and “the voice of the Tarboro Tigers.” My radio sponsors were “Wink, that sassy drink and Happy Dan the TV Man.” The pay was quite modest, about $100 a season, but the fringe benefits were great. I took my little daughters with me to every game at home and away, sometimes traveling on the team bus. They had the run of the stadium and became partisan Tiger fanatics. I found conflict in my dual roles only once when Tarboro’s left tackle, Alan “Tiny” Baker, a 240-pound behemoth, cracked a vertebra in his neck in a game against the Wilson Cyclones. He was one of my acolytes. I left the booth during the commercial, which we always had ready whenever there was a break in the action, to go down to the field. When the injury appeared to be serious and the ambulance was called, I signed off immediately, startling those back in the Tarboro studio who had to scramble for programming to fill the void. I went with “Tiny” and his parents, Noah and Ophelia, in that ambulance to the local hospital. My role as priest always took priority over my work as broadcaster. When I was elected Bishop of Newark (Northern New Jersey) in 1976, I was a Washington Redskin fan in football but uncommitted in any other sport. However, it was not long before the great Yankee teams that included Thurmond Munson, Reggie Jackson, Ron Guidry and many others captured me lock, stock and barrel. So successful were these teams that I began to think that the only reason we had the other major league cities was to provide the Yankees with someone to play in the World Series. During the long 162 game season each year, I would come in at night from some meeting or Episcopal activity and discover that I could still watch the final two to three innings of the game. Later, when my first wife began to sink into the illness that would lead to her death in 1988, I spent many hours at home alone watching the Yankees. A bond was forged that sometimes, I do admit, reaches the level of the absurd. I cannot believe it even now, when there is no Yankee story in The New York Times during the “hot stove” season of the year. The Giants and the Knicks are fun but they are not theYankees. During the World Series of 2000 when the Yankees played the Mets, I was lecturing in Wales. Discovering that BBC TV’s Channel 5 carried the entire series with the each game beginning at 1:00 a.m. Greenwich time, I saw every pitch. Being up until 6 a.m. each night, however, did make teaching the next day a bit difficult. I hope the members of my class did not notice. Given this background and my own level of compulsion, it was thus a fairly normal routine for me, as the class began, to do a brief analysis of the Yankee game brought to me on my computer the night before. As I extolled Yankee virtues, groans poured forth from these otherwise normal people. Out of those groans the anonymous question undoubtedly emerged. What does Yankee baseball do for me? First of all, it is a pleasant, highly enjoyable diversion. It diverts me from the dreadful war in Iraq, the current political pressure to move this country into a religious past, the public hostility toward gay and lesbian people, the battle over the right to die with dignity and the consuming task of my professional life – namely to rethink the Christian faith in the light of the 21st century’s knowledge. It gives my life a dimension, beyond that of the “the controversial Bishop” which has become a synonym for me in the secular press. It has also graced my life with special moments, like the time that my wife Christine and I were guests of the President of the National league, Leonard Coleman, at the sixth game of the World Series between the Yankees and Atlanta in 1996. We sat in a box seat close enough to the field to be able to touch Charlie Hayes, Yankee third baseman, who caught a pop foul to end the game. That catch made Jimmy Key the victor over Greg Maddox, and crowned the Yankees as World Champions. In that box with us were Joe Black, the former pitcher of the Los Angeles Dodgers and one of that generation of great black athletes who broke baseball’s color line and Christine Todd Whitman, the Republican Governor of New Jersey. The Governor, my wife and I cheered for the Yankees while the President of the National League and Joe Black indulged us despite their affinity with the National League. We stayed in Yankee Stadium long after the final out savoring the moment, taking in the full moon as well the spectacle of Wade Boggs riding backward on a New York policeman’s horse across Yankee Stadium. It was a magical night. Yankee fans, like the Church, have a “Communion of Saints.” Center field belongs to DiMaggio, Mantle and Williams; shortstop to Crosetti, Rizzuto, and Jeter; right field to Heinrich, Jackson and O’Neill; catcher to Dickey, Berra, and Munson; first base to Gehrig, Skowran and Mattingly. Baseball is, however, not a matter of life and death. It is a field of dreams. My anonymous questioner asked how I could be so right about religion and so wrong about baseball? Perhaps this person might examine my hate mail to discover some debate about his or her first premise. To the second premise, however, I plead ‘Not Guilty!’ I stand in awe of baseball’s ability, discipline, effort, team play, vision and competence. I admire this human arena where, far more than I see in Churches, people are judged on merit alone not on race or ethnicity. The important thing is that I know the difference between reality and fantasy. I love them both. ~ John Shelby Spong Announcements Working Together Towards Harmony: Using Our Shared Humanity to Bridge Theological and Idealogical Divides Are you tired of the divisiveness and acrimony that pervades our society? Do you want to learn actual techniques and strategies to counter the trend and create harmony? This 4-week online course brings together ideas from interfaith activists, Nobel peace prize laureates, modern psychologists, and ancient Indian seekers to create a unique recipe for all those who are interested in working towards harmony. Click here for more information/registration

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5/24/18, Progressing Spirit: Vosper: So what happens now?; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 24 May '18

24 May '18

View this email in your browser So what happens now? Essay by Rev. Gretta Vosper on May 24, 2018 For six years, I spent an invigorating half hour (or more) every Tuesday morning sitting across the table from one of Canada’s most outspoken evangelical leaders, Charles McVety. Dedicated microphones were wired up between us and we explored issues on the “Culture Wars” segment of Toronto’s most popular morning talk show. I was often asked by my own supporters, away from the show, how I could bear to have a conversation with Charles whose views were framed with a stalwart biblical literacy and shared with a vehemence that sparked in the space between us. But when the mics were off, we enjoyed a repartee that allowed us to laugh and enjoy one another moments after our flying epithets had done their work and lured the listening public to their telephones. Our host was the brilliant John Oakley who navigated the issues of the day with a deft hand, lifting up whatever tidbit he knew would cause the greatest reaction among his listening public and “light up the board”, so to speak, with callers eager to applaud or call out either Charles or me. At the end of each session, I would not have been able to tell you if John’s perspective aligned with mine or with Charles’; he was an artist in his craft. Though Charles was nimble in the creation of epithets, one of them was used more frequently than others. If you’re able to make the sound “’k” crackle with intensity without sending spit flying from your mouth, you’ll be able to replicate the way in which Charles tossed the term “Christless Christian” at me. As the leader of an evangelical Christian academy with locations in Toronto and in Korea, Charles was devoted to his Christ and decidedly antagonistic to any other idea of what Christ might mean if it wasn’t exactly as he imagined it. But then, I doubt I ever really gave him an understanding of what Christ meant to me; he simply knew that I was a critical thinker and, I suppose, imagined the dissolution of my belief in anything he understood Christ to be in the work of such a thinking process. As I write, Easter lies behind us by a few weeks. Traditionally, across all iterations of the Christian faith and as understood by most of non-Christians, Easter is clearly understood to be the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus. What that actually means to any one iteration of Christianity or any one person within it, is considerably less clear. For some people, like Charles, the Easter story means that, after his crucifixion and burial, Jesus was resuscitated and returned to bodily form. For others, it means there was a transformation that took place after Jesus’ death and which, in some inexplicable way, returned Jesus to life in a sort of mystical manner. Others believe that Jesus is momentarily reconstituted in the sacrament of the Eucharist, whole and hanging on the cross, in order to be laden with each week’s accumulation of the peoples’ sins on Saturday night or Sunday morning. Some hold “Jesus” and “Christ” as separate before and after resurrection realities, each entitled to its own exploration and understanding. Still others believe that the biblical witness to resurrection, though it may not point to any physical reality or even mystical apparitions, simply proves that something powerful must have happened, even if we cannot possibly comprehend it. I’m going to go with the last “explanation”, if we might even call it that. More, I think, it is an excuse conjured to provide for the lack of an explanation. It allows us to argue our allegiance to Christianity without having to come up with an answer to one of the most ambiguous claims in human history. It literally excuses us from accountability. Many of my progressive colleagues will sneer at such an assertion, arguing that to reduce the mystery of the resurrection to an excuse is to deny the many splendid contemporary explanations of this mystery, all of which point to a deeper, richer understanding than all the others. Let them sneer. At a homiletics festival in Orlando many years ago, I hurriedly copied down Marcus Borg’s memorized answer to the question, “Who was Jesus?” He’d been preparing for a talk show and was worried that he would have too short a time to share his understandings so he took on the task of creating a concise explanation, laboring over it to bring it to a concise perfection. As it turned out, the host never asked him the question. But not wanting all his work to have come to naught, he shared it with the eager crowd at that year’s festival. Once back home, I typed it out and posted it on a bulletin board at West Hill United Church, the congregation I serve, where it remained for many years. True to Marcus’ acute and rigorous intellect, it deconstructed traditional understandings and offered in their place a number of starting points from which our explorations might take off. In less than forty-five seconds. The man – Borg, not Jesus – was an intellectual miracle himself. [Jesus] was a peasant, which tells us about his social class. Clearly, he was brilliant. His use of language was remarkable and poetic – filled with images and stories. He had a metaphoric mind. He was not an ascetic but world-affirming with a zest for life, and there was a social-political passion to him like a Ghandi or a Martin Luther King. He challenged the domination system of his day. He was a religious ecstatic, a Jewish mystic, if you will, for whom God was an experiential reality, and as such, he was also a healer. And there seems to have been a spiritual presence around him like that reported of St. Francis or the Dali Lama. And I suggest that as a figure of history, he was an ambiguous figure; you could experience him and figure that he was insane, as his family did, or that he was simply eccentric, or that he was a dangerous threat. Or you could conclude that he was filled with the spirit of God.[i] Clearly, Marcus was handing us a gift: the accumulated effort of years of scholarship processed with an intimate appreciation of the power Jesus had wielded over centuries of Christianity. He spoke of Jesus, not of Christ, but it was as though he was inviting each of us to find our own Christs behind a man who, for Marcus, was very human, and very real. And, I expect, most of us left that lecture in awe of Marcus if not also of the human Jesus he described. Too, I think we left grasping to hold onto the many questions Marcus’ description had raised for us, and the challenge of grafting a “post-critical-naivete Jesus” onto the pre-critical understandings held by many members of our diverse congregations. The record of Jesus is scanty and contradictory, the result of decades of oral transmission. It is terribly subject to the overlay of our own personal assumptions and expectations, as Albert Schweitzer warned us it would only ever be. One has only to consider the wealth of the Vatican, Jesus’ most globally-recognized posthumous marketing team, and the man’s arguments against the accumulation of wealth for one’s own purposes to see the ease with which our prejudices have laid Jesus at our own feet rather than the other way around. So what of the resurrected “Christ”? What can we do with that? While at theological college, I worked my way through countless understandings of who or what the Christ was to many Christian apologists – scholars writing to prove Christian claims correct – whose works we were required to engage. Added to that were the many compelling arguments made by more contemporary scholars, including Marcus Borg, that worked their way into my own understanding. In the end, I think I became a classic “something must have happened” believer, perhaps because cobbling together the myriad arguments into a cohesive and substantial whole was simply a feat to which I was intellectually unsuited. Some will undoubtedly say that recognizing that ineptitude is the beginning of understanding; it is only when we leave behind the record and the arguments that we can ever really “experience” Christ. But that argument is, for this rational thinker, equally unsuited to the task; the story needs an anchor, and that anchor, if it is to mean anything at all, must be grounded in what we know to be factually true, how we understand those facts, and where our experience takes us, given that knowledge. I have been soothed in my pursuit, to a remarkable extent, by art historian, Thomas de Wesselow’s arguments in The Sign: The Shroud of Turin and the Birth of Christianity. I can feel Marcus, Dom Crossan, perhaps even Bishop Spong cringing when I say that, but I leave you to explore it and consider its challenges to our patchwork understandings. Perhaps Thomas is to the resurrection story what Northrop Frye was to biblical studies: a scholar bringing the tools of an entirely different discipline to bear on our most treasured artefacts. For me, the best way for me to express the concept of Christ emerges from my accumulated understanding in the same way that Marcus’ Jesus emerged from his. I cannot extricate one or another source of that understanding; to do so would be like taking one blue piece of glass and using it to explain the incredible impact of the windows at Coventry Cathedral, created from the shards of windows shattered in the bombing attacks during the Second World War. Christ is embedded in me as a compulsion to live out my humanity, in my time and in my way, as humanly and humanely as possible. That sounds repetitive, but years of reflection, reading, and the detritus of life that gathers in the human heart, have left me with those few words. It means sacrificing my own privileges, many of which have accumulated as the result of a globalized Christianity, to the scathing rebuke of those who do not share in those privileges. It is, as many would say, the work of following “the Way” of Jesus, as if we could ever really construct what that way might actually be with any more uniformity than is realized in the quest for the historical Jesus. But I am made unease by these assertions. I suspect you know why. Using the exclusive lexicon of Christianity makes our work meaningless to more and more people. Contrary to the assertions made by Mike Pence that Christianity is on the rise, statistics prove otherwise. And alongside them, mirroring Christianity’s downward trajectory, speed the levels of voluntarism, philanthropy, civic engagement, and the critical mass required to maintain social democracies that see all life as sacred – by which I mean, so significantly crucial to the earth’s story that we cannot risk losing or desecrating it, even and especially if we don’t yet or never do understand it – and so work to engage, protect, and embrace it. We lose more than our congregational health when our numbers decline; we lose any hope of being what liberal and progressive Christianity has modelled as “Christ” in the world. And so, as you know, I eschew the language of traditional Christianity (and liberal, and progressive) and work, instead, to model and inspire others with how it is we might live, loving and celebrating life in its many guises and wrestling with the innumerable challenges that doing so presents. All the while, I remain confident that while it may be the least popular way, it remains the only way to reduce Christianity to its most essential truth – that we must love one another – and tell that story to a new and very precarious world. ~ Rev. Gretta Vosper Click here to read online and to share your thoughts About the Author The Rev. Gretta Vosper is a United Church of Canada minister who is an atheist. Her best-selling books include With or Without God: Why The Way We Live is More Important Than What We Believe, and Amen: What Prayer Can Mean in a World Beyond Belief. She has also published three books of poetry and prayers. [i] Marcus Borg, Lecture, Homiletics Festival, Orlando, 1998 Question & Answer Q: Via a Chinese server at a neighborhood Chinese restaurant Would you like the menu for Chinese people? A: By Rev. David M. Felten At first, this question may not seem to have any bearing on theology or spirituality – but bear with me. I think it’s a great metaphor for one of the biggest challenges facing Progressive Christianity. Not long ago, I was travelling and stopped in at a neighborhood Chinese Food restaurant in Las Vegas. It was out-of-the-way and quiet. As the server handed me the menu, I asked, “What do you do well here? What would you recommend?” He looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. “Recommend this?!”, pointing at the menu. “I don’t like any of this. I’m from China – and as a Chinese person, I can’t stand any of this Americanized Chinese food: Kung Pao Chicken, General Tso’s Chicken…(he shudders).” “Wow,” I said. “Thanks for your honesty. Can you tell me what you’d recommend out of this food that you can’t stand? Anything here close to what you’d really get in China?” “No, no, no…” he trailed off. Then his face lit up with an idea, “Would you like the menu for Chinese people?” I said, “There’s a separate menu for Chinese people?” A few moments later he returned with a different colored menu emblazoned with Chinese characters. When I opened it, the selections were in Chinese with brief English translations. Among the entrees, I couldn’t find one thing that was the same as the “American” Chinese food menu. I asked again, “Anything you’d recommend from this menu?” My server proceeded to gleefully describe his favorite dishes – one of them “just like they make in Shanghai.” His recommendations were amazing. Who knew that sautéed pickles with string beans and garlic could be so delicious? As I was enjoying my Shanghai dumplings, it dawned on me: this whole “secret-menu-for-the-in-crowd” is exactly what goes on in many of our churches. Most of our “customers” are perfectly happy with the dumbed-down, sugared-up “American” Christianity that is on the menu at most of our conventional churches. They have no idea that there’s a completely separate menu for those who are looking for something more authentic and true to its origins. Isn’t that what we’re trying to do by exposing people to the study of the Historical Jesus? When we engage in studying history and the critical study of the Bible, we’re trying to get back to what following Jesus looked like before the creeds sent Christianity off into a theologically high-fructose, MSG-laced coma. It might taste good in the moment, but it’s not authentic. Plus (stretching the Chinese Food metaphor to the breaking point), you may feel full when you leave the restaurant but are left feeling empty soon afterwards. Anyone who’s eaten with me knows I’m not an insufferable foodie. But I do like to try new things, especially if it connects me with a broader appreciation for cultural differences and the varieties of the human experience. But if you’re like me, you’ve been called an arrogant elitist (and worse!) for simply trying to expose people to the reality that there’s “another menu.” Preferring their familiar sugar-laden Orange Chicken to anything more authentic, they don’t even want to know there’s an alternative menu. But for me, once you know there’s a whole new world of theological flavors and cultural insights available just for the asking, there’s no going back. So, get out there pastors, preachers, and layfolk! If you’re at a church that is stuck clinging to the saccharine “Americanized” theological menu, start putting together an alternative menu. Start with some simple appetizers (that Genesis has two creation stories written by different authors at different times that were never meant to be sequential) and work your way up to the more sophisticated entrees (questioning the physical resurrection, opposing substitutionary atonement, etc.). Ask people the theological equivalent of, “Would you like the menu for Chinese people?” and start walking them through the options. Remind them that this is a menu of choices, not the ultimate determination of one’s eternal salvation. They can stick with the familiar and remain blissfully content with their “Americanized” Christianity OR they can be liberated to begin a theological adventure that will expand their horizons and deepen their experience of the Divine. So, “Would you like the menu for Chinese people?” Open up a new world of honesty, authenticity, and an appreciation for the variety of the human theological experience. ~ Rev. David M. Felten Click here to read and share online About the Author Rev. David M. 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 On Death With Dignity Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong on August 23, 2005 Late last month I joined with other religious leaders, Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish, to file an amicus curiae brief with the Supreme Court of the United States on behalf of the State of Oregon in the case of Alberto Gonzales, Attorney General v. the State of Oregon. Specifically, our brief asked the Supreme Court to uphold the decision made by the Ninth Circuit Court in 2004 that ruled that former Attorney General John Ashcroft had acted inappropriately when he intervened to block Oregon’s legal practice of physician-assisted suicide. The State of Oregon created this right for its citizens in two separate referendums, setting assisted suicide inside the framework of tightly controlled guidelines, based entirely on the desires of the patient. Attorney General Ashcroft in initiating his suit has claimed that the federal law known as the Controlled Substances Act gave him the authority to take this action. The State of Oregon responded immediately in a countersuit, accusing him of both the inappropriate use of that act and an improper utilization of federal power. The Ninth Circuit Court ruled in favor of the State of Oregon. Before John Ashcroft resigned as Attorney General, he appealed that decision to the Supreme Court. That Court agreed to hear the appeal although now Alberto Gonzales, Ashcroft’s successor, is the name attached to the case. The case should be heard this fall in the first session of the Court since the resignation of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. The amicus brief, drawn up by the Washington law office of Jones Day, actually quotes me in the latter part of the document. Even more importantly, it quotes from the Task Force on Assisted Suicide adopted in 1996 by the convention of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark. This report stated the conviction of the majority of the convention’s delegates that physician-assisted dying “can be theologically and ethically justified” when a terminally ill person “makes a voluntary and informed choice after all reasonable means of ameliorating his or her suffering have been exhausted.” A full copy of the report of the Task Force can be read by going to http//www.dioceseofnewark.org/report.html. I still marvel that this report has achieved such influence in the life of our nation. I remember that moment in the life of the Diocese of Newark as if it were yesterday. It was the finest debate over which I presided in all of my 24 years as the bishop of that remarkable community of faith. The convention that received and acted on this report was made up of approximately 600 people: 150 of them were ordained priests, 450 of them were lay people elected by their respective congregations to represent their churches at this diocesan gathering. The task force that drafted the report was co-chaired by the Reverend Dr. Lawrence Falkowski, who, prior to his seeking ordination, had been a professor of political science at Louisiana State University, and Dr. Mary Hager, a professor at a small liberal arts college in New Jersey. It represented a year of intense study by many people. The members of this task force conducted open hearings on this issue in various locations across northern New Jersey. When its final draft was complete, it was distributed widely among all our churches and discussed at gatherings of the people of the diocese in separate congregational meetings as well as in nine pre-convention convocational gatherings. Copies were also handed out to the media, including print, radio, and television in both New York and New Jersey. This issue created great energy, and there was a high level of anticipation prior to the meeting of the decision-making diocesan convention. No one could argue that this report came as a surprise. On the last Friday afternoon in January, the co-chairs introduced the report to the convention with a full presentation to move its adoption. That motion was then referred to an open hearing, which gave every delegate the right to speak for or against it before the report was to be brought to a final vote the following day. It also gave the Task Force members the right to make any last minute changes to the report before the formal vote would be taken. The next day, the resolution was brought from the open hearing and placed on the floor for adoption. The final debate now began in earnest. Individuals spoke movingly and emotionally about their own experiences with loved ones who had been kept alive beyond the point where they had a shred of personal integrity or dignity left. They referred to excessive bills that had to be borne by survivors in what was a hopeless battle simply to prolong not life but existence. It was noted in the debate that these were very modern issues, since a century ago the persons being discussed would have died whether they wanted to or not since neither the technology nor medical expertise to keep them alive existed. The advances in medical science, stretching life expectancy to levels our grandparents could not imagine, were applauded. Some delegates sought to find that point where medical science ceases to expand life and acts only to postpone death, wondering if the former can be cheered and the latter resisted. Those in opposition spoke about the sacredness of life and whether human beings had the right or the capacity to make life-and-death decisions. Many expressed concern about what was called the slippery-slope argument. If this practice were made legal then what would follow? Would greedy heirs hasten the deaths of their parents in order to gain their inheritances earlier? Would doctors, weary of giving care, abdicate their responsibility to save life and become the destroyers of life? Would hospitals and health management organizations seek to enhance their bottom line by dispatching costly patients who had outlived their resources? This debate lasted for three hours. Amendments were offered. They had the effect of making clear what the report was designed to say. The final authority in every end-of-life decision was unequivocally to be that of the patient, in person if possible, by an advance directive if not. It was stated that the person the patient loved and trusted most must be empowered to make the final decision if illness rendered the patient incompetent to decide. Even then the voluntary nature of this decision was stressed. No one should ever be forced to end his or her life without one’s own consent. Steps were taken to guard against a precipitous act that might be regretted later or to allow depression, which so often accompanies sickness, to be the cause of premature death. The medical diagnosis had to be firm that the disease was incurable. This meant that the choice was not about whether one was going to die, but about how and when and under what circumstances death would occur. It was about whether a breathing cadaver is a living being. It was about having a chance to be with those you love most while you can still enjoy their company. It was about shortening the agony of both patient and family alike when the situation was hopeless. It was about death being used as a way of affirming life. It was about whether our Christian faith allows us to make decisions for ourselves as mature people, as co-creators with the God of life. Finally, the debate ended, the question was called, and the vote was taken. More than two-thirds of that assembly of deeply committed Christians said that physician-assisted suicide could be a Christian option under carefully outlined circumstances. A new consciousness was born in that gathering on that day, and it is still growing. It is deeply gratifying for me to see the words of that group — the first assembly of any church in America to vote to accept physician-assisted suicide as a stated value of Christian people — included in this brief before the Supreme Court of the United States. The Court will weigh many factors. Its members will address the limits on federal power to overturn state-endorsed procedures, which have been affirmed by a significant majority of that state’s voters. They will determine who has the right to make end-of-life decisions. Is it the patient, the nearest of kin, the physician, the Supreme Court, the insurance companies, or the politicians? Between the 1996 report of the Diocese of Newark and the current appeal to the Supreme Court, this nation has witnessed the Terri Schiavo case, in which politicians sought to overrule Ms. Schiavo’s own directive, her husband, her doctors, and the courts. In that case, a woman, brain-dead for more than a decade, had been kept alive artificially, with a feeding tube inserted into her stomach, while religious leaders and politicians sought to force her husband to violate her stated intentions. Representative Tom DeLay and Senator Bill Frist rushed a bill through Congress for the President to sign after a midnight flight from Crawford, Texas, to Washington. Polls indicated that a vast majority of the people of this nation recoiled at this spectacle. Now this issue will be before the highest court of the land. The Oregon law has been carefully crafted. In that law the potential pitfalls have had strong guards erected against them. Oregon citizens have used these provisions very sparingly since they were made the law of that state. They obviously wanted this law as a legal option even if it were destined to be seldom used. So do I. That is why I have joined this fight before the Supreme Court. I believe both that life is sacred and that death is a natural part of life. I believe that I should have the right, if possible, to determine how and when I die. I believe a good death is a tribute to a good life. If I am told that I have a terminal disease and that the pain can be managed only by the use of drugs that will prohibit my being able to see the smile of my wonderful wife or to know the touch of her hand, then I want the right to end my life in her embrace, saying “I love you” while I still can. I have trusted God and my wife during my life. I must be able to trust both in my death. I hope the Supreme Court will uphold my right to die with dignity. ~ John Shelby Spong Announcements THE WALTER E. ASHLEY MEMORIAL LECTURE SERIES The Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III June 8th & 9th Hendersonville, NC Dr. Moss is part of a new generation of ministers committed to preaching a prophetic message of love and justice, which he believes are inseparable companions that form the foundation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. As Senior Pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, IL, Dr. Moss has spent the last two decades practicing and preaching a theology that unapologetically calls attention to the problems of mass incarceration, environmental injustice, and economic inequality. Click here for more information ...

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Fwd: The completed life of Rev. C A Watson
by Al Lingo 23 May '18

23 May '18

To friends and colleagues of Charles A Watson, We are privileged to remember the life and service of Rev. C A Watson in the Spirit Movement. Charles died on Friday, May 11, 2018 in London England, where he and Ardil and their family resided and served the Methodist church in their retirement. Charles and Ardil, and their daughter, Grace Malar, were part of the Order Ecumenical in India, in the US in Chicago, and in the UK. Many will remember them for their family role in being early symbols of international commitment to our ecumenical mission in Asia and from Chicago across the US. Charles gave a unique example of an elder Indian Christian clergyman to the many North American church colleagues to whom he so effectively appealed to support the curriculum programs and the human development projects being continually launched by the OE and the ICA. The funeral and memorial service for Charles A Watson will take place Saturday, 26 May, at the 11:30 am service at Goodmayes Methodist Church and followed by cremation at 1pm. Saturday, May 26th. Ardil Watson may receive celebration and condolence messages at 33 Mitcham Road, ILFORD Essex IG3 8QW, England. And, her phone contact is 01144 208 590 3587. Grace Malar Watson and her husband Ted Russell can also be contacted at 70 Baron Gardens, BARKINGSIDE Essex IG6 1PB, England. And contacted by phone at 01144 550 057 , and by email at gmrussell2008(a)hotmail.com. May we all be well, Charles Lingo Al Lingo clingojr(a)aol.com Al Lingo clingojr(a)aol.com

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NYTimes.com: Bishop Michael Curry’s Full Sermon From the Royal Wedding
by James Wiegel 21 May '18

21 May '18

From The New York Times: Bishop Michael Curry’s Full Sermon From the Royal Wedding ‘There’s power in love’: Read the words of the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States, who spoke at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/19/style/bishop-michael-curry-royal-wedding… 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 Loneliness does not come from having no people around you. But from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to you. Carl Jung

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