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by R. Salvatore Caruso 05 Jul '18

05 Jul '18

Sent by my iPhone

3 2

7/05/18, Progressing Spirit: Toni Reynolds: Refiguring the Birth of Christ; Matthew Fox; Spong Revisited
by Ellie Stock 05 Jul '18

05 Jul '18

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.aolmail_mcnTextContent,.aolReplacedBody #aolmail_templateHeader .aolmail_mcnTextContent p{ font-size:16px !important; line-height:150% !important; }} @media only screen and (max-width: 480px){ .aolReplacedBody #aolmail_templateBody .aolmail_mcnTextContent,.aolReplacedBody #aolmail_templateBody .aolmail_mcnTextContent p{ font-size:14px !important; line-height:150% !important; }} @media only screen and (max-width: 480px){ .aolReplacedBody #aolmail_templateFooter .aolmail_mcnTextContent,.aolReplacedBody #aolmail_templateFooter .aolmail_mcnTextContent p{ font-size:12px !important; line-height:150% !important; }}</style><div style="height: 100%;margin: 0;padding: 0;width: 100%;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;background-color: #78a3b4;" class="aolReplacedBody"> <span class="aolmail_mcnPreviewText" style="display:none; font-size:0px; line-height:0px; max-height:0px; max-width:0px; opacity:0; overflow:hidden; visibility:hidden; mso-hide:all;">Like Mary and Jesus we are called to birth loving acts in our own day and age.</span> <center> <table align="center" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" height="100%" width="100%" id="aolmail_bodyTable" style="border-collapse: collapse;mso-table-lspace: 0pt;mso-table-rspace: 0pt;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;height: 100%;margin: 0;padding: 0;width: 100%;background-color: #78a3b4;"> <tbody><tr> <td align="center" valign="top" id="aolmail_bodyCell" style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;height: 100%;margin: 0;padding: 10px;width: 100%;border-top: 0;"> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" class="aolmail_templateContainer" style="border-collapse: collapse;mso-table-lspace: 0pt;mso-table-rspace: 0pt;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;border: 5px solid #363232;max-width: 600px !important;"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top" id="aolmail_templatePreheader" style="background:#FAFAFA none no-repeat center/cover;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;background-color: #FAFAFA;background-image: none;background-repeat: no-repeat;background-position: center;background-size: cover;border-top: 0;border-bottom: 0;padding-top: 9px;padding-bottom: 9px;"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" class="aolmail_mcnTextBlock" style="min-width: 100%;border-collapse: collapse;mso-table-lspace: 0pt;mso-table-rspace: 0pt;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> <tbody class="aolmail_mcnTextBlockOuter"> <tr> <td valign="top" class="aolmail_mcnTextBlockInner" style="padding-top: 9px;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> <table align="left" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="max-width: 100%;min-width: 100%;border-collapse: collapse;mso-table-lspace: 0pt;mso-table-rspace: 0pt;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 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0;padding-bottom: 0;text-align: center;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> <a title="" target="_blank" style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf44…"> <img align="center" alt="" width="559" style="max-width: 600px;padding-bottom: 0;display: inline !important;vertical-align: bottom;border: 0;height: auto;outline: none;text-decoration: none;-ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic;" class="aolmail_mcnImage" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/b51b9cf441b059bb232418480/images/b2c9722e-5d0…"> </a> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" class="aolmail_mcnImageBlock" style="min-width: 100%;border-collapse: collapse;mso-table-lspace: 0pt;mso-table-rspace: 0pt;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 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width="595" style="max-width: 600px;padding-bottom: 0;display: inline !important;vertical-align: bottom;border: 0;height: auto;outline: none;text-decoration: none;-ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic;" class="aolmail_mcnImage" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/b51b9cf441b059bb232418480/images/8dff27ce-c4d…"> </a> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table></td> </tr> <tr> <td valign="top" id="aolmail_templateBody" style="background:#FFFFFF none no-repeat center/cover;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;background-color: #FFFFFF;background-image: none;background-repeat: no-repeat;background-position: center;background-size: cover;border-top: 0;border-bottom: 2px solid #EAEAEA;padding-top: 0;padding-bottom: 9px;"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" class="aolmail_mcnTextBlock" style="min-width: 100%;border-collapse: collapse;mso-table-lspace: 0pt;mso-table-rspace: 0pt;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> <tbody class="aolmail_mcnTextBlockOuter"> <tr> <td valign="top" class="aolmail_mcnTextBlockInner" style="padding-top: 9px;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> <table align="left" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="max-width: 100%;min-width: 100%;border-collapse: collapse;mso-table-lspace: 0pt;mso-table-rspace: 0pt;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;" width="100%" class="aolmail_mcnTextContentContainer"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top" class="aolmail_mcnTextContent" style="padding-top: 0;padding-right: 18px;padding-bottom: 9px;padding-left: 18px;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;word-break: break-word;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"> <h1 style="display: block;margin: 0;padding: 0;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 26px;font-style: normal;font-weight: bold;line-height: 125%;letter-spacing: normal;text-align: left;">Refiguring the Birth of Christ</h1> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><img align="left" height="156" style="border: 0px;width: 125px;height: 156px;margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px;outline: none;text-decoration: none;-ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic;" width="125" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/b51b9cf441b059bb232418480/_compresseds/273ef4…">Column by Toni Reynolds on July 5, 2018</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Part of the struggle for 21<sup>st</sup> century Christians is that we have inherited a tradition formed many lifetimes ago, a key component being the virgin birth of the Christ. This tradition has been handed to us with little to no permission to rework the interpretations for ourselves. I am eager to follow Bishop Spong’s lead in doing so before more time passes by. The leaders of the past fit the Jesus story into the scope of vision respective to their eras and cultures, giving us the creeds and doctrines while prohibiting us from doing the same shaping for our own present time. We need not continue with this prohibition if we aim to bring our most authentic selves to the timeline of Christianity. To me, there is no question whether or not Christianity is <em>capable</em> of being relevant in this century. From kernel to husk of the tradition there is something with which we can work to better understand God, ourselves, and our relationship to all things God has made. What I worry about is whether or not the churches that currently house Christianity are willing to let the tradition live in ways that it wants to, leaving it free to metabolize in each new millennium so that the people learn to be good to one another in ways that make sense to their changing needs. Clearly, Christians want to do this work. You reading essays like this one is a small testament to that. The fan base Spong amassed throughout his career is an even larger testament. So, our enterprise is to free ourselves of the ruling old school mindset that claims we have no right to understand these stories for ourselves. For Christianity to grow into our 21<sup>st</sup> century lives we must take seriously our right to understand these stories and concepts for ourselves. We have no choice but to embody an understanding of the Jesus story that empowers us to recognize our generation of Christians as fundamental in the lineage of this tradition. An assignment within this enterprise is to be about the business of truth seeking and adapting it for now. To find ways to encourage developing pastors to reject the acquired myth that “your congregation won’t be ready for the truth about the Bible.” We must share resources and knowledge, wisdom and practices. We must live our lives in ways that reflect our priorities in all situations of life. In each gospel, creed, and doctrine existent in Protestant traditions is something of a time capsule for us to better understand the theological and political convictions of our faith ancestors. Whatever happened in those nine decades separating Mark from Matthew necessitated a deeper understanding of how/why Jesus’s birth was significant. Perhaps this is part of why this birth story goes from absent to colorfully present. It is worth questioning if the virgin birth accounts were some attempt to acknowledge the impressive role of Jesus’s mother in his life and ministry. As Spong notes, Mark takes care to name that Jesus’s mother was one who went to retrieve him as others were calling him crazy for his witness (p. 106). With implicit and explicit emphasis on Jesus’s maternal line we acknowledge the importance of honoring Mary in some significant way. What modern understandings of genetics has done is explained a process with images and details that leaves us thinking we know full well how a human being comes to exist in the stomach of another human being. Just because we can explain the process doesn’t mean the process is devoid of miraculousness; it’s just a different type of miraculous than the virgin birth attempted to capture. Perhaps more exciting is that it is a miraculous process that each of us has experienced. We share an intimate experience with Christ by having first arrived in the womb of another person. I defend the extraordinary nature of human conception and birth because birthing is an incredible symbol for the act of creating. I believe we are each called to create as a way of making offerings to the world and the Creator. Birthing is a symbol I believe has the power to preserve the gospel writers’ hope that the followers of Jesus would take their ability to create seriously. Jesus’s birth and life is miraculous to us for different reasons than it was miraculous to the authors of Matthew and Luke. He was born into and killed by a ruthless empire. These facts are not disputable. We know that Rome was good at violent conquest and brutal crowd control, from physical to psychological forms of cruelty. Yet Jesus maintained his sense of purpose and his commitment to compassionate action despite the temptations of a violent culture. Mary begat Jesus and Jesus begat a ministry and legacy that prompted generations of compassionate care for one another and creation. This is our heritage. Creating is an act that is available to each of us. No exceptions. To matter in our present context, our understanding of the birth of Christ must fuel us as we resist the ills of our world today. A new interpretation of the virgin birth must focus on creating with clarity of heart and certainty of mind. After a day of personal challenges, in a week of stressful headlines in the news, through a year of ever-increasing crimes against humanity our understanding of Christ’s arrival to this world must fuel us in the direction of compassion. Regardless. Like Mary and Jesus we are called to birth loving acts in our own day and age. I propose that a contemporary version of Christ’s conception and birth be more explicitly linked to our call to co-create Holy works for the benefit of all beings. To do so in times that are resistant to Goodness will better align us with the priorities of Jesus. Through our words, thoughts, projects, prayers, relationships, memory making and future visioning we ought to be consulting the Holy Spirit as a creative partner in our lives. Never creating in isolation, forever creating so that all might experience the fullness of life on earth. There are many ways to reinterpret the virgin birth of the Christ child. To my estimation, the only crucial component that ought to exist in each is that Christians be motivated to live as a radical creator of compassion and justice. Ready to offer healing to a social enemy as Jesus does to the Syrophoenician woman, and equally ready to flip a table where injustice has become the new norm. A crucial hope of the birth of Christ narratives is that each reader be inspired to birth radical acts of loving justice that go along to birth their own radical acts of justice. One thought at a time. One relationship at a time. One song, poem, article, book at a time. Happy birthing.</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">~ Toni Reynolds Click <a target="_blank" style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #2BAADF;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf44…">here</a> to read online and to share your thoughts</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"> <strong>About the Author</strong> Minister Toni Anne Reynolds is committed to singing flesh onto the bones of the Christian tradition by incorporating recently found texts of the ancient world into liturgy, sermons, and poetry. Toni’s Christianity forms a holy trinity with the psychological medicine of Tibetan Buddhism and the eternal Life found in Yoruba traditions. Balanced in an eclectic faith and focused in theology, Toni’s ministry offers a unique perspective on life, theology, and spirituality.</p> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" class="aolmail_mcnTextBlock" style="min-width: 100%;border-collapse: collapse;mso-table-lspace: 0pt;mso-table-rspace: 0pt;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> <tbody class="aolmail_mcnTextBlockOuter"> <tr> <td valign="top" class="aolmail_mcnTextBlockInner" style="padding-top: 9px;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> <table align="left" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="max-width: 100%;min-width: 100%;border-collapse: collapse;mso-table-lspace: 0pt;mso-table-rspace: 0pt;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;" width="100%" class="aolmail_mcnTextContentContainer"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top" class="aolmail_mcnTextContent" style="padding-top: 0;padding-right: 18px;padding-bottom: 9px;padding-left: 18px;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;word-break: break-word;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"> <h1 style="display: block;margin: 0;padding: 0;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 26px;font-style: normal;font-weight: bold;line-height: 125%;letter-spacing: normal;text-align: left;">Refiguring the Birth of Christ</h1> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><img align="left" height="156" style="border: 0px;width: 125px;height: 156px;margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px;outline: none;text-decoration: none;-ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic;" width="125" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/b51b9cf441b059bb232418480/_compresseds/273ef4…">Column by Toni Reynolds on July 5, 2018</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Part of the struggle for 21<sup>st</sup> century Christians is that we have inherited a tradition formed many lifetimes ago, a key component being the virgin birth of the Christ. This tradition has been handed to us with little to no permission to rework the interpretations for ourselves. I am eager to follow Bishop Spong’s lead in doing so before more time passes by. The leaders of the past fit the Jesus story into the scope of vision respective to their eras and cultures, giving us the creeds and doctrines while prohibiting us from doing the same shaping for our own present time. We need not continue with this prohibition if we aim to bring our most authentic selves to the timeline of Christianity. To me, there is no question whether or not Christianity is <em>capable</em> of being relevant in this century. From kernel to husk of the tradition there is something with which we can work to better understand God, ourselves, and our relationship to all things God has made. What I worry about is whether or not the churches that currently house Christianity are willing to let the tradition live in ways that it wants to, leaving it free to metabolize in each new millennium so that the people learn to be good to one another in ways that make sense to their changing needs. Clearly, Christians want to do this work. You reading essays like this one is a small testament to that. The fan base Spong amassed throughout his career is an even larger testament. So, our enterprise is to free ourselves of the ruling old school mindset that claims we have no right to understand these stories for ourselves. For Christianity to grow into our 21<sup>st</sup> century lives we must take seriously our right to understand these stories and concepts for ourselves. We have no choice but to embody an understanding of the Jesus story that empowers us to recognize our generation of Christians as fundamental in the lineage of this tradition. An assignment within this enterprise is to be about the business of truth seeking and adapting it for now. To find ways to encourage developing pastors to reject the acquired myth that “your congregation won’t be ready for the truth about the Bible.” We must share resources and knowledge, wisdom and practices. We must live our lives in ways that reflect our priorities in all situations of life. In each gospel, creed, and doctrine existent in Protestant traditions is something of a time capsule for us to better understand the theological and political convictions of our faith ancestors. Whatever happened in those nine decades separating Mark from Matthew necessitated a deeper understanding of how/why Jesus’s birth was significant. Perhaps this is part of why this birth story goes from absent to colorfully present. It is worth questioning if the virgin birth accounts were some attempt to acknowledge the impressive role of Jesus’s mother in his life and ministry. As Spong notes, Mark takes care to name that Jesus’s mother was one who went to retrieve him as others were calling him crazy for his witness (p. 106). With implicit and explicit emphasis on Jesus’s maternal line we acknowledge the importance of honoring Mary in some significant way. What modern understandings of genetics has done is explained a process with images and details that leaves us thinking we know full well how a human being comes to exist in the stomach of another human being. Just because we can explain the process doesn’t mean the process is devoid of miraculousness; it’s just a different type of miraculous than the virgin birth attempted to capture. Perhaps more exciting is that it is a miraculous process that each of us has experienced. We share an intimate experience with Christ by having first arrived in the womb of another person. I defend the extraordinary nature of human conception and birth because birthing is an incredible symbol for the act of creating. I believe we are each called to create as a way of making offerings to the world and the Creator. Birthing is a symbol I believe has the power to preserve the gospel writers’ hope that the followers of Jesus would take their ability to create seriously. Jesus’s birth and life is miraculous to us for different reasons than it was miraculous to the authors of Matthew and Luke. He was born into and killed by a ruthless empire. These facts are not disputable. We know that Rome was good at violent conquest and brutal crowd control, from physical to psychological forms of cruelty. Yet Jesus maintained his sense of purpose and his commitment to compassionate action despite the temptations of a violent culture. Mary begat Jesus and Jesus begat a ministry and legacy that prompted generations of compassionate care for one another and creation. This is our heritage. Creating is an act that is available to each of us. No exceptions. To matter in our present context, our understanding of the birth of Christ must fuel us as we resist the ills of our world today. A new interpretation of the virgin birth must focus on creating with clarity of heart and certainty of mind. After a day of personal challenges, in a week of stressful headlines in the news, through a year of ever-increasing crimes against humanity our understanding of Christ’s arrival to this world must fuel us in the direction of compassion. Regardless. Like Mary and Jesus we are called to birth loving acts in our own day and age. I propose that a contemporary version of Christ’s conception and birth be more explicitly linked to our call to co-create Holy works for the benefit of all beings. To do so in times that are resistant to Goodness will better align us with the priorities of Jesus. Through our words, thoughts, projects, prayers, relationships, memory making and future visioning we ought to be consulting the Holy Spirit as a creative partner in our lives. Never creating in isolation, forever creating so that all might experience the fullness of life on earth. There are many ways to reinterpret the virgin birth of the Christ child. To my estimation, the only crucial component that ought to exist in each is that Christians be motivated to live as a radical creator of compassion and justice. Ready to offer healing to a social enemy as Jesus does to the Syrophoenician woman, and equally ready to flip a table where injustice has become the new norm. A crucial hope of the birth of Christ narratives is that each reader be inspired to birth radical acts of loving justice that go along to birth their own radical acts of justice. One thought at a time. One relationship at a time. One song, poem, article, book at a time. Happy birthing.</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">~ Toni Reynolds Click <a target="_blank" style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #2BAADF;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf44…">here</a> to read online and to share your thoughts</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"> <strong>About the Author</strong> Minister Toni Anne Reynolds is committed to singing flesh onto the bones of the Christian tradition by incorporating recently found texts of the ancient world into liturgy, sermons, and poetry. Toni’s Christianity forms a holy trinity with the psychological medicine of Tibetan Buddhism and the eternal Life found in Yoruba traditions. Balanced in an eclectic faith and focused in theology, Toni’s ministry offers a unique perspective on life, theology, and spirituality.</p> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" class="aolmail_mcnDividerBlock" style="min-width: 100%;border-collapse: collapse;mso-table-lspace: 0pt;mso-table-rspace: 0pt;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; !important;"> <tbody class="aolmail_mcnDividerBlockOuter"> <tr> <td class="aolmail_mcnDividerBlockInner" style="min-width: 100%;padding: 10px 18px;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> <table class="aolmail_mcnDividerContent" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" style="min-width: 100%;border-top: 5px solid #694F0D;border-collapse: collapse;mso-table-lspace: 0pt;mso-table-rspace: 0pt;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> <tbody><tr> <td style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> <span></span> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" class="aolmail_mcnTextBlock" style="min-width: 100%;border-collapse: collapse;mso-table-lspace: 0pt;mso-table-rspace: 0pt;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> <tbody class="aolmail_mcnTextBlockOuter"> <tr> <td valign="top" class="aolmail_mcnTextBlockInner" style="padding-top: 9px;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> <table align="left" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="max-width: 100%;min-width: 100%;border-collapse: collapse;mso-table-lspace: 0pt;mso-table-rspace: 0pt;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;" width="100%" class="aolmail_mcnTextContentContainer"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top" class="aolmail_mcnTextContent" style="padding-top: 0;padding-right: 18px;padding-bottom: 9px;padding-left: 18px;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;word-break: break-word;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"> <h1 style="display: block;margin: 0;padding: 0;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 26px;font-style: normal;font-weight: bold;line-height: 125%;letter-spacing: normal;text-align: left;">Question & Answer</h1> <h3 style="display: block;margin: 0;padding: 0;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 20px;font-style: normal;font-weight: bold;line-height: 125%;letter-spacing: normal;text-align: left;"> </h3> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><strong><span style="font-size:18px">Q: By Mark Adams-Westin</span></strong> <em> I have been on a journey much like John Spong’s for almost 67 years. I have followed his work over the years with interest and used to be on his regular mailing list. I just finished his “last Book” and found it both enlightening, and frustrating. I appreciated the insights and the bio of his and our shared journey, and resonate with many of his conclusions. Where I part company is his “insight” that we human’s alone have “self-consciousness,” which allows only us to grasp: life, death, fear, joy, God, spirit etc. Sadly Spong trots out the age old notion that humans are mentally & spiritually superior to the “lower” beings on our planet. This attitude has justified our human lethal domination of this planet to the detriment of every species including human beings. Worst of all it is a conjecture that can neither be proven nor disproven (which I personally think is the easier of the two tasks) because we humans lack the ability to communicate with our fellow travelers. Stating this opinion and maintaining it as “fact” throughout the book diminishes, Bishop Spong’s logic and conclusions, because it is so basic to every argument that follows. I pray that as we humans expand our own spiritual consciousness we will outgrow all of the assumptions we’ve nurtured about our innate superiority.</em></p> <h3 style="display: block;margin: 0;padding: 0;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 20px;font-style: normal;font-weight: bold;line-height: 125%;letter-spacing: normal;text-align: left;"> <strong><span style="font-size:18px">A: By Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox</span></strong></h3> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"> </p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><img height="118" style="border: 0px;width: 125px;height: 118px;margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px;float: left;outline: none;text-decoration: none;-ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic;" width="125" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/b51b9cf441b059bb232418480/images/98ccd1c8-238…">Dear Mark</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Rather than plunge into your disagreement with Bishop Spong as such, I prefer to speak to the important issue you raise about our so-called “innate superiority” as a species.</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">To me, we as a species are better than other species in some things but inferior in others. Among the former, I would put front and center <em>our capacity for evil.</em> I don’t know any other species that has put such effort into developing nuclear missiles that would destroy the planet as we know it. Nor has any species created an event like the Second World War which killed at least 42 million human beings and sported concentration camps and the holocaust. Or that indulges in climate change and denial of climate change at the same time,</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Why are we so superior when it comes to Evil? Aquinas says one human being can do more evil than all the other species put together. How did he know that, writing as he did in the thirteenth century and 700 years before Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, et al? Because he recognized the profundity of our intellects and our creativity which together constitute the “image and likeness of God” that we carry either for good or for evil.</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Rather than carry on the myth of our “innate superiority,” I prefer to think in terms of what Meister Eckhart calls the “equality of being”--at the level of being we are all equals, none greater than the other.<a name="aolmail__ftnref1" style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #2BAADF;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf44…">[1]</a> In a culture with its religions, theology and educational systems rarely talking about “being” at all, we set ourselves up for the kind of “superiority complex” that you are warning us about.</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">It is existence or being that is the true <em>miracle of life</em>. We cannot take credit for it--existence is a given, a gift, a grace. We all got it. Now to use it well and wisely. My being as a human is not greater than other beings, say my dog, as a dog. Being is being and being is divine.</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Thomas Merton puts it this way: “The consciousness of being (whether considered positively or negatively and apophatically as in Buddhism) is an immediate experience that goes beyond reflective awareness. It is not ‘consciousness <em>of’ </em>but <em>pure consciousness</em>, in which the subject as such ‘disappears.’” He adds: “To one who has been exposed to scholastic ontology and has not recovered, it remains evident that the activity of <em>becoming</em> is considerably less alive and dynamic than the <em>act of being.”<a name="aolmail__ftnref2" style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #2BAADF;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf44…"><strong>[2]</strong></a></em></p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Eastern Orthodox scholar David Bentley Hart, in his excellent book, <em>The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss,</em> chastises both Western and Eastern wisdom traditions for neglecting the experience of being. He criticizes contemporary religion for forgetting a God of being and offering instead superficial ersatz notions and projections whether of a theistic or atheistic bent.</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">The real miracle among us is the miracle of being and shame on us for taking it for granted or forgetting it.</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">So before dashing off and declaring ourselves the “king of the hill” and the “summit and even purpose of all creation” we should wake up and smell the roses--and the sun, clouds, rain, supernovas and original fireball that make the roses possible. Aquinas says the most excellent thing in the universe is <em>not</em> the human but the universe itself. In short, <em>we must return to cosmology</em> in preference to all that feeds our collective narcissism as a species. It is the beings that preceded us and nurture us still that make our being possible. Let us cease the chauvinism and become instead <em>grateful for being</em> and therefore grateful for our equality with all beings.</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">~ Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox Click <a target="_blank" style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #2BAADF;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf44…">here</a> to read and share online</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"> <strong>About the Author</strong> Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox holds a doctorate in spirituality from the Institut Catholique de Paris and has authored 32 books on spirituality and contemporary culture that have been translated into 69 languages. Fox has devoted 45 years to developing and teaching the tradition of <a style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #2BAADF;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf44…">Creation Spirituality </a>and in doing so has reinvented forms of education and worship. His work is inclusive of today’s science and world spiritual traditions and has awakened millions to the much neglected earth-based mystical tradition of the West. He has helped to rediscover Hildegard of Bingen, Meister Eckhart, Thomas Aquinas. Among his books are <a style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #2BAADF;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf44…"><em>Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh, Transforming Evil in Soul and Society</em></a>, <a style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #2BAADF;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf44…"><em>A Way To God: Thomas Merton’s Creation Spirituality Journey</em></a>, <a style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #2BAADF;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf44…">Meister Eckhart: A Mystic-Warrior For Our Times</a> and <a style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #2BAADF;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf44…"><em>Confessions: The Making of a Postdenominational Priest</em></a></p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">A new school, adopting the pedagogy Fox created and practiced for over 35 years, is opening in Boulder, Colorado this September. Called the <a style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #2BAADF;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf44…">Fox Institute for Creation Spirituality</a> it is being run by graduates of his doctoral program and will offer MA, D Min and Doctor of Spirituality degrees. With young leaders he is launching a new spiritual (not religious) "order" called the <a style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #2BAADF;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf44…">Order of the Sacred Earth</a> (OSE) that is welcoming to people of all faith traditions and none and whose 'glue' is a common vow: "I promise to be the best lover of Mother Earth and the best defender of Mother Earth that I can be."</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">------------------------- <a name="aolmail__ftn1" style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #2BAADF;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf44…">[1]</a> See Matthew Fox, <em>Passion for Creation: The Earth-Honoring Spirituality of Meister Eckhart</em> (Rochester, Vt: Inner Traditions, 2000), Sermon Five: “How All Creatures Share an Equality of Being,” 91-101. <a name="aolmail__ftn2" style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #2BAADF;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf44…">[2]</a> See Matthew Fox, <em>A Way To God: Thomas Merton’s Creation Spirituality Journey</em> (Novato, Ca: New World Library, 2016), 237f.</p> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" class="aolmail_mcnDividerBlock" style="min-width: 100%;border-collapse: collapse;mso-table-lspace: 0pt;mso-table-rspace: 0pt;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; !important;"> <tbody class="aolmail_mcnDividerBlockOuter"> <tr> <td class="aolmail_mcnDividerBlockInner" style="min-width: 100%;padding: 10px 18px;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> <table class="aolmail_mcnDividerContent" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" style="min-width: 100%;border-top: 5px solid #694F0D;border-collapse: collapse;mso-table-lspace: 0pt;mso-table-rspace: 0pt;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> <tbody><tr> <td style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> <span></span> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" class="aolmail_mcnTextBlock" style="min-width: 100%;border-collapse: collapse;mso-table-lspace: 0pt;mso-table-rspace: 0pt;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> <tbody class="aolmail_mcnTextBlockOuter"> <tr> <td valign="top" class="aolmail_mcnTextBlockInner" style="padding-top: 9px;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> <table align="left" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="max-width: 100%;min-width: 100%;border-collapse: collapse;mso-table-lspace: 0pt;mso-table-rspace: 0pt;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;" width="100%" class="aolmail_mcnTextContentContainer"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top" class="aolmail_mcnTextContent" style="padding-top: 0;padding-right: 18px;padding-bottom: 9px;padding-left: 18px;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;word-break: break-word;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"> <h1 style="text-align: center;display: block;margin: 0;padding: 0;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 26px;font-style: normal;font-weight: bold;line-height: 125%;letter-spacing: normal;">Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited</h1> <h3 style="text-align: center;display: block;margin: 0;padding: 0;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 20px;font-style: normal;font-weight: bold;line-height: 125%;letter-spacing: normal;"> 2000 Deaths Later, the Time Has Come to Render to Caesar His Due!</h3> Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong on November 2, 2005 <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><img align="left" height="132" style="border: 0px;width: 125px;height: 132px;margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px;outline: none;text-decoration: none;-ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic;" width="125" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/b51b9cf441b059bb232418480/images/84fbd945-363…"></p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">A well-known and oft-quoted verse in Matthew’s Gospel portrays Jesus, responding to a question designed to trap him between competing loyalties. Where does the line fall between what one owes to God and what one owes to the State? To this question Jesus responded, “You render to Caesar that which belongs to Caesar and to God that which belongs to God.” His words suggested that the distinction was clear, that there were no gray areas. That is hardly ever the case.</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Christianity has wrestled with these dual loyalties over the centuries in very different political settings. At the beginning of the Common Era, Christians were persecuted by the State and as a consequence worshiped in the hiddeness of the catacombs. To be a Christian in that era was to be guilty of a capital offense. By the time the 13th century had arrived the roles were reversed as Christianity dominated the State; seating, removing and excommunicating kings. Christian leaders at that time persecuted those deviating from accepted Christian understandings.</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Then there were the more confused times, mostly post-Renaissance, when Church and State lived in a poorly defined, ambiguous relationship. That is the situation today in the Western World. Europe is now a secular society in which the Church has been marginalized, while in the United States, religion has experienced a rebirth of zeal, and seeks to force a particular world-view on the people of this nation. The Federal Government, for example, now funds “Faith-based initiatives.” Catholic Bishops threaten to deny communion to Catholic politicians unless they promise to impose Catholic sexual values on the country’s population. A president nominates one to the Supreme Court because she is “an evangelical Christian.” Strangely, however, this same president lectures the people of Iraq on how inappropriate it would be for them to adopt a constitution that would place a fundamentalist Islamic regime into power.</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">“Render to Caesar” has been used historically, to support the state’s power of taxation, to affirm a lofty patriotism and to assert one’s loyalty to one’s country. After all, Paul does say in Romans that we are “to be subject to the higher authority, since all authority is of God.”</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">I, for one, do feel I owe my country a great deal. I relish the freedom that Americans enjoy and the ideals for which this country stands. I think the taxes I pay to my government are still the best bargain in my budget. Yes, of course, I am aware that not all of our tax dollars are spent wisely. ‘Pork’ fed to voters back home is the lifeblood of politics. This nation’s lawmakers have been known to authorize the financing of a bridge in Alaska that goes nowhere. Government waste, and sycophants who feed regularly at the public trough, are facts of life. Even when these things are taken into account, however, I still believe that the freedom and liberty this country provides, its strength that guarantees our peace is worth everything I pay in taxes. I do not agree with my friend Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, that the money I make is rightly mine and that taxes are the government’s confiscation of what is my own. Taxes, I believe, are the payment that I am called upon to make for the privilege of enjoying life in this great nation. If that is what “Render to Caesar” means, then I am prepared to do so and joyfully.</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">There is, however, much more to this admonition than just that. I also believe it is my duty as a Christian to bear a public witness against policies that “Caesar” adopts when these policies violate all that I consider holy. In the Judeo-Christian tradition that is traditionally the role of the prophet. When Israel’s religion was co-opted by the King, it was the prophets who called their King to accountability. Prophecy had nothing to do with predicting the future; it had everything to do with speaking uncomfortable truth inside the citadels of political power.</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">I consider a man named Nathan to be the father of the prophetic movement in Israel. This man stood before King David, armed only with a sense of the rightness of the moral order, and accused him of being guilty of both an adulterous relationship with a woman named Bathsheba and the subsequent murder of her husband Uriah. When Nathan described the King’s immoral behavior in a parable, which caused the King to think he was describing another citizen of his realm, the King was irate and said that the man who had done what had Nathan related must surely be put to death. In one of the most dramatic moments in the entire biblical story, Nathan looked straight into King David’s eyes and said, “You are the Man!” That is the supreme biblical illustration of what it means to “Render to Caesar that which is due to Caesar.” We owe the Caesars in every generation a call to truth when truth is violated; a call to responsibility when incompetence is displayed and a call to morality when evil is rampant. I do not want a religious state, but I do want a state in which the voice of religious judgment can still be heard.</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">My current head of state, my Caesar, took this nation into a war in Iraq that has now cost the lives of 2000 of our youngest and most patriotic citizens. It has cost this nation’s armed forces more than 15,000 others who have been wounded, some destined to face life crippled or blind. The suffering and loss of life among the people of Iraq has yet to be told or counted. Billions of dollars have been spent to prosecute this war that will place our children and grandchildren in debt for the balance of their lives. I do not mean to suggest that war is never justified. I am not a pacifist, though I admire the witness of the pacifists among us. In my opinion war is sometimes essential in the defense of life and liberty. The leaders of any government, however, must make that case to its people before the sacrifice that war always brings can possibly be justified. The necessity for this war was said by our Caesar to be that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, that Iraq was developing chemical and biological weapons, and that Iraq was building a nuclear arsenal. None of these things were true. In his State of the Union address in 2003 our President informed this nation that British Intelligence had learned of an Iraqi purchase from Niger of a substance called ‘yellow cake,’ needed in the development of nuclear weapons. The Central Intelligence Agency knew at the time that this was not so, and members of this administration would soon move to punish those who countered their false version of “truth.” The people of this nation were assured that our armed forces would be welcomed in Iraq as liberators. Three years later this claim is patently not so. Our Caesar, standing on an aircraft carrier dressed in full battle gear announced in May of 2003, “our mission is accomplished.” More people would die after that victory announcement than had died before it was made. This war was necessary, our leaders stated, because Iraq housed, trained and supported the terrorists who attacked us on 91l. No such connection has ever been documented.</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">In the worst-case scenario, we have an administration in the United States that has deliberately lied to the people. In the best-case scenario we have an administration so inept that it does not recognize the truth. There is no other alternative.</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">This nation, led by this President, has also refused to treat enemy prisoners according to the provisions of the Geneva Agreement. Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib now stain the national soul. This inhumane treatment goes unpunished to this day except for a few enlisted personnel who could hardly have set this tone without higher approval. Supporters of these methods of torture including the Vice-President and the Secretary of Defense, say that this treatment is necessary because of who the terrorists are. To this self-serving explanation Senator John McCain, who himself knows something about what it means to be an inhumanely treated prisoner of war, replied “This is not about who <em>they</em> are, it is about who <em>we</em> are!” While calling on members of our armed services to make the ultimate sacrifice, this administration has asked sacrifices of no one else. Perhaps that will change this winter when the poor begin to pay war-inflated prices to heat their homes. The oil industry, so closely allied with this administration, will not share that sacrifice, however, since it will be too busy counting its record profits.</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">While all of this is bombarding our consciences, this administration diverts the attention of our people from these great moral issues by playing on fears and prejudices. As members of our armed forces die daily in a war entered without honesty, and from which we do not seem to know how to extricate ourselves with dignity, the national debate concentrates on the position a potential nominee to the Supreme Court might have on gay marriage and the right of a woman to make decisions about her own body!</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">The time has come for us to “Render to Caesar” what is appropriate, what is due to Caesar. The prophetic word of judgment must again be heard in the public arena. The ‘Nathans’ of our day must rise up and speak the ‘Word of the Lord’ to our Caesar. That ‘Word,’ it seems to me begins with the 9th Commandment: <em>You shall not bear false witness. It continues: You must not kill or cause others to be killed for inadequate reasons. You must not treat those defined as enemies as if they are not themselves human being made in God’s image. You must not violate everything for which this nation stands by acting contrary to those principles. The enormity of Caesar’s power is best seen in the example Caesar sets for the rest of the world to follow.</em></p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Christian voices of this land must now be prepared to render to Caesar the things that are due to Caesar: truth, confrontation, and judgment. Patriotism and national devotion demand it.</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">When Nathan confronted King David, the King repented, changed his path and went on to greatness. Perhaps if we like Nathan, will render to Caesar that which is due Caesar, something similar will occur. I hope so. If it does then we will recognize that we have also been rendering to God the things that are God’s.</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">~ John Shelby Spong</p> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" class="aolmail_mcnDividerBlock" style="min-width: 100%;border-collapse: collapse;mso-table-lspace: 0pt;mso-table-rspace: 0pt;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; !important;"> <tbody class="aolmail_mcnDividerBlockOuter"> <tr> <td class="aolmail_mcnDividerBlockInner" style="min-width: 100%;padding: 10px 18px;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> <table class="aolmail_mcnDividerContent" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" style="min-width: 100%;border-top: 5px solid #694F0D;border-collapse: collapse;mso-table-lspace: 0pt;mso-table-rspace: 0pt;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> <tbody><tr> <td style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> <span></span> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" class="aolmail_mcnTextBlock" style="min-width: 100%;border-collapse: collapse;mso-table-lspace: 0pt;mso-table-rspace: 0pt;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> <tbody class="aolmail_mcnTextBlockOuter"> <tr> <td valign="top" class="aolmail_mcnTextBlockInner" style="padding-top: 9px;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> <table align="left" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="max-width: 100%;min-width: 100%;border-collapse: collapse;mso-table-lspace: 0pt;mso-table-rspace: 0pt;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;" width="100%" class="aolmail_mcnTextContentContainer"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top" class="aolmail_mcnTextContent" style="padding-top: 0;padding-right: 18px;padding-bottom: 9px;padding-left: 18px;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;word-break: break-word;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"> <h1 class="aolmail_null" style="text-align: center;display: block;margin: 0;padding: 0;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 26px;font-style: normal;font-weight: bold;line-height: 125%;letter-spacing: normal;">Announcements</h1> <a style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #2BAADF;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf44…"><img height="89" style="border: 0px initial;width: 150px;height: 89px;float: left;margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px;outline: none;text-decoration: none;-ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic;" width="150" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/b51b9cf441b059bb232418480/images/990f630a-96b…"></a> <h2 class="aolmail_null" style="text-align: center;display: block;margin: 0;padding: 0;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 22px;font-style: normal;font-weight: bold;line-height: 125%;letter-spacing: normal;"> <span style="font-size:22px"><span style="font-family:georgia,times,times new roman,serif"><strong>The Wild Goose Festival</strong> July 12 - 15th, Hot Springs, N. C. </span></span> </h2> The Wild Goos Festival is a 4-day Spirit, Justice, Music and Arts Festival. But it's so much more than that. At Wild Goose, people flock together to celebrate a way of life rooted in faith, justice, creativity, and beauty. A part of the festival this year you don't want to miss is <a target="_blank" style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #2BAADF;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf44…">Wisdom Camp </a>- A pop-up retreat for mystical misfits led by Mike Morrell. <h2 class="aolmail_null" style="text-align: center;display: block;margin: 0;padding: 0;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 22px;font-style: normal;font-weight: bold;line-height: 125%;letter-spacing: normal;"> </h2> <h2 class="aolmail_null" style="display: block;margin: 0;padding: 0;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 22px;font-style: normal;font-weight: bold;line-height: 125%;letter-spacing: normal;text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:16px"><span style="font-family:georgia,times,times new roman,serif"><a target="_blank" 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FW: our condolence to Liz Banks
by John & Robyn Hutchinson 02 Jul '18

02 Jul '18

>From Vinod and Kamala Parekh From: Kamala Parekh [mailto:kamala.parekh@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, 2 July 2018 6:55 PM To: John & Robyn Hutchinson Subject: Fwd: our condolence to Liz Dear Robyn Please share our mail with other friends. Thanks Regards Kamala ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Kamala Parekh <kamala.parekh(a)gmail.com> Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2018, 7:38 am Subject: Liz To: Vinod Parekh <vinodparekh(a)gmail.com> Our dearest Liz We are heartbroken at the passing away of dear Garner, a much loved friend and colleague of ours. His enigmatic smile and enchanting eyes are etched in our minds and will remain as a beautiful memory and also our brief visit with him while in Melbourne. The love and care he showered on Air and Arnab became their anchor in a new country. You dear Liz are in our thoughts and prayers as you are go through thisgreat loss of a wonderful husband and a loving partner of many years. His loss is irreplaceable but his memories are for ever. May God give you and your family strength to bear this loss. With much love and best wishes for your gòod health. Vinod and Kamala Parekh.

1 0

(no subject)
by Lucille Chagnon 30 Jun '18

30 Jun '18

http://key.olivermcnamara.com Lucille Chagnon

1 0

Request from Julie Miesen for Liz Banks re: Garnet Banks
by Holcombe Wanda 29 Jun '18

29 Jun '18

Lis Banks asked me to try to find contact details for Neil Vance. Garnet is dying in a nursing home and has Alzheimer’s disease and Lis wants to contact Neil. Can you pass on her details? phone +61398777742. Cell +61409877550. Email <Elisabeth.a.banks(a)gmail.com Thanks everyone for your help to respond to our Australian Colleagues. Grace & Peace Wanda

5 4

6/28/18, Progressing Spirit: Matthew Fox: Deep Ecumenism vs. Biblical Terror Texts; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 28 Jun '18

28 Jun '18

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href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf44…"> <img align="center" alt="" width="595" style="max-width: 600px;padding-bottom: 0;display: inline !important;vertical-align: bottom;border: 0;height: auto;outline: none;text-decoration: none;-ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic;" class="aolmail_mcnImage" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/b51b9cf441b059bb232418480/images/8dff27ce-c4d…"> </a> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table></td> </tr> <tr> <td valign="top" id="aolmail_templateBody" style="background:#FFFFFF none no-repeat center/cover;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;background-color: #FFFFFF;background-image: none;background-repeat: no-repeat;background-position: center;background-size: cover;border-top: 0;border-bottom: 2px solid #EAEAEA;padding-top: 0;padding-bottom: 9px;"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" class="aolmail_mcnTextBlock" style="min-width: 100%;border-collapse: collapse;mso-table-lspace: 0pt;mso-table-rspace: 0pt;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> <tbody class="aolmail_mcnTextBlockOuter"> <tr> <td valign="top" class="aolmail_mcnTextBlockInner" style="padding-top: 9px;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> <table align="left" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="max-width: 100%;min-width: 100%;border-collapse: collapse;mso-table-lspace: 0pt;mso-table-rspace: 0pt;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;" width="100%" class="aolmail_mcnTextContentContainer"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top" class="aolmail_mcnTextContent" style="padding-top: 0;padding-right: 18px;padding-bottom: 9px;padding-left: 18px;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;word-break: break-word;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"> <h1 style="display: block;margin: 0;padding: 0;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 26px;font-style: normal;font-weight: bold;line-height: 125%;letter-spacing: normal;text-align: left;">Deep Ecumenism vs. Biblical Terror Texts</h1> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><img align="left" height="118" style="border: 0px;width: 125px;height: 118px;margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px;outline: none;text-decoration: none;-ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic;" width="125" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/b51b9cf441b059bb232418480/images/98ccd1c8-238…"> Essay by Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox June 28, 2018 </p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Recently I underwent, along with about 225 other people, a very moving and powerful encounter in Deep Ecumenism or Interfaith in a synagogue in Ashland, Oregon. We gathered Friday night with an opening Native American chant written by Chief Arvod Looking Horse and a simple Shabbath ceremony including the lighting of candles followed by my talk on Deep Ecumenism and Deep Ecology.</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Among the participants were a heavy representation of the Jewish tradition along with Christians, Buddhists, indigenous peoples, and variations of the above. We gathered again all day Saturday when spiritual practices included indigenous songs and chants by leader Dan Wahpepah with drum in hand were shared along with several Jewish prayers and practices including a sharing of the open Torah itself and storytelling by Devorah Zaslow. A Song of Creation from the Book of Daniel, cosmic prayers and a poem by Julian of Norwich inspired us also along with a panel of religious leaders.</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">The culminating prayer for me was an amazing passage—rendered in song in Hebrew in the trope or melody of the Lamentation songs from the Hebrew Bible!—from Pope Francis’ ecological encyclical “Laudato Si” sung by the cantor Steven Margolin. It was amazing! Is this <em>the first time ever</em> a Pope’s encyclical has been sung (in Hebrew) at a synagogue? One might bet on that. We are indeed living in unusual times.</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">In my teachings Friday night and Saturday morning I spoke to topics such as: Ecological Spirituality and of the need to recover a sense of the Sacred which, as Thomas Berry insists, can only return with a sense of the wonder and grace of the universe and of our precious but endangered Mother Earth. And of how we were all—irrespective of particular traditions—called to stand up at this time, to be lovers (mystics) and defenders (prophets or warriors) on behalf of Mother Earth who, in her suffering, is calling us beyond our religious boxes to a common cause. I also invoked Thomas Merton, a pioneer in Deep Ecumenism and a friend of both Rabbi Heshel and Rabbi Schactner and a fierce critic of the genocide of Native Americans in American history. I talked about the new Order of the Sacred Earth that we launched on the Solstice and which is going public this July.</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">It was my impression that our time together was rich and deep and meaningful for all attendees—a fine expression of the Deep Ecumenism that the late Rabbi Zalman Schactner called for and practiced in depth. It fact, Rabbi David Zaskow, who opened the doors of his synagogue to this event and oversaw it with teachings and hospitality very much brought in the spirit of his mentor, Reb Zalman. He told a story of how Reb Zalman really appreciated my term “Deep Ecumenism” which I first laid out in my book <em>The Coming of the Cosmic Christ</em>, because he had been practicing it for years but did not have a name for it until my term came along.</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">On Sunday, I was invited to preach at a Mass at the Episcopal church in town, Trinity Episcopal. The attendance was impressive—indeed the church was full– and the choir and the celebrant, Father Tony Hutchinson, led a moving and dignified celebration. It was clear to me that that church was alive and awake and even eager to be praying together.</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">There was a fly in the ointment however and it was not due to the local church. Rather, it can be laid at the feet of those liturgical officiandos who put together lectionaries for the Episcopal Church. The readings seemed to completely contradict the spirit and depth of our previous two days of deep ecumenism and honest exchange and deep prayer shared in Ashland’s synagogue. The cacophony was palatable. To top it off, a number of attendees at the Ecumenical event were in attendance at this particular Mass.</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">The readings, scheduled for “Laetare Sunday,” which is supposed to be a day of Happiness and Celebration, were as follows:</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">1. Numbers 21: 4-9. (about a poisonous serpent that attacks evil doers) 2. Ephesians 1:1-10. Which talks a lot about disobedience and living “in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else” but saved through faith which is “the gift of God, not the result of works.” 3. John 3: 14-21:”Those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God….This is the judgment, that the light has come into the world and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light….” This passage is famous for being held up on placards at baseball games—“<em>See John 3:14.”</em></p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">As preacher of the day, what to do? What to say? I slept very little the night before, bathed on the one hand in the peace and joy of a two-day ecumenical feast but now wrestling with such questions and how to preach from such texts on Sunday morning. At the service, I listened while the readings were recited, and then it was finally my time to preach. I opened with the following words: “I have been a priest for over fifty years and not once in those years have I begun a sermon the way I am beginning this one: I do not find the Scriptural readings we have just heard inspiring.”</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">After pointing out that there are “terror texts” (a term from Biblical scholar Phyllis Trible) in the Bible, I proposed that whatever bureaucratic committee put those texts together for this particular “Laetare Sunday” ought to be “taken to the woodshed.” And that for the first hour in the woodshed <em>a rabbi</em> should be there to speak to them what such texts as these did to their people over the centuries to incite pogroms and killings and scapegoating and hatred and yes, even the holocaust.</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">And for the second hour in the woodshed there should come <em>a Native American leader</em> to tell the Christians what these texts did to inspire the genocide that has so decimated indigenous religions and cultures and human beings’ body and souls over the centuries.</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">I had a few more points to make as well, including citing Thomas Berry’s advice that the Bible be put on the shelf for twenty years while we recover from its more egregious passages and study the other source of revelation which is nature. And of the need to resurrect the ancient archetypes of the Cosmic Christ, Buddha Nature and Image of God that give us a bigger-than-human perspective on life and religion itself.</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">At the very end of the service the Celebrant and rector, Father Tony, surprised me by inviting me up to extend a final blessing. I felt the need to offer a non-canned and fresh blessing and immediately Emily Dickinson shot into mind (I had been reading a new book on her by a friend of mine—a topic I will treat in another essay) so this was my blessing: “May we all be blessed in the name of the bee, the butterfly and the breeze.” Then I exegeted the blessing lightly: The Bee represents the Creator because it pollinates life all around us; the Butterfly represents the Christ because it undergoes death, hibernation and resurrection; and the Breeze represents the wind and therefore Spirit (ruah). Then, with this deeper understanding, I offered the blessing a second time.</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Following the service at the sharing of finger food and tea, a number of parishoners, choir members too, thanked me for my preaching. Apparently they were just as disturbed as I was by the terror texts.</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">I am grateful to the rector, Father Tony, for his invitation and for his generously sharing his pulpit with me and for accepting the challenge that my preaching may have stirred up.</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">But I ask the following question: Isn’t it time—in the twenty-first century that we live in—to address the terror texts in our “holy books” and lay them to rest? And <em>certainly</em> not parade them as worthy of our meditations at our Sunday gatherings?</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Is it any wonder that the younger generation, raised in a world where we rub shoulders daily with people of other faith traditions and none, don’t show up for church on Sunday with lessons like these being read at them? Have we so treated the Bible as an untouchable idol and liturgy the same that our consciences have been silenced in the process? And isn’t it time that whoever makes up liturgical lectionaries be re-educated about the realities of Biblical texts and liturgical ones too and their impact historically and contemporaneously on human behavior and their capacity to stir up feelings of self-worth or self-hatred and of hatred of others?</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">The whole thing is a scandal. It’s no wonder many thinking and feeling people are not showing up for church on Sunday mornings. This is 2018, isn’t it? We are living in a time of Deep Ecumenism aren’t we? How far behind the times are the churches and their bureaucracies <em>choosing to be</em>? Reading the signs of the times is not an option; it’s a requirement of any person or community that dares to speak in Jesus’ name. Isn’t it?</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">~ Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox</p> Click <a target="_blank" style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #2BAADF;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf44…">here</a> to read online and to share your thoughts <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><strong>About the Author</strong> Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox holds a doctorate in spirituality from the Institut Catholique de Paris and has authored 32 books on spirituality and contemporary culture that have been translated into 69 languages. Fox has devoted 45 years to developing and teaching the tradition of <a style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #2BAADF;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf44…">Creation Spirituality </a>and in doing so has reinvented forms of education and worship. His work is inclusive of today’s science and world spiritual traditions and has awakened millions to the much neglected earth-based mystical tradition of the West. He has helped to rediscover Hildegard of Bingen, Meister Eckhart, Thomas Aquinas. Among his books are <a style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #2BAADF;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf44…"><em>Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh, Transforming Evil in Soul and Society</em></a>, <a style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #2BAADF;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf44…"><em>A Way To God: Thomas Merton’s Creation Spirituality Journey</em></a>, <a style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #2BAADF;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf44…">Meister Eckhart: A Mystic-Warrior For Our Times</a> and <a style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #2BAADF;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf44…"><em>Confessions: The Making of a Postdenominational Priest</em></a></p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">A new school, adopting the pedagogy Fox created and practiced for over 35 years, is opening in Boulder, Colorado this September. Called the <a style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #2BAADF;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf44…">Fox Institute for Creation Spirituality</a> it is being run by graduates of his doctoral program and will offer MA, D Min and Doctor of Spirituality degrees. With young leaders he is launching a new spiritual (not religious) “order” called the <a style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #2BAADF;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf44…">Order of the Sacred Earth</a> (OSE) that is welcoming to people of all faith traditions and none and whose ‘glue’ is a common vow: “I promise to be the best lover of Mother Earth and the best defender of Mother Earth that I can be.”</p> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" class="aolmail_mcnDividerBlock" style="min-width: 100%;border-collapse: collapse;mso-table-lspace: 0pt;mso-table-rspace: 0pt;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; !important;"> <tbody class="aolmail_mcnDividerBlockOuter"> <tr> <td class="aolmail_mcnDividerBlockInner" style="min-width: 100%;padding: 10px 18px;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> <table class="aolmail_mcnDividerContent" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" style="min-width: 100%;border-top: 5px solid #694F0D;border-collapse: collapse;mso-table-lspace: 0pt;mso-table-rspace: 0pt;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> <tbody><tr> <td style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> <span></span> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" class="aolmail_mcnTextBlock" style="min-width: 100%;border-collapse: collapse;mso-table-lspace: 0pt;mso-table-rspace: 0pt;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> <tbody class="aolmail_mcnTextBlockOuter"> <tr> <td valign="top" class="aolmail_mcnTextBlockInner" style="padding-top: 9px;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> <table align="left" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="max-width: 100%;min-width: 100%;border-collapse: collapse;mso-table-lspace: 0pt;mso-table-rspace: 0pt;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;" width="100%" class="aolmail_mcnTextContentContainer"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top" class="aolmail_mcnTextContent" style="padding-top: 0;padding-right: 18px;padding-bottom: 9px;padding-left: 18px;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;word-break: break-word;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"> <h1 style="display: block;margin: 0;padding: 0;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 26px;font-style: normal;font-weight: bold;line-height: 125%;letter-spacing: normal;text-align: left;">Question & Answer</h1> <h3 style="display: block;margin: 0;padding: 0;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 20px;font-style: normal;font-weight: bold;line-height: 125%;letter-spacing: normal;text-align: left;"> </h3> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><strong><span style="font-size:18px">Q: By Yadidya</span></strong> <em>As a progressive Christian, how do you deal with infidelity when your partner cheats on you but later confesses it?</em></p> <h3 style="display: block;margin: 0;padding: 0;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 20px;font-style: normal;font-weight: bold;line-height: 125%;letter-spacing: normal;text-align: left;"> <strong><span style="font-size:18px">A: By Joran Slane Oppelt</span></strong></h3> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><img height="100" style="border: 0px;width: 125px;height: 100px;margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px;float: left;outline: none;text-decoration: none;-ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic;" width="125" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/b51b9cf441b059bb232418480/images/3b1f79c6-0ea…"></p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Dear Yadidya,</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">As you know, infidelity is not an issue or behavior restricted to progressives. Liberals cheat, conservatives cheat, Baptists cheat, Mormons cheat. Both men and women cheat. It’s a human behavior and it’s all too common. <em>Sex at Dawn </em>authors Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá even go so far as to say that it’s normal. In their book, they investigate whether the idea of monogamy really does come “natural” to our species. “Marriage isn't about sex,” they say. “It's about things that are much deeper and more lasting than sex, especially if you have children. And the American insistence on mixing love and sex and expecting passion to last forever is leading to great suffering that we think is tragic and unnecessary.” Yadidya, I don’t know anything about your marital situation or your religious beliefs. But, if it’s important (or possible) to salvage the relationship, you’ll need to find ways to cope with the inevitable denial, anger and self-doubt that can potentially eat away at your soul and your ability to turn toward each other and return to a place of love. This may mean regularly talking to your partner about what you’re feeling. It may mean seeking a therapist for yourself or a counselor for the both of you. If you believe that infidelity is a transgression that goes beyond human law (it is illegal in some states), then there may be deeper work for you to do or you may (in any case) choose to separate or divorce. The fact that your partner (I’m assuming you are asking for yourself, and not a friend) has confessed to their infidelity means that they are not willing to live in denial and want to live in truth with you. This does not mean the act is forgotten. It means you have the opportunity to renew your spiritual covenant and reset some mutual boundaries. As a Christian (progressive or not), forgiveness -- the power and ability to release bitterness and anger -- is a divine attribute. The word “forgive” is mentioned in the Bible 95 times, including “Forgive as the Lord forgave you” (Colossians 3:13) and in the way Jesus himself instructed us to pray (“Forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors”). What I can tell you is that forgiveness has real and lasting power. With all of the lenses, maps and metaphors at our disposal, sometimes we neglect to show up in the very real territory of relationship. Sometimes we cling too tightly to scripture or law or expectations. And the capacity for empathy, compassion, insight and understanding might be the real advantage that you wield as a Progressive Christian. No matter what you decide to do, I only ask that you begin by aiming that forgiveness straight into your own heart and know that you are loved. ~ Joran Slane Oppelt Click <a target="_blank" style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #2BAADF;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf44…">here </a>to read and share online </p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><strong>About the Author</strong> Joran Slane Oppelt Joran Slane Oppelt is an international speaker, author, interfaith minister, life coach and award-winning producer and singer/songwriter. He is the owner of the Metta Center of St. Petersburg and founder of Integral Church – an interfaith and interspiritual organization in Tampa Bay committed to “transformative practice, community service and religious literacy.” Joran is the author of Sentences, The Mountain and the Snow and co-author of Order of the Sacred Earth (with Matthew Fox), Integral Church: A Handbook for New Spiritual Communities and Transform Your Life: Expert Advice, Practical Tools, and Personal Stories. He serves as President of Interfaith Tampa Bay and has spoken around the world about spirituality and the innovation of religion.</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">He has presented at South by Southwest in Austin, TX; Building the New World Conference in Radford, VA; Parliament of the World’s Religions in Salt Lake City; Embrace Festival in Portland, OR and Integral European Conference in Siófok, Hungary.</p> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" class="aolmail_mcnDividerBlock" style="min-width: 100%;border-collapse: collapse;mso-table-lspace: 0pt;mso-table-rspace: 0pt;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; !important;"> <tbody class="aolmail_mcnDividerBlockOuter"> <tr> <td class="aolmail_mcnDividerBlockInner" style="min-width: 100%;padding: 10px 18px;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> <table class="aolmail_mcnDividerContent" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" style="min-width: 100%;border-top: 5px solid #694F0D;border-collapse: collapse;mso-table-lspace: 0pt;mso-table-rspace: 0pt;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> <tbody><tr> <td style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> <span></span> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" class="aolmail_mcnTextBlock" style="min-width: 100%;border-collapse: collapse;mso-table-lspace: 0pt;mso-table-rspace: 0pt;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> <tbody class="aolmail_mcnTextBlockOuter"> <tr> <td valign="top" class="aolmail_mcnTextBlockInner" style="padding-top: 9px;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> <table align="left" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="max-width: 100%;min-width: 100%;border-collapse: collapse;mso-table-lspace: 0pt;mso-table-rspace: 0pt;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;" width="100%" class="aolmail_mcnTextContentContainer"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top" class="aolmail_mcnTextContent" style="padding-top: 0;padding-right: 18px;padding-bottom: 9px;padding-left: 18px;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;word-break: break-word;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"> <h1 style="text-align: center;display: block;margin: 0;padding: 0;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 26px;font-style: normal;font-weight: bold;line-height: 125%;letter-spacing: normal;">Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited</h1> <h3 style="text-align: center;display: block;margin: 0;padding: 0;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 20px;font-style: normal;font-weight: bold;line-height: 125%;letter-spacing: normal;"> Is History Repeating Itself?</h3> Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong on October 12, 2005 <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><img align="left" height="132" style="border: 0px;width: 125px;height: 132px;margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px;outline: none;text-decoration: none;-ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic;" width="125" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/b51b9cf441b059bb232418480/images/84fbd945-363…"> “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” These words of philosopher George Santayana are terrifyingly true. Recently, I have looked again at what happened to the Jews in Christian Europe in the 1930s and 1940s and compared that to what I believe is happening today to homosexual people in the United States. The similarities are both eerie and frightening. Lest we prove guilty of not learning from history, allow me to recall that anti-Semitic horror from the last century for the sake of comparison.</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">The latent hostility against the Jews began to be stoked by Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf, which was written during the mid-twenties while he was in prison. The historic roots of this hostility, however, had been nurtured by years of Christian rhetoric that had portrayed Jews as Christ-killers and as the cause of such catastrophes as the Bubonic Plague. Killing Jews had been legitimatized by the Vatican during the Crusades and it was fed by the writings of Martin Luther during the Reformation. In each instance the Jews were defined as the cause of all the trouble the ruling authorities were experiencing. When Hitler’s political star began to rise this killing prejudice was newly affirmed. The Pope, Pius XII, saw nothing in Hitler’s attitude that he deemed worthy of condemnation. Instead he offered the Fuhrer his stamp of approval. The German Protestant Church leadership, with one or two notable exceptions, was also generally silent. Political leaders in the United States, Great Britain and Canada acted so as to lead others to think that this German behavior was not inappropriate. Hitler’s anti-Semitic rhetoric was unchallenged allowing a specific group of people to be regarded as worthy of persecution.</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Today, a similar drumbeat of hostility is being loosed in our world against a different victim. Listen to the words that emanate from high places regarding gay and lesbian people in our time and compare it with the hostility spoken against the Jews during the 1930s in Nazi Germany. There is much to suggest that attacks against gay and lesbian people today serve the same political purposes that attacks on Jews served in that earlier time. Prejudice at its core is a diversionary tactic to shift responsibility toward an identifiable enemy. Hitler blamed the depression on “Jewish bankers.” His inability to bring about an alliance with Great Britain, which in his mind made World War II inevitable, was, he said, the result of an “international Jewish conspiracy.” Political and religious leaders in America today blame homosexual people for the breakdown in family values, the rising divorce rate and the decline of public morality. Having a designated scapegoat always makes hostility seem legitimate. I shudder at the direction in which I see my nation and the world walking.</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">The episode that for me ignited these fears in an incontrovertible way came with the recent announcement from the Vatican that the new Pope Benedict XVI, the former grand inquisitor Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was planning to make the signature issue of his pontificate the purging of all gay candidates studying for the Catholic priesthood. The directive indicated that this purge was to be total. The Pope, like Hitler, is acting on a long history of prejudice that has also been justified by the dominant voices in the Christian Church. His own church has consistently called homosexuality “deviant, unnatural and depraved.” In our slang homosexuals are called ‘faggots,’ the name of the stick used to ignite the fires that burned numbers of homosexuals at the stake. Roman bishops do not allow homosexual groups like ‘Dignity’ to meet in their churches. Yet these prelates know full well that a major percentage of their clergy, including bishops and cardinals are in fact gay men. In this new campaign for public favor, however, the Vatican is suggesting that it matters not that gay men seeking ordination live celibate lives, or even lives of exemplary holiness. If they are homosexual, they are to be purged. One’s behavior is no longer to be the basis of judgment. People are now to be removed because of who they are. That was also Hitler’s rule. ‘Jewish,’ for Hitler, meant anyone who had at least two Jewish grandparents, or one Jewish parent. If a gentile married a Jew he or she was also to be treated like a Jew. Hitler’s purge, like Benedict XVI’s, was not about one’s doing; it was about one’s being. The very being of a homosexual person is deemed to be sufficiently evil as to warrant action, for homosexuals are assumed to infect the purity of the Catholic faith like Jews were thought to infect the purity of the Aryan race.</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Interestingly enough this Vatican Report stated that those already ordained would not be subject to this purge. That was to be avoided since the scandalous revelations would be a public relations disaster. The goal of cleansing the ordained ranks of homosexuals was thus only to start at the entry level. This means that the task of freeing the priesthood of its homosexual pollution, as they regard it, would require a time span of 50 years or so. In this manner the Pope promised that the “stench of homosexuality” would ultimately be removed from “the citadels of holiness.”</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Church leaders have blamed the recent publicity regarding the abuse of children by priests, rather conveniently it seems to me, on homosexual clergy, as if homosexuality and pedophilia were somehow the same. There is absolutely no evidence to support that assertion. In fact, 90% of the child abuse in America takes place in the family of the abused child and it is overwhelmingly heterosexual in nature not homosexual. So this new anti-gay initiative is little more than a campaign to clear the church’s image. That hardly has integrity. I recall that the hierarchy met this child abuse crisis not with honesty but with massive cover-ups. The greatest culprit in this cover-up was Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, who in an overt act of duplicity was transferred to a place of honor in Rome, thus removing him from the possibility of being brought to trial and having to testify under oath.</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">When attacking homosexuals becomes an acceptable thing to do then we have surely entered a dangerous period of history. Yet the Vatican is only one of the symptoms of this impending ‘Dark Age.’ During the last presidential campaign, the incumbent President of the United States, George W. Bush, and his top political advisor Karl Rove, managed to exacerbate the fears of the people of this land about the threat that homosexuality is supposed to bring to the institution of marriage. By placing this issue on the ballots of eleven states, Bush and Rove called out the mob spirit and blatantly encouraged America’s growing homophobia. It proved to be a winning tactic. Once the seeds of hostility are sown and the victim identified, however, the result is inevitable. America’s homosexual population has been, in effect, nominated to play that role. When Mr. Bush called for an amendment to the Constitution to ban gay marriage, he sought to institutionalize this prejudice. If hating or fearing homosexuals is proper for the Pope and the President then it quickly becomes proper for all. One has only to look and listen as this destructiveness, now unleashed, roams the land relatively unchallenged.</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Television evangelist, Jerry Falwell, has already suggested that the disaster of 9/11 was an act of divine punishment because America had begun to tolerate homosexuals. His not so subtle message is that if you do not want to be attacked by terrorists you must oppress homosexuals. Not to be outdone by his fellow Virginian, Pat Robertson was busy denying that he had said that the hurricane was divine punishment on New Orleans because it is the hometown of lesbian comedian, Ellen DeGeneres. In his denial, however, he repeated the same mentality by stating that God was planning an earthquake for Hollywood, where the one he calls Ellen ‘Degenerate’ now lives. It was bizarre thinking, but both of these men have convinced themselves that God hates everything that they hate. That seems easy in today’s world of religion</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">The Cardinal Archbishop of Sydney, George Pell, has stated that “Homosexuality is a greater health hazard than smoking,” and has let it be known that homosexuals and their sympathizers are not welcome to receive communion at Catholic altars in Australia. At the funeral in Wyoming of a murdered gay man, Matthew Shepard, picketers organized by a Baptist preacher from Topeka, Kansas, carried a placard that read, “God said fags should die (Leviticus 20).” Does everyone not yet understand that when religious or political voices suggest that prejudice is both legitimate and blessed by God, they are opening this society to violence?</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Adding to the weight of our cultural homophobia today are the voices of third world Christian leaders who, far more than is publicly acknowledged, are aided and abetted by right wing sources of money in America. Finally, there are the waffling main line Christian leaders, best symbolized by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who cannot bring himself to confront this blatant prejudice that impacts his church because he believes that “Church unity” is more important than countering this rising evil spirit. People simply do not seem to realize that if hostility, prejudice or persecution against any person on the basis of that person’s being is considered legitimate today, then no one is safe tomorrow. History can repeat itself.</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">One German Lutheran pastor, Martin Niemoeller, who did oppose Hitler, wrote these words, which I believe, are as true for us today as they were in the 1930’s:</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">“First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out because I was not a communist. Then they came for the socialists and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me.”</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">I intend to speak out against this rising tide of homophobia in both the church and the world today. Silence constitutes the betrayal of all that I hold sacred. I hope you will also join in this public witness.</p> <p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">~ John Shelby Spong</p> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" class="aolmail_mcnDividerBlock" style="min-width: 100%;border-collapse: collapse;mso-table-lspace: 0pt;mso-table-rspace: 0pt;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; !important;"> <tbody class="aolmail_mcnDividerBlockOuter"> <tr> <td class="aolmail_mcnDividerBlockInner" style="min-width: 100%;padding: 10px 18px;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> <table class="aolmail_mcnDividerContent" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" style="min-width: 100%;border-top: 5px solid #694F0D;border-collapse: collapse;mso-table-lspace: 0pt;mso-table-rspace: 0pt;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> <tbody><tr> <td style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> <span></span> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" class="aolmail_mcnTextBlock" style="min-width: 100%;border-collapse: collapse;mso-table-lspace: 0pt;mso-table-rspace: 0pt;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> <tbody class="aolmail_mcnTextBlockOuter"> <tr> <td valign="top" class="aolmail_mcnTextBlockInner" style="padding-top: 9px;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> <table align="left" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="max-width: 100%;min-width: 100%;border-collapse: collapse;mso-table-lspace: 0pt;mso-table-rspace: 0pt;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;" width="100%" class="aolmail_mcnTextContentContainer"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top" class="aolmail_mcnTextContent" style="padding-top: 0;padding-right: 18px;padding-bottom: 9px;padding-left: 18px;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;word-break: break-word;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"> <h1 class="aolmail_null" style="text-align: center;display: block;margin: 0;padding: 0;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 26px;font-style: normal;font-weight: bold;line-height: 125%;letter-spacing: normal;">Announcements</h1> <table align="left" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="200" style="border-collapse: collapse;mso-table-lspace: 0pt;mso-table-rspace: 0pt;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> <tbody> <tr> <td align="left" valign="top" style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"><a target="_blank" style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #2BAADF;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf44…"><img alt="" width="180" style="border: 0;height: auto !important;outline: none;text-decoration: none;-ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic;" src="https://ci4.googleusercontent.com/proxy/Y7fXd8gZXKqK1j3dTmLlN7S0mDJtBAgIFTT…"></a></td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <table align="right" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="346" style="border-collapse: collapse;mso-table-lspace: 0pt;mso-table-rspace: 0pt;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> <tbody> <tr> <td valign="top" style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> <h2 style="display: block;margin: 0;padding: 0;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 22px;font-style: normal;font-weight: bold;line-height: 125%;letter-spacing: normal;text-align: left;"> Events and Updates</h2> <strong><span style="font-size:18px">Christianity Through Its Scriptures</span> Starting July 2nd - Free and Online from Harvard University</strong> Learn about Christianity through a study of its sacred scriptures. 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6/21/18, Progressing Spirit: Oppelt: East of Eden: Understanding the Creation Story; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 21 Jun '18

21 Jun '18

View this email in your browser East of Eden Essay by Joran Slane Oppelt June 21, 2018 The biblical creation story — Adam, Eve, the garden, the serpent, the tree, the fall — contains the seeds of many of life’s greatest mysteries. Why are we here? How did we come to be? What is our relationship to the force that created us? What is our relationship to the environment and to the other creatures on Earth? Does man exercise free will? Why is life full of suffering? Where is the line between right and wrong, guilt and innocence, damnation and salvation? For Jews and Christians, these questions (and more) are first posed in that short, simple story. In this story, we find God creating man and woman and giving them dominion over all living creatures, Adam (the first man) giving names to those creatures, God forbidding them to eat from the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil,” Eve (the first woman) being teased and tempted by a serpent, Eve eating of the fruit of the Tree, sharing the fruit with Adam, Adam and Eve realizing their nakedness and being exiled from the garden paradise known as Eden. The story has long been used to justify man’s separateness or falling away from God. This violation of God’s command has come to be known as “original sin.” But, the idea of “original sin” isn’t mentioned anywhere in The Bible. In fact, the word “sin” isn’t mentioned until the fourth chapter of Genesis. According to Thomas Matus, it was St. Augustine of Hippo that in the 3rd century “conceived of original sin as original guilt, transmitted at conception to each human individual. Hence, all of humanity is a massa damnata, an accursed mass, redeemed by Christ but still subject to sin.”* Original sin is not a theme found anywhere in the origins of Christianity. It was invented by the church (as early as the 2nd century) as a mechanism toward salvation through Christ — or more specifically, through the church. Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox famously called for the eradication of “original sin” in his pioneering work, Original Blessing (1983). This book represented his effort to “deconstruct and reconstruct our inherited religious tradition of the West: to deconstruct the woefully anthropocentric and pessimistic Fall/Redemption religion that begins with ‘original sin’ and to reconstruct religion with the more ancient and empowering tradition of creation spirituality that begins with ‘original goodness.’” Modern contemplative, Brother David Steindl-Rast explains it this way: “When an educated person in the West asks me, ‘What is original sin?’ I answer that it is the Christian term for the universal phenomenon the Buddhists call dukkha. The original meaning of that term refers to a wheel that grinds on its axle: Something is out of order.” Even the word “sin” in the West has commonly meant “evil” or “wickedness” (again, Augustine), but the translation of the original words in Hebrew (hata) and Greek (hamartia) find their origins in archery and actually mean something closer to “missing the mark.” So, if the creation story doesn’t instruct us (or give us a concrete lesson) in “original sin,” what does it tell us? In his new book, Unbelievable: Why Neither Ancient Creeds Nor the Reformation Can Produce a Living Faith Today, Bishop John Shelby Spong takes a discerning look at twelve aspects (or theses) of the Christian faith. One of these is the concept of “original sin” and the story of the Garden of Eden found in Genesis 2-3. Spong reads the story of the fall through the lens of reason to sometimes comical effect. The scene where Adam is wearing his newly crafted “fig leaf apron” — playing the first-ever game of “hide and seek” while cowering in the bushes from an omniscient God — is particularly ridiculous. God metes out punishment to these conspiring parties as a parent would discipline his children. Man’s punishment for his transgression is a destiny of “painful toil” and working on the earth, a lifetime of “thorns and thistles” in order that he may eat the “food and plants from the field.” Woman’s punishment is to endure “painful labor” during childbirth. The serpent’s punishment is to crawl on its belly and “eat dust” all the days of its life. Spong paints this scene with all the projection, scapegoating and finger-pointing of a family dinner gone awry. He skewers and deconstructs the elements of this tale until there’s hardly anything left worth examining or redeeming. And, this is one of the criticisms of Spong’s recent book. That it’s not “prescriptive.” If we’re not to read this myth literally — this story that contains the seeds of so many unanswered and contested questions — then how are we to read it? In The Power of Myth (1991), Joseph Campbell writes that these stories (creation tales and other tales from folklore) are “clues to the spiritual potentialities of the human life.” Here are some of the many lenses through which we might read the biblical creation story: Mythologically What meaning can be found in the characters and their journey out of the garden? Does their nakedness come from a sense of shame or a feeling of other-ness? Does the garden represent the sacred time before creation or the border between sacred time and world time — the cycle of birth and death? Campbell once spoke of an Indonesian legend of a tribe that danced around a fire. All was paradise until one of the dancers was trampled and died. He was buried and from where he was buried, a plant grew. The tribe then had to split their time between dancing and farming, thus moving from sacred time into the cycle of time, birth and death. Cosmologically What are the origins of man and our world? Is the moment when God breathes life and light into the world (Genesis 1) what we now know as the Big Bang? Does the creation of man represent his appearance (or evolution) on Earth? Does his exit from the garden paradise (Genesis 2) represent the moment that humanity became self-conscious (homo sapiens)? Gnostically What is the secret wisdom (fruit) that is hidden (hanging) in plain sight? What is the knowledge of good and evil, and why would the serpent encourage Eve to choose this fruit rather than that of eternal life? Who is this angel (the first, we are to presume) with the flaming sword that guards the eastern gate of Eden? Is the flaming (illuminated) sword a symbol for the understanding (illumination) that we seek beyond the garden wall? Sexually Is it a coincidence that the snake — a phallic creature who sheds its skin and is a long-held symbol of mystery and rebirth — is the one that tempts and confronts Eve about partaking in the fruit of the tree? Is it a coincidence, then, that her punishment has to do with birth itself and foreshadows her own fruitfulness? Ecologically If Eden is the garden and man the gardener, then what is our role in caring for the planet? What does it mean to have dominion over all living creatures? Where is the cycle of reaping and harvesting to be found in the 21st century? What is our relationship (degree of freedom and responsibility) to creation? Joni Mitchell said, “We’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.” Is this drive to return necessary because we have placed ourselves above nature? Archetypally Who is the Adam in us — the sometimes naive and altruistic hard worker? Who is the Eve — the curious and bold explorer of her own backyard? Who is the serpent — the sly trickster shouting “YOLO!” and encouraging his friends to taste the forbidden fruit? Who is God — the equalizing and balancing force who is forced to referee the game? Shamanically What is the animal medicine found in the snake’s advice to Eve? What role do the trees play in this garden cosmology? Can they be likened to the World Tree in shamanic/indigenous traditions (the Axis Mundi or “Immovable Spot”)? In punishing the serpent, what animal medicine might Grandfather/Creator be denying man? These are but a few of the various ways we may read and re-read the creation stories found in The Bible. And, as an integralist, I encourage you to generously apply all of these lenses to the reading. Now, I ask you: How else might you (and your family) read this scripture? What meaning might we have to unpack 2,000 years later from these mere 2,000 words found in Genesis 1-3? How is our future understanding of our origin story different from the story we’ve been telling each other for centuries? And, is it a story that we can find ourselves (and each other) inside of? ~ Joran Slane Oppelt Click here to read online and to share your thoughts About the Author Joran Slane Oppelt is an international speaker, author, interfaith minister, life coach and award-winning producer and singer/songwriter. He is the owner of the Metta Center of St. Petersburg and founder of Integral Church – an interfaith and interspiritual organization in Tampa Bay committed to “transformative practice, community service and religious literacy.” Joran is the author of Sentences, The Mountain and the Snow and co-author of Order of the Sacred Earth (with Matthew Fox), Integral Church: A Handbook for New Spiritual Communities and Transform Your Life: Expert Advice, Practical Tools, and Personal Stories. He serves as President of Interfaith Tampa Bay and has spoken around the world about spirituality and the innovation of religion. He has presented at South by Southwest in Austin, TX; Building the New World Conference in Radford, VA; Parliament of the World’s Religions in Salt Lake City; Embrace Festival in Portland, OR and Integral European Conference in Siófok, Hungary. ------------------------------------------------------ * Belonging to the Universe, Fritjof Capra and David Steindl-Rast with Thomas Matus (HarperCollins, 1991) ** Photos by R. Crumb Question & Answer Q: By Glenda Poole I was raised in the Bible Belt as a Southern Baptist (shudder). I have attended may different types of churches in my life and have always likened myself to being spiritual instead of religious. I recently discovered John Shelby Spong, and have been devouring his books which have answered many of the questions and doubts that have come to my mind over the years. This web site has opened my mind and made me realize I am not alone in my beliefs and doubts. Now having come this far, I realize because of my strict religious upbringing my viewpoints would fall on deaf ears with my family and friends here in the south. This is how they were raised and they would not dare step out of that box. While everything I am reading rings true, I am having a deep personal crisis moving forward from a life of dependent prayer on a God in Heaven. Does that make sense? I have always struggled with the judgement of so called Christians, the suffering of the Jews during the Holocaust, and the fact that people believe that because they are special God favors them. So, why am I going through withdrawal from something that I have suspected for a long time? A: By Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D. Dear Glenda One of our deepest fears as human beings is that of being alone. Even if what matters most to our hearts falls upon “deaf ears,” if those ears belong to family and friends, our attachment runs deep – to the quick, really. Even if we suspect that something is no longer true we can find ourselves clinging to it deep within, because we feel it keeps us connected and that without it, however much pain it might bring us, we would be alone. I acknowledge and respect the courage to question, to wonder, and to follow the truth as you experience it in your own life. In reality, if we love the truth (not truth in an abstract sense, but the in the sense of what is authentic in our personal experience) it has its costs. And yet there is nothing quite as sweet as coming to dwell freely and solidly, without defense, in in the land of our own soul. There is nothing quite as sacred as tending to the questions that matter most to your heart, mind, and body. “Withdrawal” is such an exquisitely accurate description, because there is an addictive quality to our desire, our need, for the approval of others, especially when those others are family, friends, church and society. Be kind to yourself, for you are on the only journey that truly matters – the journey of becoming an authentic human being and it is “the road less travelled.” Find others who share your passion for discovery and questioning. And, perhaps the “crisis” is an invitation to greater intimacy with yourself, your longings, your desires, your unique journey. What a tremendous gift to be at rest when alone with your own soul, regardless of what others think or feel or, especially, judge as best. ~Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D. Click here to read and share online About the Author Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D. is an Episcopal priest, a student of the Diamond Approach for over a decade, as well as a certified teacher of the Enneagram in the Narrative Tradition. He is the founder of the Healing Arts Center of St. Paul’s Church in Marquette, Michigan, and the author of five books, including “I Have Called You Friends“, “Holding Beauty in My Soul’s Arms“, and “My Heart is a Raging Volcano of Love for You” and “Beyond my Wants, Beyond my Fears: The Soul’s Journey into the Heartland“. Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited Born Gay! Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong on September 28, 2005 A new book co-authored by Dr. Qazi Rahman, a lecturer in psychobiology at the University of East London and Dr. Glenn Wilson, a member of the faculty of the University of London, has just been published in the United . It was reviewed in The Guardian, one of the United Kingdom’s four major daily newspapers last month. Entitled, “Born Gay,” this book lays out in a quite public way the consensus today of both the scientific and the medical communities in their attempt to understand homosexuality. In a nutshell, these authors state the widely accepted conclusions that homosexuality is not something “that can be caught, like ‘flu’,” it cannot be “learned from people who make it look really cool and fun like those chaps on ‘Queer Eye for the Straight Guy‘ (a British sitcom) and it has nothing to do with smothering mothers and distant fathers.” All of that, they assert, has now fallen by the wayside. Those ideas are now completely dismissed in intellectual circles. Drs. Rahman and Wilson write: “It is quite clear now that homosexuality in gay men and lesbians is caused by biological factors.” This conclusion, they assert, is “so widely accepted” in academic circles that many colleagues asked why they had bothered to write this book at all. “They tell us,” they said in the Guardian interview, “that all we are doing is pointing out what everyone already knows.” Everyone, that is, who is not homophobic and therefore not open to the data that so deeply and significantly challenges this ancient, deeply held emotional prejudice. I welcome this book precisely because it is not written for the academic world of science and medicine, where this issue is no longer debated. Rather, it is written specifically for those people who still operate out of an uninformed definition of homosexuality as either a sickness for a deviant, sinful, unnatural and depraved choice. More importantly, it is written for those who somehow think that this issue was settled when the Book of Leviticus was written in the sixth century before the Common Era or by St. Paul, who wrote between 50 and 64 C.E. It is written to resource the churches of the world that are increasingly seen as the bastions of an undying homophobia, which causes them to be at war over an issue that outside those churches has largely been settled. It is written to place in the clear relief of its own ongoing ignorance the embarrassing rhetoric that still emanates from people like Benedict XVI, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and their passionate acolytes of the Religious Right in America. Negative words also come from Christian leaders in the third world who try to cover their obviously uninformed opinions with the charge of racism when those opinions are rejected as simply ignorant. The evidence is so clear. Homosexuality, just like heterosexuality, is morally neutral. Both can be lived out in holiness or in degradation. Both are ‘givens’ not ‘chosens.’ The only “sin” of homosexual people is that they are born with a sexual orientation different from the majority. Dr. Rahman says that the impetus for this book was that “over the last decade or so, there has been an explosion of work on this subject and we felt that no one had reviewed it all or laid it down in a way that was accessible to non-academics.” Noting that although the scientific community is convinced about the biological causes of homosexuality, some parts of the wider world still seem to have doubts. Perhaps the fact is that this knowledge has simply not been made accessible to them. This book then addresses the need to educate the masses, revealing with clear and credible evidence that homosexuality is a natural minority expression of the spectrum of human sexuality. That insight alone has huge ramifications for social policy. This book exposes the claim that religious conversion and religious counseling can ‘cure’ people of homosexuality. Without equivocation, these authors state that the data offered to support such claims have been debunked and dismissed as the medical fraud that it has always been. We need to embrace the fact that fraud perpetrated in the name of religion is still fraud and should be treated as such. Those who attempt to practice medicine without a license should be charged, convicted and jailed. Rahman and Wilson believe that the reason for lingering confusion over this issue in our society comes not from the lack of scientific consensus that biology is the root of homosexuality, but rather because within that biological data, the determining factors are still debated. It is not genetic in the usual sense of being an inherited characteristic. Homosexual persons presumably have straight parents, and the children of homosexual couples are no more prone to be gay or lesbian than the children of anyone else. Dr. Rahman’s best guess at this moment is what he calls “the sponge model,” which he defines as the presence of genes that predispose a fetus toward an orientation different from the majority. These genes, he suggests, affect receptors in the brain causing the brain “to soak up testosterone like a sponge.” Admitting that this is just one hypothesis, Rahman believes, nonetheless, that it has promise and can be tested. This is why, he concludes, that “developmental biology and neurogenetics are so important in this field.” In the late 1980s, realizing that I knew almost nothing about sexual orientation except the unchallenged prejudices with which I had grown up, I looked for a place I could go to gain the necessary intellectual and medical background on this human phenomenon. I knew only that my ignorance and prejudice would make it all but impossible to be an effective bishop in the metropolitan New York area. My search led me to a member of the faculty of The Cornell School of Medicine in New York City. This man, whose name was Robert Lahita, had both a PhD and an MD degree. At that time he was working on the differences in the immune systems of men and women, an interest that had led him deeply into the science of the brain. What impressed me most then, and it is now verified by this new book, is that the idea that homosexuality could be adopted as a lifestyle of choice or that it was caused by some factor or experience in early childhood was totally and universally dismissed. No one on the medical faculty at Cornell saluted this idea. That fact alone changed for me the whole dynamic in the debate going on in the Church. For if sexual orientation is part of what we are rather than something some choose to do, then it must be related to in the same way that we have learned to relate to skin color, gender, left handedness and ethnicity. These things are neither good or bad, they simply are. To discriminate against a person because of who that person is, is the essence of racism, sexism and xenophobia. I was now coming to the awareness that it is also the essence of homophobia. It was the ‘given-ness’ of sexual orientation that produced in me the sea change in my own attitude. That is also what is happening in both church and society at this moment. A new understanding of homosexuality is colliding with a definition that is uninformed, prejudiced and dying. Dying prejudices are never revived and they are never re-installed. Indeed the fact that a prejudice is being debated is a sure sign that it is dying. The only question is how long will it take and how many people will be hurt before this prejudice takes its place in the graveyards of human history alongside other discarded discriminatory practices that have marked the human journey through history. The fact is that heterosexual people cannot recall the moment when they chose their sexual orientation. I, for one, can only remember that in my very early adolescence, I decided that girls were not obnoxious and that I desired their attention. This awakening was accompanied by behavioral changes that were thought of by my parents as both remarkable and noteworthy. I took baths more frequently, combed my hair, dressed better and even used deodorant! My mother observing this behavior said: “the sap has risen!” I had no idea what that meant either. Now I wonder why those of us who did not choose to be heterosexual have always assumed that homosexuals in fact did choose to be gay! I learned many things from my Cornell contacts. I learned that scientists believe that the percentage of homosexual persons in the general population is stable among all people, in all cultures and throughout all history. I learned that homosexual behavior is well documented in the animal kingdom today. I learned that the origin of all sexual orientation is believed to be connected with the presence or absence of the same realities described in Rahman and Wilson’s book. Somehow both the levels of testosterone and brain formation are factors. I learned that the division between male and female in nature is not nearly as well differentiated as we have always thought. All human life appears to start as female and it only develops masculine identity if and when the “y” chromosome kicks in, reshaping the developing fetus. Following my work with Dr. Lahita and the others at Cornell my mind has been clear on this issue. Discrimination against homosexual persons is as wrong as discrimination against people on the basis of race, gender or ethnicity. It has no place in the life of the Christian Church. I no longer even want to debate this issue in the various councils of the Church. It is for me a settled issue. It is time for people to adjust their ancient prejudices to new realities. This debate, for me is in the same category as the debate between evolution and creationism, whether the earth is flat or round and whether the sun revolves around the earth or vice versa. Some issues are simply settled. If the Church and its leaders from the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Pope to the evangelicals across the world don’t understand this, they reveal Christianity’s irrelevance. Church unity is a bogus smokescreen. A Church united in prejudice is not worthy of continued life. Politicians who do not understand this are either ignorant or irresponsible. There is no other choice. It is time to move both Church and State into the 21st century. ~ John Shelby Spong Announcements John Shelby Spong’s final book “Unbelievable” is now available! Why Christianity Is No Longer Believable – And How We Can Change That Five hundred years after Martin Luther and his Ninety-Five Theses ushered in the Reformation, bestselling author and controversial bishop and teacher John Shelby Spong delivers twelve forward-thinking theses to spark a new reformation to reinvigorate Christianity and ensure its future.

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6/21/18, Progressing Spirit: Oppelt: East of Eden: Understanding the Creation Story; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 21 Jun '18

21 Jun '18

View this email in your browser East of Eden Essay by Joran Slane Oppelt June 21, 2018 The biblical creation story — Adam, Eve, the garden, the serpent, the tree, the fall — contains the seeds of many of life’s greatest mysteries. Why are we here? How did we come to be? What is our relationship to the force that created us? What is our relationship to the environment and to the other creatures on Earth? Does man exercise free will? Why is life full of suffering? Where is the line between right and wrong, guilt and innocence, damnation and salvation? For Jews and Christians, these questions (and more) are first posed in that short, simple story. In this story, we find God creating man and woman and giving them dominion over all living creatures, Adam (the first man) giving names to those creatures, God forbidding them to eat from the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil,” Eve (the first woman) being teased and tempted by a serpent, Eve eating of the fruit of the Tree, sharing the fruit with Adam, Adam and Eve realizing their nakedness and being exiled from the garden paradise known as Eden. The story has long been used to justify man’s separateness or falling away from God. This violation of God’s command has come to be known as “original sin.” But, the idea of “original sin” isn’t mentioned anywhere in The Bible. In fact, the word “sin” isn’t mentioned until the fourth chapter of Genesis. According to Thomas Matus, it was St. Augustine of Hippo that in the 3rd century “conceived of original sin as original guilt, transmitted at conception to each human individual. Hence, all of humanity is a massa damnata, an accursed mass, redeemed by Christ but still subject to sin.”* Original sin is not a theme found anywhere in the origins of Christianity. It was invented by the church (as early as the 2nd century) as a mechanism toward salvation through Christ — or more specifically, through the church. Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox famously called for the eradication of “original sin” in his pioneering work, Original Blessing (1983). This book represented his effort to “deconstruct and reconstruct our inherited religious tradition of the West: to deconstruct the woefully anthropocentric and pessimistic Fall/Redemption religion that begins with ‘original sin’ and to reconstruct religion with the more ancient and empowering tradition of creation spirituality that begins with ‘original goodness.’” Modern contemplative, Brother David Steindl-Rast explains it this way: “When an educated person in the West asks me, ‘What is original sin?’ I answer that it is the Christian term for the universal phenomenon the Buddhists call dukkha. The original meaning of that term refers to a wheel that grinds on its axle: Something is out of order.” Even the word “sin” in the West has commonly meant “evil” or “wickedness” (again, Augustine), but the translation of the original words in Hebrew (hata) and Greek (hamartia) find their origins in archery and actually mean something closer to “missing the mark.” So, if the creation story doesn’t instruct us (or give us a concrete lesson) in “original sin,” what does it tell us? In his new book, Unbelievable: Why Neither Ancient Creeds Nor the Reformation Can Produce a Living Faith Today, Bishop John Shelby Spong takes a discerning look at twelve aspects (or theses) of the Christian faith. One of these is the concept of “original sin” and the story of the Garden of Eden found in Genesis 2-3. Spong reads the story of the fall through the lens of reason to sometimes comical effect. The scene where Adam is wearing his newly crafted “fig leaf apron” — playing the first-ever game of “hide and seek” while cowering in the bushes from an omniscient God — is particularly ridiculous. God metes out punishment to these conspiring parties as a parent would discipline his children. Man’s punishment for his transgression is a destiny of “painful toil” and working on the earth, a lifetime of “thorns and thistles” in order that he may eat the “food and plants from the field.” Woman’s punishment is to endure “painful labor” during childbirth. The serpent’s punishment is to crawl on its belly and “eat dust” all the days of its life. Spong paints this scene with all the projection, scapegoating and finger-pointing of a family dinner gone awry. He skewers and deconstructs the elements of this tale until there’s hardly anything left worth examining or redeeming. And, this is one of the criticisms of Spong’s recent book. That it’s not “prescriptive.” If we’re not to read this myth literally — this story that contains the seeds of so many unanswered and contested questions — then how are we to read it? In The Power of Myth (1991), Joseph Campbell writes that these stories (creation tales and other tales from folklore) are “clues to the spiritual potentialities of the human life.” Here are some of the many lenses through which we might read the biblical creation story: Mythologically What meaning can be found in the characters and their journey out of the garden? Does their nakedness come from a sense of shame or a feeling of other-ness? Does the garden represent the sacred time before creation or the border between sacred time and world time — the cycle of birth and death? Campbell once spoke of an Indonesian legend of a tribe that danced around a fire. All was paradise until one of the dancers was trampled and died. He was buried and from where he was buried, a plant grew. The tribe then had to split their time between dancing and farming, thus moving from sacred time into the cycle of time, birth and death. Cosmologically What are the origins of man and our world? Is the moment when God breathes life and light into the world (Genesis 1) what we now know as the Big Bang? Does the creation of man represent his appearance (or evolution) on Earth? Does his exit from the garden paradise (Genesis 2) represent the moment that humanity became self-conscious (homo sapiens)? Gnostically What is the secret wisdom (fruit) that is hidden (hanging) in plain sight? What is the knowledge of good and evil, and why would the serpent encourage Eve to choose this fruit rather than that of eternal life? Who is this angel (the first, we are to presume) with the flaming sword that guards the eastern gate of Eden? Is the flaming (illuminated) sword a symbol for the understanding (illumination) that we seek beyond the garden wall? Sexually Is it a coincidence that the snake — a phallic creature who sheds its skin and is a long-held symbol of mystery and rebirth — is the one that tempts and confronts Eve about partaking in the fruit of the tree? Is it a coincidence, then, that her punishment has to do with birth itself and foreshadows her own fruitfulness? Ecologically If Eden is the garden and man the gardener, then what is our role in caring for the planet? What does it mean to have dominion over all living creatures? Where is the cycle of reaping and harvesting to be found in the 21st century? What is our relationship (degree of freedom and responsibility) to creation? Joni Mitchell said, “We’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.” Is this drive to return necessary because we have placed ourselves above nature? Archetypally Who is the Adam in us — the sometimes naive and altruistic hard worker? Who is the Eve — the curious and bold explorer of her own backyard? Who is the serpent — the sly trickster shouting “YOLO!” and encouraging his friends to taste the forbidden fruit? Who is God — the equalizing and balancing force who is forced to referee the game? Shamanically What is the animal medicine found in the snake’s advice to Eve? What role do the trees play in this garden cosmology? Can they be likened to the World Tree in shamanic/indigenous traditions (the Axis Mundi or “Immovable Spot”)? In punishing the serpent, what animal medicine might Grandfather/Creator be denying man? These are but a few of the various ways we may read and re-read the creation stories found in The Bible. And, as an integralist, I encourage you to generously apply all of these lenses to the reading. Now, I ask you: How else might you (and your family) read this scripture? What meaning might we have to unpack 2,000 years later from these mere 2,000 words found in Genesis 1-3? How is our future understanding of our origin story different from the story we’ve been telling each other for centuries? And, is it a story that we can find ourselves (and each other) inside of? ~ Joran Slane Oppelt Click here to read online and to share your thoughts About the Author Joran Slane Oppelt is an international speaker, author, interfaith minister, life coach and award-winning producer and singer/songwriter. He is the owner of the Metta Center of St. Petersburg and founder of Integral Church – an interfaith and interspiritual organization in Tampa Bay committed to “transformative practice, community service and religious literacy.” Joran is the author of Sentences, The Mountain and the Snow and co-author of Order of the Sacred Earth (with Matthew Fox), Integral Church: A Handbook for New Spiritual Communities and Transform Your Life: Expert Advice, Practical Tools, and Personal Stories. He serves as President of Interfaith Tampa Bay and has spoken around the world about spirituality and the innovation of religion. He has presented at South by Southwest in Austin, TX; Building the New World Conference in Radford, VA; Parliament of the World’s Religions in Salt Lake City; Embrace Festival in Portland, OR and Integral European Conference in Siófok, Hungary. ------------------------------------------------------ * Belonging to the Universe, Fritjof Capra and David Steindl-Rast with Thomas Matus (HarperCollins, 1991) ** Photos by R. Crumb Question & Answer Q: By Glenda Poole I was raised in the Bible Belt as a Southern Baptist (shudder). I have attended may different types of churches in my life and have always likened myself to being spiritual instead of religious. I recently discovered John Shelby Spong, and have been devouring his books which have answered many of the questions and doubts that have come to my mind over the years. This web site has opened my mind and made me realize I am not alone in my beliefs and doubts. Now having come this far, I realize because of my strict religious upbringing my viewpoints would fall on deaf ears with my family and friends here in the south. This is how they were raised and they would not dare step out of that box. While everything I am reading rings true, I am having a deep personal crisis moving forward from a life of dependent prayer on a God in Heaven. Does that make sense? I have always struggled with the judgement of so called Christians, the suffering of the Jews during the Holocaust, and the fact that people believe that because they are special God favors them. So, why am I going through withdrawal from something that I have suspected for a long time? A: By Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D. Dear Glenda One of our deepest fears as human beings is that of being alone. Even if what matters most to our hearts falls upon “deaf ears,” if those ears belong to family and friends, our attachment runs deep – to the quick, really. Even if we suspect that something is no longer true we can find ourselves clinging to it deep within, because we feel it keeps us connected and that without it, however much pain it might bring us, we would be alone. I acknowledge and respect the courage to question, to wonder, and to follow the truth as you experience it in your own life. In reality, if we love the truth (not truth in an abstract sense, but the in the sense of what is authentic in our personal experience) it has its costs. And yet there is nothing quite as sweet as coming to dwell freely and solidly, without defense, in in the land of our own soul. There is nothing quite as sacred as tending to the questions that matter most to your heart, mind, and body. “Withdrawal” is such an exquisitely accurate description, because there is an addictive quality to our desire, our need, for the approval of others, especially when those others are family, friends, church and society. Be kind to yourself, for you are on the only journey that truly matters – the journey of becoming an authentic human being and it is “the road less travelled.” Find others who share your passion for discovery and questioning. And, perhaps the “crisis” is an invitation to greater intimacy with yourself, your longings, your desires, your unique journey. What a tremendous gift to be at rest when alone with your own soul, regardless of what others think or feel or, especially, judge as best. ~Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D. Click here to read and share online About the Author Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D. is an Episcopal priest, a student of the Diamond Approach for over a decade, as well as a certified teacher of the Enneagram in the Narrative Tradition. He is the founder of the Healing Arts Center of St. Paul’s Church in Marquette, Michigan, and the author of five books, including “I Have Called You Friends“, “Holding Beauty in My Soul’s Arms“, and “My Heart is a Raging Volcano of Love for You” and “Beyond my Wants, Beyond my Fears: The Soul’s Journey into the Heartland“. Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited Born Gay! Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong on September 28, 2005 A new book co-authored by Dr. Qazi Rahman, a lecturer in psychobiology at the University of East London and Dr. Glenn Wilson, a member of the faculty of the University of London, has just been published in the United . It was reviewed in The Guardian, one of the United Kingdom’s four major daily newspapers last month. Entitled, “Born Gay,” this book lays out in a quite public way the consensus today of both the scientific and the medical communities in their attempt to understand homosexuality. In a nutshell, these authors state the widely accepted conclusions that homosexuality is not something “that can be caught, like ‘flu’,” it cannot be “learned from people who make it look really cool and fun like those chaps on ‘Queer Eye for the Straight Guy‘ (a British sitcom) and it has nothing to do with smothering mothers and distant fathers.” All of that, they assert, has now fallen by the wayside. Those ideas are now completely dismissed in intellectual circles. Drs. Rahman and Wilson write: “It is quite clear now that homosexuality in gay men and lesbians is caused by biological factors.” This conclusion, they assert, is “so widely accepted” in academic circles that many colleagues asked why they had bothered to write this book at all. “They tell us,” they said in the Guardian interview, “that all we are doing is pointing out what everyone already knows.” Everyone, that is, who is not homophobic and therefore not open to the data that so deeply and significantly challenges this ancient, deeply held emotional prejudice. I welcome this book precisely because it is not written for the academic world of science and medicine, where this issue is no longer debated. Rather, it is written specifically for those people who still operate out of an uninformed definition of homosexuality as either a sickness for a deviant, sinful, unnatural and depraved choice. More importantly, it is written for those who somehow think that this issue was settled when the Book of Leviticus was written in the sixth century before the Common Era or by St. Paul, who wrote between 50 and 64 C.E. It is written to resource the churches of the world that are increasingly seen as the bastions of an undying homophobia, which causes them to be at war over an issue that outside those churches has largely been settled. It is written to place in the clear relief of its own ongoing ignorance the embarrassing rhetoric that still emanates from people like Benedict XVI, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and their passionate acolytes of the Religious Right in America. Negative words also come from Christian leaders in the third world who try to cover their obviously uninformed opinions with the charge of racism when those opinions are rejected as simply ignorant. The evidence is so clear. Homosexuality, just like heterosexuality, is morally neutral. Both can be lived out in holiness or in degradation. Both are ‘givens’ not ‘chosens.’ The only “sin” of homosexual people is that they are born with a sexual orientation different from the majority. Dr. Rahman says that the impetus for this book was that “over the last decade or so, there has been an explosion of work on this subject and we felt that no one had reviewed it all or laid it down in a way that was accessible to non-academics.” Noting that although the scientific community is convinced about the biological causes of homosexuality, some parts of the wider world still seem to have doubts. Perhaps the fact is that this knowledge has simply not been made accessible to them. This book then addresses the need to educate the masses, revealing with clear and credible evidence that homosexuality is a natural minority expression of the spectrum of human sexuality. That insight alone has huge ramifications for social policy. This book exposes the claim that religious conversion and religious counseling can ‘cure’ people of homosexuality. Without equivocation, these authors state that the data offered to support such claims have been debunked and dismissed as the medical fraud that it has always been. We need to embrace the fact that fraud perpetrated in the name of religion is still fraud and should be treated as such. Those who attempt to practice medicine without a license should be charged, convicted and jailed. Rahman and Wilson believe that the reason for lingering confusion over this issue in our society comes not from the lack of scientific consensus that biology is the root of homosexuality, but rather because within that biological data, the determining factors are still debated. It is not genetic in the usual sense of being an inherited characteristic. Homosexual persons presumably have straight parents, and the children of homosexual couples are no more prone to be gay or lesbian than the children of anyone else. Dr. Rahman’s best guess at this moment is what he calls “the sponge model,” which he defines as the presence of genes that predispose a fetus toward an orientation different from the majority. These genes, he suggests, affect receptors in the brain causing the brain “to soak up testosterone like a sponge.” Admitting that this is just one hypothesis, Rahman believes, nonetheless, that it has promise and can be tested. This is why, he concludes, that “developmental biology and neurogenetics are so important in this field.” In the late 1980s, realizing that I knew almost nothing about sexual orientation except the unchallenged prejudices with which I had grown up, I looked for a place I could go to gain the necessary intellectual and medical background on this human phenomenon. I knew only that my ignorance and prejudice would make it all but impossible to be an effective bishop in the metropolitan New York area. My search led me to a member of the faculty of The Cornell School of Medicine in New York City. This man, whose name was Robert Lahita, had both a PhD and an MD degree. At that time he was working on the differences in the immune systems of men and women, an interest that had led him deeply into the science of the brain. What impressed me most then, and it is now verified by this new book, is that the idea that homosexuality could be adopted as a lifestyle of choice or that it was caused by some factor or experience in early childhood was totally and universally dismissed. No one on the medical faculty at Cornell saluted this idea. That fact alone changed for me the whole dynamic in the debate going on in the Church. For if sexual orientation is part of what we are rather than something some choose to do, then it must be related to in the same way that we have learned to relate to skin color, gender, left handedness and ethnicity. These things are neither good or bad, they simply are. To discriminate against a person because of who that person is, is the essence of racism, sexism and xenophobia. I was now coming to the awareness that it is also the essence of homophobia. It was the ‘given-ness’ of sexual orientation that produced in me the sea change in my own attitude. That is also what is happening in both church and society at this moment. A new understanding of homosexuality is colliding with a definition that is uninformed, prejudiced and dying. Dying prejudices are never revived and they are never re-installed. Indeed the fact that a prejudice is being debated is a sure sign that it is dying. The only question is how long will it take and how many people will be hurt before this prejudice takes its place in the graveyards of human history alongside other discarded discriminatory practices that have marked the human journey through history. The fact is that heterosexual people cannot recall the moment when they chose their sexual orientation. I, for one, can only remember that in my very early adolescence, I decided that girls were not obnoxious and that I desired their attention. This awakening was accompanied by behavioral changes that were thought of by my parents as both remarkable and noteworthy. I took baths more frequently, combed my hair, dressed better and even used deodorant! My mother observing this behavior said: “the sap has risen!” I had no idea what that meant either. Now I wonder why those of us who did not choose to be heterosexual have always assumed that homosexuals in fact did choose to be gay! I learned many things from my Cornell contacts. I learned that scientists believe that the percentage of homosexual persons in the general population is stable among all people, in all cultures and throughout all history. I learned that homosexual behavior is well documented in the animal kingdom today. I learned that the origin of all sexual orientation is believed to be connected with the presence or absence of the same realities described in Rahman and Wilson’s book. Somehow both the levels of testosterone and brain formation are factors. I learned that the division between male and female in nature is not nearly as well differentiated as we have always thought. All human life appears to start as female and it only develops masculine identity if and when the “y” chromosome kicks in, reshaping the developing fetus. Following my work with Dr. Lahita and the others at Cornell my mind has been clear on this issue. Discrimination against homosexual persons is as wrong as discrimination against people on the basis of race, gender or ethnicity. It has no place in the life of the Christian Church. I no longer even want to debate this issue in the various councils of the Church. It is for me a settled issue. It is time for people to adjust their ancient prejudices to new realities. This debate, for me is in the same category as the debate between evolution and creationism, whether the earth is flat or round and whether the sun revolves around the earth or vice versa. Some issues are simply settled. If the Church and its leaders from the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Pope to the evangelicals across the world don’t understand this, they reveal Christianity’s irrelevance. Church unity is a bogus smokescreen. A Church united in prejudice is not worthy of continued life. Politicians who do not understand this are either ignorant or irresponsible. There is no other choice. It is time to move both Church and State into the 21st century. ~ John Shelby Spong Announcements John Shelby Spong’s final book “Unbelievable” is now available! Why Christianity Is No Longer Believable – And How We Can Change That Five hundred years after Martin Luther and his Ninety-Five Theses ushered in the Reformation, bestselling author and controversial bishop and teacher John Shelby Spong delivers twelve forward-thinking theses to spark a new reformation to reinvigorate Christianity and ensure its future.

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Re: [Dialogue] from Cynthia Vance
by Del Morrill 19 Jun '18

19 Jun '18

At least we, as a nation, can be sure we have at least ONE friend left in this world! From: Dialogue <dialogue-bounces(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> On Behalf Of Cynthia Vance via Dialogue Sent: Sunday, June 17, 2018 9:45 AM To: Dialogue(a)wedgeblade.net; oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net Cc: Cynthia Vance <facilitationfla(a)aol.com> Subject: [Dialogue] from Cynthia Vance Toronto Star, June 13, 2018 editorial. I thought it was delightful. Cynthia Dear America: Well, isn’t this a fine (possibly soon-to-be-tariffed) pickle we’ve gotten ourselves into? We’re still reeling up here about your president’s whirlwind visit to Canada and its acrimonious aftermath. We feel a little like Dorothy Gale must have after that fabled tornado in Kansas. The landscape suddenly looks a whole lot different. But here’s the thing you need to know. As Sally Field might have put it were she Canadian: We like Americans. We really like you. Even now. There are hardly any of us who haven’t visited the United States, hardly any of us who haven’t been treated wonderfully there. All of us have a special part of America in our heart, whether it’s a beach in Maine, a ballpark in Pittsburgh or Boston, a winter respite in Florida. So we need you to know that we don’t hold all Americans responsible for the recent burst of rudeness and insult bestowed on our prime minister by your boorish president and his lackeys. We know that more of you voted for the other candidate than for him. Like many of you, we expect the distemper of current times to pass along with his temporary occupancy of the White House. We know that many of you are as appalled by him as we are. We understand Robert De Niro’s pithy outburst at the Tony Awards. And we’d be lying if we said some Canadians hadn’t beaten him to the same line. This week we’re particularly gratified by the many Americans who have written to Canadian newspapers to apologize and launch messages of goodwill with #thankyouCanada hashtags. We understand close relationships. Sometimes you hurt the ones closest to you. It’s usually the speech by a weird uncle, not a stranger, that messes up the wedding reception. Still, we won’t say it didn’t hurt to have your president treat old friends like enemies at that G7 summit meeting in Quebec, and then fly off to Singapore to embrace dubious strangers as bosom pals. What can it mean when an American president dismisses the Canadian leader as “weak” and “obnoxious” and then gushes over the North Korean dictator as “very smart” and “talented”? We get that the president’s job is to stand up for his own country’s interests. But it’d be nice if he extended as much courtesy to his closest allies as he does to those who threaten to incinerate his cities. But we’re trying hard to keep things in perspective. Trump will eventually be gone, and in any event our relationship is a lot bigger than any president, however loud and obnoxious. Our true relationship was demonstrated recently when so many of you contributed to help the Humboldt Broncos, the junior hockey team in Saskatchewan involved in the devastating crash that killed 16 people. Just as it was shown when we helped you out in Tehran in 1979. And again after 9/11 when the town of Gander took in scores of planes and thousands of passengers when American air space was closed. Go see Come From Away. We were happy to do it then. We’d do it again in a heartbeat. At this point, we understand the impulse some here might feel to stop going south, to stop buying American. But throwing snits is not really the Canadian way. We know we’ve gotten a bit cocky lately at Olympic Games and such. But usually we just smother folks in niceness. No, we’re not about to sulk up here in the attic while there’s a party going on downstairs. And as far as we can tell, there’s always something going on downstairs. Just remember, you’re always welcome here. In fact, we’d like to invite all of you to come on up this summer and renew acquaintances if you’ve visited before, or get to know us better if you haven’t. We think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. If you’ll excuse our spelling honour with a “u,” some French here and there, our dearth of gun shops, and the odd fact that we pay $40 for a case of beer and nothing for a heart transplant. We promise you a great time. Our weather’s turned. Our dollar’s low. With our diverse culture, there are few better places on Earth — no matter what country you cheer for — to watch the World Cup. We’ve got a world-class Pride Parade coming up and more than enough urban attractions and natural wonders to suit any taste. But let’s be clear. We’re comfortable with ourselves, our values and our role in the world. We’re not changing, any more than we expect you to. We’re used to hunkering down in some pretty inhospitable climates. So if our prime minister is going to a special place in hell, we’re going with him. We know you carry a big stick. The whole world knows that. We just thought your man Theodore Roosevelt had it right when he said that kind of clout was best wielded while speaking softly. So this is just to know we want our old friends back. See ya this summer. Yours truly, Canada. Sent from my iPad

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K
by jpatterson＠abbeynorth.ca 17 Jun '18

17 Jun '18

Sent from my iPad

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