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4/25/13, Spong: Making Sense of Violence and Terror in Boston
by Ellie Stock 25 Apr '13

25 Apr '13

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR Making Sense of Violence and Terror in Boston On Monday, April 15, Patriot’s Day in Boston, Massachusetts, the bomb blasts that occurred near the finish line of the Boston Marathon brought death, mutilation and injury to more than 200 innocent people. By Thursday, the perpetrators of this crime had been identified and the manhunt was on. By Friday, one of the two suspects had been killed in a shootout with police and the other was believed to be hiding in the small suburb adjacent to Boston called Watertown. The entire metropolitan area was under police lock-down for almost 48 hours and a house-to-house search was undertaken. On that same Friday, as fate or luck would have it, my wife and I were driving to Boston to give a series of lectures that weekend at an event organized jointly by Andover Newton Theological School and the Eliot United Church of Christ. The lectures were to be located in the facilities of the Eliot Church in Newton, Massachusetts, less than a mile from Watertown. The entire metropolitan area of Boston was totally caught up in the trauma of that event. Driving toward Boston, we kept the radio on wondering if we would be allowed into the area in general and into our hotel in particular. Thirty minutes before we arrived, the second suspect was captured, wounded but alive, hiding under the plastic cover inside a boat, parked on wheels in the backyard of a private house. So we were present to share in the corporate sense of relief in the community. The grief and the fear, which always come when terror removes the community’s sense of security and safety, were palpable. It was a tragedy in which the entire nation shared, indeed in which the entire world shared. Three stories out of this tragedy tore at my emotions and raised within me the same questions that gripped the people of the world. What is the sense and meaning of evil with which human life must cope and inside which human life is almost always lived? These three stories put a face on the presence of that evil. First, there was the story of a man named Bill Richard, who ran in the marathon. His wife, Denise, his eight year old son, Martin, and his five year old daughter, Jane, came to cheer their husband and father across the finish line. Bill, like most people his age, was not a championship runner. He crossed the finish line about two hours after the winner. He was, however, elated at his performance and his family, proud of him, wanted to share in his triumph. Before they could do that, however, there came, it seemed out of nowhere, an explosion. Eight-year old Martin was killed instantly, five-year old Jane was hurt so badly that one of her legs had to be amputated and Denise had received such a blow to the head from the projectiles loosed in the blast that she suffered brain damage, the full extent of which has not yet been determined. All of this tragedy was at the hands of two brothers, unknown to the Richard family, who were motivated by a cause in which the Richards were not involved. Yet in that insane moment, the life of this family was shattered, never to be fully repaired again. First, I tried to look at this tragedy through their eyes; it was enough to bring tears to mine. The second story came after the suspects had been identified as Tamerlan (age 26) and Dzhokhar (age 19) Tsarnaev, originally from Chechnya, but who had come to this country from Kyrgyzstan with their families about 11 years ago. When the names of the suspects were made known all links to this family were pursued by both the investigators and the press. It appeared that the suspects’ father had recently returned to Kyrgyzstan, leaving his brother, Rusian, as the ostensible head of the family. When this uncle of the suspects was located in Maryland, he agreed to an impromptu press conference on the sidewalk outside his home. It was for him a wrenching experience. Everything he had struggled to build up for himself and his family seemed to have blown up in this tragedy. He clearly was not in sympathy with his nephews’ new, radical religious stance. He referred to his oldest nephew as a “loser.” Almost at the point of tears, he began to speak, not to the press but to his nephews, “You have brought a shame on this family. You have brought a shame on all Chechnyans.” He knew life would never be the same and he and his family would be stained forever in the minds of all who knew them by this violent act, over which he had no control. So I tried to look at this tragedy through Russian’s eyes. The third story that gripped me was the narrative of the two primary perpetrators of this heinous crime, Timerlan and Dzhokhar. Sympathy was hard to muster at that moment, but questions cascaded forth. What motivated them? What cause was so all-consuming that it justified meticulous planning and the preparation of bombs made out of pressure cookers filled with nails and other metal projectiles that would become lethal weapons striking anyone near enough with maiming and killing fury? Why did they feel the need to destroy the lives of people they had never met? What demons possessed them that caused them to devalue human life so totally? What enabled them, when they thought they had escaped unseen, to return to their nearby home and to pal around with their friends during the evening after their deed had been done, as if life were still normal? What was it like for them when they recognized that their identities were known and that they needed to flee for their lives? In their frantic attempt to escape, they killed a 26-year old Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus policeman in cold blood and then carjacked a Suburban vehicle, forcing its driver to withdraw money from his ATM account to give them the cash they needed. Did they have a destination in mind or were they just fleeing blindly? What did they feel when they engaged in a gun fight with local police in which the older of these two brothers was killed, while the younger brother escaped in their stolen car by running over the body of his brother? What was going on inside this now lone fugitive when the man hunt finally ended with a massive police force surrounding the boat in which he was hiding in the backyard of a Watertown resident? While he was armed with an assault gun this nineteen year old, bleeding from his own wounds, surely knew that death or capture were the only options left to him. What was his state of mind? He was finally captured with no more loss of life and is today under heavy guard while a patient in a Boston hospital. All around him lives, including his own, were shattered. Human beings are capable of enormous evil. What is the cause? Is there some flaw in human nature, an inescapable “original sin” that causes some to victimize others mindlessly? Is there an alien or demonic power that takes over some of us from time to time, causing us to do things that, left to our own devices, we would presumably never do? Is there something about human life that we do not yet understand? All of these possible explanations have been offered in human history, but none of them seems adequate. Perhaps we are simply less civilized than we like to imagine. Perhaps the elemental laws of the herd are still part of our biological life and, from time to time, they must be served. A study of all living things reveals that survival is a driving force in biology. Every plant, every tree and every vine is programmed by life itself to maximize its chances of survival. That is the nature, the reality of living things. It is thus also true of every insect, every creature of the sea, every reptile, bird and mammal. Below the level of human freedom, nature drives all living things to seek survival. It is instinctual behavior. Human beings, however, are self-conscious decision makers. We can choose between love and hate, war and peace, cooperation and violence. What drives us to choose hate, war and violence? Is it not still survival? When life feels threatened, will human beings not act in such a way as to maximize their own survival? The Tsarnaev family has a history of doing just that. When life in Chechnya became so dangerous, they fled to Kyrgyzstan. When Kyrgyzstan became equally dangerous, they became political refugees in America. When they did not fit in, anger grew. When the United States was seen as hostile to Muslim nations in the Middle East, their fears were heightened. Inside Islam they sought protection and meaning in what appeared to them to be a rejecting world. Religion often functions that way. Radicalized religion is always a cover for justifying killing behavior and frequently religion becomes an acceptable channel through which rage finds an outlet. When the rage of being victimized is attached to religion, all manner of destructive behavior can be viewed by believers as acceptable. Islam is not the only religion to be used this way. Look at what the Christians did to the Jews from the days of the New Testament to the days of the Holocaust. Look at the innocent people burned at the stake as heretics by Christians. Look at the women hanged as witches in Salem, Massachusetts. Look at the religious torture employed by Christian believers against non-believers. Look at the Crusades, organized by the Vatican, which made a virtue out of killing Moslems in the Middle East because their very existence was thought be an affront to Christian sensitivities. None of this religiously sanctioned activity justifies violent and murderous behavior. What it does do, however, is to free us to see that our survival fears will always find expression in ruthless acts of killing another before those “others” can kill us and that through the ages religion has served to sanitize and perfume this killing behavior. If Christianity, Islam, Judaism or any other religion is to have continued life then its focus must be on enhancing life, building community and expanding the sense of what it means to be human. Religious devotees must also put an end to demonizing any child of God on the basis of race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, nationality or religion. Our world is a long way from that goal and organized religion still seems to be part of the problem, not part of the cure. Terror reminds us very painfully of just how shallow are the layers of civilization around us and just how empty is the piety of many of our religious words. ~John Shelby Spong Read the essay online here. Question & Answer Rick Portillo, via the Internet, writes: Question: I would like to know if you believe the Bible is a book that should be used to guide one's life. I do not agree or disagree; I just want to know what you think personally. I am an Agnostic and I recently saw a video of you being interviewed. Answer: Dear Rick, I am not sure what you mean by your question. The Bible is a library of books written over a period of time between about 1000 BCE and 135 CE by a wide variety of authors, living in a wide variety of different circumstances. These authors also reflect a wide variation in what I would call spiritual sensitivity. For example, I would not choose to pattern my life after that of Elijah, who slew 400 priests of Baal with his sword after a showdown on Mount Carmel, or that of Samson, who slew hundreds of Philistines with the jawbone of an ass. I would, however, be willing to install as life values such biblical admonitions as: Jesus’ call to “love your enemies;” Hosea’s definition of God as “love;” Amos’ definition of God as “justice,” and Malachi’s definition of God as “universal.” I would also want to listen to Jonah’s story against prejudice and Jesus’ definition of who is my neighbor. So I would be more discerning and less blanketed in my response to you than your question seems to allow. Perhaps as a self-confirmed agnostic, you have simply not encountered the Bible on anything other than the shallowest of levels. I see three great principles that underlie the entire biblical story. The first is that all life and all people are holy. This is the great insight of the Hebrew Scriptures and is the essential meaning of the story of the creation. That is also why I refer to God as “father.” It is a sexist reference, but when this nomenclature was adopted “Father” meant the source of all life. The second great biblical principle is that all life and all people are loved. That is the essence of the Jesus story, which comes through the gospels and that is what we Christians are trying to communicate when we refer to Jesus as “the son.” The third is that the purpose of life is to discover the courage to be all that each of us can be within the unique circumstances of our humanity. That is what it means to me to believe in the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is always defined in the Bible as “The Lord and Giver of Life.” There are many parts of the Bible that reflect primitive, tribal and destructive emotions toward those who are regarded as enemies. I am not impressed with the God who hates Egyptians as portrayed in the book of Exodus, the God who stops the sun in the sky in order to have more daylight to kill more Amorites as described in the book of Joshua, or the God who orders genocide against the Amalekites as recorded in the book of Samuel. The great tragedy of the church has been that by clinging to biblical literalism to the point of profound ignorance, we have made it possible for people like you to frame the question you have posed, which assumes that there is a single biblical point of view. There isn’t. Thanks for asking. John Shelby Spong Announcements Pluralism Sunday is being celebrated on May 5th all around the world. 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 our website. Our mailing address is: ProgressiveChristianity.org 3530 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Unit 1 Portland, OR 97214 Add us to your address book

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Re: [Dialogue] Salmon: Reply to Holcombe
by David Walters 25 Apr '13

25 Apr '13

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Dick West's Book Recommendation
by George Holcombe 23 Apr '13

23 Apr '13

Thanks Dick for recommending Houle's The Shift Age (http://www.theshiftage.com) It is tremendous and I hope we all read it. It's in the lineage of Toffler and Naisbitt and strikes me as being on target. I'm reminded of some of the things we spoke of back in the 60's and 70's as being Global Citizens and the morphing of institutions, nations and social structures. It would be fun and insightful to track it through the Soc. Proc. triangles, if someone has not already done that for us. 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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4/18/13, Spong: What the Gun Debate Reveals about the Republican Party and Political Leadership
by Ellie Stock 18 Apr '13

18 Apr '13

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR +A message to my readers: After the deadline for the publication of this column the terrorist bombing at the end of the Boston marathon occurred, leaving many of us enraged, saddened and despairing about the levels of violence that apparently engulf the world. It also put the content of this column into a new perspective. Our prayers go out to the victims and our thanks go to the first responders, but our hopes to build a better world remain in tact. When all the facts become clear we will look again at what this new terror episode means to our churning understanding of what it means to be human. ~John Shelby Spong What the Gun Debate Reveals about the Republican Party and Political Leadership Something seems to be missing from the equation or perhaps I am just not smart enough to understand the dynamics. The fact is I don’t get it! Perhaps there is something subliminal going on that will in time be revealed. For the life of me, however, I find it difficult to understand why the intelligent people, elected to the Congress, are having such a hard time deciding whether or not to vote for universal background checks as a prerequisite for buying a gun. I do not understand why there is a debate on whether to limit a magazine clip to ten bullets on a gun sold to a civilian. Are ten bullets without reloading not sufficient for anyone’s personal use? I do not understand why any private citizen needs to own an assault weapon? While I was trying to make sense out of these questions and the behavior of our elected officials, I watched as a group of Republican senators sought to block the Senate from even being able to debate, much less pass any gun reform legislation. Led first by four of the regular right-wing grandstanders in the Senate, who were enhancing their image with the Tea Party types, they were soon joined by 11 others including the Senate Republican minority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. It then became the position of the majority of the Republican senators, when 31 of the 45 of them voted in an attempt to prevent this bill from even being considered by the legislative wing of our government. Are there that many senators who are that out of touch with the people of this country? Is this now the official position of the Republican Party? With every poll of our citizens showing majorities ranging from 91% to 56% in support of the various provisions of this gun reform law, I am driven to the conclusion that something irrational has become the point of view of one of the major political parties in this nation, which means that something dreadful is going on in my country! I try to listen to these people’s arguments, seeking to discover some semblance of rationality, but it eludes me. In this legislation I see no attempt to revoke the second amendment’s guarantee of a citizen’s right to bear arms. I see only an effort to keep dangerous weapons out of the hands of mentally sick and clearly distorted members of our society by requiring universal background checks before a gun can be purchased. People getting drivers’ licenses at least have their criminal records checked. I see no effort to take guns away from hunters or gun club members. I have never been convinced, however, that hunters or gun club members need assault weapons or unlimited magazine capacities to carry out their activities. These might be essential to an army confronting an enemy seeking to destroy this nation, but does any private citizen need a howitzer, a bazooka, a machine gun or a missile launcher. I understand why people who live in non-urban areas, separated by distances from police protection or even from their nearest neighbors, might need to arm themselves against possible intruders, but action-activated spot lights, alarm systems and well placed cameras can provide far more effective security and at a much cheaper price and if that security system were supported by a shotgun, a rifle or even a six shooter, sufficient protection to alleviate all fear would be accomplished. More than that seems to me to reflect rampant paranoia. I listen to gun lobbyists suggest that only a society armed to the teeth will ever be a safe society and I find no facts that bear out this claim. America has more guns per person in our population than any other developed nation in the world. If guns make us safer then why does this nation also have the highest murder rate of any developed nation? Among regular gun victims are our children. What kind of nation is it that does nothing when school children are regularly lost to gun-carrying killers? No place appears to be safe from violence. University students at Virginia Tech, a campus with its own security forces, who are in fact well-armed, were murdered in their classrooms by a mentally-disturbed former student, who had access to a high magazine attack weapon. A member of congress, Representative Gabby Gifford, addressing her constituents in her home state of Arizona, was shot as were others meeting with her, including children, who came to “meet the congresswoman,” were killed. Members of a Sikh Temple in Chicago were murdered by an armed psychopath while gathering for worship. Children at school in Columbine, Colorado, were slaughtered by armed disgruntled students, and children, six and seven years old, in Newtown, Connecticut, were senselessly murdered by a young man with an attack weapon, who had just killed his mother. Innocent, unnamed, urban teenagers are regularly caught in the crossfire and killed in some of our crime-ridden, drug infested cities. How many must die before our elected leaders develop an effective response? Political and transformative figures have also been victims of our violent society. One thinks of such leaders as John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, George Wallace, Robert F. Kennedy, Malcolm X and Ronald Reagan who have been hunted down and shot by a wide variety of potential killers. How is it possible that some of our political officials think that limiting access to killing weapons compromises civil liberties more than protecting the potential victims of gun violence? Are not murdered people rendered devoid of every civil liberty? Are our elected leaders so afraid that if they had to cast a vote on this bill they would either lose their seat in the Senate or close off from themselves forever the lucrative support of the gun lobby? Is that fear more compelling than protecting the innocent from gun violence? Is there no issue worth risking one’s Senate seat? Then why did these people seek election in the first place: Since all but two of those who threatened to block any vote on these issues were Republicans, we must ask whether there is anyone in the Republican Party willing to speak out against this vote-dodging behavior of their leaders in congress? Has Kentucky Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, by embracing that attempt to prohibit even a vote on these issues, not sacrificed any leadership potential that he ever possessed? This is the same national leader who stated some four years ago that his top priority was not to help lead the country through the worst economic crisis since the depression or to help bring an end to two wars that were instrumental in bringing the economy to the edge of bankruptcy, but it was rather to limit his political opponent to being a “one-term president.” Does that statement not border on irresponsibility, if not treason? What does leadership mean? That is not the only bizarre act that now plagues this party. During the last presidential election in states where the Republicans controlled the governor’s office and both houses of the state legislatures, which included states from Pennsylvania to Florida and from Ohio to South Carolina, efforts were made by a variety of barely legal means, to suppress minority voting. Is that the way democracy works? Are they willing to subvert this democracy in order to gain political power? Why were they not worried about the civil liberties of minority voters? Is this the party of Abraham Lincoln who, for his efforts to end slavery lost his life, and as a result once had the fierce loyalty of the great majority of America’s black voters? Is this the party of Theodore Roosevelt? Is it even the party of Ronald Reagan? This is, however, the same Republican Party that wants to limit the health care options available to women in the workplace, to mandate invasive ultra-sound procedures for women seeking a legal abortion, whose representatives denied that a woman could get pregnant from “legitimate” rape, all in order to force women to conform to the narrow religious agenda of these spokespersons. Was it not the presidential candidate of this party who wanted to “self deport” illegal immigrants by seeing to it that they received no support, no jobs, no education and no health care? Do they really believe that in the last presidential election they lost by huge majorities, the votes of women, young people, African-Americans and Latinos only because they did not communicate their policies well? Or do they think no one was listening? I suggest they communicated quite well and that these voters did not like their message! I wonder whether or not this party has, out of its fear of losing power, become suicidal, or does it simply suffer from a death wish? Is this party destined to go the way of the “Whigs?” Does it not recognize that a two-party system vying for the support of the majority is what makes this country work? The gun vote in congress is a matter of life and death to many people. It is a vote both about public safety and about what kind of a nation we are becoming and what kind of nation we want to be. When leaders get so far out of touch with the people they were elected to serve and when the people begin to feel that they cannot make these leaders hear their voices the seeds of revolution are at that moment being sown. If Senator McConnell, along with Senators Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, just to name the most vocal of those who tried stop even a vote on the gun bill, are in fact the face of the modern-day Republican Party in the United States, then this party has no future. I urge other Republicans in the Senate, in the House and Republican governors around the country to separate themselves from their current congressional leadership and to call their party back to their constitutional role of responsible opposition. That is the only way Republicans will have a chance to share in tomorrow’s leadership in America. ~John Shelby Spong Read the essay online here. Question & Answer Nicole Armitstead from Australia writes: Question: I read your title Liberating the Gospels some time ago which I found "liberating." I wonder, when all the layers are peeled from the gospels, I'm not sure I fully understand what is left in the Christian story to grasp. When we strip everything away is there an eternal truth left to motivate us? When you deconstruct a story so totally, what remains? Look forward to your words which will, no doubt, be wise. Answer: Dear Nicki, Yours is a good question, but I believe the wrong question. If what we have in the gospels is an interpretation of Jesus, written from a time two to three generations after his death and in a language Jesus never spoke, as I am certain was the case, then the question we need to ask is what gave that writing its power? If the story was not literal history to begin with is anything lost when we discover that it was not literal history? That is the situation we are in today. Since the early fourth century, out of both ignorance and prejudice, we have pretended that the gospels were biographies of the things Jesus said and did. Now we know they are highly interpretive works of some Jewish artists who mined the Hebrew Scriptures for stories about Moses, Samuel, Elijah, Elisha, Solomon, Isaiah and many other parts of what we call the Old Testament in order to wrap these stories around Jesus of Nazareth. It would take far more space than this question and answer format would allow to document this conclusion with adequate data. That is what I did in some 300 pages in the book to which you have referred: Liberating the Gospels: Reading the Bible with Jewish Eyes. That is still my favorite book of all that I have written and it was the book in which my study of the gospels was broken open to new levels of understanding. It is not what is left that should be our concern, but why were these gospels written in this way at the beginning? That is the question that drives us to look behind the gospels and try to discover the experience that they had with Jesus, which required the interpretation these early writers put upon that experience. What was the source of that life-changing power that they believed they found in him? In that experience, life was expanded to new dimensions. When they tried to explain that experience, all they could finally say was somehow, through some means in that special life, they had met, encountered and known the meaning of God. The job of the church is to keep that experience alive by watching it lower barriers and expand life today. I do not throw away or abandon a great piece of art because it does not literally portray the meaning of its subject. I move deeply into that piece of art to discover the power to which the artist is seeking to bear witness. That is also how the Bible is to be read. Its value grows rather than diminishes when it is approached this way. It is institutional Christianity that has for so long defended a literal Bible that feels bereft. It is not the lives of those who can now respond to a non-literal view of the Bible. My best, John Shelby Spong Announcements Join us as we celebrate religious diversity on Pluralism Sunday! This year, May 5, 2012 (or other times during the year) – churches dedicate their worship to a celebration of our interfaith world. Progressive Christians thank God for religious diversity! We don’t claim that our religion is superior to all others. We recognize that other religions can be as good for others as ours is for us. We can grow closer to God and deeper in compassion—and we can understand our own traditions better—through a more intimate awareness of the world’s religions. On PLURALISM SUNDAY, churches celebrate elements of other world faiths in their sermons, litanies, and music; many feature speakers and singers from other faith traditions. Some congregations have exchanges with other faith communities, going to each other’s houses of worship. SIGN UP your congregation to be listed as a participating church for 2012 – by emailing Rev. Jim Burklo, Pluralism Sunday Coordinator for ProgressiveChristianity.org. (Churches can celebrate the event on other dates and still be listed as participants – indicate your plans for the event to Jim so these details can be listed on our site.) 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 our website. Our mailing address is: ProgressiveChristianity.org 3530 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Unit 1 Portland, OR 97214 Add us to your address book

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4/11/13, Spong: The Birth of Jesus, Part XI. Matthew Weaves Together Proof Texts from Isaiah, Micah, Hosea and from an Unknown Source
by Ellie Stock 11 Apr '13

11 Apr '13

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR The Birth of Jesus, Part XI Matthew Weaves Together Proof Texts from Isaiah, Micah, Hosea and from an Unknown Source Christianity was born in the synagogue and the original followers of Jesus were primarily observant Jews. They gathered in the synagogue regularly on the Sabbath for worship. A major part of that worship consisted of reading, learning about and becoming conversant with the sacred scriptures as the Jews understood them. Each Sabbath there were three major scripture readings observed by the synagogue pattern of Jewish worship. The first, the longest and the most important, came from what the Jews called the Torah. This part of the Hebrew Bible was also called “The books of Moses.” In Jesus’ day, it was generally believed that Moses was the author of the Torah books, named Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. These writings were the Jewish “Holy of Holies” and in the stricter, more orthodox synagogues, the requirement was that the entire Torah must be read in the synagogue on the Sabbaths of a single year. To accomplish this, the Torah lesson would of necessity consist of the reading of five to six chapters of our present text as the first lesson. It would take a minimum of 10 to 15 minutes to read a passage of that length. In more moderate or “liberal” synagogues this requirement was loosened and the Torah was allowed to be read over a three-year cycle. The second lesson would come from that portion of the Hebrew Bible that the Jews called “The Former Prophets.” These are the books that purport to describe Jewish history after the death of Moses, and include those works known as Joshua, Judges, I and II Samuel and I and II Kings. At an earlier point in history, these latter four books were all called the books of Samuel or I, II, III and IV Samuel. It was a later interpolation to call the last two I and II Kings. These books covered Jewish history from the conquest of Canaan under Joshua, around the year 1200 BCE, to the defeat of the nation of Judah at the hands of the Babylonians and the subsequent exile of the Jewish people in the land of Babylon beginning in 586 BCE. They were not as important as the Torah so there was no specific deadline by which to complete them. The third synagogue scripture reading was from what the Jews called “The Latter Prophets.” That title referred to the books we now call Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the books from Hosea to Malachi, which were all on a single scroll and were referred to by the Jews as “The book of the Twelve.” Christians tend to call them “The Minor Prophets.” Please note that Daniel did not come into the canon of Jewish Scripture until about 165 BCE and, as a late arrival, was not generally included in synagogue readings. When one notes the length of these four books: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the Book of the Twelve, we discover that they are about the same length and each tended to be read one chapter a week, one book a year, so the four books would be rotated over a four year cycle.. The singing or reciting of selected psalms would break up and separate the various scripture readings. Following these three readings, the members of the congregation would be invited to comment on the readings. This was the context in which the followers of Jesus began to wrap their memories of Jesus around and into the stories from the sacred text of the Jews. In time, stories originally written about Moses or Elijah would be retrofitted and then retold about Jesus, thus linking him to the spiritual power of his Jewish ancestors. On other occasions, words from one of the prophets or from one of the psalms would illumine an experience they had once had with Jesus and a tradition would be started in which Jesus and the Hebrew Scriptures began to meld into each other. We will see this reality occurring over and over as we work through the gospels. For now all I want to demonstrate is that these themes are a major part of the birth narratives and we cannot read them intelligently unless we recognize the process that created them. We have noted already that the story of a wicked king named Pharaoh, who tried to put to death the infant Moses as God’s promised deliverer, was repackaged and told by Matthew as a Jesus story in which a wicked king named Herod tries to put to death God’s promised deliverer named Jesus. Matthew then goes on to wrap his narrative of Jesus around a series of carefully chosen texts that suggest that the history of the Jewish people is somehow being relived through Jesus and that the words of the Hebrew Scriptures find their fulfillment in him. Matthew is much like a country preacher trying to bend the biblical text to the needs of his sermon. In his birth story, Mathew utilizes texts from Isaiah, Micah, Jeremiah, Hosea and, finally, from an unknown or yet to be identified text. I will examine each in brief detail. All of them are, at the very least, enormous stretches in literal accuracy. The first one is Isaiah 7:14 that we have heard numerous times in our Christmas pageants. Out of the darkness or even off stage, the voice of the prophet is heard saying, “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and his name shall be called Emmanuel, which means God with us.” The first and major problem with Matthew’s use of this text is that he did not quote it accurately. Was this an honest mistake or a deliberate attempt to make the text say what he needed it to say to suit his literary purposes? No one can finally say, but I suspect the latter when I put these words from Isaiah into their original context. Isaiah actually writes in Hebrew: “Behold a young woman is with child!” It is rather difficult to claim one is a virgin when one is expecting a baby. Indeed, the word virgin appears nowhere in this verse from Isaiah. The context is this. Two kings, Pekah from the Northern Kingdom called Israel and Rezin, the king of Syria, are in siege positions outside the walls of Jerusalem. They have made war on Judah and its king named Ahaz, because he has refused to join their alliance against Assyria. Their goal in this war was to topple Ahaz, put a puppet king on to the throne of Judah and then to have Judah’s military strength added to their alliance designed to hold off the Assyrians. King Ahaz is atop the walls of Jerusalem inspecting its defenses when he is met by Isaiah the prophet. First, Isaiah assures the king that Jerusalem will not fall to “these smoldering stumps,” which is what he calls Pekah and Rezin. Ahaz is not convinced. Isaiah then says to him: “Ask a sign of God.” and God will convince you that you will be delivered. Ahaz refuses to ask. Irritated, Isaiah says well you will be given a sign whether you like it or not. “Behold a woman is with child.” This baby soon to be born into the royal household will be the heir to the throne, a sign that this kingdom will endure. Isaiah goes on to say that before this baby is able to eat curds and honey and before he is old enough to choose between good and evil, these kings before whom Ahaz was quaking at this moment will be long gone. The facts of history are that the land of Judah was destined to work out a treaty with Assyria that left Judah a vassal state, but still alive, while both Syria and the Northern Kingdom of Israel were destroyed by Assyria. This text in Isaiah had nothing to do with predicting the birth of the messiah almost 800 years later! Matthew was stretching his interpretive powers wildly by using the text the way he did. The second text from the prophets, which Matthew weaves into his story, comes from Micah. When the wise men (I will discuss them in the next column in this series) stop to ask directions at the palace of King Herod, the king consults his chief priests and scribes to determine where it is that the messiah is to be born. One of the images so important to the Jews was that messiah must be a descendant of King David and thus heir to the Jewish throne. Part of messiah’s task was to restore the throne of King David. Micah the prophet refers to Bethlehem as the town out of which David emerged to rule the land of the Jews. The messiah must follow the same pattern. So in the opening narratives of Matthew, the birth of Jesus was shifted from Nazareth, where he was surely born, to Bethlehem, so that the messianic claim can be made and the words of the prophet Micah affirmed. Next, when Matthew proceeds to tell the story of King Herod slaughtering the boy babies in Bethlehem in his move to destroy the promised deliverer, he relates this to another tragic moment in Jewish history when the Assyrians conquered and destroyed the Northern Kingdom, made up, according to tradition, primarily of the descendants of Joseph, the son of Rachel, who was said to have been Jacob’s favorite wife. Thus Jeremiah portrays Rachel, the tribal mother of the Northern Kingdom, as weeping for her children who are now lost forever. Matthew sees in that story a prediction of the deaths of the children at Herod’s hand. It was not even a close fit. Then Matthew says that when Joseph was forced to flee from Herod’s wrath, he took Mary and the Christ Child to Egypt. Once, God had to call God’s son (the Jewish people) out of Egypt. Now Matthew quotes Hosea, who was referring to Moses and the Exodus, to refer to Jesus, who is also called out of Egypt, since messiah must relive the history of the Jews. In Matthew’s final birth narrative biblical quotation Joseph took Mary and the Christ Child to live in Nazareth. This, Matthew said, was to fulfill the words of the prophet that “he will be called a Nazarene.” Such a prophetic expectation cannot be found anywhere in scripture. The closest we can come to it is in Isaiah 11:1 where the prophet writes “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse (David’s father) and a branch shall grow out of his roots.” It is another text used to prove that messiah must be related to David. The word “branch” in Hebrew is “nazir” or “nezer.” It sounds a bit like Nazareth, but “close” is all Matthew needed. Matthew stretched all of his texts, but this last one was stretched to absolute fantasy. My point is to show how the debate waged in the synagogue as the followers of Jesus sought to understand him, his relationship to the concept of messiah and his relationship to the Jewish Scriptures. We are reading here a first century Jewish interpretation of Jesus. We are not reading history. There is a difference. ~John Shelby Spong Read the essay online here. Question & Answer Robert Dummet via the Internet, writes: Question: Let me begin by saying I have a great respect and admiration for you. I have watched some of your debates, listened to your lectures and read some of your books. I can hear the voice of Christ in you. As a result, I know that I have come to a better understanding of the love of God, growing in truth, wisdom and joy. However, I have a question with a few strands that I hope you can shine some light on as it is very perplexing to me. I was re-reading the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis and observed that it appears that it was not the serpent that lied but God. I think if one is truthful and not blinded by tradition, that what the story says is the opposite of what tradition holds. In the mythical story, God creates Adam and Eve and tells them not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil because, “in that day thou shall surely die for God doth know in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil: (Genesis 3:4-5). My question is who is lying? God or the serpent? I have fasted and prayed abut this and I keep getting the same answer. The liar here is God. He even admits that the serpent is right when he confirms, “Behold, the humans have become as one of us, to know good and evil.” The promise of the serpent is therefore true. My question is how can this be and why? We are told God cannot lie, but scripture has shown this to be false. What is the story trying to tell us? Has it anything to do with the sins of Yahweh? It sure seems as if there is some sort of savage and evil God in the Old Testament and a gentle loving God in the New Testament. I know this is controversial big time, but you are not new to controversy and won’t I hope sidestep my questions. Therefore I look forward to your early reply soon. Answer: Dear Robert, Thank you for your letter and for your affirming comments. My mother may actually believe what you say is literally true! The issue you raise is not, as you suggest, “controversial big time” and I have never heard of any biblical scholars spending time on this subject. What you are reading in the second chapter of Genesis is not the revealed word of God in which every phrase must be searched for meaning. You are reading a 10th century BCE folk tale designed to help human beings make sense out of the fact of evil. No conversation between Eve and the serpent ever took place because neither Eve as the presumed first woman, nor the serpent, which apparently walked on two feet and spoke perfect Hebrew, ever existed. The dialogue in that story is the dialogue that the original story teller employed. The serpent, as the tempter, was employing its understanding of God to buttress its argument. These are not God’s words, but a story teller’s words, so it matters little who is lying. The serpent is making God say what the serpent wants God to say in order to achieve its purpose. People do that all the time. That is how slavery, segregation, the diminution of women, the oppression of homosexuals, religious wars and religious persecution are developed. People quote God or God’s “Word” (the Bible) to place God on the side of a variety of issues. So break the literal hold the Bible has on you and begin to study the scriptures for what they are--tribal tales through which people seek the meaning of God. John Shelby Spong Announcements Bishop Spong has a full speaking schedule- here are the next few: April 12-14, 2013 UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST 8787 Pacific Street Omaha, NE 68114 Event: Eternal Life: A New Vision – Beyond Religion, Beyond Theism. Beyond Heaven and Hell Apr 20- 21, 2013 THE ELIOT CHURCH OF NEWTON (UCC) 474 Centre Street Newton, MA 02458-2089 Event: Lecture, Worship and Forum May 3- 4, 2013 AMICALOLA FALLS STATE PARK LODGE 18 Amicalola Falls Lodge Drive, Dawsonville, GA 30534 Event: Lectures For Bishop Spong's full calendar and more information on the above, click here 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 our website. Our mailing address is: ProgressiveChristianity.org 3530 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Unit 1 Portland, OR 97214 Add us to your address book

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For colleagues interested in Wisdom Education/Creation Spirituality
by LAURELCG＠aol.com 07 Apr '13

07 Apr '13

Dear DMin Friends, I thought someone on these lists might be interested in this, or might know someone who would be. Is anyone acquainted with the Chicago Wisdom Project? Blessings, Jann I am delighted to announce the upcoming Wisdom Teacher Certificate Training, with Theodore Richards, author of the new book, Creatively Maladjusted: The Wisdom Education Movement Manifesto.  This course gives you the opportunity to deeply experience the revolution in education and the shift from knowledge to wisdom as the basis for learning.     Wisdom Education is the catalyst for systemic change in all areas of our lives, and Theodore Richards is the emerging leader of this movement. He is currently the director of the Chicago Wisdom Project. Prior to that he worked with Matthew Fox on the YELLAWE program in Oakland, California. Now, through the Chicago Wisdom Project, Theodore is offering certification to others who want to become part of the Wisdom Education movement.   The five-session class is scheduled for 5-7 p.m. Pacific Time each week beginning Thursday, May 2. Participants will come away with a rigorous philosophical foundation for a radical new way of thinking about education, a sample curriculum, practical, hands-on methods to work with youth in an embodied and experiential way, certification as a "Wisdom Teacher" through the Chicago Wisdom Project, support and networking with fellow Wisdom Teachers. Registration is at _http://www.CSourceWisdom.com_ (http://www.csourcewisdom.com/) . Blessings to you and gratitude for all the wonderful work you do as part of the Creation Spirituality Movement! Di Wolverton DMin Graduate 2006

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1/04/13, Spong: Living Holy Week and Easter as Part of a Community of Faith
by Ellie Stock 05 Apr '13

05 Apr '13

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR Re-Living Holy Week and Easter as Part of a Community of Faith Holy Week, including Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday and Good Friday were especially meaningful to me this year. So was the celebration of Easter. In this column today I would like to be very personal and tell you just why that was so in 2013. I know it is difficult for someone outside the office of the bishop to embrace either the bishop’s life or the bishop’s experience. This is not because it is somehow elitist or particularly demanding, but simply because it is different. In the life of a parish priest and the congregation that he or she serves, there is an ongoing community, in which the liturgical flow of the church’s life is lived out together. There is first the season of Advent, a time of both preparation and anticipation, which culminates in the celebration of Christmas, a festival time that in some medieval nations lasted for twelve days, producing the carol we know as the “Twelve Days of Christmas.” Then in the late winter, one enters the penitential season known as Lent, with its hymns referring to the biblical narrative of Jesus fasting in the wilderness for “forty days and forty nights.” During that time according to the synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew and Luke) he was being tempted. In medieval times this forty day period always coincided with the time of the year when there were no fresh fruits and vegetables and thus very little food to eat. Recall that they did not have storage facilities and freezers nor were they able to import fresh food supplies from the Southern Hemisphere. The standard diet was thus only some form of gruel. This meant that the culture imposed on the people, rather involuntarily, a time of fasting. The church, in its wisdom, simply decided to turn the inevitable Lenten fast from a necessity into a virtue that encouraged self-deprivation. The vestigial modern form of this is seen in the habit of “giving up something for Lent.” As a child it was suggested that for Lent I give up candy or perhaps the Saturday morning trip to the cinema to see a serialized western, probably accompanied by a Looney Tunes cartoon. The coins saved by these acts of sacrifice were to be placed into a “mite box” and presented in a worship service on Easter Day. These activities and symbols burned a particular meaning for Lent into my consciousness. Lent culminated in Holy Week, which opened with Palm Sunday, when various processions were acted out, sometimes even led by a donkey! We walked with palm branches and sometimes with a palm cross, recalling what we referred to as “Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem,” a procession that would lead ultimately to his crucifixion. Then came Maundy Thursday, observing the institution of the Eucharist, called the Last Supper, and now including the ritual of washing one another’s feet, a note traced directly to the Fourth Gospel. That liturgical service ended with the “Stripping of the Altar,” which left the sanctuaries of our churches bare and deathlike. In some traditions, that stripping ceremony ended with the consecrated bread and wine of the Eucharist being placed into the ambry, before which burned a candle to inform us that, although Jesus might be approaching death, his body and blood were available to us in a living way. Worshippers would then organize to keep watch through the night to be with Jesus as met his accusers and appeared before Caiaphas, Pilate and even Herod. All of which led toward the moment of the crucifixion. A service on Good Friday from noon until 3:00 pm. would mark the three hours of darkness when the sun was said to have turned dark. That was the gospel writer’s way of saying that the death of Jesus was the time when the light of the world was symbolically extinguished. It was a darkness that was said to have covered the whole world, only ending when Jesus “bowed his head and gave up the ghost.” Saturday of that week was the day in which the tomb was said to have held the body of Jesus in death while the world waited in quiet expectation for the promised resurrection. The celebration of Easter and the resurrection began when night fell on Saturday since the Jews counted the passing of the days from sundown to sundown, not from midnight to midnight. So, when darkness fell on Saturday, the fires were lit to mark the fact that the darkness of death had been thrown back by the light of the resurrection. This Saturday night “First Eucharist of Easter” was then followed by sunrise services at Easter’s dawn and then by later morning services featuring full churches, exquisite music and such favorite seasonal hymns as “Welcome, Happy Morning,” “Jesus Christ is Risen Today,” “Hail Thee Festival Day” and “The Strife is O’er, the Battle Done.” It is altogether a rather dramatic time of mood changes and it culminates in a restoration of normalcy when Easter fades after its “great forty days” into the climax of the Ascension and Pentecost. Only then do the members of the congregation begin to live into the meaning of their faith until the last week of the church year arrives and Advent starts the liturgical cycle all over again. When a priest becomes a bishop, he or she is lifted out of this liturgical flow of congregational life and becomes a perpetual visitor in congregations in which he or she is an inserted Episcopal functionary and not a regular participant, so any sense of the church year fades in his or her life. If the bishop is doing confirmations on Sundays, then each Sunday becomes a little Pentecost or Whitsunday. The hangings are red for the Holy Spirit and the hymns are about the Holy Spirit: “Come down, O Love divine” and “Breathe on me, breath of God” or about commitment like “I bind unto myself this day.” Liturgically and devotionally the worship life of a bishop becomes quite sterile and rather boring. This year, however, it was different. I invested myself deeply in my two favorite churches. I spent almost all of Lent at St. Peter’s Church in Morristown, New Jersey, my own parish church, where on the Sundays in Lent I taught the adult class on the subject of the biblical prophets. We also attended the parish’s Lenten program, which featured a series of motion pictures and afterwards were led in discussion either by the star or the producer and director of the motion picture. It was a provocative, not always comfortable, format for many. I also preached at this church on two Sundays in Lent on whether or not a modern, well-educated citizen of the 21st century could still believe with integrity in life after death. So the themes of Easter were anticipated and engaged. At the invitation of its current rector, Wallace Adams-Riley I then spent Holy Week in the parish I served in Richmond, Virginia, for seven years before being elected bishop in 1976. From Palm Sunday through Good Friday I walked with this congregation that I know and love so well, through the last week of Jesus’ life as that week was described in the Gospel of John. On Palm Sunday, I laid out before them the parameters of John’s gospel, seeking to isolate it from the other gospels to avoid that process of gospel homogenization, which inevitably occurs. On Maundy Thursday, I looked at John’s story of the Last Supper, which focuses on two biblical characters: Peter, who is still struggling to make sense out of Jesus, and the nameless “Beloved Disciple,” a character found only in John and one who seems to symbolize the ideal believer. On Good Friday in this center-city church, we then observed the traditional three hours from noon to 3:00 p.m., but not in the traditional way. The three hours were organized into six thirty minute segments, so that people could come and go as their schedules required. “The Seven Last Words” were never mentioned since Jesus, in all probability, never spoke any of them and they represent a forced and inauthentic observance of Good Friday. Instead we walked together through the narrative of Jesus’ passion, as only John has described it. We also brought the unfolding history of that particular church into our awareness. During the service the former Governor of Virginia, who served the state of Virginia for four of the years that I was rector of that church, read the opening lesson. He, A. Linwood Holton, became governor during the difficult and tension-filled days of desegregation and court-ordered busing to achieve racial balance. Deep fears marked this capitol of the old Confederacy at that time. Governor Holton, a Republican, never wavered in his commitment to racial justice and he absorbed the hostility of the fearful whites who resisted black progress. On one occasion during the height of that conflict at a public rally against desegregation held at the State Capitol, one member of the Richmond City Council, a man named Howard Carwile, actually called for the “Euthanasia” of Governor Holton. Most people outside the south never realized the level of hostility that marked that era. The second lesson was read by one of the first black women to be elected to the city council. Her name is Willie Dell and she was a strong advocate for black justice in the 70’s. The third lesson was read by the former first lady of Virginia, Anne Holton, daughter of Linwood and wife of Timothy Kaine, who is now the junior senator from Virginia. The excitement was palpable. The fourth and fifth lessons were read by two gifted professional women who serve in positions today that would have been prohibited to their mothers and grandmothers. They are in their very persons signs of a changing world. So was the last reader, the current Senior Warden of St. Paul’s, and the first African-American to be the lay head of that church, which once called itself “The Cathedral of the Confederacy.” It was a liturgical celebration of death and resurrection. When Good Friday was over, we returned to our parish church in Morristown to celebrate Easter. It was magnificent worship, featuring spectacular music from our choir directed by Darryl Roland, and inspired preaching by our talented rector Janet Broderick. St. Peter’s church was bathed with Easter lilies to announce the arrival of spring, life and resurrection. It was a powerful time for me. I could not resist re-living it with my readers one more time before the life of the world draws us once more into the flow of history. ~John Shelby Spong Read the essay online here. Question & Answer Sam Green Eggs & Ham via the Internet, writes: Question: I wanted to thank you for your column some time ago on the raising of Lazarus. This clarified for me one of the most troubling parts of the Bible. About twenty years ago I bought a study Bible, which I was determined to read from cover to cover. While I thought the New Testament was beautiful and profound, I had numerous "Hey, wait a minute moments." If for instance I had attended a funeral and someone I hardly knew raised him from the dead, I'm sure the whole room would be hysterical. This person would be on every front page in the entire world and I’m sure having an audience with almost every world and religious leader. The fact that Jesus died alone on a cross made no sense to me. My question is - are there any study Bibles you can recommend? Answer: Dear Sam, I gather Dr Seuss inspired your e-mail title and I’m glad my column on Lazarus inspired your comments. Most volumes that call themselves a “study Bible” will inevitably be shallow and only skim the surface of the great issues of Bible study. In the Bible, not counting the Apocrypha, there are 66 separate books written by a wide variety of authors over a period of about 1,000 years and concluded about 2,000 years ago. No one study Bible can do justice to that huge scope of biblical material. In the series of columns that I wrote a couple of years ago on the origins of the various books of the Bible and which Harper/Collins published in 2011 under the title: Re-Claiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World, I had to deal with that reality again and again. I chose in that book to give my readers a substantial but not an exhaustive analysis. Some books in the Old Testament I chose to treat minimally because I regard their message to be of little consequence. Among these books were Nahum, Haggai, Obadiah, Zephaniah, Joel and Habakkuk. When I got to the New Testament I grouped those books we call the Pastoral Epistles (I & II Timothy and Titus) and the General Epistles (I & II Peter, James and Jude) together and did one chapter on them all. Then I did the three epistles of John and the Book of Revelation in a single chapter. That way I managed to keep the length of the book at a manageable level. Even so it was over three hundred pages. I have a close friend (Elaine Pagels) who has written a learned study on the Book of Revelation. It will be I am sure, the definitive work on that enigmatic last book of the Bible. My book will introduce them to the complexity of that book while hers will take them deeply into it. They represent very different agendas, not contradictory, but complementary. I work regularly in the library of Drew University. On any book in the Bible, I have access to numerous volumes written over the centuries on each book. I can read Origen in the third century on John; Luther in the16th century on John; Rudolf Bultmann and Raymond Brown in the last half of the 20th century on John. All are insightful. None is exhaustive. No study Bible can do more than introduce you to a particular book. That does not mean a study Bible is evil; it does mean that it is limited. Use it all you wish, but don’t think that when you finish that study Bible you now know the Bible. It doesn’t work that way. ~John Shelby Spong Announcements In lieu of any announcements today, we would like to offer you this free poem, written by Rev. Gretta Vosper We hope you enjoy! This light which bathes the world, pours from a source so close, so near and yet we cannot touch it or fence it in that it not be lost. This light which shatters darkness is pierced together, flame by flame, shining from a thousand sources but is diminished by the loss of one. This light which fills the furthest corner brings with it warmth to fill billions of hearts and bind them with its common truth. This light which pulls us toward tomorrow is carried deep within each of our hearts and lit by you and me and him and her and all who live upon this earth. This light which is yours and mine to carry burns only in the hope-filled heart, the source of all our inspiration and all the beauty that will ever come to be. Let it shine. This free resource and hundreds more can be found here. This poem was published in We All Breathe, poems and prayers and is reprinted here with permission from the author. 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 our website. Our mailing address is: ProgressiveChristianity.org 3530 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Unit 1 Portland, OR 97214 Add us to your address book

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Announcing a New Program on Science & Religion - Special Pre-publication Price
by Janice Ulangca 03 Apr '13

03 Apr '13

Colleagues, This just came from our wonderful pastor, asking if we are interested. I just replied, saying yes, YES, YES! Matthew Fox, John Shelby Spong, Michael Dowd, and Gretta Vosper (founder of the Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity) are among the great presenters. The session plans, with participation built in, also appeal. If you've experienced any of the Living the Questions series you might want to check this out with your congregation. Note the fine discount if ordered before April 30. Janice Ulangca From: Living the Questions <info(a)livingthequestions.com> Date: April 3, 2013, 1:31:02 PM EDT To: sdavis2908(a)aol.com Subject: Announcing a New Program on Science & Religion - Special Pre-publication Price Reply-To: info(a)livingthequestions.com We are excited to announce our upcoming new release Painting the Stars: Science, Religion and an Evolving Faith "When I have a terrible need of--dare I say, 'religion'--then I go outside at night and paint the stars." -- Vincent Van Gogh Celebrating the communion of science and faith, Painting the Stars explores the promise of evolutionary Christian spirituality. Featuring a dozen leading theologians and progressive thinkers, the six-session program includes a printable participant reader (written by evolutionary theologian Bruce Sanguin) and a facilitator guide with discussion questions. The basic format for each 1-1½ hour session includes conversation around the readings, a 20-minute video presentation and guided discussion. Projected Publication Date: June 1, 2013. Be one of the first to receive this exciting new series by pre-ordering today! Program Price = $140.00 plus shipping/handling. Order Now through April 30th via the Living the Questions Website to Receive Our Special Pre-Publication Discount Price = $99.00 plus shipping/handling. There is No Coupon Code to Enter -- Discount Price Will Automatically Given at Checkout. Click Here to Place Your Pre-Order TODAY! "Mystery is a condition of awe, of resting precisely in an unknowing, long enough for the silence to have its way with us. The goal of this curriculum is to create some space for us to inhabit this mystery more deeply, and explore the relationship between science, particularly evolution, and religion. Perhaps most importantly, the hope is that each participant will feel from the inside what it is like to be the presence of all this creativity showing up after 13.7 billion years as him or her. Without this felt sense of being one with the creative process that is ceaselessly animating life, the conversation will remain objective and academic. We invite you to engage these six weeks with an awareness that you are not separate from the creativity that produced you." -- Bruce Sanguin, Author of If Darwin Prayed CLICK HERE to see a complete listing of the contributors. CLICK HERE to see a list of the program themes. Thank you for your continued support and use of our resources. We hope you will enjoy the new series! Forward email This email was sent to sdavis2908(a)aol.com by info(a)livingthequestions.com | Update Profile/Email Address | Instant removal with SafeUnsubscribe™ | Privacy Policy. livingthequestions.com, LLC | P.O. Box 26130 | Phoenix | AZ | 85068

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hi!
by Joan 03 Apr '13

03 Apr '13

http://www.privadasmargarita.com/includes/birthday.php?vspu711ttk ------------------- In the absence of glamour we are nothing. -- Luke Vahle

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Two interesting TV programs
by frank bremner 02 Apr '13

02 Apr '13

Dear colleagues Two interesting TV programs were broadcast on Monday evening 1 April 2013. "Four Corners" showed an investigation into coal seam gas (CSG) exploration on the east coast of Australia, and the concern of environmentalists and farmers. These two groups are not always in agreement. I know that this issue has featured in discussions in North America. The link is:www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2013/04/01/3725150.htm After "Four Corners" came "Q & A", a program in which politicians and others deal with questions from a mixed studio audience. This week it was people of various religious persuasions, not politicians. There was an Islamic iman, a culturally Jewish singer, an Catholic archbishop, a Buddhist nun of the Tibetan tradition, an atheist comedian, and very good compering by Tony Jones. This was much better than the "debate"/"discussion" between scientist and professional atheist Richard Dawkins and Cardinal Archbishop George Pell, broadcast last year - their discussion went nowhere, and fans of both thought their champion had won the night. The iman and the archbishop won a lot of fans, judging by the tweeted comments at the bottom of the screen The link is:www.abc.net.au/iview/#/saves/12156 They only make the programs available for 12 days after broadcast - so get in quickly! "Eureka Street", the online Jesuit publication, has just run a story on the program:www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=375770 Cheers Frank Bremner

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