What Pulls At Your Heart

Nearly 15 years ago I was asked to “help out” in the office of the new president of The Center for Progressive Christianity. I was told I would be filing paperwork, answering phone calls and helping with some basic accounting. My first response was, “No, thank you. I think I am done with Christianity.” 

Allow me to fill in the history a bit. As many of you know, I grew up as a pastor’s kid in a vibrant, thriving and meaningful progressive Christian church (United Church of Christ). We were one of the first churches to experience the Open and Affirming process. We marched in protests, and had a diverse, intellectual, justice oriented congregation. People of different sexual orientations, gender identities and a spectrum of Christian and non-Christian believers attended our church. Some drove an hour every Sunday, because it was the only church where they were welcomed and accepted. This was in the 80’s. 

I participated at every level of the church — in the choir, as a youth group leader, a camp counselor, a youth delegate and as a beloved community member. 

I will never forget the feeling of walking into that church building, being greeted with eyes of love, warm hello’s, familiar faces and many hugs. I had my regular seat at the front of the church where I laughed, cried and held hands with neighbors. Often I was joined there by several children, many of whom I babysat, and all of whom I loved dearly. My lap would be full, my heart soft and my mind stimulated. 

Now at 43 years old, I realize I have rarely felt so whole as I did when we were at Family Camp at Pilgrim Pines, singing around the fire, under the magnitude of stars. The crisp fall air swirled around us, pine fragrance filled the air, and I belonged to something bigger than myself. I felt directly connected to God then. She was all around us. 

My church was my extended family. And in my years of searching, I have yet to find a church like it, although I am sure they are out there. 

So, why did I feel like, at 29 years old, that I was done with Christianity?

One, I couldn’t ignore the history of violence, misuse, mis-translation, abuse of power, sexism, racism, and the blatant oppression of people around the world. It seems like the Christian Church has often been at the center of these since it’s inception. This continued oppression is in opposition to the teachings of the Jesus I knew.

Two, I couldn’t relate to the stories in the Bible, of a land in the middle east, and a people over 2,000 years ago. While many of the stories are timeless and universal, many for me simply were not. And it felt like a lot of digging to find those gems. I tried to imagine Jesus in our world today… and I simply couldn’t. He would likely be a homeless man, thought to be crazy. Or a black man imprisoned. An immigrant caged. The nation I was raised in, that calls itself Christian, is simply not.

And three, growing up in Orange County, California our progressive church and our family were targeted by fundamentalist Christians on a regular basis. I had “friends” tell me I was going to burn for all eternity in Hell. My family and our church received bomb threats and death threats. We were called heathens, heretics and false prophets. All this because we dared to create a radically inclusive community. Like Jesus.

So, I felt like I was done. I didn’t want to have anything to do with that Christianity again. 

In college, I moved on and studied Eastern Asian religions and I fell in love with Tibetan Buddhism. I taught yoga, worked with children, had my own child and eventually was asked help with this progressive Christian non-profit organization, known then as TCPC. 

In spite of my initial hesitancy, it felt like a good opportunity for some part time work. So I finally said yes. My role expanded and I began to learn more about progressive Christianity from a different perspective. I can’t tell you how many letters and emails and phone calls we received on a regular basis saying something like: “Until I found this organization, I felt completely alone in the world.” And “I have hope again.” Or, “My family doesn’t understand me and calls me a sinner. I now see that there is a path for me where I can still be a follower of Jesus and also be me.” Something like that over and over again. 

And, after some deep introspection, contemplation and a re-opened mind, I realized that what mattered was that we were offering a path of radical inclusion. TCPC, like my childhood church family, was trying to model the radical love of Jesus as we saw and understood it. That vision still matters now, even more so.

Today, progressive Christianity is being called to level up. And big time. All that preaching from the pulpits about radical inclusion and justice? It’s time to take that to the polling place, grocery store, neighborhood and family dinner table. It’s time to examine how we have contributed to unjust systems because of our personal comfort. It’s time to acknowledge how these unjust systems have kept us from the community Jesus embodied.

How do we level up?

We must listen to our grief, individually and collectively. We are losing something, after all — our privilege, our perceived superiority and our comfortable and familiar ability to “other.” We must accept that our anger is telling us something is not right. We can no longer hide under the blankets of denial, guilt, fragility, shock and numbness. We must look at that grief with eyes wide open and ask how it is informing our spending, sense of ownership, actions and empathy today?

We must act. Empire living, which embodies the sins of human nature, has been crushing us all. We can not pretend that because we are kind, liberal Christians that we don’t have to act or be in denial of our part. Black, brown and trans bodies are dying for our sins over and over again. We can no longer turn a blind eye. We must create a bigger table with every voice in mind and make sure every one is there when we start to wrestle with solutions. Because “we belong to each other,” as indigenous teachers have said.

We must maintain hope. At the heart of Christianity and the path of Jesus is Wild Hope, living and loving with abandon. As John Shelby Spong says, “live fully and love wastefully.”

“If God is the source of love, as I believe God is, then the only way you can worship God is by loving. Not by being right, but by loving. By loving wastefully. The image in my mind is an old sink in the basement, that you plug up the drains and you turn on all the [taps] and the water overflows the boundaries and goes all over the floor and fills up every crack and cranny… and never stops to ask whether that crack deserves this living water. You love because love is what you have to do, not because somebody deserves the love. You love wastefully.”

Radical love, patience and trust require hope and we must maintain that burning light within if we are going to be a real part of transforming our communities and world. Hope tells us that there will always be more living water within to pour out of us.

We must keep pushing. It is going to take hard, dedicated and exhausting work to continue to evolve Christian theology and to remove all echoes of racism from our liturgy and rituals. Take rest and take turns, but never stop pushing. Progressive leaders and communities need to continue (or start) modeling the transformation of systems that pervade our current global human experience through radical love. Push everyday to center, listen and learn from black, brown and indigenous people who will lead the way. 

United States Vice President Kamala Harris has been known to say, “I eat no for breakfast. I love that word.” She kept on pushing and isn’t going to let up now. Neither can we. 

We must not forget. Poet, leader and author Sonya Renee Taylor says, “white supremacist delusion demands amnesia” in order to survive. We can’t forget where the Church has done harm and has been oppressive and unjust or we will repeat the cycle of fear and othering, complacency and apathy. 

We must create new narratives and images. Progressive Christians, the time has come to be fully engaged in the world and active in our pursuits of radical compassion and service. Gather your church and ask, “How can we radically model the love Jesus offered to the world? The new, diverse, just and live giving narratives we create need to represent all of us and center the least of us. They must be a balance of accountability and radical empathy and forgiveness. 

What breaks your heart?

You know when else I have felt whole? Marching in Black Lives Matter protests alongside thousands of other humans chanting and crying and singing songs of justice. Demanding an end to the hate and fear of racism. 

So let us take our 40 days in the desert while we wrestle our grief and what it means to you to be a follower of Jesus. But then, for the love of god, for the love of what is good and worthy, let us come out of the desert and do something. 

Look with honesty at the world and notice what breaks your heart. And then start with just one thing that lends healing to that brokenness.  What breaks your heart can break open your community. So there is room for new growth in the cracks and a deeper cause. Pick one thing and do it well.

And when you don’t know what to do, find BIPOC leaders who are already building those just systems Jesus longed for. They have been calling us to pay attention for hundreds of years. Listen, learn and show up. 

I stand with you as we step into our collective healing. I march with you as we commit to walking the walk. It is what Jesus asked of us all along.

~ Rev. Deshna Shine

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About the Author
Rev. Deshna Charron Shine is Project Director of ProgressiveChristianity.org’s Children’s Curriculum.  She is an ordained Interfaith Minister, author, international speaker, and visionary. She grew up in a thriving progressive Christian church and has worked in the field for over 13 years. She graduated from UCSB with a major in Religious Studies and a minor in Global Peace and Security. She was Executive Director of ProgressiveChristianity.org, Executive Producer of Embrace Festival and has co-authored the novel, Missing Mothers. Deshna is passionate about sacred community, nourishing children spiritually, and transforming Christianity through a radically inclusive lens.

Question & Answer

Q: By Victor

Trying to figure out what Christianity is all about, I ask a lot of questions. All I want is a simple answer, but I keep getting different opinions from different people. Is that all there is? Opinions? Where are the facts?

A: By Rev. David Felten

Dear Victor,

As a pastor who’s also a musician, the best analogy I can think of is (what else?) musical. There are a lot of “facts” about music: we strive for the “A” above middle “C” to vibrate at 440 Hz, there are four musicians in a quartet, and the British Navy uses Britney Spears songs to scare off Somali pirates.[i] No kidding. But beyond that kind of thing, music is pretty subjective. I, for one, have eclectic tastes in music, ranging from the spare and simple to the avant-garde – not surprising in that my music education degree expected me to be proficient in everything from the obscure and esoteric discipline of the classical French saxophone repertoire to the jazz and pop styles that make up the bulk of what people listen to in the real world.
 
I was trained and expected to be able to play it all. Not surprisingly then, the music that moves me and serves as the soundtrack to my life is from almost every style and period. It’s intensely personal and subjective. I know that some of the more experimental and “free” music that inspires me the most would leave a lot of people just shaking their heads in bewilderment (it does with my mom, at least), but that’s where my musical journey has taken me.
 
So, here’s the thing: there’s one kind of music that I don’t listen to. In fact, I can’t stand it. And that’s contemporary country music. I understand it technically and appreciate how popular it is with regular folk. Be it the inane lyrics, superficial patriotism, or the monotony of the music harmonically, it’s just not anything I can listen to. Totally subjective, but there it is. That’s my opinion. I’m a musical elitist and snob.
 
Suffice it to say, in the realm of theology and religion, there’s an abundance of opinion, but there just aren’t that many facts. As with music, my theological tastes are pretty eclectic, ranging from the spare and simple to the avant-garde. My theological degrees expected me to know about everything from pretty obscure historical and esoteric writings to the simplest pop Christian theology that most people relate to in everyday life. I was exposed to a lot; and now, where I’ve come to be in my own personal spiritual life turns out to be very confusing to most people. It’s intensely personal, subjective and fluid. I know that a lot of what I believe must make some people just shake their head in wonder, but that’s OK. I hope they can get a glimpse of my spiritual priorities through my actions in the world. Along the way, colleagues have called me a heretic, apostate, liar and “one of the tools the enemy.” All for just being honest? Hooray! They called Thelonious Monk incompetent and subversive.
 
And yes, just like in music, in the world of faithing, there’s one kind of theology that I can’t stand – and that’s the kind of pop Christianity that has become the dominant civic/evangelical religion in the United States. And just like country music, it’s inane, monotonous and steeped in superficial patriotism. I understand it and appreciate how popular it is with regular folk, but it's disconnectedness from the teachings and intentions of Jesus make me really sad. What’s worse is its programmatic embrace of hateful and ignorant ideologies that not only discriminate against a growing laundry list of people and ideas, but deny reality and those precious “facts” you’re looking for.
 
I used to think that they were totally out of touch with the reformation that is going on across the country and around the world, but that’s not true. They’re well aware of the threat posed by evolving mainliners, post-evangelicals and non-believers. The nature of God, blood atonement, Christology, the authority of the Bible – all of them (including “belief” itself) – are not just in the midst of major change, in the words of one of my mentors, “they’re not even in my rear-view mirror.” As a result, the Religious Right leverages fear-based campaigns to raise money and enhance their political influence to fend off what they perceive as dangerous religious and social trends.
 
For us in the middle of it professionally, it’s daunting, exciting and challenging, but it’s just downright perplexing to most people in the pews who think that Christianity just “is what it is” and want “just the facts.” Sorry. There’s lots of change in process and on the horizon. The belief and practices of the last 1,500 years are being retooled, revised or just plain retired. For many of us, it’s not about being faithful to rigid creeds and doctrines, but about subjectively composing a whole new genre of spirituality (of which Jesus’ teachings are just one part).
 
The challenge is that most people in most churches (and many clergy) have their theological beliefs pre-set to the “oldies station” and are either insulated from or intimidated by what’s going on outside their comfort zone. So, they simply plod along in the isolation of their bubble of orthodoxy without a clue that there are people who practice Christianity and follow Jesus in radically different ways.
 
So there it is. I’m not only a musical elitist and snob but a theological elitist and snob, too. If you ask me what Christianity is all about, I’m happy to give you my opinion. But it probably won’t match the last person you asked. And just like my musical tastes, I reserve the right to change my opinion based on the latest release from Snarky Puppy or Die Berliner Philharmoniker.
 
I urge you to abandon your quest for simple answers and embrace the journey that sifting through opinions offers. Any “facts” along the way may be helpful, but only insofar as they provide a means of evaluating the veracity of various opinions. In the meantime, I encourage you to take to heart the sage (and subjective) advice of Harry Emerson Fosdick: “Opinions may be mistaken; love never is.” 

~ Rev. David M. Felten

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About the Author
Rev. David M. Felten is a full-time pastor at The Fountains, a United Methodist Church in Fountain Hills, Arizona. David and fellow United Methodist Pastor, Jeff Procter-Murphy, are the creators of the DVD-based discussion series for Progressive Christians, “Living the Questions” and authors of Living the Questions: The Wisdom of Progressive Christianity. A co-founder of Catalyst Arizona and also a founding member of No Longer Silent: Clergy for Justice, David is an outspoken voice for LGBTQ rights both in the church and in the community at large. David is active in the Desert Southwest Conference of the United Methodist Church and tries to stay connected to his roots as a musician. You’ll find him playing saxophones in a variety of settings, including appearances with the Fountain Hills Saxophone Quartet. David is the proud father of three reliably remarkable human beings.
 

Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited

The Origins of the New Testament
Part XXVI: The Book of Acts

In the early manuscripts of the Bible, the book of Acts served the purpose of providing transition from the gospels to the epistles. There was a deep historical fallacy in this assumption though it seemed logical, at least historically, to have stories of the life of Jesus precede stories of the spread of Christianity after the end of Jesus’ earthly life. The fact is that the authentic epistles of Paul were written first (51-64) and then the gospels, or, at least, the first three gospels (70-93). John was much later (95-100). Into that framework also needs to be placed the Pastoral Epistles that claim Pauline authorship, but are clearly written in Paul’s name long after his death (ca. 64), and the General or “Catholic” Epistles that are called by the names of Peter, John, James and Jude, but which were clearly not written by the one to whom each is attributed and some of which are even quite clearly the products of the second century. Then there is this book of Acts, which purports to tell the story of the Christian movement and how it spread after the Easter event from Jerusalem to Rome. Although its title claims that it is the story of all the apostles, it features stories primarily about Peter, with John appearing in a secondary role before moving to its obvious star, Paul, who is known in the early church simply as “the Apostle.” Not only was he not one of the twelve, but there is no evidence that Paul ever met or knew the Jesus of history.

Originally, Acts was designed to be volume two of the Gospel of Luke. The two works are clearly inter-related and are obviously the products of the same author. They agree in vocabulary usage, in common themes and in the fact that Luke’s gospel anticipates the book of Acts and the book of Acts looks back on the gospel of Luke. It is unfortunate that, when the New Testament was formed, the gospels — now four in number — were put in the beginning, which necessitated splitting Luke-Acts into two volumes, with the gospel of John breaking their original unity. In this study, however, I will try to rectify that mistake by treating Luke-Acts as one continuous story. We can then move with better understanding into the Pastoral Epistles, the General Epistles and that rather unique epistle we call the Letter to the Hebrews before concluding our journey through the biblical text with the Johannine corpus, which includes the gospel that bears John’s name, the three epistles purportedly written by him and the book of Revelation, which claims to have been written by John while he was imprisoned on the Isle of Patmos. So with that apologia for the placement of this book in both the Bible and in this series, let me bring into focus the Acts of the Apostles.

I noted in our earlier study the impact the synagogue setting had on the organization and the content of the gospels themselves (I am speaking now primarily of the first three: Mark, Matthew and Luke) and raise the question about whether or not the book of Acts might fit into that same liturgical pattern. Please note first that the book of Acts is approximately the same length as both Matthew and Luke, so if Matthew and Luke were designed to enable Jesus stories to be read in the Sabbaths of the liturgical year, as I have suggested, Acts is a similar length so that it would also lend itself to be read in segments over the course of one liturgical year.

We also need to be aware of the practice in the synagogue of reading the Torah first in the Sabbath liturgy. There appear to have been two patterns at the dawn of the Christian era. The pattern in the more traditional synagogues was to read the Torah in its entirety over the Sabbaths of a single year. This would mean a very long first lesson, some five to six chapters from Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. In those communities of “the Diaspora,” in which the Jews were dispersed throughout the empire into pockets in predominantly Gentile cities, the pattern developed of reading the Torah over a three year cycle, thereby making the lessons much shorter each Sabbath. Once the reading of the Law was complete, and probably following the recitation of a psalm, a second lesson would be read from the historical books that the Jews called “the Early Prophets” — the books of Joshua, Judges, I & II Samuel and I & II Kings. Basically, this portion of the sacred story was the narrative of what happened to the Jewish nation after the end of the life of their founder, Moses. The Jews did not regard these writings as in the same category of importance as the Torah so the passion to complete their reading in a particular period of time was not a matter of great urgency.

It appears to me that the book of Acts was designed by Luke after the analogy of this Jewish practice and was meant to provide Christians with a lesson tracing the history of the church as it moved out of the Jewish orbit and into the wider Gentile world. Like the books called the “Early Prophets,” the book of Acts chronicles the life of “the New Israel” following the death of its founder, Jesus. If that is true, we might look for stories in the book of Acts that would be appropriate to the various feasts and fasts of the liturgical year in the synagogue. The first one is obvious for in Acts 2, Luke gives us the narrative of Pentecost in which he tells the story of the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the Christian community. The Jews regarded the Law as the greatest gift God had ever given to Israel and they marked this at Pentecost. Christians, however, wanted to transform Jewish Pentecost into a Christian celebration to mark what they believed was the greatest gift God had given the Christians, namely the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Pentecost, which literally means 50 days, was also called Shavuot. When we previously examined Matthew’s gospel, we noted that Shavuot was observed by the Jews as a twenty-four-hour vigil focusing on the Sinai experience in which Moses received the law. We also noted that Matthew marked that holy day with the Sermon on the Mount that portrayed Jesus as the new Moses on a new mountain giving a new interpretation of the Torah, together with sufficient material to cover eight segments of three hours each in this twenty-four hour vigil. That is why there are eight beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount and eight commentaries or elaborations of each of the beatitudes. Matthew’s traditionally Jewish community observed Pentecost in an orthodox way.

We also noted earlier that Luke’s community was constituted of dispersed Jews and an increasing number of Gentiles who had been attracted to the synagogue by its theology of ethical monotheism. These Gentile proselytes, however, were not attracted to the cultic elements of Judaism. They would thus not be particularly interested in observing a twenty-four-hour vigil. When we were considering Luke’s gospel, we noted that when this author came to the time in which Pentecost was celebrated, he simply had John the Baptist point to the narrative that he planned to write when he got to the second chapter of Acts where Luke would reveal his new understanding of Pentecost. He did this by having John say, “I baptize you with water, but one comes after me, the thong of whose sandal I am not worthy to unloose, he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.”

In the fifty day period between Passover and Pentecost in the Jewish calendar, Pentecost will be reached on or near the seventh Sabbath. Luke, therefore, needed to provide six gospel lessons before he gets to Pentecost. As the Easter stories began to proliferate he provided for three of these in his gospel itself. The lesson for the Sabbath after Passover, when the Christians celebrated the resurrection, would be Luke 24:1-12. Next, he added the Emmaus Road resurrection story (24:13-35) that no other gospel writer recorded to be read on the second Sabbath after Passover. Then Luke’s gospel has a third resurrection story (24:36-53) in which Jesus appears to the disciples for the first time and commissions them to be his witnesses to “all the nations,” before he departed from them.

The early Christian community would then turn to the book of Acts where Luke has three more quite distinct lessons to carry him to Pentecost. First, there is his introduction (Acts 1:1-5) in which continuity with the gospel of Luke is established together with the note that the appearances of the raised Jesus went on for fifty days. Second was the story of the Ascension that brought those appearances to an end (Acts1:6-14). Finally there was the story of the community choosing Matthias to replace Judas Iscariot so that the new Israel, like the old Israel, could continue to have twelve tribes. That brings us to the seventh Sabbath and the day of Pentecost. Right on cue, the reading was the story of how the Christians had turned Pentecost into a Christian celebration of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:1-13). There are other stories in the book of Acts that seem to be appropriate to the other Jewish holidays and each comes in the correct liturgical order: Stephen is a kind of Rosh Hashanah figure as he points to the coming of the kingdom (see Acts 6:1-8); Yom Kippur is referenced when the Christian movement begins to enroll Gentiles (6:9-15); Sukkoth or Tabernacles is recalled when Stephen recites and recalls the time the Jewish people lived homeless in the wilderness (7:1-36). The festival of Dedication or Hanukkah, which came in the dead of winter, might well be replicated in the story of Paul’s conversion in chapter 9:1-22 in which the light of God comes not on the Temple as it did in the Hebrew observance, or even on Jesus as it does in the gospel story of the Transfiguration, but on Paul as he journeyed on the road to Damascus.

When we get to the end of Acts, we discover the trial of Paul also appears to replicate in many places the trial of Jesus and would be read at the time when Passover for the Jews and the crucifixion for the Christians were being observed. My conclusion is that the book of Acts, like the Synoptic Gospels, was written as a liturgical book patterned after the synagogue’s holy day observances and in the proper order. Now we are ready to look at the content of this book.

~  John Shelby Spong

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