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PBS "Climate Doubt" documentary from Frontline link
by John Cock 25 Oct '12

25 Oct '12

Worth watching. http://blog.heartland.org/2012/10/anticipating-unfair-treatment-of-skeptics- in-tonights-pbs-frontline-special-climate-of-doubt/ John and Lynda

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10/25/12, Spong: You Are Profoundly Wrong! A Response to the Archbishop of Newark and Other Catholic Leaders
by Ellie Stock 25 Oct '12

25 Oct '12

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR You Are Profoundly Wrong! A Response to the Archbishop of Newark and Other Catholic Leaders The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Newark, the Most Reverend John J. Myers, has recently issued “A Pastoral Teaching on the Definition, Purpose and Sanctity of Marriage.” In this document, which is clearly politically motivated, he urges “faithful Catholics” and other “men and women of goodwill” to vote against any candidate for public office who supports same-sex marriage. He also states that “all Catholics, who support a candidate for elective office, who does not oppose same sex marriage, should consider themselves excommunicated, and should, therefore, absent themselves from the Eucharist at Catholic altars. I have never met Archbishop Myers. I have no reason to believe he is not a good and sincere person. When one enters a public debate, however, especially in an attempt to elect one candidate over another, one has a responsibility to be well-informed on the issues about which one speaks. It is not sufficient simply to appeal to the authority of the magisterium of one’s church to find support for these ideas or to quote traditional religious conclusions, as if they are still viable or are still accepted in academic and intellectual circles. This is the Archbishop’s fatal error. His underlying definition of homosexuality is the badly dated and all but universally rejected idea that it is “deviant,” “unnatural” or even “evil.” His definition of human life is based on the pre-Darwinian idea that life was created perfect only to fall into “Original Sin,” which then distorted humanity’s original perfection, thus justifying the negativity toward homosexuality because it is an expression of that distortion. Darwin’s thought, which today underlies all science and is the basis of teaching in every medical school in the developed world, has also been validated by the discovery of DNA. That idea can hardly be dismissed because it is inconvenient to one’s religious doctrines. Darwin teaches us that there never was a time of human perfection, but that we have always been evolving into our humanity. We are, therefore, not fallen sinners, but rather incomplete human beings. To talk, about how God established monogamous heterosexuality as the basis for all family life at the time of creation, which means that it cannot be validly set aside by any government or political decision, is to engage in pious nonsense. It also reveals a lack of knowledge about and understanding of the last two hundred years of biblical scholarship. To go on from that weak premise to liken homosexuality to incest and to use this argument to buttress other positions of the Roman Catholic Church, including opposition to all forms of contraception and family planning; opposition to abortion under any circumstances, including rape, incest and the threat to the life of the mother; opposition to any end of life conversations or procedures, as well as opposition to the full acceptance of gay and lesbian people as violations of God’s natural law is, quite frankly, breathtaking in both its gall and its arrogance. Let me try to unravel this maze of incoherent conclusions. Did God set monogamous coupling as the original basic building block of all human society in the creation story of the book of Genesis? Of course not! Does the good archbishop not know that the “seven-day” creation story of Genesis 1:1-2:4a is a product of the 6th century BCE? Does he not know that the story of the “fall,” as related in Genesis 2:4b-24 is the product of the 10th century BCE? Neither of these times is anywhere close to the beginning of human history. Human-like creatures, called hominids, have populated this planet for at least 4,000,000 years, and self-conscious, language-using, recognizably human creatures have been on this planet, according to the best scientific estimates for somewhere between 100,000 and 250,000 years. The biblical story of creation is, thus, very recent, relatively speaking. In most of human history monogamous marriage between one man and one woman was all but unknown. The original pattern of human “marriage” and family life appears to have been polygamy and harems. Since women were largely regarded as property in that period of time, the number of wives a man had determined his wealth and status. A vestigial reminder of this value system is preserved in church marriage ceremonies, when one man, the father, gives the bride away to another man, the husband, as if she were a possession. When the early writers of the Bible sought to describe this period of their own Hebrew ancestry, they quite accurately portrayed their forebears, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as polygamous people. Even the ultimate Jewish hero, King David, who was called “the man after God’s own heart,” was portrayed as the husband of many wives. His son, Solomon, in whose reign the Adam and Eve story was actually written, was famous for having had 300 wives and 700 concubines. So the suggestion that the monogamous, heterosexual marriage of one man to one woman is the original divine plan written into “natural law” and is, therefore the “basic building block of the social order” and thus not capable of being altered is both patently false and historically inaccurate. Marriage as a human institution has been and still is evolving from polygamy based on male supremacy to monogamy, based on sexual equality. In the light of this understanding the ability to grant to same-sex couples the dignity and sanction of official marriage is simply another step to be welcomed in that evolution. The prelude to that new step in the evolution of marriage is the recognition, now universally acknowledged, that homosexuality is a reality among many higher mammals. What is present in the natural world can hardly be called “unnatural” or the result of the fall! Because an Archbishop cannot process this new insight outside his dated and antiquated theological and ethical frame of reference does not make it “evil,” it rather reveals the limitation of knowledge present in the system on which that archbishop bases his decisions. These are the facts that need to be embraced: No reputable scientist today supports the idea that anyone chooses his or her sexual orientation; scientific data now validates the reality that the number of homosexual people in the population is a steady, perhaps fixed, percentage among all people at all times and in all places; homosexuality cannot be cured because it is not a disease and those organizations that claim to be able to do so are fraudulent; homosexuality is not hereditary and every gay or lesbian person is presumably the child of a heterosexual union, and children born to gay men or lesbians have no higher chance of being gay or lesbian than the ratio in the population. These facts mean that the moral teaching of the church, as expressed in the “Pastoral Teaching” of the Archbishop of Newark is based on premises that are no longer viable and thus cannot with credibility be used to counter the best scientific scholarship available to the world today. Does the Archbishop want to repeat the darker chapters of church history? Galileo was right in the 17th century even when he was found guilty by the church of heresy. It simply took the Roman Catholic Church some 400 more years before its leaders were able to free themselves sufficiently to open their doctrinally closed minds. Charles Darwin was also right in 1859, but it was in the 1990’s before this church could acknowledge this fact in a very tepid and limited way. The problem is that when religious leaders issue statements, based, not on knowledge and contemporary research, but rather reflecting their comfort level inside their own closed systems of thought, all the while pretending that this is divinely revealed knowledge, they do enormous damage to people whose humanity they so badly compromise. The church supported for centuries the institution of slavery, even quoting the Bible to justify it. The church supported second class status for women and in many places still does so to this day, once again quoting the scriptures to give this prejudice the cover of perfumed piety. When Archbishop Myers argues, not for the equality of women, but for the “complementarity” of women, is he not doing anything other than to quote an ecclesiastical version of the old “separate but equal” argument used for so long to justify segregation? Homosexual persons are a perfectly normal, but minority, part of the human family. So are left-handed people, bald-headed people and red-headed people. To call homosexual persons “deviant,” “unnatural” or “evil” is a commentary not on the gay community, but on the uninformed prejudice of the person or institution that is speaking. The Fourth Gospel portrays Jesus as saying that his task, and thus the task of his church, is to be the giver of abundant life to all people. Can anyone do that by calling another, who is different, “evil, deviant and unnatural?” This “Pastoral Teaching” reaches the height of absurdity when it suggests that homosexual partners ought to seek heterosexual unions and try to make them work. Elements in the church well into the 20th century thought that they had to break the “unnatural” stance of being left-handed by tying the hands of left-handed children behind their backs in order to force them to be “normal.” We now know that this was nothing but an expression of ignorance as to how the brain was organized, but it dehumanized many a left-handed child before the religious leadership got over its prejudice and began to recognize that the problem was not located in the victim that they so badly violated, but in the ignorance that fed the prejudice of the violating ones. That is exactly what is being done anew in this “Pastoral Teaching” promulgated by Archbishop John J. Myers of Newark. Of course the Bible reflects the prejudices of antiquity toward those who are “different.” That, however, should not be used to justify the continuation of these destructive patterns. We have, over the centuries, learned to set some parts of the Bible aside when we come to new understandings of truth. That is what is now happening in our society as a new consciousness is being forged, based upon contemporary understanding of how human values operate. One cannot uphold ancient ignorance by pretending that one’s own prejudice is blessed by God. That is what Archbishop Myers seeks to do. His “Pastoral Teaching” will be ridiculed by the educated. It will be ignored by those he calls “the faithful,” just as they today largely ignore the church’s teaching on birth control, end of life decisions and even abortion. The sad thing is that the credibility of the church is compromised by the uninformed prejudice of its leaders and time ultimately will sweep this ignorance aside. It will be the laity of this church who will dismiss it in their practice first. Both the Pope and the Archbishop will someday discover that “truth,” which is not truth, cannot be imposed. Only then will their minds be changed and apology will be appropriate for the pain their prejudice and ignorance, has caused millions, including many who are priests and bishops of their own church. ~John Shelby Spong Read the essay online here. Question & Answer Edward from London, England, writes: Question: As you know, I very much appreciate your books and weekly essays, even if I may be so bold as to say I do not agree with every bit of them. I wonder whether you have read a new book, Moral Transformation: The Original Christian Paradigm of Salvation, by A. J. Wallace and R. D. Rusk, who I believe are two New Zealand biblical scholars. The book, backed up by copious quotations from the New Testament and from early Christian writers such as Irenaeus and Origen, throws a flood of light on Christian beliefs and practices of the first three centuries AD, which were quite simply to follow faithfully the teaching and example of Jesus in the hope of being judged by God worthy of eternal life. There was no conflict between Paul and Jesus, no conflict between faith and works – the Greek word “pistis” and its assorted adjectives and verbs, commonly translated “faith,” really means, in 80-90% of the cases, faithfulness or loyalty, not belief in a system of ideas. They show how the reformers of the 16th century misunderstood the point that Paul was making, largely due to this mistranslation. If you have read the book, I should be interested in your comments on it. If not, may I respectfully recommend it to you? Answer: Dear Ted, It is always good to hear from you. You are the only Queen’s Counsel I know. My best to your wife Rachel. I have not read the book you recommend and appreciate you calling it to my attention. It is quite difficult to determine what differences there were between Jesus and Paul since most of what we know about Jesus is recorded in the four gospels that were not written by eyewitnesses, but by Greek-speaking authors, who composed them between 40 and 70 years after the crucifixion. That would be two to three and a half generations after Jesus. The Hebrew word, “dabar,” which was translated by the Greek word “pistis” does in fact mean trust or a willingness to put one’s confidence into something or someone. It was only in the Greek language that this Jewish concept was changed and came to mean believing or giving intellectual assent to propositional statements. The creeds were never written to define faith, they were written to enable human beings to trust the God they sought to capture in creedal words. This is why the shift from “I believe” to “We believe” when we say the creed in church is a step in the right direction. It is a corporate faith not an individual belief. I am still convinced that most of the difficulty Christians have today with the Bible is that they do not understand or appreciate the power of the Hebrew Scriptures that lies behind almost everything in the New Testament. They do not understand, for example, that the story of Jesus feeding the multitude in the wilderness with five loaves and two fish was related to the story of Moses and manna in the wilderness, that the Sermon on the Mount is based on Psalm 119 and that the Palm Sunday story is based in Zechariah 9:9-12. These were not “predictions” that Jesus somehow miraculously fulfilled, it is evidence that when the Jesus story was being written his interpreters used the scriptures to interpret and to frame his life. When Christians left the synagogue, they left the interpretive context in which their own gospels were written. The time has come to recover that. My best, ~John Shelby Spong Announcements Any questions or concerns, please contact us at support(a)johnshelbyspong.com or 503-236-3545. Copyright © 2012 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] Thanks, George
by Bill Schlesinger 24 Oct '12

24 Oct '12

HRN quote is from the HRN chapter in 'The Church, The World and the Gospel' edited by Kenneth Scott Latourette (Harper 1946). While out of print, Ayer Publishing has the copyright and it's visible at: http://books.google.com/books?id=rhL_1rixLfIC <http://books.google.com/books?id=rhL_1rixLfIC&pg=PR5&source=gbs_selected_pa ges&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false> &pg=PR5&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false Bill Schlesinger Project Vida 3607 Rivera Avenue El Paso, TX 79905 (915) 533-7057 x 207 (915) 503-1014 FAX pvida(a)whc.net www.projectvidaelpaso.org _____ From: dialogue-bounces(a)lists.wedgeblade.net [mailto:dialogue-bounces@lists.wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of Bud Tillinghast Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2012 2:15 PM To: dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net Dialogue; oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net Community Subject: [Dialogue] Thanks, George Thanks, George, for calling attention to my response to Bishop Coyner. Indeed it does change the dynamic to have a whole Jurisdiction stand against the UMC's exclusionary policy. Would you want to hazzard a guess as to where the Niebuhr quote came from? I'm continually grateful for the influence of the Ecumenical Institute. Our colleague, Bud Tillinghast, a UMC clergy, (he's on this list serve) responds to a Bishop's attack on the Western Jurisdiction of the UMC for contesting the latest General Conference decision to continue their prejudice against Gays and Lesbians. For those not up to speed on this - the United Methodist Church's continued policies against Homosexuality is being challenged. Several churches around the country have for some time declined to follow the denomination's line by being known as Reconciling congregations. Recently a retired Bishop has questioned the church's position. There have been demonstrations at several General Conferences and efforts to turn the position around including letter signings and efforts to get Annual conferences to take a stand, which a few have. This is the first time a whole Jurisdiction has made a statement, and a powerful defense of it by Bud. It was published in an official publication of the church. I hope you take time to read it. George Holcombe 14900 Yellowleaf Tr. Austin, TX 78728 Mobile 512/252-2756 geowanda(a)earthlink.net Hope appeareth, but it is not your Hope-you do not have anything to do with it. It just appeareth. It comes as a stranger, as an alien-it just appeareth! You do not even know why you hope. How in the world could you hope when there is absolutely nothing to justify any hope? ~Joseph W. Mathews http://www.umcconnections.org/2012/10/22/a-response-to-bishop-coyner/

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Thanks, George
by Bud Tillinghast 24 Oct '12

24 Oct '12

Thanks, George, for calling attention to my response to Bishop Coyner. Indeed it does change the dynamic to have a whole Jurisdiction stand against the UMC's exclusionary policy. Would you want to hazzard a guess as to where the Niebuhr quote came from? I'm continually grateful for the influence of the Ecumenical Institute. > Our colleague, Bud Tillinghast, a UMC clergy, (he's on this list serve) responds to a Bishop's attack on the Western Jurisdiction of the UMC for contesting the latest General Conference decision to continue their prejudice against Gays and Lesbians. For those not up to speed on this - the United Methodist Church's continued policies against Homosexuality is being challenged. Several churches around the country have for some time declined to follow the denomination's line by being known as Reconciling congregations. Recently a retired Bishop has questioned the church's position. There have been demonstrations at several General Conferences and efforts to turn the position around including letter signings and efforts to get Annual conferences to take a stand, which a few have. This is the first time a whole Jurisdiction has made a statement, and a powerful defense of it by Bud. It was published in an official publication of the church. I hope you take time to read it. > > George Holcombe > 14900 Yellowleaf Tr. > Austin, TX 78728 > Mobile 512/252-2756 > geowanda(a)earthlink.net > > Hope appeareth, but it is not your Hope—you do not have anything to do with it. It just appeareth. It comes as a stranger, as an alien—it just appeareth! You do not even know why you hope. How in the world could you hope when there is absolutely nothing to justify any hope? ~Joseph W. Mathews > > > > > http://www.umcconnections.org/2012/10/22/a-response-to-bishop-coyner/

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A response to Bishop Coyner by Bud Tillinghast » UMC Connnections
by George Holcombe 23 Oct '12

23 Oct '12

Our colleague, Bud Tillinghast, a UMC clergy, (he's on this list serve) responds to a Bishop's attack on the Western Jurisdiction of the UMC for contesting the latest General Conference decision to continue their prejudice against Gays and Lesbians. For those not up to speed on this - the United Methodist Church's continued policies against Homosexuality is being challenged. Several churches around the country have for some time declined to follow the denomination's line by being known as Reconciling congregations. Recently a retired Bishop has questioned the church's position. There have been demonstrations at several General Conferences and efforts to turn the position around including letter signings and efforts to get Annual conferences to take a stand, which a few have. This is the first time a whole Jurisdiction has made a statement, and a powerful defense of it by Bud. It was published in an official publication of the church. I hope you take time to read it. George Holcombe 14900 Yellowleaf Tr. Austin, TX 78728 Mobile 512/252-2756 geowanda(a)earthlink.net Hope appeareth, but it is not your Hope—you do not have anything to do with it. It just appeareth. It comes as a stranger, as an alien—it just appeareth! You do not even know why you hope. How in the world could you hope when there is absolutely nothing to justify any hope? ~Joseph W. Mathews http://www.umcconnections.org/2012/10/22/a-response-to-bishop-coyner/

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Carol Pierce Memorial Gifts
by Ruth Gilbert 19 Oct '12

19 Oct '12

*MEMORIAL GIFTS FOR CAROL PIERCE* Carol Pierce's memorial service will be Saturday, October 20, 2012. Many of you will not be able to attend because of distance or schedule. But we can all remember her skills, humor and strength. People have inquired about how they might participate. Gifts in memory of Carol Pierce are a way to honor her life, as well as the people she taught, touched, supported, motivated and sustained. If you wish to make such a contribution, you may do so either on-line or via postal mail. Her family will be informed of your memorial gift. The contribution is tax deductible. · Online – www.ica-usa.org/donate · Postal mail with check o ICA-USA (with memo line: “in memory of Carol Pierce”.) o Attn: Development Office o 4750 Sheridan Rd. o Chicago, Illinois 60640 Such a gift would reflect on her life of service and continue her tradition of opening opportunities for others. She would be so pleased. Ruth

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Re: [Dialogue] Searching for a "Town Meeting" (like) song recording for the Archives Demo
by David Walters 18 Oct '12

18 Oct '12

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Searching for a "Town Meeting" (like) song recording for the Archives Demo
by Walter Epley 18 Oct '12

18 Oct '12

Dear Colleagues: As part of the Archive team, I'm looking for a recording of a "Town-Meeting"-like song for the Town Meeting demo archive website. Do you know of anyone who has recordings, or that I could ask in this search? We'd also be interested and appreciative of any recordings of movement songs that we could collect for the archives. Frank K. has quite a list, and I have some from the early 70's on Paul Evans' tapes of movement singing. Paul's latest tapes are from 1974, just predating that work. I remember a year or so ago looking on the internet and finding a webpage describing a vinyl recording of our songs. Unfortunately, I didn't write that down, and can't seem to find that reference any more. We're working on getting all this posted in a while. Take Care, Walt Epley Walter F. Epley 1030 Jasmine Street Denver, CO 80220 Email: wfepley(a)yahoo.com Cell Ph: 303-842-0265

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connections with transition mov't
by Terry Bergdall 18 Oct '12

18 Oct '12

ICA continues to nurture an international relationship with "Transition Towns." See the link below: http://transitionculture.org/2012/10/18/transition-chicago-and-accelerate-7…

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10/18/12: Spong: "Think Different–Accept Uncertainty" Part XIX: The Dawning of Resurrection
by Ellie Stock 18 Oct '12

18 Oct '12

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR "Think Different–Accept Uncertainty" Part XIX: The Dawning of Resurrection Behind the narratives of Easter contained in the gospel tradition was an experience that was undeniable, powerful and true to the followers of Jesus. That experience exploded upon them in a manner that words could not capture, but it left its mark on them in indelible ways. Because of whatever that experience was their lives were changed from being fearful people in hiding to being heroic people willing to die for the reality of their new vision. That experience transformed the way they envisioned God so dramatically that the person of Jesus was incorporated into their understanding of God. That experience caused them to create a new holy day, the first day of the week, as a time to recall and commemorate the transforming experience they had undergone. Whatever this experience was it occurred around they year 30 C.E. The gospels were not written for two to three generations after that time or somewhere between 70-100 C.E. By the time the gospels came to be written, the experience had been explained, told and retold, countless numbers of times and it had evolved into a kind of creedal or liturgical formula. The formula had several elements, responding to the inevitable human questions: “who, where, when and how.” The phrase “three days” became part of the liturgy not, I suspect, because it was three days after the crucifixion that they had the experience of resurrection, but because the Christians gathered on the first day of the week to celebrate the meaning of Jesus and the first day of the week was the third day after the Friday on which the crucifixion was remembered. So three days became the symbol, not the measure of the time between the first Good Friday and the first Easter celebration. We have to explore the texts of the various gospels that I outlined last week in order to answer these four questions. Who was it who stood in the center of whatever the Easter experience was and who then opened the eyes of the others to see what he had seen? There is no question, but that the gospels portray Simon, who was nicknamed Peter, as the one who was central in this story. That is why he is always listed first among the disciples. He was said to have been the first one to confess that Jesus was the Christ at a place named Caesarea Philippi. He was the one to whom Jesus was quoted as saying, “Peter, when you are converted, strengthen the brethren.” He was the one to whom the Christ of the Fourth Gospel was quoted as saying: “Peter, will you also go away?” and Peter responded, “Lord, to whom shall I go? You have the words of eternal life!” In the biblical sources that purport to relate the resurrection tradition, Paul says the risen Christ “appeared first to Cephas,” that is to Peter. Mark has the messenger say to the women at the tomb: “Go tell the disciples and Peter,” that he has been raised. In Luke, the disciples interrupt Cleopas to tell him that the risen Christ has appeared to Peter thus relegating Cleopas’ vision to a secondary position. In the Epilogue to John’s gospel, Peter is the star as he is reconstituted into the band of disciples after being the one who denied and who was then commissioned to feed the sheep of God. Peter appears to be the primary person in whom the resurrection experience dawned, that is, the first one to perceive its meaning. Where were the disciples when this experience called resurrection occurred in a particular individual or in their collective minds? That is, where were they when their lives were transformed? The earliest gospel tradition asserts that it was in Galilee. That was their home. That is where the messenger in Mark asserts that they will see him. Even Paul hints at the originality of the experience of resurrection being located in Galilee. Matthew says that the only time the disciples saw the raised and glorified Jesus was in Galilee on top of a mountain. In the Epilogue to the Fourth Gospel, a very primitive resurrection tradition is recorded as occurring in Galilee, where they had returned to the fishing trade after Jesus’ crucifixion. On the other hand both Luke and John assert a primary Jerusalem setting for the resurrection experience, denying the Galilean location totally. Everything about these Jerusalem appearances, however, looks contrived and developed, while the Galilee stories look fresh and original. Only in the Jerusalem setting do you have appearances details and physical symbols, while the Galilean stories are vague and less defined, even mysterious. So the consensus of opinion is that Peter stood in the center of whatever the resurrection experience was and that he opened the eyes of the others to see what he had seen and that this occurred when they had returned to Galilee some time after the crucifixion. These are the details then that force us to answer the “when” question by suggesting that three days was a symbol and not a measure of time. It would have taken the disciples seven to ten days to return to Galilee from Jerusalem after the crucifixion so nothing could literally have occurred inside the three day interval that came to separate resurrection from crucifixion. Luke suggests that appearances of the raised Christ continued for 40 days. The main body of John’s gospel relegates the resurrection experience to two special days separated by one week. The Epilogue to the Fourth Gospel seems to indicate that months had passed before the disciples confronted his risen presence by the Sea of Galilee. If we dispense with literalizing the three day symbol, we open the possibility that whatever Easter was, it might have occurred months after the crucifixion – perhaps up to as long as a year. So, Peter is the central person, Galilee is the primary place and the time is perhaps months to a year after the crucifixion before the resurrection dawns as a life-changing experience. How then did it dawn? What was the context? I am convinced that it had nothing to do with a resuscitated body walking out of a tomb. It had to do, rather, with a new vision of life, a new consciousness, a new understanding of reality. It had to do with seeing the death of Jesus as a new freedom, a life no longer bound by the primeval drive to survive, a life free to give itself away and even to love those who took his life from him. That was something new, something transformative, something none of them had ever known before. A life free of the drive to survive is victorious over death. A life free to give itself away, free to love, not to avenge those who were his killers, represented a new dimension of what humanity can become and can be. In the evolutionary development of the universe, birth began in the “Big Bang” some 13.7 to 13.8 billion years ago in a burst of material energy. Only physical matter existed in this universe for about nine billion years before life emerged out of this expanding matter. This life was in the form of primitive single cells, but it had the life capacity to reproduce itself that physical matter had never before possessed. After hundreds of millions of years, this thing called life first began to cluster making complexity in life real. Then this thing called life split itself into two streams, one of which was animate and the other inanimate life. Next, in the flow of what seemed like an infinite amount of time, out of the animate side of life, primitive forms of consciousness appeared. Again, over hundreds of millions of years, that new gift of consciousness grew and expanded. A dog is far more conscious than a clam, for example. Finally, perhaps no more than 250,000 years ago out of developed consciousness, self-consciousness appeared and with it the ability to say “I” and “me;” the ability to recall the past and to anticipate the future; the awareness that we are both driven and limited by our own desire to survive, which locks us as self-conscious people into a pattern of self-centeredness. That was called by some “human nature,” but by others “original sin,” which assumed that this was a matter of choice and not the nature of life itself. It is that definition of “human nature” that gave way in the life of Jesus. He somehow moved beyond the drive to survive and thus revealed a new kind of human life. He moved from self-consciousness into a universal consciousness where he shed all of the limitations that marked humanity. He had become part of that which we call God, but defined in a multiplicity of ways as we seek to embrace the unlimited reality beyond all the boundaries of humanity. Mortality and death have no power over this dimension of humanity. When one is not bound by the drive to survive, one enters into a new understanding of what it means to be human. One is free to live, free to love and free to be. That is what people experienced in what they came to call the resurrection. This insight dawned after the crucifixion when they broke bread, which they identified with Jesus’ broken body and drank wine, which they identified with his shed blood. Thus they “remembered the Lord’s death until he came again.” The “second coming” was not a return of the human Jesus to the world at the end of time. It was the freeing gift of the spirit that called and invited human beings to step beyond life’s limits and into a new consciousness. So the gospel witness was that the risen Christ “was known to us in the breaking of the bread.” Human language can only point to the reality of this truth. It cannot capture it. That is why the story of the resurrection of Jesus inevitably got literalized into a grave that was empty, apparitions that appeared and a body that was resuscitated. Behind these literal images is one over whom death had no power. On that truth Christianity stands today and will live into the future. To understand it, however, we must “think different” and “accept uncertainty.” ~John Shelby Spong Read the essay online here. Question & Answer Karl from Helsinki, Finland, via the Internet, writes: Question: I know this email most likely will never reach you, but that is maybe not the most important thing. The important thing is that I do what I feel I need to do and that is, to thank you. I myself am an atheist and my wife is a believer. We have together listened to your speeches on the Internet. We think that one of the best ones is the “Burke Lecture.” We are both happy that there exists so special a person as you, who has the courage to challenge the harmful doctrines of the church and bring more adult kind of thinking into the religion. Thank you for your courage and we hope you have many good years to come so that more people can benefit of your words. Answer: Dear Karl, Thank you so much for your letter, which did arrive and was read. The fact is that I receive and read all of them, but I can respond only to the ones chosen for use in my column. If I were to respond to all of them I would have to hire a full-time staff. I am grateful for your comments. We have done lecture tours of Finland on two separate occasions and have many friends in that wonderful country. The Burke Lecture was delivered a number of years ago at the University of California in San Diego. It seems that the PBS station in that area of California runs that lecture on the air periodically so I get a new batch of mail about it, which regularly surprises me. I understand an atheist to be one who denies the existence of a theistic deity, not as one who denies the reality of anything beyond or higher than the human. That is a crucial distinction. A theistic God is, by definition, a supernatural external deity who is believed to come to our aid in time of need. That is what “theism” literally means. That definition, however, is a human creation, yet we assume that this definition and God are the same. Suppose we think of God, not as a being to whom we have to relate, but as a presence that can be experienced, but not defined, a presence understood as the source of life flowing through the universe, the source of love enhancing life in all its forms and the ground of being discovered when we have the courage to grasp and even to be what we most deeply are. God then becomes a verb, not a noun. Theism, as a definition of God is quite dead, but God, as the source of life, the source of love and the ground of being is not dead, at least not to me. I think Paul was right when he described God as that in which “I live and move and have my being.” At that place both theism and atheism cease to be real and I walk into the mystery I call God. These are the thoughts which lead me to suspect that you and your wife are not as far apart as you think. ~John Shelby Spong Announcements Any questions or concerns, please contact us at support(a)johnshelbyspong.com or 503-236-3545. Copyright © 2012 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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