August 2017 - OE - lists.wedgeblade.net

8/11/16, Spong: The Unlikely Honored Guest at the Democratic National Convention
by Ellie Stock via OE 01 Aug '18

01 Aug '18

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He was surrounded in that reserved and exclusive seating area by the power-elite of the Democratic Party: A former President, the sitting Vice-President and the “second lady,” the spouses and children of the nominees, as well as those especially invited guests, who were uniquely and politically related to the convention’s eventual nominee. This unlikely guest was in his own way quite unique. He was a Republican, one who had been elected to a state-wide office as a candidate of the opposition party. He served as the governor of Virginia from 1970 – 1974 and was the first Republican governor of Virginia since 1869 in the last days of reconstruction. Later he sought his party’s nomination to the Senate of the United States, losing to another Republican, John Warner, who served with distinction from 1979 until he retired in 2008. The name of this mystery quest is Abner Linwood Holton. He is now, and has been since the day I first met him, an extraordinary man. People, unaware of the history of the Democratic Party in Virginia, find it strange that the man I regarded as the best governor of Virginia during the years I lived in that state would be a Republican. Let me tell you his story.</p> <p>Linwood Holton was born in 1923 in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, a town deep in the heart of Appalachia. He was a Republican from the moment of his birth. He was also bright and ambitious. Being a Republican in Virginia in those days was to be part of a distinct minority, perhaps even an endangered one! The Democrats of Virginia were the only cohesive political force in the state. This majority party was run by Virginia’s senior United States Senator, Harry Flood Byrd, who after serving a term as governor from 1926 to 1930, effectively ran the state until he died in 1966. It was said of Harry Byrd that he and a few of his closest political advisors would sit on the porch at his home in Berryville, Virginia, and pick the candidates for every political vacancy in Virginia from governor on down. The electorate was deliberately kept small by poll taxes, which effectively discouraged both blacks and poor whites from voting. A Byrd loyalist was in every county seat in Virginia to run the party. Racism was deep and “States Rights” was a holy slogan designed to make racism seem socially acceptable. Virginia was a one party state. Frequently the Republicans would not even nominate candidates and, even when they did, no one paid much attention to them because whoever won the Democratic primary seldom even campaigned in the general election, since Republicans simply did not win in this state! Linwood Holton made it his life’s ambition to establish two-party politics in Virginia.</p> <p>He graduated from Washington and Lee in Lexington, Virginia, and then entered the law school at Harvard University. Along the way he married a Roanoke girl, named Virginia Rogers, who went by the name of Jinks. She was the daughter of Frank Rogers, an upright, but ultra-conservative, successful and well-connected Roanoke citizen, who was the grandson of the first Episcopal Bishop in Southwestern Virginia. In his mind, the two greatest virtues were to be a conservative Episcopalian and a loyal Byrd Democrat. Jinks, the more rebellious of Rogers’ two daughters, chose to marry a Republican and a Presbyterian! Supported by this remarkable woman, Linwood began his life’s task of strengthening Virginia’s Republican Party. This party’s base, such as it was, had always been in the mountains of the western part of Virginia. As a force in opposition to Byrd Democrats, the Virginia Republican party tilted slightly leftward. There was no room to the right of the Byrd machine. The Virginia Republicans were known for their party’s efforts to improve education statewide and to develop better state mental health facilities. Linwood’s organizational efforts were so successful that in 1965 he was the Republican nominee for governor opposing the Southside, Virginia, Byrd Democrat, Mills Godwin, who had emerged as the new leader of the Democratic Party. The sickness, retirement and subsequently the death of Senator Byrd meant that the torch of party leadership had to be passed to the next generation. It is interesting that Harry Byrd, Jr., always known as “Little Harry,” who was appointed to succeed his father in the Senate, did not succeed him in the leadership of the statewide Democratic Party. Holton was defeated in that first run for the governor’s office, but he garnered a respectable total of votes and succeeded in introducing himself to the state. The day after the defeat, he began planning for his second run in 1969. The governorship in Virginia, we need to note, is limited by the Constitution to a single term.</p> <p>National issues soon began to erode the Byrd majorities. Poll taxes were declared unconstitutional in 1964. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 opened the ballot to people of color. The feminist movement began to galvanize women into an effective political force. A national- thinking Virginia Democrat, named Henry Howell, began to build a liberal political base made up of labor unions, blacks, women and young people. His challenge to the Byrd machine resulted ultimately in his election as Lt. Governor in 1971, but he could go no farther. He remained anathema to Byrd Democrats. In the Democratic Primary of 1969, the Byrd candidate, William Battle, the son of former Governor John Battle, defeated Henry Howell in a bitter contest. The party could not heal this division, so in the General Election, Linwood Holton, supported by many of Howell’s still angry voters, rode to victory with a 65,000 vote majority.</p> <p>In his inaugural address, Holton called for an end to Virginia’s pattern of racial discrimination and its racist politics. No Virginia Governor had ever uttered such words before. Words, however, were not enough. People looked for actions. They would follow soon.</p> <p>In the most dramatic step imaginable, the new governor and his wife made the decision not to put their children in the church-related or independent private schools of Richmond, where all governors’ children had previously attended, but to enroll them in Richmond’s public schools which were at that time about 80% black. It was such a startling action for a Virginia politician that the New York Times covered it with a front page story and a picture of Virginia’s Governor Holton escorting one of his daughters into a school surrounded by a host of black faces smiling broadly. In a state where the official response of the ruling Democratic machine to “Brown vs. the Board of Education,” had been to call for “massive resistance to the law of the land,” a state in which some counties chose to close their public schools rather than to integrate them, here was the highest elected official in the state escorting his children into the majority black public schools of Richmond, Virginia. No action could have announced better that a new day was dawning in what had once been the capital of the Confederacy. One of those Holton children entering those public schools on that day was their oldest daughter, Anne.</p> <p>The white population of Virginia was shocked. They believed and stated that their new governor was sacrificing his children on the “altar of integration.” Many suggested that the “inferior education” that his children would receive in those heavily black schools would cripple them for life. It was a strange argument that gave the lie to the previous white claim that all of its racially segregated schools were “separate, <em>but equal</em>.” Anne, in her early teens, would be an exemplary student. She received a fine education and upon graduation from high school would be admitted to Princeton University, from which she graduated <em>magna cum laude</em>. She seemed not to have been penalized at all in her educational achievements. After Princeton she was accepted into the class of 1983 at the Harvard Law School, from which she now holds a doctor of Jurisprudence degree. From there she went into a legal career that in time would include being a domestic relations judge and Virginia’s Education Secretary.</p> <p>While at Harvard she met, fell in love with and married a fellow law student, who was born in Minnesota and educated at the University of Missouri. His name was Tim Kaine. She lured him back to Richmond, where his earlier life experiences, including his Jesuit high school education, his year as a volunteer missionary to Honduras and his mastery of the Spanish language, prepared him to begin his Richmond law practice as a civil rights attorney. Then responding to an expressed community need, he entered politics at the most local of levels, running for a seat on Richmond’s nine-member City Council. In a majority black city, Tim not only won that seat, but was also later elected by that majority-black city council to be Richmond’s Mayor. Two years later, in 2001 he moved to the state level, being elected Virginia’s Lieutenant Governor. In 2005, he won the governor’s office. His wife, Anne Holton, became the first person to be at one time living in the governor’s mansion as the child of a Republican governor and then a second time as the state’s first lady and wife of a Democratic governor. In 2012, Tim Kaine won a seat in the United States Senate. In 2016, with two years remaining in his first term as senator, he was chosen by the presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, to be her vice-presidential running mate. Anne Holton was there with him, waving to the crowd on the final night. As Hillary Clinton raised Tim Kaine’s hand high, former president Bill Clinton was at her side and Anne Holton was at Tim Kaine’s side. The crowd roared with approval.</p> <p>In the VIP section of that vast Philadelphia arena sat the former Republican Governor Linwood Holton, now 92 years old, with his wife Jinks, both still vibrant and attractive, watching their daughter being introduced to the nation. There is sometimes a reward for integrity. Linwood and Jinks Holton, who would not allow their lives to be twisted by the prejudice of racism, challenged the distorting and debilitating social structures of his generation in Richmond, Virginia. Doing what is right sometimes carries with it intimations of transcendence and even immortality. To this day he remains one of my heroes.</p> <p>John Shelby Spong</p> <p>Read the essay online <a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb2…">here</a>.</p> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <table border="0" cellpadding="20" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top"> <div style="color: #000000;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><h2 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 30px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">Question & Answer</h2> <p><span style="font-size:18px">Alberto Mejia Aguilera from Mexico writes via the internet:</span></p> <h4 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 22px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;"> Question:</h4> <p>I am from Mexico and I would like to know your opinion about Liberation Theology. Do you think that this theology is still an inspiration for the struggle against the social injustice?</p> <h4 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 22px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">Answer:</h4> <p>Dear Alberto,</p> <p>Liberation theology was, I believe, was born in Latin America, so you should be especially proud of it. I associate the name of Leonardo Boff, primarily, with it, but there were others like the murdered Bishop Oscar Romero. It was born in an attempt to apply the principles of the gospel not just to individuals, but also to the structures of our society, which so often drive the masses into poverty. It identifies God with the poor. For those reasons it tended to be resisted in ecclesiastical circles, especially by the leaders of the Roman Catholic during the years of Popes John Paul II and Benedict, both of whom were so politically conservative that they saw it as another manifestation of Communism. I think they were both wrong in this judgment. Liberation theology, I believe, constituted a call to Christianity to see that its alliance with power, both in Europe and the new world, had corrupted the essential justice that Christianity requires.</p> <p>Christianity was born among the poor and the outcasts. It rose to dominate society and so became the religion of kings. Liberation Theology was a necessary correction.</p> <p>I wish you well.</p> <p>John Shelby Spong <a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb23…">Read and Share Online Here</a></p> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <table border="0" cellpadding="20" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top"> <div style="color: #000000;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><h2 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 30px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">Announcements</h2> <div style="text-align: center;color: #000000;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;"><a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb2…"><img align="none" height="262" style="width: 350px;height: 262px;margin: 0px;border: none;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;line-height: 100%;outline: none;text-decoration: none;text-transform: capitalize;display: inline;" width="350" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/b51b9cf441b059bb232418480/images/e67ac6a0-334…"></a></div> <h2 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 30px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:26px"><span style="color:#000000">Bishop Spong at the Episcopal Diocese of Northern Michigan September 10th & 11th</span></span></h2> <strong>Schedule:</strong> Saturday, September 10, 2016 1:00 pm at the Reynolds Recital Hall, Northern Michigan University 7:00 pm at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Marquette Sunday, September 11, 2016 2:00 pm at the Memorial Union Building , Michigan Technological University At each location, there will be an opportunity for Q&A and book signing.</div></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr><tr><td align="center" valign="top"> </td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></center><center><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" id="aolmail_canspamBarWrapper" style="background-color:#FFFFFF; border-top:1px solid #E5E5E5;"><tbody><tr><td align="center" valign="top" style="padding-top:20px; padding-bottom:20px;"> </td></tr></tbody></table></center></div> </div> <style type="text/css">#AOLMsgPart_2_1c149769-41d3-4c3b-8300-eaccdde19ae7 td{color: black;} @media only screen and (max-width: 480px){ .aolReplacedBody table[id="canspamBar"] td{font-size:14px !important;} .aolReplacedBody table[id="canspamBar"] td a{display:block !important; margin-top:10px !important;} } </style>

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"Journey Reflection" Most Read Blog Posts (August 2017)
by John C via OE 31 Aug '17

31 Aug '17

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8/31/17, Greta Vosper/Fox: If it weren’t for you …; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock via OE 31 Aug '17

31 Aug '17

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR If it weren’t for you … By Rev. Gretta Vosper Much of the work I have been privileged to do over the past thirteen years has been the result of a conversation I had one day with the late Reverend Jim Adams, founder of The Center for Progressive Christianity (now called ProgressiveChristianity.org) If it weren’t for you, much of this would never have happened at all. Think of it as an “It’s a Wonderful Life” contribution! At the beginning of September, Ever Wonder, a conference celebrating the work of the Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity (CCPC), will take place in Edmonton, Alberta. Leaders from the movement will come together with the many who have been involved over the years to reflect on what has been and, of course, ruminate about what the future might include. The CCPC wound up its operations in 2016 after twelve years of operation. We chose to do so because we felt we had fulfilled our purpose. That there remains work to do is obvious but it is not the work the CCPC stepped out to do. It will fall to others. The Center for Progressive Christianity (TCPC) had been a vibrant presence in the United States since its founding by the late Rev. Jim Adams in the mid-1990s. As many Spong readers already know, Adams had transitioned an Episcopal congregation in the heart of Washington, DC, into a progressive, vibrant community. He had done so by focusing less on the ecclesially-approved way of doing things and choosing, rather, to break the hermetic seals that kept stuffy, antiquated theology locked within the confines of the ecclesial edifice. As a result, his community persistently offered progressive explorations that embedded contemporary scholarship in its worship, study, and pastoral leadership. I first learned of TCPC through an article in the Toronto Star. A regular column of the late author and theologian, the Rev. Tom Harpur, told of the TCPCs work in the States. Of course, I googled it, hoping to find congregations in Canada that were part of the organization. Alas, there were none. But West Hill United, the congregation I serve in the east end of Toronto, had been on a journey that seemed to be in step with what Adams was doing in the United States. In 2001, in a Sunday morning service, I had declared my lack of belief in a theistic, supernatural, interventionist god and had not been shown the door. Instead, the congregation, with the Board’s direction, chose to explore what Christianity and the liturgy that shares it would look like beyond the doctrinal language upon which it had remained grounded even after literal belief had fallen away. When Harpur’s article appeared, we were in the process of exploring just what that would look like. Though we had already considered TCPC’s Eight Points as potential models for our work, they did not represent our intentions accurately and so we’d declined to use them. Some time later, as West Hill was beginning the process of creating a comprehensive document that would guide the congregation’s work and choices, we had not yet found a concise way to describe who we were becoming. And we had not found other congregations who might companion us on our journey. So I phoned Jim Adams to discuss the TCPC’s work and determine if there were sufficient synchronicities between us to allow West Hill to join the organization. Jim laughed often about that call, remembering his amusement when, contrary to most of the calls he received, I asked if the TCPC would accept West Hill’s membership even though we believed the Eight Points to be somewhat conservative. Adams, who usually heard people railing against his progressive ideas, was delighted to welcome us to the fold. A year later, the CCPC grew out of Jim’s dream of a global network of progressive theologians and practitioners. Passionate about creating connections that would open the church to seekers, Adams had reached out to leaders in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere to invite them to form networks in their own countries. Almost everyone he contacted did just that. Including me. Adams forwarded me an email list of individuals in Ontario who had been sufficiently moved by the work of TCPC to send donations to the organization. He knew that they were the most likely to be interested in starting a sister organization in Canada. And he was right. In January, 2004, in the midst of an outstanding Ontario snowstorm, twenty four people made their way to the lounge at West Hill. Some of them had spent upwards of three hours fighting the storm to be there, impressing me with their tenacity. I had no agenda other than to discern with these people whether it would be possible, or even helpful, to create a Canadian network of progressive Christians. And so I simply asked those gathered to share with the group how they had managed to get into that room that day. What forces had conspired in their lives to make it important enough to them to join this discussion that afternoon. As it turned out, that was the only agenda we really needed. Each individual spoke passionately about the factors that had stimulated their journey. Some had difficulty because of the powerful emotions evoked by the provision of a space in which they could speak openly and honestly. It took several hours to get around the circle but in the end, we knew we would create a Canadian network. We had to. To a person, isolation was the thread that ran through the stories we held that afternoon. Whether someone lived in a rural area where the only churches available were conservative or evangelical, or was deeply rooted in a congregation that taught progressive scholarship during the week but continued to embrace traditional language, hymns, and liturgy on Sunday mornings, or participated in a large, urban community in which they felt silenced and alone, each person knew the tragedy of isolation on the deeply personal reality of the spiritual journey. We knew that if this was so in a group of twenty-four people in Ontario, it was true for many more across the country. And so, a few meetings, some amazing volunteers, and several months later, we launched the Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity in November, 2004. >From the beginning, we knew we were different from the Center out of which we had been born. Our application for charitable status under Canadian law identified that, though we were applying as a religion, we did not believe in a theistic god and would not be promoting one. The Charities Act, however, requires belief in a theistic god for registration. Rather than receive our charitable registration in a timely manner, we found ourselves the instigators of a complete review of the Charities legislation as it applied to religious organization. Despite our lack of belief in a theistic god and the charitable registration of Buddhist communities that did not promote such belief, the Charities Directorate retained the requirement that religious charities be promoting belief in a theistic god. The work we had undertaken to do was embedded in our Charitable Objects which were: 1. To provide a national network for the promotion of Progressive Christianity; 2. To provide support for individuals and organizations in the exploration and development of: ….a. spiritual thought relevant to contemporary needs, ….b. spiritual practices and values meaningful to contemporary humanity, and ….c. spiritual resources for worship and nurture inspiring to contemporary ....seekers. 3. To provide mutual encouragement and fellowship to those engaged in this endeavour. We welcomed almost 500 people to our launch in Mississauga, ON, almost exclusively because we had managed to book Bishop Spong as a speaker at that event. It was a powerful evening. Both Bishop Spong and Jim Adams spoke. Tom Harpur was in attendance. My husband, Scott Kearns, a composer of powerful music for the evangelical church and who hadn’t written a single piece since leaving it, managed to create, in two days’ time, an amazing song which became a sort of theme for our work. In the light of love our lives have meaning. In the light of love our purpose shines. Wherever there is justice to be dared, compassion to be shared, this is our calling, in the light of love. So lift it up, hold it high write it clear across the sky. Burn it deep within your soul, live it well and live it whole, for nothing more is needed but nothing less will do, for nothing else can take the place of love.(1) We quickly recognized the need for national gatherings and organized our first conference with the late Rev. Jack Good, author of The Dishonest Church, as our keynote speaker and offering workshops in everything from organizational change to the meaning of Jesus in a post-Christian world brought by former Moderator of The United Church of Canada, the Very Rev. Bruce McLeod. The following year, we brought Bishop Spong to Ottawa along with Joanna Manning, author of The Magdelene Moment; A Vision for a New Christianity. Conference in Toronto, London, and Halifax followed, always drawing a diverse and enthusiastic crowd. Our first annual meeting took place at Toronto’s Factory Theatre where we had booked the house for CCPC participants to enjoy Rick Miller’s Bigger Than Jesus, a theatre extravaganza that opens all the questions. Over the course of the work of the CCPC, we offered a magazine, Progressions, which was published three to four times a year and conferences in London, Toronto, Oshawa, Ottawa, and Halifax. We travelled across the country sharing our work with congregations from Halifax to Victoria. Twice I participated in Progressive Christian Networks in the UK and spoke at conferences and events promoted by networks in Australia and New Zealand. The energy for the work was great and the influence we had was, I believe, significant. As to questions about why we disbanded, my feelings are that the isolation experienced by those who had joined together on that icy day in 2004 had dissipated. The year after our launch, Mark Zuckerberg provided most of them a platform for finding one another easily on the internet and Facebook now hosts hundreds of communities devoted to living beyond traditional beliefs. We provoked questions across the country that are still under debate. And we reached a place that challenged us to move beyond even the furthest boundaries of progressive Christianity, moving into the arena of non-religious values and beliefs. The work of freeing individuals and communities from the stifling language and ritual of traditional Christianity is not over. It will continue, fed by the resources and conversations we ignited across the country. This work and these conversations are the legacy of the CCPC and it is a rich, vibrant, and lasting legacy. ~ Rev. Gretta Vosper Read the essay online here. P.S. Gretta’s next article will address the difference between the American and Canadian Centres and the specific challenges that arose in the Canadian Context. About the Author The Rev. Gretta Vosper is a United Church of Canada minister who is an atheist. Her best selling books include With or Without God: Why The Way We Live is More Important Than What We Believe, and Amen: What Prayer Can Mean in a World Beyond Belief. She has also published three books of poetry and prayers. (1) “The Light of Love” © 2004, R. Scott Kearns. Printed in The Wonder of Life; Songs for the Spirit. R. Scott Kearns (File 14: Toronto, 2014) p. 61 ff. Question & Answer Mike from San Francisco Asks: Question: I am interested in spirituality but not in religion but isn’t spirituality the same as religion? Answer: By Rev. Matthew Fox Recently I had a thoughtful discussion with a thirty-something who wanted to talk about spiritualty but seemed to see it exclusively in the context of religion. And, like many of his generation, he was no longer connected to religion as such. He had a hard time seeing spirituality in his everyday world and yet he was working hard in preparing himself for a new profession, namely one in alternative (Chinese) medicine. I tried to get him to think of that as a spiritual calling; as a vocation of service. At first he was very hesitant. Then I asked him, “What is your favorite painting?” Immediately he responded that it was Van Gogh’s painting of his shoes. “Why?” I asked. “Because it was so ordinary a subject,” he remarked; “Shoes take us places every day; I identified with those shoes. I just love that painting.” He was getting it. Spirituality is our everyday experiences of depth and deeper meaning and the connection that they carry. Spirituality is present wherever we undergo or observe deeply. In this instance it came alive for this individual who is moved to observe or consider the shoes, the maker of the shoes, the wearer of the shoes and the fact that shoes take us places including to work, and to our loved ones and to home. Thus the artist painting the shoes and the young adult seeing this painting 140 year later—all of it comes alive and is triggered in Van Gogh’s painting of his shoes and the young man’s memory and appreciation of that painting. Rabbi Heschel says that the role of ritual is “to preserve single moments of radiance and keep them alive in our lives." An artist does that. Even our shoes carry radiance worth keeping alive in our lives. Often the first question about spirituality comes to this: “What makes you most come alive?” In this story, it was Van Gogh’s painting of his shoes. And you? ~ Rev. Matthew Fox Read and share online here About the Author 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 60 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 FleshTransforming Evil in Soul and Society, The Pope’s War: Why Ratzinger’s Secret Crusade Has Imperiled the Church and How It Can Be Saved and Confessions: The Making of a Postdenominational Priest ______________________________________ Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited The Bible and Homosexuality The Church's Dance in the 21st Century - Part 3 "They glorified God not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened (Romans 1:21 KJV)." "For this cause God gave them up into vile affections; for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet (Romans 1: 26,27 KJV)." These Pauline verses represent the strangest and most overt condemnation of homosexual acts that can be found in the New Testament. Included here is the single biblical allusion to female homosexuality. These texts are frequently quoted to justify the overt prejudice of homophobia while their obvious meaning is either ignored or dodged. Paul is here asserting that homosexuality is neither a sickness nor does it result from a moral choice, it is rather God's punishment given to those who fail to worship God properly. Read it carefully, Paul is saying that God will afflict people with homosexual desires if they fall into improper habits of worship. It is both a startling and an ignorant claim. Imagine what it would be like to live in fear that if one does not worship in 'the right way,' one's sexual desire would be turned toward those of one's own gender! Would the God who either could or would do that, be worthy of anyone's worship? Would that not turn God into a demon? Would it ever be appropriate to use such a text to condemn homosexuality? Why would anyone articulate such an idea or suggest that this convoluted and bizarre idea should be called "The Word of God." Why do people still look in the Bible not for truth but for the confirmation of their cultural prejudices? Paul was in many ways a tortured man. The passages from Leviticus and Genesis, condemning homosexuality convinced him that to be homosexual was to stand under the condemnation of the Torah for which the penalty of death was proscribed. Paul also knew the books called Maccabees that were incredibly popular in the first century so he would certainly be aware of the injunction in IV Maccabees 2:1-6, which suggested that if one were faithful and disciplined enough in worship, all desires could be overcome. Fortunately, for our interpretive purposes we have other works of Paul like Galatians and Philippians in which he relates some of his autobiographical history, his passion for the law, his zealousness in his studies, his advancement in holiness beyond all of his fellows. What becomes clear in these epistles is that Paul's religious zeal approaches fanaticism. Fanatics are always defending a threatened security. That is why they erupt in rage when their religious ideas are challenged. Recall Paul's days as a persecutor of the Christians, his desire to exterminate that movement, throwing its adherents into prison and even participating in their execution. These are the typical responses of religious fanatics. Fanatics are deeply controlling people, seeking to silence their critics. They bind themselves inside the authority of religious rules, which become unbendable and self-defining. The typical pattern is to suggest that to 'oppose my views is to oppose God.' The most rigid priest I have ever known lived this pattern out totally and in his way, beautifully. He never appeared in public without the proper uniform of jet-black suit and clerical collar. He followed a rigid discipline of daily prayers, including the obligatory rites of Matins and Evening Prayer. He celebrated or attended Mass each day of his life. The idea that the liturgy might be modernized was anathema to him. The possibility that women might ever become priests was inconceivable. Those things could happen only if the church sacrificed everything that was holy to him. When this man's bishop would visit his church for confirmation, it would create in this priest almost unmanageable anxiety. For weeks in advance, he would choreograph that liturgy to make sure that the bishop would do it his way, so as not to allow his people to know there were options. This anxiety spilled over into the congregation, many of whom were attracted to that church out of deep security needs. The rigidity of worship and their ability to master the intricate details of their complicated liturgy, gave them a strange kind of comfort. Ultimately, all of these control needs proved too much to be sustained and this priest literally fell apart psychologically and, for a period of time, was unable to function. The dark specter of depression began to consume him as parts of his identity that he believed were unacceptable began to rise in his consciousness. Suicide and a total psychotic break were both distinct possibilities. Instead, like Paul, in the book of Acts, this man had a kind of Damascus Road experience in which he accepted, as Paul seems to have done, a love that surrounded him just as he was. A sense of acceptance swept over him allowing him to face his reality as a homosexual person. In that moment he found the courage to let go of those things he believed were loathsome and evil and to be himself. At that moment the healing process began. That priest began to live anew. To use the language of Evangelical Christianity, he was" born again." He accepted his homosexual reality, began to allow himself to be honest and ultimately he was able to lay down both his rigidity and his fear. As he was restored to health, a person came in to his life that he allowed himself to love. In time they became partners and lived with each other in life giving faithfulness until age itself finally separated them in death. This priest helped me to see Paul's reality in a whole new way. "Paul was just like me before I became honest with myself," he said, "Both of us were rigid about all the rules, violent when challenged, persecutors of those who suggested that the law, with which we bound ourselves, was not itself ultimate. After his conversion Paul began to acknowledge, just as I have been able to do, that even those parts of his identity, which he had not been able to accept, could be accepted by the God he had met in Jesus." That was an amazing insight to me and under the tutelage of this priest, I began to look at Paul in a brand new way. Listen to Paul's language: "There is a war going on in my body," --- "With my mind I follow one law but with my body, I follow another" --- "Sin dwells in my members, causing me to do those things that I do not want to do and not to do the things I want to do" --- "O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of death?" These are the plaintive cries of a man who endured the torture of being what he believed it was evil to be. They are articulations of ancient, painful memories. When those cries fade into the affirmation of acceptance Paul utters words like: "Thanks be to God who has given us the victory in Christ Jesus!" Then he goes on to say, "now I know that nothing can separate me from the love of God ---- not even my own nakedness." It is a remarkable portrait of a remarkable man, who strangely enough, is still quoted today by homophobic people to condemn what Paul surely knew that he was. Yes, I am convinced that Paul of Tarsus was a gay man, deeply repressed, self-loathing, rigid in denial, bound by the law that he hoped would keep this unacceptable reality so totally under control that even he would not ever have to face it. Repression, however, kills. It kills the repressed one and sometimes, in the form of defensive anger, it also kills those who challenge, threaten or live out the thing that is so feared. Much of the persecution of gay and lesbian people in the Church today has been carried out by self-rejecting, deeply closeted homosexual people. Frequently they wrap their externalized, rejecting and sometimes killing fury, inside the security of an authoritative verse from a sacred source called "The Word of God." This is how a terrible text is born and that is how Paul's tirade in the first chapter of Romans has come to be viewed as a legitimate basis for condemning homosexual people. It is a sinister, inaccurate and incompetent way to use the scriptures. We now expose it for what it has always been with the hope that, weakened and revealed, it will no longer claim new victims in every age. There are other places in the Pauline and pseudo-Pauline corpus, which have also been used to hurt homosexual people, such as 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, and 1 Timothy 1:10. There are also single references in 1 Peter and Jude that are favorites of the Bible quoters searching for a scriptural basis to support their prejudice. Scholars now conclude, however, that these texts may just as well be referring to temple prostitutes or the sexual practices of exploitation that no one, homosexual or heterosexual, would regard as appropriate and life-giving behavior. The Christian ethic is ultimately a life ethic. When behavior increases life, expands love and calls all parties involved into a new being, then it must be called good. But when behavior denigrates, violates or diminishes anyone, it must be called evil. Sexuality per se is morally neutral. Both heterosexuality and homosexuality can be lived out in either life affirming or life destroying ways. If the Christian Church could only, instead of worrying about its internal unity, begin to lead the world to recognize the right of homosexual people to be accepted just as they are and to have their legitimate desires and sacred commitments blessed by the church and legalized by the state, then the Church would be a moral leader once again. For the fact is that all relationships that give life are holy and those that do not are unholy. ~ John Shelby Spong Originally posted April 14, 2004 Announcements Starting September 1st, The Shadow Course is an Online, Eight-Week Journey to Know Yourself and Bring Light to the World. In The Shadow Course, you’ll explore how to uncover the hidden parts of yourself and see the secret forces at play in the world. You’ll learn to: · Heal and transform the parts of yourself that keep causing negative patterns · Reveal your hidden archetypes and better understand their connection to the Shadow · Unearth new strengths, insights, and wisdom—there’s buried treasure in the Shadow · See our collective shadows and break free from systems that keep us disempowered · Step into your sacred calling and make a difference in a world that needs you now Click here for more information/registration

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Houston area colleagues?
by Marilyn Crocker via OE 29 Aug '17

29 Aug '17

Dear OE/ICA colleagues, We have been watching with horror and sorrow the pictures of Hurricane Harvey's devastation of the Corpus Christie and Houston areas of Texas. According to our Directory we have many colleagues living in that general area. Is there any news of their safety and wellbeing? Perhaps this is covered among many of you via Facebook, but we are not so into that social media, so would appreciate any news via the listserves. Additionally, we are praying for our colleagues in New Orleans who have suffered enough from Katrina, yet may be in for a piece of this history-making weather event. We hold all of you in Texas and the Gulf of Mexico in our hearts. Grace and peace, Marilyn and Joe

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Oaxtepec
by Beret Griffith via OE 27 Aug '17

27 Aug '17

Thank you to all of you who provided information on Oaxtepec. I will add a couple of sentences to the ChronHist, and.....will pull the rest of the information together in a hopefully coherent Google document. There is very little information in the ICA Global Archives on the event. It was a time of huge change and it would be good to have a written record of what happened. After I've written up what you all have contributed, I will send it out and see if more memories are jogged. Does anyone have photos of the event? The event time design? Report of the event? Who were the members of the Panchayat at the time, 1988..... ? Thanks again for your contributions. Beret

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Archive Information after 1986
by Beret Griffith via OE 25 Aug '17

25 Aug '17

FYI, the last assignments Roster, Global Council and GRA information in the archives is 1986. If you think you have any information please take a look. Beret

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8/24/17, Matthew Fox/Spong: Some Thoughts on Priesthood in Our Post-modern Times; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock via OE 24 Aug '17

24 Aug '17

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR Some Thoughts on Priesthood in Our Post-modern Times By Rev. Matthew Fox This week my brother and sister-in-law are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. I was reminded that I was ordained a priest the year they were married and that indeed I performed their wedding (my very first). So maybe it is time to offer a few reflections on the meaning of priesthood in our time. First, an autobiographical word. I have been a priest for fifty years—twenty six as a Roman Catholic priest and twenty four as an Episcopal priest. Actually, even according to Roman Catholic theology, it is one priesthood. My ministry has been more theological and educational than parish work though I have been engaged deeply in developing new forms of worship and rituals as well. I have authored about 34 books on spirituality and culture and have founded and directed a number of spirituality programs over the years teaching undergrads and graduate students in various colleges, the most recent being the Fox Institute for Creation Spirituality which opens in Boulder, Colorado this Fall. I birthed the University of Creation Spirituality in 1996 after pressure from the Inquisitor General under Pope JPII, Cardinal Ratzinger (later to be Pope Benedict XVI) succeeded after twelve years of trying to shut down my Institute of Creation Spirituality at Holy Names College in Oakland, CA. My definition of the priest archetype is simply this: A midwife of grace. For me this works, it honors many versions of ministry and priesthood at the same time that it also opens up many interesting possibilities for the new generation who are listening deeply (at least many are) for their calling, their vocation, “How can I best serve this wounded and rapidly endangered world?” This in a time of climate change, out of control reptilian brain, war-mongering budgets and threats, patriarchy in backlash, obscene gaps between haves and have nots and all the rest. The late Catholic monk Thomas Merton, who was so ahead of the religious/theological game in the last ten years of his life and who died a martyr for peace in 1968 for his opposition to the Vietnam War, had this to say about the priesthood today: “I think the whole thing needs to be changed, the whole idea of the priesthood needs to be changed.”(1) For me, the notion of priesthood is far too useful to be restricted to ecclesial offices and clerical strivings. It deserves to go public, to assist the needed move from the secularization of our work worlds and professions to a re-sacralizing of them. I raised the question in my book The Reinvention of Work about whether it is time to talk about the priesthood of all workers.(2) If a priest is a “midwife of grace,” is it not true that whether one works as therapist or artist, business person or activist, educator or nurse, doctor or mechanic, one can be a midwife of grace? And if so, our work is a priestly work, a work that goes deeper than just bringing a paycheck home or paying our household bills? Is our work not a Sacrament connecting us to the “Great Work” of the universe?(3) It is my contention, based on life observation, that most people affect history through their work (including parenting which is work also). Think of how much effort and time we put into preparing for work (we call that education), recovering from work (we call that vacation) and above all working at our work. Why succumb to seeing that work as mere putting in time to make money to buy things and make more money? This secular version of work has its deep drawbacks including a loss of meaning and dignity in our work worlds. When that happens competition, dissatisfaction, greed and avarice can easily take over our work worlds. People want to know that their work is making a positive contribution to future generations, to the healing so needed in our time of peril for peoples and the planet, to the passing on of health and beauty to future generations. In short, people want to hear that they are midwives of grace. The everyday–including our everyday work– carries the depths of mysteries. After all, we all carry a 13.8 billion year history within us and we all participate in the amazing event called Creation or Cosmos or Universe that, we are astounded to have learned a year ago, is two trillion galaxies large. All our work reveals that depth of presence and meaning and “isness” or being that is our understanding of the Divine. Yes, we are all midwives of grace on a daily basis. But have we woken up to it yet? Following his mystical experience at noon rush hour in downtown Louisville, Thomas Merton posed this question: “How is it possible to tell everyone they are all walking around shining like the sun?” I would add: “How is it possible to tell people at work that they are all shining like the sun?” The product of our work also shines like the sun. What we give birth to is another Christ (or Buddha nature or Image of God). As Meister Eckhart put it, we are all “mothers of God” and birthers of the Christ…If we are aware. Martin Luther wrote about the “priesthood of all believers.” I am pushing the priesthood of all workers—provided of course that our work is truly beneficial, and therefore a grace, for others. By emphasizing the priesthood of all workers we are also challenging our professions and workplaces to become more value-centered and more value-purposeful. To reform our work places whatever and wherever they may be. That is a big task but a necessary one when an ecological consciousness must prevail if our species and so many others on earth are to survive. Whether as educators or politicians, whether as economists or business people, whether as journalists or policemen and women, whether as artisans or artists or engineers we are all called to reform/renew our work and work places. To return to the Source and bring Spirit back to work. There is lots of work to do. Lots of Spirit to stir up. Lots of standing up and being counted to happen. Now some people might ask: But what about church workers? Is your definition of priesthood so broad that you are leaving out the role of the priest or minister who serves in a church setting? A fair question but I urge us all to begin not with the particular example of priesthood (or “ministry) we are accustomed to think about but to begin as I have in this essay with the larger meaning of priesthood and work back from there. Physicist David Bohm said, “I am a post-modern physicist who begins with the whole.” So let us begin our post-modern discussion of a post-modern priesthood with the whole, that is with the most generic understanding of priesthood (midwife of grace) and move back from there, for that is how we will renew and refresh all the priesthoods among us—including but not limited to the religious priesthood. A primary issue in any discussion of the religious priesthood today is education and the training future priests undergo. There is a reason why so many seminaries are dying today or find themselves in fitful throes of bare survival amidst an extinction spasm.(4) It is because a modern version of education has poisoned religious training which as a result is as dated as the dial phone or the horse and buggy. If seminaries are not consciously training future priests and ministers to become the mystics they are and the prophets they are and equip them to lead others about the same vocation they deserve to die. Many seminaries are neglecting the training of our right brains because they worship at an altar of rationality as so much of academia and its accreditors do; thus they deserve to go out of business. Educational models that elevate the left brain of rationality and neglect the mystical or intuitive brain are dead and deadly. We need fewer seminaries that train for religious leadership and more schools that train for wisdom and for spiritual leadership at this critical juncture in human and planetary history. For forty years I have been testing and implementing such a pedagogy and I can share numerous stories of the success of our methods—not only clergy but engineers, scientists, activists, artists, therapists, social workers, business people and many others have availed themselves of this left brain/right brain learning method. I am happy that a new kind of seminary, one incorporating the pedagogy I speak of, is opening this fall in Boulder, Colorado where master’s degrees, doctor of ministry degrees and doctor of spirituality degrees will be offered. It is called the Fox Institute for Creation Spirituality (the title is not my choice but that of the founders who are alums of my University of Creation Spirituality). You are welcome to check it out whatever your calling to priesthood means, whatever call you are receiving to be a midwife of grace. The work of liturgical renewal that priests and ministers and congregations can and must commit themselves to I will have to save for another discussion. But I have addressed this issue, which for me has been a hands-on one, in some depth in my writings including my autobiography and the Reinvention of Work.(5) ~ Rev. Matthew Fox Read the essay online here. About the Author 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 60 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 FleshTransforming Evil in Soul and Society, The Pope’s War: Why Ratzinger’s Secret Crusade Has Imperiled the Church and How It Can Be Saved 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. See www.foxinstitute-cs.org (1) Thomas Merton, The Springs of Contemplation (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1992), 175-176. (2) Matthew Fox, The Reinvention of Work: A New Vision of Livelihood for Our Time (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994), 299f. (3) Ibid., 302-309. (4) Seminaries Reflect the Struggles of Mainline Churches (5) Matthew Fox, Confessions: The Making of a Postdenominational Priest (Berkeley, Ca: North Atlantic Press, 2016), 363-383; and Fox, The Reinvention of Work, 249-295. Question & Answer Suzanne from Canberra, Australia writes: Question: Buddhists tend to think of God as a manifestation of creation; Christians think of God as separate from creation. Do you understand that distinction? Answer: By Cassandra Farrin Dear Suzanne, I’d like to answer this question in a roundabout way by sharing and comparing two passages from the literary masters Yukio Mishima and Victor Hugo, each of which confronts the question of God and Ultimate Reality in his own way by asking the question of how free a person is to choose how he lives. Mishima represents one possible Buddhist perspective; Hugo, one possible Christian perspective. Each of the passages below occurs near the beginning of what are widely considered to be each writer’s master works. Hence, they can be understood as setting the terms of the lengthy stories that follow. In his Sea of Fertility series, Yukio Mishima introduces the law student Shigekuni Honda, who is deeply interested in questions of ultimate reality. Honda pursues his close friend through multiple reincarnations across his own single lifetime. Here Honda is trying to be harshly realistic with himself and his friend about the concept of free will—the ability to make choices for oneself: Picture a scene like this: it’s a square at midday. The will is standing there all alone. He pretends that he is remaining upright by virtue of his own strength, and hence he goes on deceiving himself. The sun beats down. No trees, no grass. Nothing whatever in the huge square to keep him company but his own shadow. At that moment, a thundering voice comes down from the cloudless sky above: “Chance is dead. There is no such thing as chance. Hear me, Will: you have lost your advocate forever.” And with that, the Will feels his substance begin to crumble and dissolve. His flesh rots and falls away. In an instant his skeleton is laid bare, a thin liquid spurts from it, and the bones themselves lose their solidity and begin to disintegrate. The Will stands with his feet planted firmly on the ground, but this final effort is futile. For at that very moment, the bright, glaring sky is rent apart with a terrible roar, and the God of Inevitability stares down through the chasm. But I cannot help trying to conjure up an odious face for this dreadful God, and this weakness is doubtless due to my own bent toward voluntarism. For if Chance ceases to exist, then Will becomes meaningless—no more significant than a speck of rust on the huge chain of cause and effect that we only glimpse from time to time. Then there’s only one way to participate in history, and that’s to have no will at all—to function solely as a shining, beautiful atom, eternal and unchanging. No one should look for any other meaning in human existence. In this passage Honda envisions “God” is the inevitable forces of all reality, churning one impermanent feature into another, obliterating free will wherever it tries to assert itself as separate. It’s really important to understand that this is not a bad conclusion in Honda’s eyes even though he fights it emotionally. Actually, it perfectly foreshadows how his friend’s beautiful life will unfold again and again in each reincarnation across the series. By comparison all the great drama and angst of Victor Hugo’s much beloved character Jean Valjean in Les Misérables depends very much on a vision of reality and God that accommodates free will. The passage below occurs after, first, the Bishop of Digne rescues him from a return to prison by giving him back the items he stole in exchange for a promise “to make an honest man of himself,” and second, after Jean Valjean steals money from a child for no good reason. His heart broke at that point and he burst into tears. It was the first time he had cried in nineteen years. When Jean Valjean left the bishop’s, as we saw, he was in a state far beyond anything he had ever experienced till that moment. He did not recognize himself. He could not make sense of what was happening to him. He steeled himself against the old man’s angelic act and against his gentle words. “You promised me to make an honest man of yourself. It is your soul that I am buying for you; I am taking it away from the spirit of perversity, and I am giving it to the good Lord.” Those words kept coming back to him. He defended himself against such heavenly forgiveness by means of pride, which is like a stronghold of evil inside us. He felt indistinctly that the old priest’s forgiveness was the greatest assault and the most deadly attack he had ever been rocked by; that if he could resist such clemency his heart would be hardened once and for all; that if he gave in to it, he would have to give up the hate that the actions of other men had filled his heart with for so many years and which he relished; that this time, he had to conquer or be conquered, a colossal and decisive struggle, was now on between his own rottenness and the goodness of that man. In the glimmering light of all these thoughts, he staggered like a drunk. While he was flailing about, did he have any real idea what his adventure in Digne might mean for him? Did he hear all those mysterious warning bells that alert us or jog our spirit at certain turning points in life? Was there a voice that whispered in his ear that he had just passed the most solemn moment of his destiny, that there was no longer a middle course for him; that from now on, he would either be the best of men or he would be the worst of men; that he now had to rise higher, so to speak, than the bishop or fall even lower than the galley slave; that if he wanted to be good, he had to be an angel; that if he wanted to stay bad, he had to be monster from hell? Unlike Honda, Valjean’s whole existence rests precisely in what choice he makes for himself—to be the best or worst of men. It creates an expectation of judgment by a neutral force, outside the ordinary forces of reality: implicitly, God as represented by the good bishop. I find it meaningful that even though Honda and Valjean both approach their separate life struggles from opposite points of view about the nature of reality, they both experience it as a form of obliteration and rebirth, for Valjean’s violent emotional grappling with himself concludes, “Then all of a sudden, he [Valjean] evaporated completely. The bishop alone remained. He flooded the entire soul of this miserable being with a glorious radiance. … While he was crying, day dawned brighter and brighter in his spirit, and it was an extraordinary light, a light at once ravishing and terrible.” In reading these passages side by side, I cannot help but observe that both require us to accept limits, to acknowledge that our vision of ultimate reality does cradle what our individual existence can mean. In both cases, submission feels like a form of death and rebirth, yet it also provides a sudden bright clarity: How am I to live? ~ Cassandra Farrin Read and share online here About the Author Cassandra Farrin is a poet, writer and editor of nonfiction books on the history of religion. She recently launched the blog Ginger & Sage on religion, culture, and the land. Her writing can be found on the Westar Institute and Ploughshares websites, along with a poetic retelling of "On the Origin of the World" forthcoming in Gender Violence, Rape Culture, and Religion (Palgrave Macmillan). A US-UK Fulbright scholar, she has more than ten years' experience with cross-cultural and interfaith engagement. Cassandra can be reached at welovetea(a)gmail.com. ______________________________________ Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited The Bible and Homosexuality The Church's Dance in the 21st Century - Part 2 "The men of the city -- of Sodom, compassed the town round, both old and young, all the people from every quarter; And they called unto Lot and said to him, "Where are the men which came in to thee this night? Bring them out to us that we may know them (Gen.19: 4,5, KJV)." "And (Lot) said, 'I pray you, brethren do not (act) so wickedly, Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes (Gen. 19:7,8, KJV)." A Sodomite! That once meant only a citizen of the city of Sodom. Today, however, this word usually means one who performs a sexual act with a person of the same gender, though it is also used to refer to both oral and anal sex and even to bestiality. That is quite a journey for a word to take and it cries out for an explanation, which I shall seek to provide in this column. This biblical story of Sodom is regularly quoted in the gay debate, but it is quite obviously seldom, if ever, read. I begin, therefore, by relating the entire biblical story of the destruction of Sodom. A long time ago, the narrative begins, three men appeared before Abraham in the Plains of Mamre. One of these was the Lord. The other two were later identified as angels. Abraham, as was the custom in the nomadic Middle East, went out to meet his visitors to offer them the hospitality of his home. He washed their feet and prepared food for them. Sarah, Abraham's wife, assisted in that preparation, but she did not eat with them because she was a woman. At dinner, these divine visitors revealed to Abraham that Sarah was to have a baby. This would enable God to fulfill the divine promise made to Abraham that "through his 'seed' all the nations of the earth would be blessed." There was, however, a problem. Sarah was well advanced in years, or as the King James' text, which I have deliberately quoted, puts it ever so delicately, "it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women." Sarah, hearing this conversation, laughed out loud, uttering words that later Victorians would never have used or even understood: "After I have waxed old shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?" To which these divine visitors responded, "Is anything too hard for the Lord?" Next, the Lord decided that since Abraham was to be the father of a great and mighty nation, it behooved the Lord to share with him the divine plan for destroying the entire city of Sodom. The Lord appeared to have received reports that the city of Sodom was very sinful. Not certain as to the accuracy of these reports, the Lord decided to check out the sources to make sure that the divine intelligence was competent. So the two angelic companions were to journey to Sodom, while the Holy One remained with Abraham to reveal to him the fate of Sodom, in which Abraham's nephew Lot lived, if the angels confirmed the divine suspicions. God apparently was not all knowing, so needed eyewitness verification. Abraham then engaged the Lord in a bargaining session, patterned after the activities of the market places of that region, in which the seller seeks to gain for his goods a price twice their value and the buyer seeks to pay half of what they are worth. Before the final price is agreed to, a vigorous debate takes place. Abraham, in effect opened the bidding with this question of the Lord. "Will you go to Sodom and destroy the righteous with the wicked?" That seemed to Abraham to be a rather ungodlike thing to do. "Suppose," he continued, "that there be fifty righteous within the city, wilt thou also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty that are therein?" That would not be fair argued Abraham, reminding God that "the Judge of all the earth" must do right. When God agreed to this number, then Abraham pressed his advantage. "Suppose you miss by five, would the shortfall of just five righteous people trigger the destruct button?" God accepts forty-five as the cutoff number. Abraham continued the debate, reminding God that he knows how impertinent this is for one who is "but dust and ashes" to confront the Holy One, but he pushes the bargaining process down to forty righteous people, then thirty, then twenty and finally ten, at which point Abraham secures the divine promise not to destroy Sodom for the sake of ten righteous people. The deal now struck, the Lord departs, and Abraham returns to his tent, while the two angelic spies enter the city of Sodom. There were no hotels. Under the hospitality code of the time, visitors to a city had no rights unless a citizen of the city accorded them a welcome. Failing that, strangers were fair game for abuse, which usually took the form of forcing them to take the role of women in sexually abusive acts. These episodes served to break the monotony of village life. When the citizens of Sodom saw these strangers, hopes rose in anticipation of a night of debauchery. However, Lot, Abraham's nephew, took these visitors into his home, thwarting the nocturnal fantasies of his fellows. Enraged, they surrounded Lot's house demanding that Lot surrender these two angelic guests to them for a night of fun and games. The hospitality code of that society, however, proclaimed that once the protection of a home was offered, the honor of the whole household would be destroyed if that protection were compromised. So Lot refused the demands of his neighbors, which only roused the crowd. Lot then made a counter offer. "I will give you instead," he said, "my two virgin daughters and you may do to them what you will." The implication was that the two daughters could be gang-raped for the evening's entertainment. That is exactly what was said to have happened in a very similar tale told in the 19th chapter of the Book of Judges. There is no indication in this narrative that Lot's daughters were consulted about this offer. They were, after all, only 'women' and thus had no rights. Women were viewed as the property of their father, who could do with them, as he desired. The story then says that the angels rescued Lot from the angry crowd with supernatural power, turning the members of the mob blind. Next, the angels ordered Lot and his family to flee the city. Ten righteous people had not been found in Sodom, so its doom was certain. Lot, his wife, and their two daughters were to be the only people in Sodom who were allowed to escape the promised destruction. Even the two prospective husbands of Lot's daughters who, the text says were part of the angry mob, declined an invitation to join the escape party. Lot's first plan was to enter the city of Zoar, but recalling the fate of unprotected strangers in a foreign city, he opted not to run that risk, heading instead for the mountains. His wife disobeyed the divine instruction, we are told, and looked back to see the fire and brimstone falling and was turned magically into a pillar of salt. So only Lot and his two daughters were finally judged to be righteous and thus worthy of deliverance. This strange story is not over yet. The 'righteous' Lot, compromised already by the offering of his two daughters to the men of the city, was destined to be compromised again. Those daughters slowly began to recognize that they now had no clan or tribe from which to find husbands. That was a calamity in a world that taught women that their sole purpose in life was to bear children. Noting that their father was now the only male available to them, they conspired to get him drunk and then they turned him into their sexual partner, both becoming pregnant and giving birth to sons, named Moab and Ammon, through incest. On this note the story of Sodom finally comes to an end. Check it out in Genesis 18 and 19. Here we have an ancient biblical narrative that features a God who needs divine emissaries to gather first hand intelligence. It is a story that portrays the men of Sodom as eager to violate sexually two angelic strangers. It is a story in which a father, in order to honor the hospitality code, offers his virgin daughters to be gang raped. It is a story about scheming daughters who seduce a drunken father into dual acts of incest. How, in the name of all that is holy, could a story like this ever have come to be used as the biblical basis for condemning faithful, loving, committed gay and lesbian relationships? How could anyone ever suggest that this story be used to fan human prejudices and thereby to encourage the violent behavior that has marked both our homophobic world and our homophobic church? That would be possible only if a sick and uninformed prejudice overwhelmed all rationality and destroyed all moral judgment. Of course, gang rape is wrong, whether homosexual or heterosexual people carry it out. Of course, the plot to commit incest is wrong. But what does that have to do with the hopes and aspirations of two women or two men in the 21st century, who love each other and who want to live for and with each other in a blessed partnership of intimacy and faithfulness? To use this text to condemn the legitimate desires of homosexual people is to attempt to perfume a sick homophobia with the sweet smell of Holy Scripture. On the basis of this text, prejudiced people have fashioned bitter, hostile, destructive attitudes that have victimized gay and lesbian people through the ages. This means that the Bible has been used to justify the murder, oppression and persecution of those whose only crime, or 'sin' if you prefer, is that they were born with a sexual orientation different from the majority. Such a tactic is so blatantly evil, so overtly ignorant and so violently prejudiced that it should be worthy of nothing but condemnation. If that constitutes biblical morality, I want none of it. The Sodom story from Genesis should never be used in the service of homophobic oppression. Still unfazed by facts, the Bible quoters continue to seek to shelter their prejudices inside the authority of Scripture. "What about Paul?" they say. "Did not Paul condemn homosexual behavior? Is Paul not proclaiming the 'Word of God' to which Christians must listen?' To the texts from Paul I will turn next week. ~ John Shelby Spong Originally published April 7, 2004 Announcements Matthew Fox & Robert Thurman: Cultivating Peace in Difficult Times Join us in Berkeley, CA on September 9th at 7:00pm for an evening with renowned scholars Matthew Fox and Robert Thurman in this discussion on what we can do to help further the causes of peace in troubled times. Click here for more information/registration Any questions or concerns, please contact us at support(a)progressivechristianity.org or 253-507-8678. Copyright © 2017 ProgressiveChristianity.org, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you have a membership at johnshelbyspong.com. Our mailing address is: ProgressiveChristianity.org 4810 Pt. Fosdick Dr. NW #80 Gig Harbor, WA 98335 Add us to your address book If you are a paying subscriber, you may login and cancel your account. This email was sent to elliestock(a)aol.com why did I get this? unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences ProgressiveChristianity.org · 4810 Pt. Fosdick Dr. NW · #80 · Gig Harbor, WA 98335 · USA

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After the Great Eclipse
by W. J. via OE 23 Aug '17

23 Aug '17

I was extraordinarily privileged to witness the Great Eclipse yesterday from close to the center line of totality.'Awesome' doesn't begin to describe my experience. Further thoughts on the Great Eclipse: 1. It's so difficult for those acculturated to Western ways to 'stop doing' and 'just be aware.' This was a rare chance to just give in to being transfixed for a few minutes and possibly open up to contemplating the deep Mystery of the created Universe. And why there is Something rather than Nothing. And our Somethingness and our Nothingness. And who I am in relation to all creation and the Great Unknown. 2. So we immediately think, 'There's going to be another one in 14 years.' Another way to use anticipation or rationalization to escape from the moment of just being in the great Now.3. There's so much beauty in the Universe. But it can take the astonishing beauty of an unusual experience of a celestial event to bring us back to being aware of the Great Beauty of Everydayness. So why are we so eager to escape?4. There are always many things on everybody's 'To Do' List. And thus a kazillion excuses NOT to stop and pay attention to a Great Eclipse. Especially if our unconscious Comfort Zone is about staying with the Daily Grind of ordinary life. What Radical Newness are we afraid to face? Awareness of our mortality, maybe?5. To see a Total Eclipse, you gotta be in the 'Zone of Totality.' You gotta be in the Path of the oncoming great shadow of the moon. And for most of us, you gotta decide to get on that Path. So what Path of life are you on today? Very few just happen to show up at the right spot out of sheer luck. Most of us gotta stop doing everything else and just go! Or not. And if you're in the 'not' group, what are you saying about you? 'Next time', maybe? 6. You gotta be prepared for the event. So get ready to get on your chosen Path. Order your eclipse glasses in advance, plus whatever other gear (telescopes, filters, hats, etc.) you'll need to be able to actually see the celestial event. 7. Even if you get very close to Totality, deciding to stay back in the '99.998% Zone' is NOT the same being 'all in' or in the '100% Zone.' There IS a HUGE difference in your experience if you can't go all the way to 100%. 8. It's absolutely totally OK to decide either way. Those who Go aren't any better or more human than those who stay behind. 9. And no matter how well-chosen your spot is on the Path of Totality, there is always the possibility that clouds will obscure your view, or you could get rained on and sopping wet. You know, that just happens to some unlucky people! Some things are beyond our control. So plan ahead and carry an umbrella. 10. If you do decide to go, stay alert in the Now! Don't let exhaustion, sleepiness, or petty distractions rob you of your experience. The eternal Now is all you get to play with. Marshall Jones

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Personal Businesses Started Using ICA/O:E Methods
by Beret Griffith via OE 19 Aug '17

19 Aug '17

A new line of research related to the history and legacy of ICA and O:E - Businesses started by O:E and ICA Staff and colleagues following time with the ICA or O:E. For example *Participation Works: Milan & Linda Hamilton* Home-based business: Facilitated strategic planning for small to medium-sized nonprofit organizations, small cities, county governments, and small businesses. Served a few statewide organizations, but mostly those in the Inland Empire of Southern California. Had several hundred clients over the fifteen years before business was retired at the end of 2013. *Strategics International Inc. Miam*i: *Cynthia Vance* And on and on......please contribute. Thanks, Beret P.S. 2nd edition of Chronological History is in progress. David Dunn and I will wrap it up at the end of August. If you have additions or corrections, please send soon.

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Chronological History Addendum
by Beret Griffith via OE 18 Aug '17

18 Aug '17

A reminder that anything after 1988 can be added directly, *by you*, to the Chronological History Addendum. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Y0IgEUDJLGzZJp_ DVoZ0ZwE4hiLfZ7inTTTmD9nLEdo/edit Beret & David

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