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Janice's Memorial Service
by Ellie Stock 03 Sep '13

03 Sep '13

Hi Ken, Thanks for sharing the information about Janice's memorial service as well as yours and others presence at the service--much appreciated. Ellie elliestock(a)aol.com

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Update on Jack Gilles
by Gordon Harper 03 Sep '13

03 Sep '13

Colleagues -- With Jack's permission, I'm sharing this news with you about his current health situation. As some of you may know, Jack has had several quite painful gall bladder attacks over the past few months. They've mostly occurred while in Litibu and mercifully been of fairly short duration. He's elected on those occasions not to take the surgery route but to treat the stones medically, and this has seemed sufficient. Jack and Judy have been in the States these past three weeks or so, preparing to attend the Archive Team's Fall Sojourn in Chicago. Jack had the most severe of these attacks while here--as it happens, while staying with David and Margaret Scott in Kalispell, MT. He has basically been wiped out, this time for several days, with major pain and unable to sleep. He's now been diagnosed once again with stones, and this time an inflamed pancreas and an irregular heartbeat. Thankfully, I don't think the Gilleses could have picked a better place for this to happen. The Scotts are providing incredible care for both of them and ensuring that Jack has access to fine medical resources. Further tests are scheduled for this week, and Jack has pretty much decided this time to go for gall bladder surgery if the doctors give him the nod. Jack and Judy won't be joining the Archive Team in Chicago this weekend for the start of the Fall Sojourn. Depending on how things go, (the eternal optimist) he's holding open the possibility they might make it the second week. Given how much Jack is in communication with so many of us, he wants to let everyone know the current situation, and, if any of you were wondering, why you haven't heard from him lately. Regardless of the medical evaluation, those of you who know Jack know that when he can't bring himself to get on the Internet himself, he clearly can't be in the best shape. I know he'd appreciate any of our prayers or emails wishing him improved health. He was feeling somewhat better this evening when I talked to him, having been able to get some sleep today for a change. He's scheduled for further tests related to those irregular heart rhythms tomorrow, with discussion of the surgery depending on how they turn out. More as we learn more -- Gordon

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Re: [Dialogue] Update on Jack Gilles
by David Walters 03 Sep '13

03 Sep '13

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"Journey Reflection" August 2013 Top-viewed Blogs
by Lynda Cock 31 Aug '13

31 Aug '13

Dear colleagues, Following are the top-viewed blog posts during August <http://rejourney.blogspot.com/2013/08/journey-reflection-blog-review-august .html> 2013. As always, we appreciate your quote suggestions, comments, and sharing blog posts with others. Happy Holiday and Namaste. Lynda and John >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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8/29/13, Spong: On the importance of being ordinary
by Ellie Stock 30 Aug '13

30 Aug '13

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR On the Importance of Being Ordinary Over the past few years, while working on my recent book, The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic, I became fascinated with how the author of John’s gospel develops the characters in his narrative. There are more memorable characters in the Fourth Gospel than anywhere else in the New Testament. The disciple Thomas is simply a name on a list in the other gospels, but in John, he becomes a doubter, placing the term “Doubting Thomas” into our language. John also includes a whole series of other crucial characters about whom none of the other gospels seem to have heard. Among them are Nathaniel, the “Beloved Disciple,” Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman by the well and Lazarus. These characters are so beautifully drawn that they not only become indelible, but their uniqueness raises the possibility that they are more symbolic figures than they are actual people of history. In this gospel, they also appear to represent different kinds of responses to Jesus. When one reads John deeply enough, each character seems to become a personality type whose diversity is sufficient that everyone can identify with one of them. Today I want to lift one of the Johannine characters out of the text and present him to you, my readers, as a possible role model, at least for some of us. His name is Andrew and I call him “The Patron Saint of Ordinary People.” Before the Fourth Gospel appeared, the only thing the New Testament tells us about Andrew is that he was the brother of Simon Peter, who everywhere in the New Testament, is portrayed as a leader. Andrew was thus one with only reflected status, primarily known by his relationship to another. Quite often in our still patriarchal world, women are known only as the wives of their husbands, and children are sometimes identified only as the son or daughter of a famous parent. This was the role of Andrew. Those whose primary identity is derived from a more famous person are not necessarily the stars, they are rather the ordinary people. While we continue to live in a culture of heroes, the world actually turns, I believe, on those who are ordinary people. Reading a history of World War II one might get the impression that America fought and won that war with only three soldiers: Eisenhower, MacArthur and Patton. Yet everyone knows that wars are won or lost not by the generals, but by the fighting, bleeding and dying of the foot soldiers, who are normally nameless. Before John’s gospel was written Andrew was a foot soldier, an ordinary person, identified only by his relationship with another. The Fourth Gospel then adds to that scant biography three short but telling stories. In the first chapter of John we are told that Andrew, the ordinary man, brought his brother to Jesus, thus making possible Peter, the extraordinary man. It was Peter, not Andrew, who was destined to become the first leader of the Christian community. In the sixth chapter of John’s gospel Andrew is the one who brings to Jesus the lad with five loaves and two fish. Given the dimensions of the crowd of thousands that needed to be fed, this gift was hardly a drop in the proverbial bucket. Andrew, however, was one who understood that no person’s gift was so small or insignificant that it could not be used and thus felt that it must be appreciated. The story says that Jesus took this gift and used it to feed the multitude. In the twelfth chapter of John’s gospel we are told that a group of Greek foreigners come seeking Jesus. This would make them, by Jewish standards, Gentiles, who were unclean, uncircumcised, non-Kosher and non-Torah observing people. It is Andrew, we are told, who becomes their guide, for no task is too insignificant for him to undertake. So through the dark streets of Jerusalem Andrew led them to the place where Jesus was. At that moment John has Jesus announce “My hour has come.” He then says: “Now the Son of Man will be glorified.” When I am lifted up on the cross, Jesus continues, “I will draw all people to me” and then the world will know “I AM,” then the world will know the meaning of God. Once again Andrew is the expeditor. He is always an ordinary person, but because he did the ordinary thing, great things seemed to happen all around him. No one is unqualified for this kind of role. Take a moment to recall a critical turning point in your own journey and remember who it was who stood with you at that moment, the one who might have said just the right word causing you to choose one path over another and you now recognize that your whole life was determined by that decision. Was that critical person not just an ordinary man or woman? At the risk of being an exhibitionist allow me to relate an intensely personal story that illustrates for me the role of the ordinary person. My father died when I was 12. My mother had not finished the 9th grade in school and thus had little ability to replace my father as our family’s bread winner. We soon fell into rather precarious poverty. For about two years, I was little more than a radically lost, insecure adolescent. Then someone came into my life through no action on my part. My church in Charlotte, North Carolina, chose a new rector. The year was 1946, World War II had come to an end, and the man chosen had just come out of the navy, where he had served as a chaplain on an aircraft carrier in the South Pacific. I do not know the process that enabled him to be chosen, but I do know that this choice determined the course of my life. This man was different from any minister or priest that I had ever known. First, he was only 32 years of age. That fact alone broke my priestly stereotype, for I had never known a priest who wasn’t old. I thought one probably had to be at least 80 to be ordained. Second, he wore white buck shoes. I had never known a priest to wear anything but black. lace-up oxfords. Third, he drove a Ford convertible. I thought priests only drove hearses. Finally, he had a stunningly beautiful wife. I thought clergy wives were dour, wearing only dark brown and navy blue with their hair in a bun at the back of their heads. This woman, however, was dashing and bejeweled. She even smoked cigarettes in a long golden cigarette holder. She was the most sophisticated woman I think I had ever met. I was so deeply drawn to this couple that I volunteered to do anything that enabled me to get closer to them, so I became the only acolyte in my church willing to serve at the 8:00 a.m. communion service. I was not a good acolyte– faithful, but not necessarily competent. My new rector was on the more catholic side of the Episcopal Church and he believed that no one should receive communion without fasting from midnight on. He worried that a bit of undigested toast might corrupt the body of Christ received at the Eucharist. So I came to that service fasting. At that time in my life, however, I was delivering the Charlotte Observer to about 150 houses each morning. This meant I would rise at 4:30 a.m., go to the corner where my papers were dropped off, fold them so that I could throw them on to the lawns of my subscribers, and, then, with my bicycle basket filled, I would set out to deliver them. I arrived home about 6:45 a.m. in sufficient time to shower, dress and catch a bus to my downtown church to do my acolyte duty at 8:00 a.m. By this hour of the morning, however, I was absolutely famished, but still committed to that fast. In the 1928 Prayer Book liturgy, my church used at that time, there was something called the “Prayer for the Whole State of Christ’s Church.” It was two pages long and reminded me of the mercy of God in that it seemed to me to endure forever! Inevitably, before we got through that prayer I began to feel strange, light-headed and very warm. Then I would either faint dead away and have to be carried bodily out of the sanctuary or else I would turn green and throw up leaving my offering at the foot of the altar. I never made it through that prayer. One of the reasons I championed Prayer Book revision in my adult career was to get rid of the “Prayer for the Whole State of Christ’s Church.” Despite this weakness in both my flesh and performance as an acolyte, my rector continued to want me to serve and when that 8:00 a.m. worship was over and I had recovered my equilibrium, this man and I would go half a block up the main street of Charlotte to a restaurant, have breakfast together and talk. I do not recall what we talked about, but I do know that in all my adolescent life, this was the only time an adult talked with me. I had many adults who talked to me or at me, but he talked with me. He even listened to my immature ideas; he asked questions to help me clarify my thinking. It was such a simple thing to do, such an ordinary thing, but to this lonely and lost fifteen year old boy, it was powerfully important and life-giving. I adored that man and wanted to be as much like him as I could be. He became the model for my life and I found my vocation to be a priest in my relationship with him. Was the man a great person? Was he even a great priest? Well, he was to me, but that was not how he was judged by the world. The world saw and judged him to be an ordinary man with ordinary weaknesses. After I left Charlotte to begin my university education he left our church in Charlotte to become the rector of a church in Louisiana. There he fell into an addiction to alcohol. It got so bad that he was finally removed from the priesthood. He died thinking of himself professionally as a failure, but he was a vital person, a change agent to me. The truth is that he was just an ordinary man who simply took the time to talk with a lost teenager. It was something that anybody could have done, but he did it. He was an Andrew. Most of us will not be generals who win battles or elected officials who will rise to political power. We may not become the chief executive of either a small business or of a great corporation, but we can make a difference, a profound difference in the lives of those around us in ordinary ways just by being sensitive, just by being a friend, just by saying the right word at the right time in the right circumstance. We can all be Andrews, the Patron Saint of ordinary people. ~John Shelby Spong Read the essay online here. Question & Answer Jack from Oklahoma writes: Question: I have heard you support the Unity Church for many reasons. One popular belief, held by Unity, is reincarnation. Do you believe it is possible for persons to be reincarnated? Answer: Dear Jack, Unity appeals to me because of that church’s positive view of human potential and because they do not wallow in guilt and sin as so many Christians seem to do. I have met people in Unity who are inquisitive about reincarnation, though this is clearly not a core teaching of the Unity movement. Prior to writing my book on Eternal Life (Eternal Life: A New Vision-Beyond Religion, Beyond Theism, Beyond Heaven and Hell), I made an intensive study of reincarnation. I came out of that study completely agnostic about that question. It seems to me that reincarnation plays the same role in Eastern religious thought that heaven and hell play in Western religious thought. I feel its primary function is to control life here and now. Instead of reward and punishment being meted out in some place after life like heaven and hell, it is meted out in the next incarnation. Sinful people come back as lower caste people or sometimes even as animals. I am not interested in playing the game of judgment. I found no evidence that supports the idea of reincarnation and most of the evidence cited is anecdotal and, to my mind, bogus. It is more a human hope than a human reality. So put me down in the negative column or at least the unconvinced column. I would rather try to master the meaning of the life I have than to speculate about some future or past reincarnation. My best, John Shelby Spong Announcements Common Dreams 3 Conference Midwives of Change:Progressives Shaping Religious Communities From: September 19, 2013 to September 22, 2013 Manning Clark Centre, Australian National University Canberra, AUSTRALIA Common Dreams http://www.commondreams.org.au Click here for more information Any questions or concerns, please contact us at support(a)johnshelbyspong.com or 503-236-3545. Copyright © 2013 ProgressiveChristianity.org, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you have a membership at johnshelbyspong.com. Our mailing address is: ProgressiveChristianity.org 708 Broadway Suite 105 Tacoma, WA 98402 Add us to your address book .

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question about the 4 C's
by Sunny Walker 29 Aug '13

29 Aug '13

Okay, this old brain is foggy. I recall we used to speak of four C's. It seems Courage and Care were two of them. The other two please? Then I'll share a different (though somewhat similar) set of 4 C's I've just run across (thanks to ICA Board member Cheryl Kartes). Sunny Sunny Walker SunWalker Enterprises 303-587-3017 (cell); 303-671-0704 (office) sunwalker(a)comcast.net Aurora, Colorado "What is it that you want to do with the one, wild, precious thing called your life?" ~Mary Oliver

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50 years
by Mary D'Souza 28 Aug '13

28 Aug '13

Salutations to those of you who have participated directly or indirectly with Martin Luther King and his effort to bring equality and justice. With gratitude, The D'Souzas

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ICAI Winds & Waves Magazine August 2013
by John & Robyn Hutchinson 26 Aug '13

26 Aug '13

The Institute of Cultural Affairs International - Advancing Human DevelopmentDear colleagues and friends, Please feel free to send on to your networks. We look forward to continued contributions for future editions. best wishes Robyn, for W&W team ----- Original Message ----- From: ICA International To: rjhutchinson(a)optusnet.com.au Sent: Saturday, August 24, 2013 12:00 AM Subject: ICAI Winds & Waves Magazine August 2013 Any problem reading this message please click or paste this URL in your browser's address bar http://icai-members.org/windswaves-mag/2013-august/vol-3-august-2013.htm Greetings, ICA International is delighted to present the August 2013 edition of the ICA global magazine, 'Winds and Waves,' published 3 times a year and now in its third year. This is a growing and organic global project, and is making many connections. You will find that this month's magazine is equally as informative and stimulating with it's main theme of 'Edge Thinking in Human Development,' and again being filled with reports and stories from the many ICAs around the world. With a growing number of other interested organisations and individuals, we now have a readership of well over 1000 folk... Winds and Waves is available through the ICA International website in several formats to download or to read on line, also a high resolution PDF to download for printing. We are now sending the magazine to the two ICA listserves, OE and dialogue, and hope that members of both ICA listserves will enjoy receiving and reading this and future editions of Wind and Waves. We do apologise for any double postings. We encourage you to send Wind and Waves on to your networks. Please follow this link: Winds and Waves Volumes 3 No.2 August 2013 saludos, ICA Internacional se complace en presentar la edición de agosto 2013 de la revista ICA global, "Vientos y Olas", la cual se difunde 3 veces al año, cumpliendo ya su tercer año de ser publicada. Se trata de un proyecto global creciente y orgánico, que está logrando muchas nuevas conexiones. Usted encontrará que la revista de este mes es igualmente informativa y estimulante: cuyo tema es el "Pensamiento Innovador en el Desarrollo Humano", nuevamente Ud puede encontrar informes e historias de muchos de los ICA en todo el mundo y un número cada vez mayor de otras organizaciones e individuos. Por ahora estamos llegando a un público de más de 1.000 personas. Todas las publicaciones de la revista "Vientos y Olas" se encuentran disponibles en la página web de ICA Internacional en varios formatos para descargar o leer en línea, también en una alta resolución para descargar un PDF e imprimir. Ahora estamos enviando la revista a través de las listas disponibles de ICA, y esperamos que los miembros inscritos en las listas ICA podrán disfrutar de la recepción y la lectura de esta y futuras ediciones de "Vientos y Olas". Nos disculpamos por si recibe la información dos veces. Por favor, siga este enlace: vientos y olas, agosto de 2013. Bonjour, ICA International est heureux de pouvoir vous présenter l'édition du magazine global de l'ICA pour le mois d'août 2013, 'Winds and Waves,' qui est publié trois fois par an, et qui est maintenant dans sa troisième année.Il s'agit là d'un projet organique à croissance rapide, qui accomplit de nombreuses voies de communication. Vous constaterez que l'édition de ce mois est tout aussi informative et stimulante: 'Les concepts d'avant-garde du développement humain' continuent à présenter de nombreux rapports et d' histoires qui proviennent de grand nombre d' ICAs autour du monde et d'un nombre croissant d'autres organisations et individus. A l'époque nous avons un lectorat de plus de 1000 personnes... "Winds and Waves" est accessible par l'intermédiaire du site web de l'ICA International et est disponible en différents formats: Vous pouvez le télécharger ou lire en ligne; vous pouvez aussi télécharger un PDF à haute résolution en vue d'une éventuelle impression. A l'heure actuelle nous envoyons le magazine aux deux services de liste de l'ICA en espérant que les membres des deux services de liste de l'ICA pourront profiter de la réception et de la lecture de la présente et de futures éditions de "Winds and Waves". Nous nous excusons de tout message dupliqué. Veuillez suivre ce lien: WINDS AND WAVES, Août 2013 http://icai-members.org/windswaves-mag/2013-august/vol-3-august-2013.htm Published by The Institute of Cultural Affairs International, 655 Queen Street East, Toronto, Ontario M4M 1G4, Canada. All rights reserved. For more information or to unsubscribe, email: subscriptions(a)icai-members.org

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What Happens If You Give the God Lecture Today?
by Gordon Harper 25 Aug '13

25 Aug '13

Well -- In this case, the poor soul here in Seattle who tried it (no, twas not I) got roundly booed andsome people in his sizable audience tried hard to shut him downbefore he was through it. I'd heard about David Guterson's experience delivering the commencement address this year at his former Seattle high school. Only recently, however, did a friend send me a copy of it to read myself. (You may recognize Guterson's name as the author of the novel, /Snow Falling on Cedars/.) Ifound his talk so deliciously outrageous as a graduation speech that I have to share it. Those who were most outraged and expressed it so vocally were in the parentsand family memberssection; it seems the graduates were at least polite and attentive during it. Its ending is weak (IMHO), and of course there was no following Christ lecture the next morning. Still, if one ever wanted a current rendering of our Friday night event, this might come close -- Gordon

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8/22/13, Spong: The Need for the Christian to Journey Beyond Scripture, Creed and Church
by Ellie Stock 22 Aug '13

22 Aug '13

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR The Need for the Christian to Journey Beyond Scripture, Creed and Church Theology is a rational, deeply human, attempt to explain our experience with God. Theology is, therefore, never primary; it is always secondary to experience. Theological explanations can thus never be eternal. All explanations not only will change, but must change when knowledge grows and by so doing will always invalidate previous conclusions. Theology can never be infallible, unchanging or ultimately real. This, however, is a reality that quite frequently cannot be embraced by religious institutions and religious leaders. This means that there never has been an “inerrant Bible” or an “infallible pope.” The books of the Bible are always human attempts to explain a primary life experience, while every church hierarchy, including the papacy, is engaged in the task of trying to determine ultimate truth in a subjective, culturally relativized world. All scriptures and all theological pronouncements are inevitably time-bound and time-warped. A couple of illustrations might help us to see that no human explanation of any experience can ever be inerrant or infallible. Since the dawn of self-conscious life, we human beings have had the experience of watching the sun rise in the east and set in the west That is a phenomenon well documented all over the world, an objective reality. Look, however, at the various ways that this experience has been explained throughout history. The explanations range from the ancient Egyptians, who interpreted this pattern of the sun to be caused by the Sun God riding a chariot across the sky each day surveying the world, all the way to the modern scientist, who asserts that the phenomenon of the sun’s rising and setting is the result of the planet earth turning on its axis every 24 hours, as it makes its elliptical journey around the sun. These explanations obviously vary widely, but note that the experience itself is identical. In a similar fashion an epileptic seizure is another human phenomenon that has been observed from the dawn of time. In the New Testament an epileptic seizure was explained as having been caused by an invisible, demonic spirit suddenly taking over its victim, shaking him or her violently, hurling the victim to the ground and forcing the victim into an unconscious, trembling state until the spirit finally departed as suddenly as it arrived. Modern medicine, however, explains this same experience as a malfunction of the brain, resulting in a cascade of misfiring electrical impulses, which jump the track, so to speak, and thus create the resulting sense of seizure. The explanations are widely divergent, but once again the experience is identical. It is the constant temptation and the regular pitfall of religious institutions and religious spokespersons to confuse their explanations with the experience itself. The gospels, we need to state clearly, are not the dictated word or words of God, but are rather the time-bound and time-warped explanations of the Jesus experience, couched in the language and understandings of the first century. At the time the New Testament was written, no one knew that women had an egg cell, so the story of Jesus’ birth to a virgin could be used to explain the experience, which was that in Jesus they believed they had encountered something, which human life by itself was not capable of producing. In that time, we need to understand that no one quite understood what happens to the body at death. They could, therefore, reasonably assume that the death process could be reversed, if the reversal occurred within three days, after which the decaying of the body became obvious. When the New Testament was written, no one knew about germs, viruses, tumors or cardiovascular disease and so sickness was interpreted as divine punishment for sins committed. That was why it made sense to treat sickness by offering prayers and sacrifices. If we assume, as fundamentalist Protestants and conservative Roman Catholics still seem to do, that the gospel narratives are in fact literal renditions of what actually happened in time or in history, then religion has become idolatrous. It has invested the perfection of God in something that is in fact a human creation. By literalizing the Bible, religious people have also unknowingly literalized the world view of the first century that assumed that anything that could not be understood by first century minds must be a miracle, explained only by an appeal to the presence of a supernatural power. So the presumably “inerrant” Bible of Protestant fundamentalism and the presumably “infallible” theological doctrines of Roman Catholicism, become nonsensical in the 21st century. A Christianity based on those outdated ideas can never be compelling to 21st century people unless they are willing and able to close their minds to modern knowledge. Biblical inerrancy is therefore not just ignorance, it is a distortion of both truth and humanity. To quote the Bible to oppose equality for women or justice and dignity for homosexual people is to confuse the cultural fears of yesterday with ultimate truth. It is also to be pathetically and profoundly uninformed. What then about the creeds? They are fourth century attempts to codify religious beliefs that had been drawn primarily from the Bible. To insist that creeds are unchanging truth or to make creedal faith the hallmark of Orthodoxy is to state something that is absurd. It is to pretend that a quite limited fourth century, Greek-oriented world view is the same as “the mind of God.” So, when we learn that there is no all-seeing God, who lives above the sky of a three-tiered universe, who is always looking down to record our deeds in the record book of life, by which our eternal destiny will be determined, is not to say that there is no God, but it is to say that truth is always relative. Heaven as a place of reward and hell as a place of punishment have become nonsensical dated ideas. So is a Bible that contains the story of the Tower of Babel, the raining of heavenly bread, called manna, from the sky to feed the starving Hebrew people and the story of Jesus’ ascension into heaven. If the story of Jesus’ ascension literally means that he went up into the sky then we need to embrace the modern reality that Jesus did not get to heaven, he got into orbit or else he escaped the force of gravity and wandered into the infinity of space. Yet, on the basis of those limited, time bound fourth century creeds religious wars have been fought, religious persecution has been carried out, “heretics” have been burned at the stake and “witches” have been hanged to keep alive the myth that human words can capture, in some unchanging form, eternal truth. So often the business of religion has ceased to be the search for truth and has become the activity of mind control. Christians who claim inerrancy for the first century words of the gospels or infallibility for their doctrinal understanding of the fourth century words of the creeds are quite simply delusional people, and in the name of both God and truth, they need to be resisted mightily. Yet the facts of history reveal that Galileo was condemned by the church for suggesting that first century cosmology was inaccurate and Darwin is still being roundly criticized and politically resisted for suggesting that pre-modern biology is simply incorrect. I was both startled and amazed when I read recently a widely reported poll taken in Georgia, which revealed that 73% of the registered Republicans and 53% of registered Democrats in that state still believe literally the creation story in the Bible. This is not a commentary on faith, it is a commentary on how an uninformed faith can impede and distort the educational system of one of the states of this union. To think that an electorate this deeply uninformed can still choose political leaders, who will make laws for this entire nation is frightening! Yet, having now said all of these things, and quite clearly I hope, I still want to tell the world that there is a difference between an experience and the culturally bound explanation of that experience. I still plumb the meaning of the Bible on a daily basis. I still gather in my parish church every Sunday and recite the creed. I do these things joyfully and self-consciously. Am I simply schizophrenic, living simultaneously in two different worlds? Am I being delusional by intention and pretending to participate in rituals in which I do not really believe? No, neither is the case. I am rather a believer, not in a literal Bible, but in the experience to which the words of that Bible point. I am a believer, not in the literal creeds, but in the reality to which those creedal words point. I view the creeds as a love song that my ancestors in faith created to help them process their God experience. I do not mind joining in the singing of their love song. I recognize my kinship with them in the history of my faith’s development over the centuries. The creeds are not for me an imposed girdle into which I have to force my flabby faith. They are not a straitjacket designed to force me to live within the theological boundaries and understandings of fourth century people. They are the dated explanations of an experience that I still believe and acknowledge as real. Yes, let there be no mistake, I am convinced that there is a reality to the experience of God, but I do not interpret this reality as if God is a supernatural being who does miracles. I rather see this reality as a transcendent presence that is beyond human boundaries and that calls me and compels me not to allow those boundaries to bind my humanity into less than it is capable of being. I view God as the Source of life and love, and as the Ground of Being calling me to live, to love and to be. My Christian life is thus a journey for which there is no literal roadmap. I am convinced that if I walk this journey deeply enough and faithfully enough, I will be led beyond all religious forms – beyond scripture, creeds, doctrine and dogma and into the wordless wonder of the true meaning of worship. The Christian Church exists, I believe, to point all of us beyond the boundaries of our own humanity. It is a pity that institutional religion in all its forms does not understand its own message! ~John Shelby Spong Read the essay online here. Question & Answer Ken Austin from Maroubra, Australia, writes: Question: I heard Bishop Spong speaking recently on Radio Australia about his book on the Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic. The Bishop said he was a Christian, but he also said that he did not believe in the historical interpretation of scripture. He pointed out how “Christians” in history were not acting as God would have it. He said he would like to meet with people of other religions who had “experienced God” in their own faiths and to explain to them his experience of God from the Christian perspective and then to listen to their explanations of their religious experience with a view to getting a dialogue going and not saying “my version of God is right and yours is not.” He said that this is in the interest of having a peaceful world. But how can “religions” or “faiths,” if you like, agree on the nature of God when their doctrines are so opposite (actually Christianity is not a religion, it is about having a relationship with God, through the Savior Jesus, the Christ). Jews, Muslims and Buddhists don’t have this aspect going on at all. But he did not say in this interview that Jesus has said that the only way to the Father (God) is through him, I am the gate, etc. The Bishop also didn’t mention that Jesus came to take away the penalty for sin (which all humans have as part of their natures) and that the thing that separates humankind from God is sin. (God cannot be related to sin in any way and Jesus removes that barrier – other religions don’t do this at all.) Bishop Spong is clearly an intellectual type, who apparently ignores some of the most important parts of scripture in order to promote his own version of God. For what reason or purpose he does this is not clear to me. I hope I can have these questions put to him for an answer. I don’t see how Jesus’ words agree with his, especially about having a holy relationship, through Jesus’ death and resurrection, with the true and living God. Answer: Dear Ken, Thank you for your letter even though it reveals a deeply fundamentalist version of Christianity that lives only in those communities that have not engaged the intellectual revolution of the last 500 years. I associate your viewpoint with that which I encountered constantly when I was in Sydney, which religiously, at least, seems to me to be little more than a hotbed of pre-modern thinking. Perhaps that is why Sydney is known primarily as a secular non-religious city. This was especially true of those who called themselves “Sydney Anglicans,” who were among the most uninformed, the most imperialistic, the most deeply prejudiced and the most ungracious people I have ever met who still call themselves Christians. This was true from the Archbishop on down, excluding only that tiny minority in that archdiocese who secretly communicated to me their embarrassment over what has happened to their church in that beautiful city. If by your question you want to be in dialogue with a different perspective then I am happy to respond. What you call the “historical interpretation of scripture” is shorthand for evangelical fundamentalism. For the past 200 years in the Christian academies of the developed world the literal view of the Bible that you espouse has been shattered. Moses did not write the Torah. It was the product of about 500 years and the merging together of traditions from at least four schools of thought arising in the circumstances of four different periods of Jewish History. Not a word of what are called the “Books of Moses” or the Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) was actually written until about 300 years after Moses’ death. Moses thus did not write it down while God dictated the Ten Commandments. There are in fact three versions of the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament and they do not agree with each other. From your perspective we would have to believe that God was confused or perhaps that God did not quite get the commandments right the first time so God kept trying. You appear not to be aware that miracles do not come into the story of Jesus until the 8th decade of the Common Era. The Virgin Birth does not enter the gospel tradition until the 9th decade; neither does the understanding of resurrection as the physical resuscitation of a deceased body. The story of Jesus’ ascension is a 10th decade addition to a growing and developing tradition. The Christian movement did not separate itself completely from the Synagogue and Judaism until 55-60 years after the crucifixion, so the imperialistic idea that only Christians have the truth was a late developing idea when Christians finally achieved institutional and political power. Can you imagine a God so limited that this God would only welcome into the divine presence those who agree with you or other fundamentalists? If Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews and Christians all worship the one True God as I believe we do, since there is ultimately only one God, then no one’s understanding of God can ever be identified with absolute truth. As the apostle Paul once wrote: “We see through a glass darkly.” The claim that no one comes to God but by Jesus is a saying attributed to Jesus only in the Fourth Gospel, a book that did not appear in Christian history until the latter years of the 10th decade, or some 65 – 70 years after the end of Jesus’ earthly life. The earlier gospels portray Jesus as saying those who are not against him are for him and inviting all who are weary and heavily laden to come unto him. The only standard of divine judgment according to Matthew said nothing about proper believing, but spoke only of the ability to see the presence of God in every person including those he called “the least of those who are our brothers and sisters.” The idea that human nature is fallen and that Jesus had to die for our sins is a result, not of some divine revelation, but of literalizing the ancient Jewish creation stories that stressed an original and perfect creation, followed by a fall into sin created by human disobedience, which in turn necessitated a rescue operation that portrays Jesus as being punished for our sins on the cross. This is a 4th century misreading of the ancient Jewish folktales and, if literalized, turn God into a vindictive, punitive monster. They would also turn Jesus into being the prime victim of divine abuse and would turn you and me into guilt-laden Christ killers. Besides that, we now know that these ancient stories are simply not literally true. Modern studies of the origin of our universe tell us that there never was a perfect creation, just an evolving process that went from physical matter, to life, to consciousness and finally to self-consciousness over a period of about 13.8 billion years. Evolution is an established scientific understanding of the origins of life that renders “original sin” as nonsense. If there was no fall into sin, there is no need for a savior, so that way of telling the Christ story is simply a product of an uninformed mentality. All versions of God are the ideas of someone. The idea of God changes dramatically in the Bible itself. It is a long journey from the God who sent plagues into Egypt, ordered the murder of the first born male in every Egyptian household on the night of the Passover and who drowned the Egyptian army in the Red Sea, to the God who enjoins us to love our enemies. I guess what I really want to communicate to you is that true Christianity is vastly different from any one’s idea of Christianity and is certainly different from the type of Christianity that you seem to have experienced and unless you can step away from the narrow and even punitive understanding that you reflect, you will never be able to grow into the fullness of the stature of Christ Jesus, which Paul says is in each of us. I have been all over Australia on many occasions. I assure you there is more to Christianity in that wonderful country than what you appear to know about. My books actually sell on a per capita basis there better than they sell anywhere else in the world. That would not happen unless someone is listening and someone is reading. As a matter of fact in September in Canberra an international gathering of progressive Christians will come together in a conference known as “Common Dreams III.” I commend it to all Australians who want to try to build what I have called “A New Christianity for a New World.” I wish you well. John Shelby Spong Announcements Common Dreams 3 Conference Midwives of Change:Progressives Shaping Religious Communities From: September 19, 2013 to September 22, 2013 Manning Clark Centre, Australian National University Canberra, AUSTRALIA Common Dreams http://www.commondreams.org.au Click here for more information Any questions or concerns, please contact us at support(a)johnshelbyspong.com or 503-236-3545. Copyright © 2013 ProgressiveChristianity.org, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you have a membership at johnshelbyspong.com. 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