- Dialogue - lists.wedgeblade.net

To Tim from Jaime
by wangzhimu2031＠aol.com 04 Oct '13

04 Oct '13

Tim, just once more. If I could be taken out of the digest lists but let the individual postings on OE get to me, that will serve me better - if this is still possible. Thanks. Jaime

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Archives Fall Sojourn Report
by Timothy Wegner 04 Oct '13

04 Oct '13

Marge Philbrook asked me to share the report of the Archives Fall Sojourn 2013 in Chicago with our mailing lists. The Unfolding Story of the Archives Project September 20, 2013 This is a brief look at an evolving, ongoing happening occurring right now. Some have called it the Living Archives Project since it is an initiative led by those who have personally participated in the remarkable work of the Order Ecumenical, Ecumenical Institute and Institute of Cultural Affairs that began in the early 1960s. The critical and foundational archival activity of preserving and cataloguing the documented history of this community reflected in its file cabinets has thankfully been going on for many years, with many colleagues having a hand in it. What is different today is the decision to get said in a fresh way what we’ve been about in the major arenas of our work. It’s those of us who were there, who actually lived it, having this one remarkable last chance to say, in our own words--as well as with the advantage of a forty or fifty year perspective--what it was that we set out to do and did, what our profound intent was in doing that stuff, and how and why we went about it as we did. It’s finding ways to make the treasure of our past comprehensible and accessible to a new generation of Those Who Care. This is pretty exciting stuff. Part of what’s exciting is the making sure that we--and that especially includes ICA today and in the future--don’t lose our stuff, that which made us the distinctive historical presence that we’ve been. For ICA to have a meaningful future vision, it needs a way for its current young staff to grasp something of its incredible past, not to replicate it, but to draw on its experience and learnings in creating its own future directions. Beyond that, what’s exciting is seeing the potential new relationships and partnerings that can emerge from making what we’ve done available to the world. The university-focused Service Learning project and the neighborhood Accelerate77 project both are “Living Archives” examples of the great worth of our past wisdom available in our ICA Global Archives. No longer is the “Archives” equivalent to musty boxes in the basement. We of the Fall Sojourn and the continuing Archives Team, based in Chicago or remote, have the power to not only build a bridge from the EI/ICA/O:E research and projects to the current projects of the ICA-USA and ICA International, but to catapult our wisdom into the world wide web of global communications. Our work in these Sojourns is constantly electrified by the white-hot heat of raw energy we all created together as a collegial body moving together to inspire and motivate thousands upon thousands with our programs based on our fundamental principles. Our singing, our sharing of stories and our reporting of new found treasures are actually just “re-discovered” wisdom and clarity that held us together and sustained us and others on the long march of rebuilding the Earth. Those core strategies are our fundamental covenant or manifesto: 1) Contextual Re-Education, 2) Structural Reformation, 3) Spirit Re-Motivation. We all confessed we took only “Baby Steps” in learning to be Word Press website designer/builders. Our two weeks went by in a flash and we admitted that the state of our published collections were really only “Starter Collections” which nevertheless foretell immense promise to synergize profound collaborations with all peoples doing social development with great energy today. The Global Archives Project team sees some new near-term developments that will help us communicate much more widely “the future of our past work” online in fresh ways. What are the fresh ways? We will be present online and face-to-face in 2 locations - Chicago and Minneapolis - for a YouTube channel broadcast. We are searching for short imaginal stories of our work for new collections like Imaginal Education, Facilitation Methods and Human Development Projects. We find inspiration from the outreach example of ICA-Ukraine in the way they broadcast 2 live programs a week to a community of interest of 8000 Ukrainian subscribers in both Russian and English. We intend to produce some live on-air prototype programs on your computer screen - like the Imaginal Education Collection broadcast done in September by Elise Packard and Kaze Gadway. For the Spring Sojourn 2014 we intend to create several intact partner teams to design and startup and bring online new Collections. Please subscribe to collections and stay tuned for some program prototypes. We have scheduled the Spring Sojourn for April 28 to May 9, 2014. Please consider joining the team. Colleagues can also participate in this ongoing project at any time either in Chicago or by working with a team remotely from home. Please contact margephilbrook(a)gmail.com for more information.

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10/03/13, Spong: An Adventure in Church Building in Springfield, Missouri
by Ellie Stock 03 Oct '13

03 Oct '13

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR An Adventure in Church Building in Springfield, Missouri Springfield is Missouri’s third largest city. Its approximately 160,000 people occupy space in the southwestern part of that state, where this city serves as the county seat of Greene County. Tradition, not fully documented, suggests that it got its name from an early settler, named James Wilson, who offered whiskey to anyone who would vote to name it after his hometown of Springfield, Massachusetts. Originally this part of Missouri was the heart of Native American land with members of the Delaware, Kickapoo and Cherokee tribes roaming, hunting and living in the area. The “Trail of Tears,” the forced relocation of Native Americans from the southern United States, passed through Springfield and the first transcontinental highway, the famous “Route 66” originated there. Southern Missouri was also a bloody battlefield in the pre-Civil War days as both North and South battled to tilt this state to its side of that conflict. Today, Missouri remains politically a battleground state, neither red nor blue. It is still the “show me” state, having produced the American president who most epitomized it, the man from Independence, Harry Truman. In 1906, in Springfield, three black men being held in the city jail were lynched. A gang of vigilantes broke into the jail, removed the prisoners and hanged them in a public square. Like so many lynchings, later data revealed that those three men were not guilty of the crimes of which the mob accused them. This episode nonetheless caused a general exodus of black people from the area. The last census reveals that the racial makeup of Springfield is 89% white, 4.1% black, 3.7% Latino and about 1% Native American. Springfield is a heartland city in a heartland state and as such, it reflects the Evangelical, Pentecostal, Protestant religion of the heartland. It is the national headquarters of a denomination called “The Assemblies of God,” which once counted Jimmy Swaggart among its stars! The four key doctrines of the Assemblies of God are baptism in the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues, the inerrancy of scriptures and the literal second coming of Jesus. The theological school that trains Assembly of God preachers is also located here. Mainline churches are present, but the numbers of worshipers are far greater in the independent and Pentecostal-type congregations. While Southern Baptist churches are plentiful, they too lean in a Pentecostal-fundamentalist direction. Springfield, Missouri would not seem to be fertile ground in which to plant a progressive, liberal, scholarship-oriented Christian congregation. Yet that is what Roger Ray, who holds both a master’s degree and a doctor’s degree in divinity from Vanderbilt University, has done. The first hint I had of this man’s existence came while reading an article in “The Fourth R,” the theological journal of the Jesus Seminar, and in my opinion, the best theological journal in America. The article was entitled: Starting a Church That Even I Would Attend. This article appeared about a year ago and it both intrigued and charmed me. When I received an invitation to lead a conference on Progressive Christianity, which was to be hosted by this church, but which anticipated drawing participants from as far away as 500 miles, I was even more intrigued. I was to be joined in the leadership of this conference by one of the preeminent scholars of the Jesus Seminar, Dr. Charles Hedrick, a retired professor of religion at Missouri State University and, via a Skype hookup, with another retired, world class biblical scholar, Dr. David Trobisch, who taught at both Yale Divinity School and the Bangor Theological Seminary. Both of these men, I discovered, had a long-time relationship with this church. The conference was held over a Friday and Saturday in July, attracting a huge, regional gathering that filled its space to capacity. That conference opened my eyes to two major truths. There is, first, enormous hunger in the heartland of America for an understanding of Christianity that has intellectual integrity and, second, most people who think outside the fundamentalist or Pentecostal box feel that they are alone because the cultural majority voice arising from this heartland religion is so loud. The Community Christian Church of Springfield, Missouri, however, was founded to be different and part of its ministry is to link those, who feel alone into a dynamic community that also provides a resource for the entire region. Roger Ray is an ordained minister in the Disciples of Christ tradition. He is both an imposing personality and a large man physically. He got the Van Heusen shirt company to make shirts for him in white, black and blue with the church logo on the front pocket. This unique “clerical garb” is widely recognized in the community. He asked me to lecture in one of them. I did, but the shirt had a nineteen inch neck and a thirty-six inch sleeve so that on me it looked more like a hospital operating gown than a shirt, but I loved it! Dr. Ray founded this church in 2008 with a clear vision. He wanted a church that was committed to social justice. He did not want just to reflect the values of his culture, but to be in dialogue and even conflict with all prevailing attitudes that serve to dehumanize anyone on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation or social status. He wanted a church that “studies, embraces and embodies an academic and historical view of Jesus,” one that would also be willing to look, both appreciatively and critically, at Mohammad, Moses, the Buddha, Confucius and Zoroaster. For about 20 years, he had, as he says: “played around the edges of the Jesus Seminar.” He shared in the general despair of many Seminar members that, despite their work, institutional Christianity is still largely mired in pre-modern images of a supernatural, theistically understood deity. It is still trapped in the theology of the fourth century Council of Nicaea. It still parrots substitutionary theories of the atonement (Jesus died for my sins!) and the behavior-controlling promise of heaven’s reward and hell’s punishment. Ultimately, Roger Ray found these institutional expressions of Christianity more than he could abide and so he left ordained ministry for work in relief agencies, as well as teaching and writing. He continued to drop in on different churches from time to time, only as he says, “to have my resolve to stay away strengthened.” Churches for him continued to speak dated theological and biblical nonsense. Yet he still missed some of the things that he believed a church could provide: a sense of community, a place where ideas could be exchanged and challenged and where thoughts about evolving faith and religious practices could be shared. A book group met some of those needs for him at least for a while. Ultimately, it was a member of his book club who suggested that they start a church of their own. The idea did not meet with much enthusiasm. They did not know how to think about church except in terms of their previous church experiences. They wanted nothing more to do with hymns that exhorted them to be “washed in the blood of Jesus!”; liturgies that shredded their human dignity, telling them they were not worthy to gather up the crumbs under God’s table; baptismal services that proclaimed that this sacrament cleansed them from their original sin, and a Eucharist that invited them to eat the flesh and drink the blood of Jesus! These images blinded them to the possibilities of the future. The idea of starting a new church, however, lingered and after months of prodding, Roger Ray accepted the responsibility of being a founding pastor. They started in a funeral home. After three months, they had 50 interested people and moved to leased space in a conference center. A year later, they bought a small church building and after two years, they chartered a church with 200 original members. One year later they launched YouTube and iTunes channels and have now gathered a weekly following of between 1000-2000 viewers. When issues are hot that total has risen as high as 3000. They are currently meeting with an architect to draw up expansion plans. They have become a regional force for a new understanding of Christianity. They credit their success to a number of things. Roger writes a weekly opinion piece in the local newspaper. His ideas on Jesus and religious practices have found their way into that column and this creates a community buzz. With boldness and audacity they make no attempt to be “all things to all people” or to keep everybody happy. They inevitably threaten some security-seeking believers. They target those who want something different, something that has intellectual integrity. They make their prophetic witness quite public, always willing to be controversial on the side of the poor, the dispossessed and the victims of any human prejudice. This church serves 250 meals a week to the homeless poor of Springfield. They ship 2000 pairs of shoes a year to the children of Nicaragua. They began to hire university professors from nearby Missouri State University to teach Sunday morning classes in the areas of their expertise that were relevant to religion, the environment or to social justice. They constantly keep their name before the city’s population through letters to the editor, the local NPR radio station, direct mail and planned congregational visibility at public events. Recently they leased an electric car, a “Volt,” and painted it as an advertisement for both their church and their website. There are few “Volts” in Springfield. They readily acknowledge that they had three or four “angels,” who put up the money necessary to get this project off the ground. Finally, but I think most importantly, they did not seek to abandon their Christian identity, but rather to broaden it. They call themselves the Community Christian Church and they live out, for those who care to notice, a Christianity that is open to all, non-imperialistic, intellectually engaged and spiritually attuned. It was a thrilling experience for me to be there. I’ve already signed up to go back again in 2014. I invite you to visit their website @www.spfccc.org, or to contact Dr. Ray in person at revdrray(a)aol.com. ~John Shelby Spong Read the essay online here. Question & Answer James Penn, a classical singer from Australia, writes: Question: I have heard you say in an interview that you believe in the Kingdom of Heaven. Do you still? Answer: Dear James, If, by the Kingdom of Heaven, you mean life beyond this life, my answer is yes, but I hasten to add that I would need the time to define what I mean by that. I do not believe in a place of reward or punishment. I do not see God as a judge. I do not believe that this life is just a preparation for the next. I do believe that God is real and that this reality is beyond all of my limits, but not beyond my ability to engage. I tried to spell out this message more fully in a 2009 book entitled: Eternal Life: A New vision- Beyond Religion, Beyond Theism, Beyond Heaven and Hell. That book took about 250 pages. If you are able to read that book you will at least know how I try to address the issue. I am still quite content with the conclusions I reached in that book. John Shelby Spong Announcements Many of you have asked for this video of Bishop Spong from Chautauqua, NY in 2012 on Recasting the Christ Story. Enjoy!

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"Journey Reflection" September 2013 Top-viewed Blogs
by Lynda Cock 30 Sep '13

30 Sep '13

Dear colleagues, Following are the top-viewed blog posts during September <http://rejourney.blogspot.com/2013/09/journey-reflection-blog-review.html> 2013. As always, we appreciate your quote suggestions, comments, and sharing blog posts with others. Happy Fall and Namaste. Lynda and John P.S. Many thanks to those who sent paper duplicates of blog images before years 2009-2013. We are now mostly restoring and revising blogs from 2004-2008-over halfway there since early March. Another life-giving venture is ours. >Blog: "Journey Reflection" at 4 links ... Google: <http://www.rejourney.blogspot.com/> www.reJourney.blogspot.com Google Plus: <https://plus.google.com/u/0/114307312715975337692/posts> Journey Reflection/Google Plus Facebook: <https://www.facebook.com/transcribebooks> https://www.facebook.com/transcribebooks Twitter: <https://twitter.com/transcribebooks> https://twitter.com/transcribebooks >Web Page: <http://www.transcribebooks.com/> www.transcribebooks.com >Books: <https://www.amazon.com/author/johnpcock> https://www.amazon.com/author/johnpcock

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John Epps' new book: "The Theology of Surprise"
by Lynda Cock 30 Sep '13

30 Sep '13

George Walters of Resurgence Publishing requested that we post this notice on the OE and Dialogue list serves: Order John Epps' new book: "The Theology of Surprise" at <http://www.resurgencepublishing.com/> www.resurgencepublishing.com. In this book John shares with us 50 years of his experience and wisdom in his "encounters with Life's Mysteries" and critical thinking about such topics as "The Theology of Development" from JWM and others. Recently Perkins Theological Seminary accepted for the Perkins Library copies of John's book and all of those he has shared in editing (Bending History Series). They also accepted Brother Joe and the Symposium publications and the books of Bill Holmes and Bishop Mathews. The "Wesley Nexus" has recently published a review of John's new book as well. On any Android device, you can download the new RPC App from the Google Play store "rpc.mobile" and order from your phone or tablet. Bulk Orders: On the website and RPC mobile There is an offer there for bulk orders for study books (qty of 10) when ordered directly through Resurgence Publishing with credit card payment options (or send a check). Single Orders: You can also click the "Amazon" or "Barnes and Noble" Icons on our website for single orders less than 10 copies.Or you can order from a dozen different sources by searching on your Google or Bing "John Epps "The Theology of Surprise"". On the New RPC website and mobile app, you will also enjoy a photo history and all the videos now published on YouTube from the 2009 Symposium at Wesley Seminary, Washington DC. (To view the photos, scroll down to the grey band at the bottom of the home page. Select RPC Conferencing on the right side above the You Tube symbol. Congratulations to John Epps on his new book. Lynda and John Cock)

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Archive History-Version 9.doc (dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net)
by Beret Griffith (Google Drive) 29 Sep '13

29 Sep '13

I've shared an item with you: Archive History-Version 9.doc https://docs.google.com/document/d/1f3iDOBwKD9H4k54g3aj_0in78L7eKOr66Kxbe2F… It's not an attachment -- it's stored online. To open this item, just click the link above. Colleagues, Greetings from The Global Archives. Marge Philbrook has been the inspiration for documenting the history of The Global Archives.Your recollections of the archives are welcome and will be included. Anyone with memories of the print shops? We would like to add your stories and recollections, in addition to hearing about anyones experiences in the archives.

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Re: [Dialogue] Epps' Theology of Surprise
by George Holcombe 29 Sep '13

29 Sep '13

Surprisingly, Amazon sent it the next day, though I had it on standard delivery. It took me two sittings to read through it (you really don't want to put it down). Some parts reminded me of the witnesses at Daily Office in the old Jet Hanger, and other parts of JWM's dramatic orations in room E or his eye piercing conversations around the table in the cubicle, while still others brought me back to the classroom with Shubert Ogden at Perkins (not many will have that memory). But it also reminded me of the intent and thrust of our HDP experiment and in the final chapters threw me up against the decisions I have on my hands at the moment. Some of it will require a little "chewing" through the theological language; after all John is a theologian, but it's well worth the trip, and the tramping through our categories of experience is a delight. For me, this has been the best of our efforts going forward, and hopefully our writers will give us more. Surprisingly enough, the first article I read on the web after putting down the book was one written by Desmond Tutu entitled the God of Surprises. http://www.onbeing.org/program/desmond-tutus-god-surprises/85 Thanks John, spot on. George Holcombe 14900 Yellowleaf Tr. Austin TX 78728 Mobile 512/252-2756 grholcombe(a)gmail.com "Whatever the problem, community is the answer. There is no power greater than a community discovering what it cares about." Margaret Wheatley

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9/26/13, Spong: Part III Matthew: The Shadow of Moses Continues
by Ellie Stock 26 Sep '13

26 Sep '13

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR Part III Matthew: The Shadow of Moses Continues Using the gospel of Matthew as our guide we have begun the task of opening the background necessary to grasp, as members of the current generation of Christians, the meaning of all the gospels. This is necessary because all of the gospels are Jewish books written by Jewish authors for Jewish congregations. They employ Jewish symbols and Jewish images; they draw on the Jewish Scriptures of antiquity to interpret the life and meaning of the Jewish Jesus of Nazareth. If we do not understand this Jewish reality, the tendency on the part of modern readers of these gospels will be to treat them as literal accounts of things that actually happened. They were never written to be that! I began this study of Matthew’s gospel by lifting the figure of Moses out of the shadows in Matthew’s first seven chapters. Although the image of Moses dominates these chapters his name is never mentioned. Yet for those who understand, Moses is the template against which Matthew tells his story of Jesus. Earlier in this series, we looked at the first Moses story in Matthew’s gospel, the account of King Herod going down to Bethlehem and killing all the Jewish boy babies up to the age of two in a vain attempt to destroy God’s promised messiah. When Moses was born, we read in the book of Exodus that a king named Pharaoh sent an order throughout Egypt to kill all Jewish boy babies in his mythological attempt to destroy the one whom God had promised to deliver the Jewish people from Egyptian bondage. Matthew was thus wrapping a well-known Moses story around the infant Jesus. His original readers would have understood that. It is the first instance of the interpretive clue to the role the unseen Moses will play in Matthew’s story of Jesus. It will not be the last. The shadow of Moses will emerge time after time as this gospel pursues its story. Next we looked at Jesus’ baptism by John in the Jordan River, which Matthew likened to Moses’ Red Sea experience. Moses split the waters of the Red Sea while Jesus, the new Moses, split the heavenly waters. These heavenly waters then proceeded to rain on him as the Holy Spirit. The baptism of Jesus was thus being paralleled to the Red Sea experience of Moses. The interpretive power of Moses was still at work. It would not stop even there. What did Moses do after his baptismal experience in the Red Sea? Read the book of Exodus and you will discover that he wandered in the wilderness for forty years trying to figure out what it meant to be God’s “Chosen People.” To purpose-driven modern men and women, this meandering in a wilderness type limbo is very strange. Look, however, at how the gospel writers treat this Jewish story from the Torah. After Jesus had his Red Sea experience in the Jordan River, we are told that he too wandered in the wilderness, not for “forty years,” but for “forty days,” trying to figure out what it meant to be God’s designated messiah, the one whom God had called “My beloved son in whom I am well pleased.” Mark, the earliest of the gospels, says simply that Jesus was in the wilderness for forty days being tempted by the devil, but he gives no content as to the temptations. Matthew, however, provides that content, which also serves to open the mind of Matthew a little more deeply. We study that mind by searching for the source of Matthew’s temptation content. A careful reading of the Moses story in the Torah provides this new understanding. During Moses’ forty year sojourn in the wilderness, we learn that Moses faced three critical experiences. The first one had to do with the shortage of food and Moses took his concern to God. God answered Moses’ prayer by raining down upon the starving children of Israel heavenly bread that came to be called “Manna.” By the time the editing of the Torah was finished. the “Manna in the Wilderness” story, had become stylized in order to accommodate Jewish piety. The manna eventually fell on only six days a week in order to save both God, who had to send it, and the people, who had to gather it, from violating the prohibition against working on the Sabbath. It also placed into biblical mythology the image of a God capable of expanding the food supply, a theme that will be visible in the stories of Elijah and Elisha and will making its appearance in the Jesus tradition as the miraculous feeding of the multitude with a limited number of loaves and fish. In any event, the crisis of hunger among the people that Moses was leading in the wilderness is answered by the God who sent heavenly bread. The second critical moment for Moses came in response to another crisis, this time involving a shortage of water. In response Moses dared to put God to the test at a place named Meribah. Moses, in frustration over this threatened water shortage, struck a rock with his staff and demanded that God cause water to flow out of that rock. God, according to this story, obeyed Moses’ command so as not to humiliate God’s chosen leader. God, however, was not pleased. No one commands God to do a human being’s bidding. Moses had sinned and the Torah made that clear. Moses was punished for this act by not being allowed to enter the Promised Land. He would see that destination, but he would not enter it for no one puts God to the test! Moses died in the wilderness with his life’s work in some sense unfulfilled. The third critical moment for Moses in these forty years in the wilderness came in the episode we know as the story of the golden calf. Moses had been away from his people for a long period of time, conferring presumably with God on top of Mt. Sinai. The people felt abandoned and became restive. So, under the direction of Aaron, who was both the high priest and Moses’ brother, the people brought all of their gold jewelry, their bracelets, rings, necklaces and chains, and Aaron proceeded to melt them down and to fashion the gold into the image of a calf, which was then proclaimed to be “God” for the people. Before this golden calf they then bowed in worship, while saying: “This is the God who brought us out of the land of Egypt.” The people had turned from the worship of God to the worship of something less than God. When Moses returned, he smashed this golden calf and instituted a purge of the chosen people. Each of these three critical moments has its consequences, but in them Moses was tried by hunger, by putting God to the test and by seeing the people worship something other than God. Matthew knew these stories in the Hebrew tradition and, not surprisingly, he wrapped them around the memory of Jesus in a way designed to demonstrate that the God presence in Jesus exceeded the God presence in Moses, the holiest hero of the Jewish faith story. That was his stunning claim. So, if it took Moses forty years to get through the wilderness, Matthew suggested that Jesus did it in just forty days, while struggling successfully with the same crises that confronted Moses. The first of what Matthew called the temptations of Jesus arose out of the shortage of food. “Turn these stones into bread,” the tempter urged. Jesus, however, resisted. People do not live by bread alone, he responded. Full stomachs do not make full human beings. The second temptation was to put God to the test: “Cast yourself off the pinnacle of the Temple, Jesus,” make God serve you. The tempter even quoted scripture to make the temptation more appealing, “It is written,” he said, “that God will give his angels charge over you and in their hands they will bear you up lest you strike your foot against a stone.” Jesus responded: “You do not tempt the Lord your God.” You do not put God to the test. The third temptation once again followed the Moses script. The tempter invited Jesus to bow down before him with the promise that the devil would give him all the kingdoms of the world. Jesus, however, understood the script that Matthew was following and so he was made to respond with the ringing words that God alone, not any creature, was worthy of worship. Moses, struggling to understand what it meant to be the “chosen people,” underwent three critical moments in his forty years in the wilderness. Jesus, struggling to understand what it meant to be “messiah,” God’s chosen deliverer, underwent three temptations in his forty day sojourn in the wilderness. The content of their crises was identical. This is not a coincidence, nor is this literal history. This is Jewish interpretive storytelling. Matthew was announcing the arrival of a new Moses and, to make his meaning clear, he proceeded to wrap around the memory of Jesus the well-known stories of Moses from his birth, to the Red Sea adventure, to his critical moments in the wilderness. This is not biography. This is not Matthew writing a literal account of Jesus’ life. Matthew knew what he was doing and so did the audience who first read his words. He wanted to fill them with a sense of wonder, awe and even worship. “I am writing,” if I might paraphrase him, “to tell you about the one who fulfilled our Jewish scriptures; one in whom God was present as God has never been present in a human life before, not even in the holiest life of Moses, who stands at the apex of our own Jewish traditions. Listen to my story. It is of infinite importance.” As long as his readers were aware of Matthew’s Jewish story telling method, they heard and they understood. Literalism and fundamentalism arose in Christianity after the Christian Church ceased to be made up primarily of Jews. Fundamentalism was born when Gentile ignorance made it impossible for them to understand the Jewishness of Matthew’s stories about Jesus. Fundamentalism is thus a “Gentile Heresy.” When this series resumes we will turn our attention to the “Sermon on the Mount.” and Moses will emerge once more in the background. ~John Shelby Spong Read the essay online here. Question & Answer Question: Jane Cookdale, via the Internet, writes: Do I get my child baptized into a church with which I profoundly disagree? Should I stand up and commit her to the ridiculous concept of original sin? To the human interpretation of evil and the devil? I have spent a year discussing this with my minister and I really want to proclaim no! I want to commit my child's life to a God of love, of forgiveness that is already waiting to be claimed, a God who is not dependent on repentance. I was nine years old when I understood that if God loves, then there can be no "hell," no final judgment. Just our own inability to comprehend that we are already forgiven for everything is enough. Then there is no scale from a little misdemeanor to irredeemable evil, just a degree of separation from God's perfection that we can only close through love. Answer: Dear Jane, I would never ask you to act against what you believe. I would urge you to be a catalyst for what you believe and raise the issues publicly in your church. If your minister cannot embrace your insights and insists that you violate your own convictions and your honesty if your child is to be baptized, then I suggest you walk away from that church, but do it very publicly so the issues that you raise will be both indelible and consciousness-raising for the entire community. I assure you that there are numerous voices in academic Christianity that react to the concept of original sin’s absurdity just as strongly as you do and there are thus numbers of churches that are moving away from the idea that baptism is required to wash away the stain of original sin. I have unbaptized grandchildren because their parents could not and would not say the words required in the baptismal liturgies of their prospective churches. Original sin died in the writings of Charles Darwin. Maybe that is why traditional churches have been so threatened and so frightened by Darwin. Original sin implies an original perfection, from which we have fallen. Darwin makes us aware that there was no original perfection but an evolution of life from single cells to self-conscious complexity. The traditional way of telling the Christ story falls apart with that insight. No original perfection means no fall into sin. No fall into sin means that there is no need to be rescued or saved. No need to be saved means that the idea that Jesus “died for my sins” or brought about my salvation through his pain and suffering is little more than a guilt-producing control technique. Once that medieval world view has been dispatched, perhaps we can begin to see God as life, love and being and Jesus as the human experience of that divine presence. On that basis, a new Christianity for a new world will be created. In 1979, when my church revised its prayer book, it changed the baptismal liturgy dramatically, not enough, I fear, but it was clearly a step in the right direction. No longer in this revised service is one asked to renounce the “world,” but rather to renounce “the evil powers of this world that corrupt and destroy the creatures of God.” We no longer in that revised service renounce “the Flesh,” but rather we renounce “the sinful desires that draw us from the love of God.” We no longer renounce the devil, but we renounce “all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God.” Suddenly being a Christian is no longer related to being a monk or a nun! In the baptismal prayers for the child or person to be baptized, the new baptismal liturgy has moved in very positive and different directions. We pray that this child’s “heart may be open to God’s grace and truth,” that this child will be filled with God’s “holy and life-giving Spirit,” that this child will be kept “in the faith and communion” of God’s church, that he or she will be taught “to love others in the power of the Spirit” and finally that this child or person may be brought to the “fullness” of God’s “peace and glory.” That represents a fairly dramatic turn from the baptismal theology of the past and the theology to which you are being exposed and against which you are so rightly reacting. I hope you can find a community of faith that will build your child up rather than tear your child down. They are out there, but the old stuff is still present and it is still reaping its harvest of human depravity. ~John Shelby Spong Announcements Tell your faith community about A Joyful Path, Spiritual Curriculum for Young Hearts and Minds! Is your community searching for a way to connect children with an authentic spiritual experience that is inter-spiritual, creative and multi-layered? A Joyful Path is truly progressive Christian curriculum that is inclusive, joy-full, compassionate, and intelligent. This behavior-over-belief curriculum connects children with their own inner wisdom. It teaches interdependence, self awareness, respect for nature, stillness, forgiveness, prayer, meditation, and integrity. Using the Bible and other wisdom stories, A Joyful Path helps children learn how to follow the path of Jesus in today’s world. “The great need in the Christian church is for a Sunday school curriculum for children that does not equate faith with having a pre-modern mind. The Center for Progressive Christianity has produced just that. Teachers can now teach children in Sunday school without crossing their fingers. I endorse it wholeheartedly.” ~John Shelby Spong Click here for more info

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9/19/13, Spong: SYRIA, POISON GAS, MISSILE STRIKES AND PEACE?
by Ellie Stock 23 Sep '13

23 Sep '13

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR SYRIA, POISON GAS, MISSILE STRIKES AND PEACE? It has been both an emotional and a political roller-coaster. The television newscasters and the print media informed us that a political debate was underway as to whether or not the armed might of this country should be used to punish the Syrian government for violating the universal condemnation against chemical warfare that has governed the world since the horror of gas in the trenches in World War I. Pictures were released of small children, who had been the victims of sarin gas. The pictures were chilling. I enquired of a medical expert about the effects of sarin gas on the human body. He shuddered even to talk about it. His sentences were short and declarative. “It is deadly.” “There is no protection.” “Suffering is intense.” “Death is inevitable.” For almost one hundred years, despite brutal wars, both worldwide and local, with weapon enhancements like atomic power and cruise missiles, the prohibition against chemical warfare has still been generally adhered to by the nations of the world until this moment. Now the Syrian government has breeched this taboo, in an action widely believed to have been ordered by its president, Bashar al-Assad. I did not disagree with the official statement of facts and yet the debate itself struck me as deeply irrational. Condemning one tactic of war as inhumane, while condoning the war itself, strikes me as a strange line of reasoning. The nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the last days of World War II killed about 100,000 civilians in each city. There were, however, no photographs except that of a mushroom cloud. We did not see victims in the last stages of life because the bomb vaporized them. Estimates are that the poison gas attacks in Syria killed over 1400 hundred people. Well over 100,000 people, however, had been killed previously in this cruel civil war. It seems to me that all of them are equally dead. One wonders if the means by which they died is of any great significance to the victims. Nevertheless political leaders at home and abroad engaged this debate quite publicly. The “war hawk” part of the Republican Party, led by Senators John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina quickly endorsed the call for a military response. Neither has ever seen a war they did not favor. Politics being what they are, however, neither could resist using their endorsement to slam the President for not engaging this war much earlier and on the side of the rebels. They were soon joined by House Speaker, John Boehner, but how many Republican votes he can control in his caucus is always a question, not just on this issue, but on any other. The Libertarian wing of Republican Party, led by Senator Rand Paul, was vehemently opposed to any military intervention. They are far too isolationist in their foreign policy ideas to embrace anything that might lead to another unpopular and expensive war. War is also an activity of “big government,” which they oppose. They were joined in this opposition by the “hate Obama” wing of this party which seems to infect in varying degrees all Republicans. These political operatives act on the premise that if President Obama is for it, even if it is an idea that was originally a Republican proposal, they are against it. That is a strange way to be an opposition party, but that is what ideologically driven American politics has degenerated into being. Those on the Democratic side of the aisle did not do much better. The tensions within this party are equally real. In the last twenty-five years this nation has been led into three Middle Eastern wars: Iraq I, Afghanistan and Iraq II. All three resulted from foreign policy decisions made by Republican presidents. None of these wars was conclusive. All were expensive. There is no doubt that the unbudgeted costs of these three wars contributed both to the out-of-bounds deficit we still seek to get under control and to the economic collapse that occurred in 2008. There is, therefore, little stomach among leading Democrats for another military action in another Middle Eastern country. Many in this nation have discovered the unintended consequences of war decisions far too often to be interested in going down that road yet once again. Middle Eastern civil wars with deep religious overtones, we have observed, do not lend themselves to military solutions anyway. This decision to begin retaliatory military procedures against Syria, however, came from a Democratic president, perhaps more importantly, from a president who has spent his first term in office unwinding the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Could the Democrats ignore this call from their own elected leader? This president surprisingly then decided to do what few other presidents have done. Before ordering this strike he asked Congress to authorize his action. It was high risk to ask this almost dysfunctional body of legislators to do much of anything, making the president clearly vulnerable. The polls showed that the American public did not favor a new military engagement in the Middle East and the Congress began to reflect that popular will. The Obama administration, sensing defeat, tried to minimize the “punitive” response. It would be a “surgical strike,” they said. “It will be designed not to destroy the Assad regime, but only to destroy his capacity to use chemical weapons.” Our purpose is only to “degrade,” that became the new code word, “his ability to wage war.” Perhaps these words helped acceptance to grow, but that is unlikely. These distinctions were also non-sensical. If these attacks were to “degrade” Assad’s ability to wage war, does that not lead to his removal from power at the hands of the rebels? Is it not the stated public policy of the government of the United States to remove Assad from power? Who then are we fooling? Are we ready to embrace the rebels as our choice for the future of Syria? Is there any evidence that the rebels want our endorsement? Is the devil we know worse than the devil we do not know? How many Muslim terrorists, members of Hezbollah or the Taliban have infiltrated the ranks of the rebel forces? The issues are not clear. If the president of the United States asks Congress to authorize a military strike and Congress were to refuse, is not permanent damage inflicted on the office of the presidency itself? Would any future president ever again ask for congressional approval for a military initiative? Would that not open this country up to a president who would then seem to have the unilateral power to begin a war that no one wanted? So the debate raged and good options began to disappear. Irrationality seemed to reign supreme. Then a new initiative appeared from a surprising source that, on the surface at least, seemed better than any other alternative. There was not only a rush to embrace that initiative, but also a rush to claim credit for it, despite the lack of comfort that surrounded it. Suddenly the only way out of the Syrian debacle required that we trust Russia’s Vladimir Putin, who now seemed to occupy center stage. Through the op-ed page of the New York Times Putin was allowed to speak to the American people. That was more than some politicians could manage. Mr. Putin also ridiculed the popular political claim to “American Exceptionalism.” One well known Republican Senator told the world that he “wanted to throw up” as he read the Putin piece. There were, however, no other options on the table around which anyone could rally. Leaders thus held their noses and sought to use this offer to move the process along. At week’s end a tentative agreement was reached. If it holds there are many benefits. If it fails there are huge downside risks. Syria’s chemical warfare arsenal was to be turned over to an international body and destroyed. A powerful message would thus be sent to rogue governments from North Korea to Somalia that the civilized world was watching and was ready to act. Such an agreement would surely encourage the new government in Iran to seek better relations with the world. This agreement, if successful, might actually open the door to a negotiated settlement to the entire Syrian civil war. If that were successful, then perhaps the door would be ajar for a much larger Middle Eastern peace proposal that would create a permanent settlement between Israel and the Palestinians, a settlement than many people regard as the key to Middle-Eastern peace. International relations do turn on breakthrough moments. Perhaps this Syrian settlement will prove to be one of those moments. Time alone will tell us whether this is so. If it is, then we will have seen a new alternative to both power politics and to the “balance of terror” that has kept the world’s fragile peace since the end of World War II. That would be an exceptional result. Perhaps “American Exceptionalism” is not something we are, as we like to pretend, but something we are called to be, in this case peacemakers. That would be a new idea. Perhaps real leadership could then emerge both at home and abroad, based not on political posturing, but on solving real problems in the service of all the people at home and abroad. For now let us dare to hope. If this initiative fails or turns out to be little more than the stalling tactic that many fear it is, then we would have to turn to “Plan B.” The only trouble is that there does not appear to be a “Plan B!” John Shelby Spong Read the essay online here. Question & Answer Mike Rand from Dorset, UK, writes: Question: I work for the Dorset police here in Dorset, England. I do not come from a Christian family although I did attend a Methodist Sunday School as a boy. I have been searching to try and make sense of the Christian message and many of the complex questions that the Bible throws up. I have read a number of your books and I have to say that they are the first publications that make any sense to me. The question of the death of Jesus being a method of atonement from original sin has always been a major block to faith for me. I have in the past completed the Church of England’s Alpha courses, but the answers given by well-meaning clergy have never made any sense to me. The literalist view of the Bible in this modern day and age doesn’t aid understanding. I am halfway through your latest publication relating to the Fourth Gospel. I feel for the first time a sense of enlightenment with the view that the life of Jesus was to show us the vision of what we can be and to assist as a gateway into the mystical union with God. This at least gives a real purpose to Jesus’ life and work. My question is where can I, and others like me, go from here. I have yet to find a church organization that isn’t governed by restrictive creeds and regulations? If we do find a new faith and belief, where and what should the next stage be to becoming all that we are meant to be? Is it enough just to believe in a private and individual way? Do we need to find a group of like-minded people with similar views or is it sufficient just to go it alone? I am coming up to London with a good friend of mine in October to hear you lecture in Streatham. I am really looking forward to seeing you. Any advice you can give me on my “where next” question would be gratefully received. Answer: Dear Mike, Thank you for your letter. I have great respect for those who serve as policemen in England. I have a nephew, who is a Special Forces policeman in Devizes, which is very near you. I shall look forward to meeting you at the October lecture in Streatham. Maybe I can get him to come and introduce him to you. Many parts of the established Church of England are in fact moribund. Someone observed that rigor mortis would be too lively a word to describe many of its congregations. This Church, out of which my Episcopal Church has come and to which we are still related, sings from a hymnal entitled “Hymns Ancient and Modern,” but “modern” barely gets to the 19th century. It is burdened with the structures of yesterday, with patronage and with a hierarchy so bound to the establishment that its leaders do not realize how out of date it is. Traditionally this Church was divided into three groups that were affectionately designated “high and crazy, broad and hazy and low and lazy.” The high and crazy group is more catholic than the Pope. They chant the mass, use incense on every occasion and employ a variety of worship traditions to make sure the 13th century liturgical forms will not be disturbed. Like their Roman Catholic cousins, this “high and crazy” group does not generally care for women priests. The “low and lazy” group is made up of the evangelicals who still seem to believe that God wrote the Bible and therefore that it must be inerrant. They offer salvation and the bliss of heaven only to “true believers,” i.e. those who agree with them. They publish what is surely the worst church paper I have ever read called “The Church of England Newspaper.” They seem to me to reserve their passion for church fights to the task of saving the Church of England from the pollution of both homosexuals and women, because they think the Bible defines gay people as evil or “deviant” and women as subservient. The Alpha course is a product of this “low and lazy” way of thinking in the Church of England. The “broad and hazy” group used to be the ones who gave the Church of England its flavor and its entertainment value. This group takes religion somewhat less than seriously, but they don’t reject it because it is part of what it means to be English. They also want an institution in which their babies can be “christened,” their children married and themselves buried, not so much because these things are inherently of great value, but because that is the proper way to do things, the English way. As secularism rises, this broad group has, however, essentially given up religion so that all of England’s fierce religious disputes are now between the “high crazies” and the “low lazies.” Both of them tend to bore thinking people. In England there is a group called the Progressive Christian Network, originally headed by the Rev. Hugh Dawes, one of the most creative priests I’ve ever known. It is now headed by the Rev. John Churcher, an outstanding and brilliant Methodist clergyman. They sponsor and support study groups in all parts of the UK. A constituent part of the Progressive Christian Network is the progressive wing of the United Reformed Church of England, a merger originally between English Congregationalists and English Presbyterians. This Church has produced some great leaders, including Fred Kaan, whom I regard as perhaps the greatest Christian hymn writer of the 20th century. This Church has also sponsored national conferences called “Free to Believe,” where they have encouraged lay people to wrestle with the real questions that Christians living in the 21st century need to face if Christianity is to live and be relevant. So my advice to you is to seek contact with a group associated with the Progressive Christian Network of the UK and begin to work with one of its groups. Perhaps some members of that organization, reading this response to your question, will get in touch with you directly or through this column if they prefer. I look forward to meeting you in October and thank you for your letter. You are the kind of person toward whom my whole life’s work is directed. Live well! John Shelby Spong Announcements Find community where you live as well as connect with others around the world! Visit our Global Network Directory today and find other "Believers in exhile!" Join the progressive Christian movement and add your name to the directory. Just go to "My Account," then "Sign Up" and click: "show me in directory." Bishop Spong will be in the United Kingdom in October- view the Calendar for his speaking schedule!

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Re: [Dialogue] The mirror on the staircase
by frank bremner 17 Sep '13

17 Sep '13

Dear colleagues In a recent conversation as part of a Philosophy and Christian Thought class (third year B Th through Flinders University), Descartes' notion of people doing their own thinking came up. I said I recall a theologian had pictures of his favourite theologians on the wall alongside his staircase. The top portrait was a mirror. Does anyone remember who that theologian might have been? I thought it might have been Karl Barth, but it might have been one of the four RS-I theologians, or someone else. Can anyone help? Best wishes Frank Bremner

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