Deep Ecumenism vs. Biblical Terror Texts

Essay by Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox
June 28,  2018
 

Recently I underwent, along with about 225 other people, a very moving and powerful encounter in Deep Ecumenism or Interfaith in a synagogue in Ashland, Oregon.  We gathered Friday night with an opening Native American chant written by Chief Arvod Looking Horse and a simple Shabbath ceremony including the lighting of candles followed by my talk on Deep Ecumenism and Deep Ecology.

Among the participants were a heavy representation of the Jewish tradition along with Christians, Buddhists, indigenous peoples, and variations of the above.  We gathered again all day Saturday when spiritual practices included indigenous songs and chants by leader Dan Wahpepah with drum in hand were shared along with several Jewish prayers and practices including a sharing of the open Torah itself and storytelling by Devorah Zaslow. A Song of Creation from the Book of Daniel, cosmic prayers and a poem by Julian of Norwich inspired us also along with a panel of religious leaders.

The culminating prayer for me was an amazing passage—rendered in song in Hebrew in the trope or melody of the Lamentation songs from the Hebrew Bible!—from Pope Francis’ ecological encyclical “Laudato Si” sung by the cantor Steven Margolin.  It was amazing!  Is this the first time ever a Pope’s encyclical has been sung (in Hebrew) at a synagogue?  One might bet on that.  We are indeed living in unusual times.

In my teachings Friday night and Saturday morning I spoke to topics such as:  Ecological Spirituality and of the need to recover a sense of the Sacred which, as Thomas Berry insists, can only return with a sense of the wonder and grace of the universe and of our precious but endangered Mother Earth. And of how we were all—irrespective of particular traditions—called to stand up at this time, to be lovers (mystics) and defenders (prophets or warriors) on behalf of Mother Earth who, in her suffering, is calling us beyond our religious boxes to a common cause.  I also invoked Thomas Merton, a pioneer in Deep Ecumenism and a friend of both Rabbi Heshel and Rabbi Schactner and a fierce critic of the genocide of Native Americans in American history.  I talked about the new Order of the Sacred Earth that we launched on the Solstice and which is going public this July.

It was my impression that our time together was rich and deep and meaningful for all attendees—a fine expression of the Deep Ecumenism that the late Rabbi Zalman Schactner called for and practiced in depth.  It fact, Rabbi David Zaskow, who opened the doors of his synagogue to this event and oversaw it with teachings and hospitality very much brought in the spirit of his mentor, Reb Zalman.  He told a story of how Reb Zalman really appreciated my term “Deep Ecumenism” which I first laid out in my book The Coming of the Cosmic Christ, because he had been practicing it for years but did not have a name for it until my term came along.

On Sunday, I was invited to preach at a Mass at the Episcopal church in town, Trinity Episcopal.  The attendance was impressive—indeed the church was full– and the choir and the celebrant, Father Tony Hutchinson, led a moving and dignified celebration. It was clear to me that that church was alive and awake and even eager to be praying together.

There was a fly in the ointment however and it was not due to the local church.  Rather, it can be laid at the feet of those liturgical officiandos who put together lectionaries for the Episcopal Church.  The readings seemed to completely contradict the spirit and depth of our previous two days of deep ecumenism and honest exchange and deep prayer shared in Ashland’s synagogue.  The cacophony was palatable.  To top it off, a number of attendees at the Ecumenical event were in attendance at this particular Mass.

The readings, scheduled for “Laetare Sunday,” which is supposed to be a day of Happiness and Celebration, were as follows:

1. Numbers 21: 4-9. (about a poisonous serpent that attacks evil doers)
 
2. Ephesians 1:1-10. Which talks a lot about disobedience and living “in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else” but saved through faith which is “the gift of God, not the result of works.”
 
3. John 3: 14-21:”Those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God….This is the judgment, that the light has come into the world and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light….”  This passage is famous for being held up on placards at baseball games—“See John 3:14.”

As preacher of the day, what to do?  What to say?  I slept very little the night before, bathed on the one hand in the peace and joy of a two-day ecumenical feast but now wrestling with such questions and how to preach from such texts on Sunday morning.  At the service, I listened while the readings were recited, and then it was finally my time to preach.  I opened with the following words: “I have been a priest for over fifty years and not once in those years have I begun a sermon the way I am beginning this one:  I do not find the Scriptural readings we have just heard inspiring.”

After pointing out that there are “terror texts” (a term from Biblical scholar Phyllis Trible) in the Bible, I proposed that whatever bureaucratic committee put those texts together for this particular “Laetare Sunday” ought to be “taken to the woodshed.”  And that for the first hour in the woodshed a rabbi should be there to speak to them what such texts as these did to their people over the centuries to incite pogroms and killings and scapegoating and hatred and yes, even the holocaust.

And for the second hour in the woodshed there should come a Native American leader to tell the Christians what these texts did to inspire the genocide that has so decimated indigenous religions and cultures and human beings’ body and souls over the centuries.

I had a few more points to make as well, including citing Thomas Berry’s advice that the Bible be put on the shelf for twenty years while we recover from its more egregious passages and study the other source of revelation which is nature.  And of the need to resurrect the ancient archetypes of the Cosmic Christ, Buddha Nature and Image of God that give us a bigger-than-human perspective on life and religion itself.

At the very end of the service the Celebrant and rector, Father Tony, surprised me by inviting me up to extend a final blessing.  I felt the need to offer a non-canned and fresh blessing and immediately Emily Dickinson shot into mind (I had been reading a new book on her by a friend of mine—a topic I will treat in another essay) so this was my blessing: “May we all be blessed in the name of the bee, the butterfly and the breeze.”  Then I exegeted the blessing lightly: The Bee represents the Creator because it pollinates life all around us; the Butterfly represents the Christ because it undergoes death, hibernation and resurrection; and the Breeze represents the wind and therefore Spirit (ruah).  Then, with this deeper understanding, I offered the blessing a second time.

Following the service at the sharing of finger food and tea, a number of parishoners, choir members too, thanked me for my preaching.  Apparently they were just as disturbed as I was by the terror texts.

I am grateful to the rector, Father Tony, for his invitation and for his generously sharing his pulpit with me and for accepting the challenge that my preaching may have stirred up.

But I ask the following question: Isn’t it time—in the twenty-first century that we live in—to address the terror texts in our “holy books” and lay them to rest?  And certainly not parade them as worthy of our meditations at our Sunday gatherings?

Is it any wonder that the younger generation, raised in a world where we rub shoulders daily with people of other faith traditions and none, don’t show up for church on Sunday with lessons like these being read at them?  Have we so treated the Bible as an untouchable idol and liturgy the same that our consciences have been silenced in the process?  And isn’t it time that whoever makes up liturgical lectionaries be re-educated about the realities of Biblical texts and liturgical ones too and their impact historically and contemporaneously on human behavior and their capacity to stir up feelings of self-worth or self-hatred and of hatred of others?

The whole thing is a scandal.  It’s no wonder many thinking and feeling people are not showing up for church on Sunday mornings.  This is 2018, isn’t it?  We are living in a time of Deep Ecumenism aren’t we?  How far behind the times are the churches and their bureaucracies choosing to be?  Reading the signs of the times is not an option; it’s a requirement of any person or community that dares to speak in Jesus’ name. Isn’t it?

~ Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox

About the Author
Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox holds a doctorate in spirituality from the Institut Catholique de Paris and has authored 32 books on spirituality and contemporary culture that have been translated into 69 languages. Fox has devoted 45 years to developing and teaching the tradition of Creation Spirituality and in doing so has reinvented forms of education and worship. His work is inclusive of today’s science and world spiritual traditions and has awakened millions to the much neglected earth-based mystical tradition of the West. He has helped to rediscover Hildegard of Bingen, Meister Eckhart, Thomas Aquinas. Among his books are Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh, Transforming Evil in Soul and Society, A Way To God: Thomas Merton’s Creation Spirituality Journey, Meister Eckhart: A Mystic-Warrior For Our Times and Confessions: The Making of a Postdenominational Priest

A new school, adopting the pedagogy Fox created and practiced for over 35 years, is opening in Boulder, Colorado this September.  Called the Fox Institute for Creation Spirituality it is being run by graduates of his doctoral program and will offer MA, D Min and Doctor of Spirituality degrees. With young leaders he is launching a new spiritual (not religious) “order” called the Order of the Sacred Earth (OSE) that is welcoming to people of all faith traditions and none and whose ‘glue’ is a common vow: “I promise to be the best lover of Mother Earth and the best defender of Mother Earth that I can be.”

Question & Answer

Q: By Yadidya

As a progressive Christian, how do you deal with infidelity when your partner cheats on you but later confesses it?

A: By Joran Slane Oppelt

Dear Yadidya,

As you know, infidelity is not an issue or behavior restricted to progressives. Liberals cheat, conservatives cheat, Baptists cheat, Mormons cheat. Both men and women cheat. It’s a human behavior and it’s all too common.

Sex at Dawn authors Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá even go so far as to say that it’s normal. In their book, they investigate whether the idea of monogamy really does come “natural” to our species.  

“Marriage isn't about sex,” they say. “It's about things that are much deeper and more lasting than sex, especially if you have children. And the American insistence on mixing love and sex and expecting passion to last forever is leading to great suffering that we think is tragic and unnecessary.”

Yadidya, I don’t know anything about your marital situation or your religious beliefs. But, if it’s important (or possible) to salvage the relationship, you’ll need to find ways to cope with the inevitable denial, anger and self-doubt that can potentially eat away at your soul and your ability to turn toward each other and return to a place of love. This may mean regularly talking to your partner about what you’re feeling. It may mean seeking a therapist for yourself or a counselor for the both of you.

If you believe that infidelity is a transgression that goes beyond human law (it is illegal in some states), then there may be deeper work for you to do or you may (in any case) choose to separate or divorce.

The fact that your partner (I’m assuming you are asking for yourself, and not a friend) has confessed to their infidelity means that they are not willing to live in denial and want to live in truth with you. This does not mean the act is forgotten. It means you have the opportunity to renew your spiritual covenant and reset some mutual boundaries.

As a Christian (progressive or not), forgiveness -- the power and ability to release bitterness and anger -- is a divine attribute. The word “forgive” is mentioned in the Bible 95 times, including “Forgive as the Lord forgave you” (Colossians 3:13) and in the way Jesus himself instructed us to pray (“Forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors”).

What I can tell you is that forgiveness has real and lasting power.

With all of the lenses, maps and metaphors at our disposal, sometimes we neglect to show up in the very real territory of relationship. Sometimes we cling too tightly to scripture or law or expectations. And the capacity for empathy, compassion, insight and understanding might be the real advantage that you wield as a Progressive Christian.

No matter what you decide to do, I only ask that you begin by aiming that forgiveness straight into your own heart and know that you are loved.

~ Joran Slane Oppelt

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About the Author
Joran Slane Oppelt Joran Slane Oppelt is an international speaker, author, interfaith minister, life coach and award-winning producer and singer/songwriter. He is the owner of the Metta Center of St. Petersburg and founder of Integral Church – an interfaith and interspiritual organization in Tampa Bay committed to “transformative practice, community service and religious literacy.” Joran is the author of Sentences, The Mountain and the Snow and co-author of Order of the Sacred Earth (with Matthew Fox), Integral Church: A Handbook for New Spiritual Communities and Transform Your Life: Expert Advice, Practical Tools, and Personal Stories. He serves as President of Interfaith Tampa Bay and has spoken around the world about spirituality and the innovation of religion.

He has presented at South by Southwest in Austin, TX; Building the New World Conference in Radford, VA; Parliament of the World’s Religions in Salt Lake City; Embrace Festival in Portland, OR and Integral European Conference in Siófok, Hungary.

Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited

Is History Repeating Itself?

 “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” These words of philosopher George Santayana are terrifyingly true. Recently, I have looked again at what happened to the Jews in Christian Europe in the 1930s and 1940s and compared that to what I believe is happening today to homosexual people in the United States. The similarities are both eerie and frightening. Lest we prove guilty of not learning from history, allow me to recall that anti-Semitic horror from the last century for the sake of comparison.

The latent hostility against the Jews began to be stoked by Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf, which was written during the mid-twenties while he was in prison. The historic roots of this hostility, however, had been nurtured by years of Christian rhetoric that had portrayed Jews as Christ-killers and as the cause of such catastrophes as the Bubonic Plague. Killing Jews had been legitimatized by the Vatican during the Crusades and it was fed by the writings of Martin Luther during the Reformation. In each instance the Jews were defined as the cause of all the trouble the ruling authorities were experiencing. When Hitler’s political star began to rise this killing prejudice was newly affirmed. The Pope, Pius XII, saw nothing in Hitler’s attitude that he deemed worthy of condemnation. Instead he offered the Fuhrer his stamp of approval. The German Protestant Church leadership, with one or two notable exceptions, was also generally silent. Political leaders in the United States, Great Britain and Canada acted so as to lead others to think that this German behavior was not inappropriate. Hitler’s anti-Semitic rhetoric was unchallenged allowing a specific group of people to be regarded as worthy of persecution.

Today, a similar drumbeat of hostility is being loosed in our world against a different victim. Listen to the words that emanate from high places regarding gay and lesbian people in our time and compare it with the hostility spoken against the Jews during the 1930s in Nazi Germany. There is much to suggest that attacks against gay and lesbian people today serve the same political purposes that attacks on Jews served in that earlier time. Prejudice at its core is a diversionary tactic to shift responsibility toward an identifiable enemy. Hitler blamed the depression on “Jewish bankers.” His inability to bring about an alliance with Great Britain, which in his mind made World War II inevitable, was, he said, the result of an “international Jewish conspiracy.” Political and religious leaders in America today blame homosexual people for the breakdown in family values, the rising divorce rate and the decline of public morality. Having a designated scapegoat always makes hostility seem legitimate. I shudder at the direction in which I see my nation and the world walking.

The episode that for me ignited these fears in an incontrovertible way came with the recent announcement from the Vatican that the new Pope Benedict XVI, the former grand inquisitor Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was planning to make the signature issue of his pontificate the purging of all gay candidates studying for the Catholic priesthood. The directive indicated that this purge was to be total. The Pope, like Hitler, is acting on a long history of prejudice
that has also been justified by the dominant voices in the Christian Church. His own church has consistently called homosexuality “deviant, unnatural and depraved.” In our slang homosexuals are called ‘faggots,’ the name of the stick used to ignite the fires that burned numbers of homosexuals at the stake. Roman bishops do not allow homosexual groups like ‘Dignity’ to meet in their churches. Yet these prelates know full well that a major percentage of their clergy, including bishops and cardinals are in fact gay men. In this new campaign for public favor, however, the Vatican is suggesting that it matters not that gay men seeking ordination live celibate lives, or even lives of exemplary holiness. If they are homosexual, they are to be purged.

One’s behavior is no longer to be the basis of judgment. People are now to be removed because of who they are. That was also Hitler’s rule. ‘Jewish,’ for Hitler, meant anyone who had at least two Jewish grandparents, or one Jewish parent. If a gentile married a Jew he or she was also to be treated like a Jew. Hitler’s purge, like Benedict XVI’s, was not about one’s doing; it was about one’s being. The very being of a homosexual person is deemed to be sufficiently evil as to warrant action, for homosexuals are assumed to infect the purity of the Catholic faith like Jews were thought to infect the purity of the Aryan race.

Interestingly enough this Vatican Report stated that those already ordained would not be subject to this purge. That was to be avoided since the scandalous revelations would be a public relations disaster. The goal of cleansing the ordained ranks of homosexuals was thus only to start at the entry level. This means that the task of freeing the priesthood of its homosexual pollution, as they regard it, would require a time span of 50 years or so. In this manner the Pope promised that the “stench of homosexuality” would ultimately be removed from “the citadels of holiness.”

Church leaders have blamed the recent publicity regarding the abuse of children by priests, rather conveniently it seems to me, on homosexual clergy, as if homosexuality and pedophilia were somehow the same. There is absolutely no evidence to support that assertion. In fact, 90% of the child abuse in America takes place in the family of the abused child and it is overwhelmingly heterosexual in nature not homosexual. So this new anti-gay initiative is little more than a campaign to clear the church’s image. That hardly has integrity. I recall that the hierarchy met this child abuse crisis not with honesty but with massive cover-ups. The greatest culprit in this cover-up was Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, who in an overt act of duplicity was transferred to a place of honor in Rome, thus removing him from the possibility of being brought to trial and having to testify under oath.

When attacking homosexuals becomes an acceptable thing to do then we have surely entered a dangerous period of history. Yet the Vatican is only one of the symptoms of this impending ‘Dark Age.’ During the last presidential campaign, the incumbent President of the United States, George W. Bush, and his top political advisor Karl Rove, managed to exacerbate the fears of the people of this land about the threat that homosexuality is supposed to bring to the institution of marriage. By placing this issue on the ballots of eleven states, Bush and Rove called out the mob spirit and blatantly encouraged America’s growing homophobia. It proved to be a winning tactic. Once the seeds of hostility are sown and the victim identified, however, the result is inevitable. America’s homosexual population has been, in effect, nominated to play that role. When Mr. Bush called for an amendment to the Constitution to ban gay marriage, he sought to institutionalize this prejudice. If hating or fearing homosexuals is proper for the Pope and the President then it quickly becomes proper for all. One has only to look and listen as this destructiveness, now unleashed, roams the land relatively unchallenged.

Television evangelist, Jerry Falwell, has already suggested that the disaster of 9/11 was an act of divine punishment because America had begun to tolerate homosexuals. His not so subtle message is that if you do not want to be attacked by terrorists you must oppress homosexuals. Not to be outdone by his fellow Virginian, Pat Robertson was busy denying that he had said that the hurricane was divine punishment on New Orleans because it is the hometown of lesbian comedian, Ellen DeGeneres. In his denial, however, he repeated the same mentality by stating that God was planning an earthquake for Hollywood, where the one he calls Ellen ‘Degenerate’ now lives. It was bizarre thinking, but both of these men have convinced themselves that God hates everything that they hate. That seems easy in today’s world of religion

The Cardinal Archbishop of Sydney, George Pell, has stated that “Homosexuality is a greater health hazard than smoking,” and has let it be known that homosexuals and their sympathizers are not welcome to receive communion at Catholic altars in Australia. At the funeral in Wyoming of a murdered gay man, Matthew Shepard, picketers organized by a Baptist preacher from Topeka, Kansas, carried a placard that read, “God said fags should die (Leviticus 20).” Does everyone not yet understand that when religious or political voices suggest that prejudice is both legitimate and blessed by God, they are opening this society to violence?

Adding to the weight of our cultural homophobia today are the voices of third world Christian leaders who, far more than is publicly acknowledged, are aided and abetted by right wing sources of money in America. Finally, there are the waffling main line Christian leaders, best symbolized by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who cannot bring himself to confront this blatant prejudice that impacts his church because he believes that “Church unity” is more important than countering this rising evil spirit. People simply do not seem to realize that if hostility, prejudice or persecution against any person on the basis of that person’s being is considered legitimate today, then no one is safe tomorrow. History can repeat itself.

One German Lutheran pastor, Martin Niemoeller, who did oppose Hitler, wrote these words, which I believe, are as true for us today as they were in the 1930’s:

“First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out because I was not a communist. Then they came for the socialists and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me.”

I intend to speak out against this rising tide of homophobia in both the church and the world today. Silence constitutes the betrayal of all that I hold sacred. I hope you will also join in this public witness.

~  John Shelby Spong

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