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Dear George Holcombe
by Nancy Trask 25 Jul '20

25 Jul '20

>From Nancy Trask, now living in Winterset Iowa. In 1989, I landed in TX with John Rader and our 2 youngsters, Austin and Ashleigh. It was a foreign-land experience for me, because it was TX and because we had just left our corporate life in NYC. I remember quite a few colleague gatherings, which were always helpful in remembering ‘who am I anyway?’ After a house church at George and Wanda’s, I felt a common bond and observed their ever-faithful integrity. From then onward, though I didn’t have the chance to conduct programs with them, we were nevertheless colleagues of the spirit. One specific memory of George is a conversation with him while he made noodles and veggies in the wok in their kitchen. George, you will always stand out to me for your generous kindness and moral support. Thank you for your many years of love and care for the world and for each one of your spirit colleagues. Grace and Peace to you, Nancy Trask

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Colleagues of the Cleveland Region...
by sherwoodshankland＠comcast.net 25 Jul '20

25 Jul '20

This may break protocol for the OE list serve… just had to share this listing of colleagues that got started following Sally Fenton’s journey into the final Mystery on July 17, 2020 (If you wish to add to this ‘memory lane’ document just send an email to sherwoodshankland(a)comcast.net <mailto:sherwoodshankland@comcast.net> . In Peace, Sherwood From: OE <oe-bounces(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> On Behalf Of Judy Lindblad via OE Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2020 9:54 AM To: Order Ecumenical Community <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> Cc: Judy Lindblad <nj.lindblad(a)gmail.com> Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] Sally Fenton What beautiful tributes and memories. A few others that touched and were touched by Sally's life...Rev. Mark, Jenelle, and Tim Dove; Dr. Karl Hess; Jay Antenen; Jay Jr. and Carolyn Houpt Antenen, and Jim and JoAnn Armour...from Ohio days and beyond. On Sun, Jul 19, 2020 at 8:12 AM Frank Knutson via OE <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net <mailto:oe@lists.wedgeblade.net> > wrote: Sally Fenton died Friday, July 17 in Chicago surrounded by family. Sally was a member of the Friendship UMC cadre in Cincinnati before she and Jim joined the Order in 1971. In later years she became a founding member of the Archives Project and anchored the project with Marg Philbrook and Jean Long as part of the Chicago troika. You can contact daughters Katherine Scharko at: kscharko(a)aol.com <mailto:kscharko@aol.com> or Jamie Fenton at: JAMIE(a)FENTONIA.COM <mailto:JAMIE@FENTONIA.COM> . Frank Knutson ...We join with Earth and each other to celebrate the seas, to rejoice in the sunlight, to sing the song of the stars. We join with Earth and each other to recreate the human community, to promote justice and peace, to remember our children of the Earth. We join together as many unique, diverse and connected expressions of one loving Mystery: for the healing of the Earth and the renewal of all life. * ❤ _______________________________________________ OE mailing list OE(a)lists.wedgeblade.net <mailto:OE@lists.wedgeblade.net> http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net

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To zgeorge Holcombe
by Milan Hamilton 25 Jul '20

25 Jul '20

Sent to Wanda: George, you won’t remember this but you were my first exposure to EI (after Mathews) when you and David McClesky came to Lincoln, Nebraska in November of 1967 to teach a Parish Ministers Colloquy (later called Parish Leadership Colloquy). I remember you introduced yourself as a “radical, fanatical churchman of the 20th century.” That course, of course, was what began my own vocational journey’s radical shift. The last time we were in the same room was when I was in your home in Dallas with the Slickers and Gene Marshall and a couple others when I was attempting to bring FOOD FOR ALL to Texas. Linda and I have continued to follow your work and want to add our voices to the chorus of those colleagues and friends who want to celebrate with you a life well lived and a journey of profound humanness, the fulfillment of that statement you made at that PMC in 1967. You never wavered but rather transcended it. We hope you can hear as you transition the “well done, good and faithful servant” or whatever the expression of completion that says the same. I’m glad we met George! Milan (and Linda who remembers you from Kemper days adds her voice as well! Sent from my iPhone Sent from my iPhone

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7/23/20, Progressing Spirit, Roger Wolsey: A Call to Listen, Lament, Learn & Love; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 23 Jul '20

23 Jul '20

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.yiv7775278768mcnTextContent, #yiv7775278768 #yiv7775278768templateHeader .yiv7775278768mcnTextContent p{ font-size:16px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv7775278768 #yiv7775278768templateBody .yiv7775278768mcnTextContent, #yiv7775278768 #yiv7775278768templateBody .yiv7775278768mcnTextContent p{ font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv7775278768 #yiv7775278768templateFooter .yiv7775278768mcnTextContent, #yiv7775278768 #yiv7775278768templateFooter .yiv7775278768mcnTextContent p{ font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;} } | | | | View this email in your browser | | | | | | | | | | | | | | A Call to Listen, Lament, Learn, & Love. | | | | | | | | | | Essay by Rev.Roger Wolsey July 23, 2020 Those of you who have been followers of the Progressing Spirit newsletter for the past few years may notice that it’s been quite a few months since one of my essays has been featured on this forum. While I am a member of the Board of Directors of ProgressiveChristianity.org, and have been a regularly featured contributing writer, I haven’t been asked to provide an essay for quite a while. I didn’t feel a need to inquire why. It seems that our leadership has intentionally been seeking to center and amplify the voices of women and people of color more and more. As a straight, white, male I could choose to feel slighted and offended by this – but that would be a pretty lame thing to choose. Indeed, it’d be petty and tone-deaf to the times. Rather than feeling slighted (there’s plenty of my writings already out there on the interwebs), I choose to be elated that Rev. Deshna Shine and ProgressiveChristianity.org have been adopting this diversifying, re-centering, mindset and approach prior to the recent Black Lives Matter revolution. They were discerning how best to serve this present age and anticipate its needs – well before others came on board. It was to my surprise that I received an invitation on June 20th to contribute an essay smack in the middle of the recent uprising. Because contributing writers are asked to write our essays weeks in advance of the date they will be published, this is one of the first essays in this newsletter written during this time of social unrest. And here I am, a straight, white, male being asked to weigh in. We writers are never told what to write about – but it’d be oblivious on my part if I were to opine about some theological nuance of progressive Christianity from an academic, cerebral, intellectual manner - as if such essays are written in a vacuum without any need to be relevant to social context. I write in the context of the twin global realities of Covid-19; and the increasing rejection of toxic masculinity, patriarchy, and white supremacy – including a growing rejection of religions which are perceived as promoting and maintaining those poisons. It’s been said that “Eleven a.m. on Sunday morning is the most segregated time in America.” It’s not just a saying, it’s a fact. Yes, there are a few congregations here and there that are notably diverse racially (but many of the most racially diverse congregations are not diverse when it comes to diversity and full inclusion of differences in gender and sexual orientations), yet such diverse congregations are outliers. They are the exceptions. They shouldn’t be exceptions that prove the rule. Yet, what should be the rule for the Church is full inclusion and celebration (not mere toleration) of the vast diversity of the people of God. American Christian congregations tend to be more American than Christian. And despite the much lauded rhetoric about the “rights and liberties of all” in its charter documents, the U.S. has tended to be far more embracing of the oppressing and segregating ways of empire than it has been noble, and in any way an exemplary and promising “light before the nations.” I already wrote about progressive Christianity and racism once before on this newsletter , what more can I as a white, Christian (albeit progressive), man say that would be of any help? I think it’s best for me to begin with some silence… .. … …. ……. And then to offer some words of a black pastor and scholar who we’d do well to know about and listen to: “Let us not rush to the language of healing, before understanding the fullness of the injury & the depth of the wound. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Let us not rush to offer a band-aid, when the gaping wound requires surgery & complete reconstruction. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Let us not offer false equivalencies, thereby diminishing the particular pain being felt in a particular circumstance in a particular historical moment. Let us not speak of reconciliation without speaking of reparations & restoration, or how we can repair the breach & how we can restore the loss. Let us not rush past the loss of this mother’s child, this father’s child…someone’s beloved son. Let us not value property over people; let us not protect material objects while human lives hang in the balance. Let us not value a false peace over a righteous justice. Let us not be afraid to sit with the ugliness, the messiness, & the pain that is life in community together. Let us not offer clichés to the grieving, those whose hearts are being torn asunder. Instead… ⠀ Let us mourn black & brown men & women, those killed extra judicially every 28 hours. Let us weep at a criminal justice system, which is neither blind nor just. Let us call for the mourning men & the wailing women, those willing to rend their garments of privilege & ease, & sit in the ashes of this nation’s original sin. Let us be silent when we don’t know what to say. Let us be humble & listen to the pain, rage, & grief pouring from the lips of our neighbors & friends. ⠀ Let us decrease, so that our brothers & sisters who live on the underside of history may increase. ⠀ Let us pray with our eyes open & our feet firmly planted on the ground. Let us listen to the shattering glass & let us smell the purifying fires, for it is the language of the unheard. God, in your mercy…⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Show me my own complicity in injustice.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Convict me for my indifference.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Forgive me when I have remained silent.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Equip me with a zeal for righteousness.⠀⠀⠀⠀ Never let me grow accustomed or acclimated to unrighteousness.” ~ Rev. Dr. Yolanda Pierce, Director of the Center for Black Church Studies & Associate Professor of Religion & Literature at Princeton Theological Seminary (words she wrote on Nov. 25, 2014 which I discovered on June 26th of this year) Yes. We need to begin with lament. We need to hear the winces of pain of those who are hurting. As Rabbi Goldie Milgram puts, it, “Lament is to remember where it hurts, how it got that way, to tell the journey, to honor the pain, not become the story.” Holding space for lament is sacred work and it is our holy calling at this time. The following are words that I wrote and posted on social media (Facebook) on May 25th: “In ordering our nation's flags to be lowered to half-staff over this Memorial Day weekend, the current president has finally given a modicum of recognition of our nation's grief. And so I lament. Dear God I'm hurting. It's been said that "hurt people hurt people" and my heart is breaking knowing that so many of my fellow humans are hurting so deeply and hurting one another. Yes, it's also the case that "hurt people help fellow hurt people" but let us not rush through these feelings. May we not fast-track or by-pass our grief. This is a time for us to really, and deeply, feel. Feel the hurt, feel our shock, feel grief, feel lament, feel anger, feel despair, feel angst... feel our hearts break. I think we fear feeling our hearts be broken. But that's just what hearts are designed to do. Hearts that don't break aren't being allowed to be real hearts. Let's be real hearts. Let's love, hurt, and break - knowing that only through brokenness can come true wholeness. May the lowered flags be more than a token gesture. May we allow seeing them to be the final log flowing through our bodies that causes our emotional dams to burst forth releasing a needed outpouring of tears. May we lament the ongoing racism and violent white supremacy in a country which too often seems to allow law enforcement officers to disproportionally brutalize and kill its black citizens. May we lament the completely unnecessary deaths of the (nearly now and soon to be over) 100,000 of our fellow Americans (and the many others around the world) due to horrible mismanagement of this pandemic. May we lament the lost jobs and financial challenges faced by billions of people as they struggle to survive. May we lament the loss of opportunities to gather as humans are meant to as social creatures, celebrating life through theater, dance, church services, weddings, graduations, anniversaries, and more. May we lament that so many of us yearn to return to the old normal as quickly as possible instead of embracing this time as an opportunity to re-imagine who we are and can be. May we lament the millions of lives senselessly taken in the dark pits of war. And may we use our hoarded stockpiles of toilet paper to mop up our needed outpouring of tears so we don't flood ourselves off the face of the earth.” While it is an understatement to say, “we’ve got our work cut out for us,” what’s being asked of us really isn’t too much to ask. It isn’t impossible. It’s not too hard. And it’s not too much to ask. Yet, it’s not tokenism. It’s not merely posting a “black square” on social media. And it’s not just suddenly buying and wearing a Black Lives Matter t-shirt. It’s being willing to date and marry people of color. ..Being willing to have a pastor who is a person of color. ..Being willing to have people of color leading our religious denominations. ..Being willing to change the way we do worship to help it feel more inviting and welcoming to people of color. ..Being willing to break bread with and prayerfully kneel next to people of color. ..Being willing to worship “with” people of color in primarily POC congregations who are offering worship online via Zoom, Youtube, etc. ..Being willing to invite black pastors to serve as guest preachers and worship leaders for primarily white congregations online – and in person when the pandemic has abated/subsided. ..Being willing to either take down images of white Jesus; or add images featuring Jesus portrayed more accurately as a person of color; and/or being willing to have an artist darken the flesh on your current paintings of Jesus. ..Being willing to do the things that would actually reduce the massive incarceration rate of people of color – decriminalize and/or legalize drugs; end private prisons which inherently seek to enact laws to help keep their cells filled; change how police departments budget their monies so that they receive more training in engaging with mental health issues, more training in de-escalation, seeking to utilize the least violent measures possible in every interaction, seeking to hold police officers accountable for breaching the public trust in harming the people they are sworn to protect (which includes persons suspected or accused of committing crimes – whether guilty or innocent); ..Being willing to have our churches and/or national government pay restitution of some sort (perhaps $10k-300k to each black citizen who has family lineage in the U.S. dating back to 1865 or earlier, etc.); being willing to engage in reparations or restitution to native Americans whose lands we stole. ..Being willing to provide universal health care that provides mental health care, and increase the number of mental health workers per capita in the use. ..Being willing take down statues of known slave holders and racists (those who are on the wrong side of the Civil War), being willing to feature people of color as the faces we honor on our currency; Being willing to center and amplify the voices of people of color; being willing vote for persons of color; being willing to fully share power with people of color; and being willing to give up some of our current power to help that power-sharing be meaningful and real. And not just being willing to do these things – but actually doing them. If there’s any wisdom in what I’ve written here, may it be the kind that Jesus referred to with these words attributed to him: “Wisdom is made known through our deeds” ~ Matthew 11:19 More importantly, may we make the most of this truly challenging and difficult time to be alive on this planet – by putting our faith into action in such a way that the followers of Jesus might once again be known by our love - “See how they love!” ~ Rev. Roger Wolsey Read online here About the Author Rev. Roger Wolsey is a United Methodist pastor who resides in Grand Junction, CO. Roger is author of Kissing Fish: Christianity for people who don’t like Christianity and blogs for Patheos as The Holy Kiss and serves on the Board of Directors of ProgressiveChristianity.Org. Roger became “a Christian on purpose” during his college years and he experienced a call to ordained ministry two years after college. He values the Wesleyan approach to the faith and, as a certified spiritual director, he seeks to help others grow and mature. Roger enjoys yoga; playing trumpet; motorcycling; and camping with his son. He served as the Director of the Wesley Foundation campus ministry at the University of Colorado in Boulder for 14 years, and has served as pastor of churches in Minnesota, Iowa, and currently serves as the pastor of Fruita UMC in Colorado, and also serves as the "CRM" (Congregational Resource Minister/Church Consultant) for the Utah/Western Colorado District of the Mountain Sky Conference. | | | | | | | | Question & Answer Q: By A Reader Not long ago I discovered the facts provided by Rev. Spong about the Bible being interpreted in its correct historical context. It was information that I knew was the vital missing piece to my faith that I didn’t know how to find until that point. I had been trying for years to find the facts and he provided them in an accessible way besides going to a seminary school. It felt like I had been starving and finally found food. Also I understand his call to not abandon faith, but to see it in a new light. However this is easier said than done. I don’t feel too comfortable in Episcopalian services because it feels like that same old, literal view again being pushed onto the parishioners. I don’t know what my faith can be anymore and a part of me wants to give up. In the past I was constantly praying, going to church, and made faith a cornerstone of my life. Now I don’t know what to call myself, if anything, because I’m not sure what Jesus is besides a kind Jewish rabbi who was impactful to a group of Jews who wrote his life as propaganda to support their cause to add him to the list of prophets like Moses and Elijah. Should I look into Unitarian churches? I don’t know what to do. Thank you for your time. A: By Rev. Aurelia Dávila Pratt Dear Reader, Reading your question, I am filled with compassion for you because the nature of your faith has shifted significantly. First, you must allow yourself space to grieve the certainties you have lost. This acknowledgment of grief is as important as any spiritual practice. But take heart! You have gained much by choosing to take hold of the reigns in your faith journey. I can remember having similar questions about faith in my first semester of seminary. All the new information overwhelmed me, especially with regards to the Bible and its historical context. I felt like I was being tossed about in an ocean of doubt. Every new piece of knowledge was like another wave crashing over me. Meanwhile, my faith floated further and further away. In these moments, I would remind myself that I had traded certainty for freedom, but living into this freedom took years of work and still requires continuous upkeep. It requires a non-dualistic mind, and a lifetime of wrestling. This is the life of faith: it is allowing facts, doctrine, and interpretations to inform your inner work, but ultimately learning to trust your own instincts. It is learning to embody the belief of imago dei: that you are made in the image of God and the Spirit of God dwells within you. This means you not only have permission, but it is absolutely essential to become well-practiced in listening to your Spirit. No mentor, podcast, pastor, or book can do this for you. It is the road less traveled to be sure! Personally, two things have helped me along the way: going back and going forward. First, I have had to go back and reclaim the faith of my childhood. This is not to be confused with the faith I had at the start of seminary. I am talking about the mystical, wonder-filled, imaginative faith of my child-self, before all the indoctrination. I believe this is the posture Jesus was speaking of when he told us to be like little children. Going back to this place requires a lot of unlearning and deconstruction, but it also means we get to reimagine and create anew. I have also needed to move forward by finding community who engages faith in a way similar to me. I cannot learn to trust myself if I lack the safe environment to do the hard work involved and the people who are committed to this work. One reality resulting from COVID-19 is that a lot of churches have moved online, making the possibility of finding this kind of community more accessible. Our church has, and you are always invited to come find us on social media if you need more support on your journey. Finally, please take this as less of an “answer” and more of a “response.” It’s difficult to not get the answers we seek, but I take comfort in Jesus, who often answered questions with a question. It was as if he knew the life of faith couldn’t be sold so short as an easy answer. This is the kind of truth I wish to be held in. It’s not certain, but it’s free. It’s hard as hell, but it’s so, so good. I pray the same can be true for you in time. Blessings on your journey. ~ Rev. Aurelia Dávila Pratt Read and share online here About the Author Rev. Aurelia Dávila Pratt is the Lead Pastor and a founder of Peace of Christ Church. She is a licensed Master of Social Work and sits on the Board of Advocates for the Diana R. Garland School of Social Work. Aurelia is President of the board for the Nevertheless, She Preached conference and co-chair of the Religious Liberty Council for the Baptist Joint Committee. You can follow her on Instagram @revaureliajoy to keep up with her sermons and writings at the intersection of justice and theology. | | | | | | | | Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited The Origins of the New Testament, Part II: Dating the Jesus of History Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong September 24, 2009 In order to understand the New Testament with any real integrity, it must be placed into its historic setting. The events in the life of Jesus of Nazareth did not happen in a vacuum, nor are these events history as history is now defined. Not only was Jesus born in, shaped by and interpreted through a particular context, but also the narrative details of his life found in the gospels were not recorded until somewhere between two and three generations after his life had come to its end. Both of these facts are ignored in many church circles today. First, we seek to fix the dates around the life of Jesus. That is accomplished by an appeal to both the remembered story of his life and to secular records that we can locate, which date other people who appear in his story. It is not an exact science but it is a trustworthy guide. Accounts of Jesus’ birth are recorded in only two of the gospels, Matthew and Luke, and both link his birth to the reign of King Herod, who was known as “Herod the Great.” Matthew, the earliest of these two sources, weaves his story of the Wise Men around references to the reign of Herod and the anticipation recorded in the prophet Micah that the messiah will come out of King David’s line and be born in King David’s birthplace, Bethlehem. He also casts Herod in the familiar Jewish role of the wicked king who, like the Pharaoh of old in Egypt, sought to destroy God’s promised deliverer. Matthew, in effect, retells the story of Moses’ being miraculously saved from death by divine intervention, but this time it is about Jesus. This attempt to wrap Moses’ stories around the memory of Jesus is illustrative of the Jewish interpretive tradition we call “Midrash.” While these stories are messianic interpretations and not remembered history, there is still no reason to suggest that this means that the anchoring of the birth of Jesus to the reign of Herod was itself fanciful. Matthew is even more specific, suggesting that the birth of Jesus took place near the end of Herod’s reign, just prior to his death. Secular records tell us that Herod reigned in this Jewish nation from 37 BCE to 4 BCE. We also know from historical records that, with Herod’s death, the Jewish nation was subdivided into three provinces, each ruled first by the sons of Herod and later by Roman procurators. That is the situation when the adult story of Jesus is brought to its conclusion. From both of these angles, the dating of Jesus’ birth fits with what we know of secular history. Luke confirms this tradition when he dates the births of both John the Baptist and Jesus as occurring when Herod was king of Judea. Luke adds that this was also when Caesar Augustus was on the throne of the Roman Empire and Quirinius was governor of Syria. Secular records reveal that only Quirinius, who did not come to power until 6-7CE, does not fit this historic reconstruction. Luke appears to have inserted Quirinius into his story to support his idea that a general taxation or enrollment was ordered in which people had to return to their family’s ancestral home, a device Luke used to explain how this birth happened to occur in Bethlehem. Once again, we observe how the historical facts in the birth story are blended into later messianic interpretations. The association of the birth of Jesus with the last year or years of Herod’s reign is, however, fairly clear in the memory of the Christian community. It is for these reasons that most scholars today date the birth of Jesus no later than 4 BCE, the date of the death of King Herod, and probably no earlier than 6 BCE. I tend to share in that bit of historic reconstruction and have adopted as “my best guess” the year 4 BCE as the time when Jesus was born. I am fairly certain, however, that his birth took place in Nazareth, as the first gospel of Mark assumes, and that the Bethlehem birth tradition is a later messianic development. It was Paul, writing to the Romans around the year 58 CE, who first claimed that Jesus was in the Davidic line and thus heir to his throne. This was the reference that ultimately gave rise to a Bethlehem birth story. So, with the birth date fairly accurately set, we search for a way to determine the date on which the end of the life of Jesus occurred. Once again we discover that the gospel tradition is clear in associating the crucifixion of Jesus with the procuratorship of a Roman official known as Pontius Pilate. Although Pilate is not mentioned in Paul, the first gospel of Mark, written in the early years of the 8th decade of the Common Era, anchors the Passion of Jesus in the reign of Pilate so deeply that it would be hard to suggest that these two things were not deeply linked. Pilate enters Mark’s gospel when the arrested Jesus, having been interrogated by the Jewish authorities, is delivered to Pilate early in the morning of the day of the crucifixion. Pilate receives ten other mentions in Mark’s gospel, all associated with the passion story, the last one occurring when Pilate allowed the body, now confirmed to be dead, to be delivered to Joseph of Arimathea for burial. While the historicity of this burial narrative in the newly hewn tomb in the garden of this Joseph is largely doubted, the connection between the crucifixion and Pilate is not. Matthew links Pilate with the crucifixion in nine references. Luke has twelve in number, including two pre-crucifixion mentions, one to date the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry and the other to chronicle Pilate’s role in a previous Galilean uprising. John raises the number of Pilate references to twenty-one. It is also worth noting that, in these two later gospels of Luke and John, Pilate grows into a more and more sympathetic figure, while Judas and the Jewish leadership grow more and more negative. We thus can see in the texts themselves traditions and memories changing and developing. To complete the biblical record, Pilate is mentioned three times in the Book of Acts, which is really volume two of Luke, and always in speeches attributed to the apostles Peter and Paul. There is only one reference to Pilate in the epistle I Timothy, an epistle whose Pauline authorship is universally denied and is dated in a much later period of Christian history. So, once again, without claiming more than history can validate, it seems clear that the crucifixion of Jesus was connected to the reign of a man named Pontius Pilate as Roman procurator. That being settled, we can then go to Roman records to learn that Pilate served in this post in Judea from 26-36 CE, which gives us the limits within which to locate the crucifixion. Through other means, too lengthy to go into here but leaning on narratives about his removal recorded by Josephus, a Jewish historian, we can narrow down that eleven-year span and state the high probability that the crucifixion happened around the year 30 CE. This guess could be off by some two years on either side, but it still remains the closest we can come to certainty. So our conclusion is that Jesus lived between 6 BCE and 32 CE at the outside and probably 4 BCE to 30 CE would be our best guess. His life span would thus have been 34 to 38 years. I have no doubt that Jesus was a figure of history and am completely unimpressed by those recent writers who have tried to prove that he was a mythological figure of Jewish or early Christian fantasy based on Egyptian sources. I think the biographical notes recorded in one of Paul’s early and authentic epistles (Galatians 1:18-24) are determinative. Paul relates a conversation that he had with Peter and James, whom he identified as “the Lord’s brother,” some three years after his conversion. The early 20th century church historian, Adolf Harnack, has stated that Paul’s conversion had to have occurred within “one to six years” after the crucifixion, so this conversation to which Paul refers had to have occurred no less than four and no more than nine years after the death of Jesus. That is far too short a span of time for mythology to develop. This means that while all the details of the Jesus story are clearly not historical, Jesus himself is. So we locate Jesus in human history as having lived between roughly 4 BCE and 30 CE. Two things become obvious immediately from this dating exercise. First, Jesus’ entire life was lived as a Jew under the domination of the Roman Empire. He was a part of a conquered and oppressed people. Rome first took over the rule of this land in 65 BCE in an alliance with the successors of the Maccabees and ruled it with an iron hand until the fall of the Roman Empire. That included a war against a Jewish rebellion that occurred between 66-73 CE which totally destroyed the Jewish nation, including Jerusalem and the Temple. While that destruction happened well after the life of Jesus, it did occur before any of the gospels were written. Scholars now believe that this later destruction of Jerusalem has shaped the memory of Jesus in the gospels far more than was once was recognized. We will look at this assertion later. The second conclusion that this dating exercise makes obvious is that the earliest records we have of anyone writing anything about Jesus is in the works of Paul, who did his writing between 51 and 64 CE, or 21 to 34 years after the death of Jesus. That means there is a total absence and thus a total silence for at least 20 years before any single detail about the life of Jesus was written down. Even then, we need to note that Paul tells us very little about the life of Jesus and that Paul died before any gospel had been written. The gospels from which we get most of our image of Jesus were written between the early 70’s and the late 90’s, or some 40 to 70 years after the death of Jesus. This means that the gospels are not eyewitness accounts, but are rather the product of the second, third and even fourth generation of Christians. The gospels were also written in Greek, a language that neither Jesus nor his disciples spoke or wrote. We need to dispense with the idea that these books are either history or biography. That should be enough to disestablish many of the assumptions that faithful, but not necessarily learned, people have made over the centuries about the New Testament. It also sets the stage for us to begin to examine these Christian Scriptures with fresh eyes and open minds. That is what I hope to do as this series unfolds. ~ John Shelby Spong | | | | | | | | Announcements Building on the popular Call of This Moment anti-racism workshop, this second class will focus on concrete practices to build anti-racist community. This workshop will build on materials presented in the previous workshop - watch The Call of This Moment before July 22. You may purchase it here. The class will run from 7:00 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday, July 22nd and Thursday, July 23rd. READ ON ... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

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Sally Fenton
by Frank Knutson 22 Jul '20

22 Jul '20

Sally Fenton died Friday, July 17 in Chicago surrounded by family. Sally was a member of the Friendship UMC cadre in Cincinnati before she and Jim joined the Order in 1971. In later years she became a founding member of the Archives Project and anchored the project with Marg Philbrook and Jean Long as part of the Chicago troika. You can contact daughters Katherine Scharko at: kscharko(a)aol.com or Jamie Fenton at: JAMIE(a)FENTONIA.COM. Frank Knutson ...We join with Earth and each other to celebrate the seas, to rejoice in the sunlight, to sing the song of the stars. We join with Earth and each other to recreate the human community, to promote justice and peace, to remember our children of the Earth. We join together as many unique, diverse and connected expressions of one loving Mystery: for the healing of the Earth and the renewal of all life. * ❤

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Re: [Oe List ...] Sally Fenton (second send from SS)
by sherwoodshankland＠comcast.net 21 Jul '20

21 Jul '20

Here is a "second send" with a few more names added to the Cleveland Metro list of folks... who else do you remember? / SS -----Original Message----- From: OE <oe-bounces(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> On Behalf Of Shankland, Sherwood via OE Sent: Monday, July 20, 2020 8:56 AM To: 'Order Ecumenical Community' <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> Cc: sherwoodshankland(a)comcast.net Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] Sally Fenton Yes Sally, you were part of the group of deeply committed colleagues in the Cleveland Region, teaching RS-I, Jim working at the Cleveland Clinic (kids Kathy & Jamie), moved into the Cleveland House at 902 Wheelock Avenue with Joan and Frank (Bob) Knutson (Kristin + ), Martha and Dick Talbot, Joe and Sandra Cliff, Jan and Sherwood Shankland (kids Shonna and Kevin), Joy and Herman Greene, Sean Burke, Betty and Phil (?) Webber, Barbara and Don Barkony, Jody ____ (later May), Zoe and Ken Barley, Sharon and Attis (Ed) Feldmanis, David & Joyce Reese, (Ginny +); Jim and Dorthea Jewell (Mark, Diane, & Russel) with a powerful Local Church Galaxy led by Mark and Jean Poole, metro pedagogues - Jack and Judy Gilles, Michael and Judith Tippet, Bob and Sandra Rafos, Lois Reeves, Fred and Marian Karpoff, Clancy and Mary Ann Mann, Rose and her Mom Albright, and many, many more! What an amazing multi-faceted team. Claudia and Don Cramer had just departed for DC. (Hey Jack, how's your long-term memory doing?) So many memories are surging this year as you Sally and so many others have joined the collegium beyond... there is a great hall in the Other World where one by one we slowly file in singing and witnessing to our incredible journeys...and the Amazing Grace of Freedom and Forgiveness. Grace and Peace all around, Sherwood -----Original Message----- From: OE <oe-bounces(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> On Behalf Of Frank Knutson via OE Sent: Sunday, July 19, 2020 12:15 AM To: ORDER ECUMENICAL <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> Cc: Frank Knutson <frankknutson2(a)gmail.com> Subject: [Oe List ...] Sally Fenton Sally Fenton died Friday, July 17 in Chicago surrounded by family. Sally was a member of the Friendship UMC cadre in Cincinnati before she and Jim joined the Order in 1971. In later years she became a founding member of the Archives Project and anchored the project with Marg Philbrook and Jean Long as part of the Chicago troika. You can contact daughters Katherine Scharko at: kscharko(a)aol.com or Jamie Fenton at: JAMIE(a)FENTONIA.COM. Frank Knutson _______________________________________________ OE mailing list OE(a)lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net

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Re: [Oe List ...] [Dialogue] Earthling Love
by Robertson Work 21 Jul '20

21 Jul '20

Thank you, Marilyn! Let me hear from you if you read it. And, please write a review on Amazon. Blessings to you and your family and colleagues in Arizona. Compassionate Civilization Collaborative (C3) ................................................................................................ New book (2020): Serving People & Planet: In Mystery, Love, and Gratitude https://www.amazon.com/dp/1684716160<https://www.amazon.com/Serving-People-Planet-Mystery-Gratitude/dp/1684716160> Previous book (2017): A Compassionate Civilization: The Urgency of Sustainable Development and Mindful Activism https://www.amazon.com/dp/1546972617 Blog: https://compassionatecivilization.blogspot.com/<https://compassionatecivilization.blogspot.com/><https://compassionatecivilization.blogspot.com/> LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertsonwork/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/compassionatecivilization/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/movementofmovementsMOM/ ________________________________ From: Marilyn Oyler <marilyn.oyler(a)gmail.com> Sent: Tuesday, July 21, 2020 3:06 PM To: Colleague Dialogue <dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> Cc: Robertson Work <warkers(a)msn.com> Subject: Re: [Dialogue] Earthling Love Thank you so much for sharing! Congratulations On Tue, Jul 21, 2020 at 10:10 AM Robertson Work via Dialogue <dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net<mailto:dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net>> wrote: Dear colleagues, My new book, Earthling Love: Living Poems, has just been launched. Here is the URL: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0578711257<https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazo…> A half-price sale is in effect for one week. Hope you enjoy these poems celebrating Earth, humanity, family, and self. I decided to share these eighty-two poems written over fifty-five years to care for Those Who Care in these challenging times. There are poems about Earthrise, the Christ Word, the peace movement, joy, grief, love, happiness, gratitude, a river, a mountain, grandchildren, and much more. Hope you enjoy them and share them with family and friends. Click here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0578711257<https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazo…> Later, please write a review on Amazon. Thank you. Please stay safe and healthy, Rob Compassionate Civilization Collaborative (C3) ................................................................................................ New book (2020): Serving People & Planet: In Mystery, Love, and Gratitude https://www.amazon.com/dp/1684716160<https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazo…> Previous book (2017): A Compassionate Civilization: The Urgency of Sustainable Development and Mindful Activism https://www.amazon.com/dp/1546972617<https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazo…> Blog: https://compassionatecivilization.blogspot.com/<https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcompassio…><https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcompassio…><https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcompassio…> LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertsonwork/<https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.linke…> Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/compassionatecivilization/<https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.faceb…> Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/movementofmovementsMOM/<https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.faceb…> _______________________________________________ Dialogue mailing list Dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net<mailto:Dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net> http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/dialogue-wedgeblade.net<https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists.wedg…> -- Marilyn Oyler Partners in Participation Phoenix, AZ marilyn.oyler(a)gmail.com<mailto:marilyn.oyler@gmail.com> www.partnersinparticipation.com<https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.partne…> 602 468 0605 or 602 460 8843 (mobile) Purchase a sticky wall on www.partnersinparticipation.com<https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.partne…>

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Earthling Love
by Robertson Work 21 Jul '20

21 Jul '20

Dear colleagues, My new book, Earthling Love: Living Poems, has just been launched. Here is the URL: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0578711257 A half-price sale is in effect for one week. Hope you enjoy these poems celebrating Earth, humanity, family, and self. I decided to share these eighty-two poems written over fifty-five years to care for Those Who Care in these challenging times. There are poems about Earthrise, the Christ Word, the peace movement, joy, grief, love, happiness, gratitude, a river, a mountain, grandchildren, and much more. Hope you enjoy them and share them with family and friends. Click here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0578711257 Later, please write a review on Amazon. Thank you. Please stay safe and healthy, Rob Compassionate Civilization Collaborative (C3) ................................................................................................ New book (2020): Serving People & Planet: In Mystery, Love, and Gratitude https://www.amazon.com/dp/1684716160<https://www.amazon.com/Serving-People-Planet-Mystery-Gratitude/dp/1684716160> Previous book (2017): A Compassionate Civilization: The Urgency of Sustainable Development and Mindful Activism https://www.amazon.com/dp/1546972617 Blog: https://compassionatecivilization.blogspot.com/<https://compassionatecivilization.blogspot.com/><https://compassionatecivilization.blogspot.com/> LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertsonwork/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/compassionatecivilization/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/movementofmovementsMOM/

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7/16/20, Progressing Spirituality, Aurelia Davila Pratt: Breaking Free From Supremacy Theology, Part Two
by Ellie Stock 20 Jul '20

20 Jul '20

Breaking Free From Supremacy Theology, Part Two#yiv2948850713 p{margin:10px 0;padding:0;}#yiv2948850713 table{border-collapse:collapse;}#yiv2948850713 h1, #yiv2948850713 h2, #yiv2948850713 h3, #yiv2948850713 h4, #yiv2948850713 h5, #yiv2948850713 h6{display:block;margin:0;padding:0;}#yiv2948850713 img, #yiv2948850713 a img{border:0;height:auto;outline:none;text-decoration:none;}#yiv2948850713 body, #yiv2948850713 #yiv2948850713bodyTable, #yiv2948850713 #yiv2948850713bodyCell{min-height:100%;margin:0;padding:0;width:100%;}#yiv2948850713 .yiv2948850713mcnPreviewText{display:none !important;}#yiv2948850713 #yiv2948850713outlook a{padding:0;}#yiv2948850713 img{}#yiv2948850713 table{}#yiv2948850713 .yiv2948850713ReadMsgBody{width:100%;}#yiv2948850713 .yiv2948850713ExternalClass{width:100%;}#yiv2948850713 p, #yiv2948850713 a, #yiv2948850713 li, #yiv2948850713 td, #yiv2948850713 blockquote{}#yiv2948850713 a .filtered99999 , #yiv2948850713 a .filtered99999 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#yiv2948850713templateHeader .yiv2948850713mcnTextContent p{font-size:16px !important;line-height:150% !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv2948850713 #yiv2948850713templateBody .yiv2948850713mcnTextContent, #yiv2948850713 #yiv2948850713templateBody .yiv2948850713mcnTextContent p{font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv2948850713 #yiv2948850713templateFooter .yiv2948850713mcnTextContent, #yiv2948850713 #yiv2948850713templateFooter .yiv2948850713mcnTextContent p{font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;}} | | | | View this email in your browser | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Breaking Free From Supremacy Theology, Part Two | | | | | | | | | | Essay by Rev. Aurelia Dávila Pratt July 16, 2020Naming the Messages that Bind Us When I wrote part one of this article, the world was on the cusp of global pandemic. The day it was published, my family and I began our quarantine. Four months later, I am still socially distancing, wearing a mask when I venture out, and pastoring virtually. The world has changed significantly, but also, it hasn’t. COVID-19 has uncovered some long-existing truths concerning the treatment of the most vulnerable in our country. Shared outrage over the Black lived experience has led to months of historic protests all over the U.S. And yet the trauma that people of color in our country carry – especially Black and Indigenous people – is nothing new. White supremacy, in its many systemic forms, continues to keep us all bound. Pandemic or not, the work of Liberation through anti-racism and decolonization continues. For people of faith, this work includes breaking free from supremacy informed theology. Naming these frameworks that prop up the oppression of Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) is crucial to our healing. For white people of faith, both naming and understanding how you may be complicit in perpetuating these messages should be a part of your Liberation work. Embodiment Wielding harmful interpretations of the biblical text, supremacy theology has stolen the power of embodiment from us through the glorification of the spiritual and the demonization of the physical. As a result, we live our lives disconnected from our bodies, developing unhealthy relationships with over-work, food, sex, and image. Womxn[1] are especially harmed from this messaging. We’ve been oversexualized from a young age and taught that our bodies were made for two things: childbearing and the sexual pleasure of men. Alongside this message of submission, we’ve also been told not to trust our bodies. This mass indoctrination sustains the justification of violence against us. All of our bodies need freedom and healing from this messaging, but womxn and especially BIWOC[2] have been affected the most. These harms are compounded at the intersection of race because basic human dignity is denied to BIPOC in our society. The murder and lack of justice for Breonna Taylor is but one glaring example of the Black womxn’s experience currently. A white supremacist-informed theology has nourished the roots of our political and social structures, sending the message that black and brown bodies are inferior, untrustworthy and must be policed and subdued. Shame in the guise of humility Supremacy informed theology doesn’t stop at forcing shame upon our physical bodies. Along with the messages around embodiment, we are taught not to trust our voices or experiences. Scripture is used in order to keep us mentally and emotionally bound to patriarchal structures (i.e. “the heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure”). We’ve also been indoctrinated to adhere to the love and respect myth, sending the message that husbands, male faith leaders, male coworkers, etc. are more competent and capable. Furthermore, when harm from men inevitably befalls us – whether it is emotional, physical, or sexual harm – supremacy theology tells us that we are to blame. This mass manipulation has been used to keep womxn bound to systems of oppression. It’s important to acknowledge that womxn of color, especially Black and Indigenous womxn, continue to bear the brunt of this harm. Valerie Saiving suggested that theology has defined the human condition on the basis of the masculine experience[3]. As a result, womxn will often stifle our impulses when they do not fit the patriarchal narrative. Personally, this has been true each time I neglect cultivating confidence or taking pride in my gifts as a leader. I’ve seen firsthand that suppressing my own thriving does not serve the community I pastor, but I have to work in defiance of a double standard each time I lean into these instincts. Part of breaking free is rejecting the message of shame veiled in the illusion of a “Proverbs 31-woman” humility. I untangle myself from supremacy theology every time I trust my own voice, boldly and without apology. Feminine characteristics as weakness Patriarchy rears its ugly head again, using scripture to uphold and perpetuate toxic masculinity, which frames traditionally feminine characteristics as provocative, distrustful, and weak. This messaging largely informs how womxn are treated within the Church and beyond. I am reminded of a conversation between a male pastor friend and a colleague, in which they pondered why men don’t go to church. My friend suggested that perhaps it’s because one is often required to risk vulnerability by turning inward and facing tough feelings at church. He suggested this is the kind of thing boys are rarely taught to do. Men, therefore, are not practiced in them. His colleague suggested that men don’t go to church when they don’t like the pastor. He suggested that “if the pastor is too feminine” they will be turned off by the church as a whole. In this case, “feminine” was used as shorthand for “weak.” When vulnerability and emotional depth are societal markers of femininity, and when femininity is equated as weakness, everyone suffers. We live half lives as the body of Christ because the fullness of God’s image is blatantly rejected. Yet, this is the kind of thinking that is rampant in the Church. It results in men struggling or refusing to accept the leadership of womxn, resulting in the silencing of prophetic womxn voices. We must disentangle ourselves from this messaging and call out toxic masculinity for what it is: a domination system that perpetuates harmful theological interpretations.The “White and Polite” social construct White culture sets societal norms, including politeness[4]. The concept of politeness is then rooted in Scripture, whether through the “fruits of the Spirit” or through the definition of love (i.e. 1 Corinthians 13.) The power of politeness cannot not be ignored. For BIPOC, when this norm is not adhered to, tone policing and gaslighting will follow. Honesty is reframed as contentious, vulnerability that isn’t “positive” is upsetting, and pain rooted in colonization and racism is either minimized or disregarded. White fragility takes center stage, upholding the dominant culture and preventing BIPOC voices from being heard. When we speak, we speak from the margins. This is a language in and of itself, and we must alter it daily in order to be accepted. The necessity of code switching steals much of our energy. I experience this exhaustion often as a brown woman pastor who navigates a predominately white, southern, Christian context. I have found myself apologizing for being too much. I have spent a lot of time filtering my fire. Interactions with white males have come with the assumption that it is my job to prove my competence before I will be afforded respect. This underhanded litmus test includes abiding by the societal norms of politeness as defined by the dominant culture. If I do pass the test, they hold power over me. If I don’t pass it, I am denied. Either way, I am bound. The more I untangle myself from supremacy theology, the more I realize this is unnecessary and unloving. I must name and reject this way of operating so that I can live into the fullness of my Imago Dei. Racial trauma through the absorption of white shame/guilt As we do this deeply personal work of breaking free, we inevitably discover a long road of anti racist work ahead. Navigating this as a white person looks like listening and learning. It looks like acknowledging privilege, relinquishing power, and decentering whiteness by elevating BIPOC voices. As a non Black WOC[5], my anti racist work also includes a lot of listening, learning and acknowledging privilege. But it also has its own unique set of responsibilities. Navigating this work within a predominantly white world can be difficult. In my context, I am surrounded by incredible white people who are committed to anti-racism work. However, this work brings up a lot of shame and guilt for them. I must take great care to protect my energy, so that I am not retraumatized through the absorption of it. As a pastor of a predominantly white church, I am learning how to make room for their process, while also holding space for myself and other BIPOC, who make up a minority of our sacred community. It is important to acknowledge that we all have different relationships with white supremacy. A non-dualistic, nuanced approach is essential as we work toward the common goal of Liberation. One of our pastors worded this challenge well. He said “When we don’t acknowledge a message’s intended audience, we are assuming audience homogeneity, which really just means we’re assuming everyone is dominant culture / white.[6]” We cannot be color blind. Our collective breaking free is not a homogenous experience. We must voice the many intricacies and intersections. Otherwise, we risk further perpetuating dominant norms. This adds to racial trauma and the continued marginalization of BIPOC through the unwanted absorption of white shame and guilt. The path to healing Naming theological frameworks rooted in oppression is crucial to all our healing. We name them in order to soundly reject them. It was in my sermon writing process that I first woke up to the extent to which I am bound. I spent nearly a decade believing myself to be an imposter, both incompetent and unintelligent. Now, I can name and reject these messages each time they threaten to keep me from my work. Doing so has made me a better pastor and preacher. Most importantly, I am more whole. We name oppressive theology so we can break free from it, both in how we understand ourselves and in how we understand God. The more we untangle ourselves, the more we discover how unnecessary it is for the image of God to be limited, exclusive, or triggering in any way. Because of this realization, we are able to love ourselves and others in a way more reflective of Christ. And we can know without a doubt that God is ever present, both within us and around us. It is the decolonized God who will gently tend to us: loving us, empowering us, and nursing us back to good health.~Rev. Aurelia Dávila Pratt Read online here About the Author Rev. Aurelia Dávila Pratt is the Lead Pastor and a founder of Peace of Christ Church. She is a licensed Master of Social Work and sits on the Board of Advocates for the Diana R. Garland School of Social Work. Aurelia is President of the board for the Nevertheless, She Preached conference and co-chair of the Religious Liberty Council for the Baptist Joint Committee. You can follow her on Instagram @revaureliajoy to keep up with her sermons and writings at the intersection of justice and theology. __________________________[1] An alternative, intersectional term for women inclusive of those who are trans and nonbinary[2] Black, Indigenous and womxn of color[3] Womanspirit Rising, Carol P. Christ & Judith Plaskow, 1979[4] I am speaking specifically from within a U.S. context[5] Womxn of color[6] Rev. Matthew Hanzelka, Pastor of Community Care at Peace of Christ Church | | | | | | | | Question & Answer Q: By Jennie I enjoyed the column by Dr. [Thew] Forrester Living Christs of Touch, but John 8:44 has always been problematic for me. For example, in 8:44 Jesus tells the Jews who don't believe in him that they are children of the devil. What is the Progressive commentary on this passage? Is this where some anti-Semitic tropes find a source? Even Luther has vile language that could have come from this. A: By Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D.Dear Jennie,Let me begin by saying there is no commentary which is “the” Progressive one. There is a range of possibilities when interpreting any passage, which is why we continue to return to the scriptures from our ever-changing circumstances to discover different shades of meaning in the texts. Historical context is critical. Those communities of the early Christ movement that are shaped by John’s spirituality felt under attack and on the defensive. We know that Jesus was born, lived, and crucified a Jew. His preaching and healing and table-gathering ministries were for the Jewish people. His earliest followers were overwhelmingly, if not exclusively, Jewish. He was a Jewish Rabbi committed to reforming 1st century Judaism. In the end Pharisaical Judaism would evolve into Rabbinical Judaism and, in a sense, its vision became the primary expression of Judaism and not that of Jesus (although they shared much more in common than many realize). When Jesus’ message failed to take hold within mainstream Judaism, the early Christ movement struggled with its identity. In its fear for survival, John’s community defensively produced some writings that placed harsh blame on Jews, such as in 8.44. This was an ominous development, wherein John’s rhetorical anti-Judaism sowed some seeds of later anti-Semitism. The tragic irony is now quite clear since Christianity is an offspring of Judaism unable to be whole without a complete embrace of its Hebrew ancestry. Inchoate in John’s spirituality, which at times is stunning in its beauty, is the unfortunate distortion of Rabbi Jesus into an “object of belief” that invites later dogmatic orthodoxy and intolerance. This spirituality vacillates between a Logos of Love that would draw us into an ever-deepening realization of Jesus as an embodiment of a spiritual path rooted in direct experience of Belovedness; and, Jesus as an exclusive, divisive, Divine figure. In one way, this is the tension between the gospels of John and Thomas: John tends to make Jesus into an exclusionary fulcrum, whereas in Thomas, Jesus-as-Christ is who we are each called to be. Harvey Cox’s, The Future of Faith, catches what is at stake. In the early Christ movement, experience, not belief, is what captured and motivated the heart. What we find in some passages of John, and not him alone, is the tenacious tug of fear in the face of difficult experiences. This gravitational pull will, in time, all too often draw the Christ movement away from exploring the direct experiences of Belovedness in our lives (which is the heart of Rabbi Jesus’ spiritual path). Instead there will be an increasingly reactive instinct toward a mental dogmatic theology that will draw boundaries that divide, disparage, devalue, and demonize what is not understood.~ Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D. Read and share online here About the Author Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D. is an Episcopal priest, a student of the Diamond Approach for over a decade, as well as a certified teacher of the Enneagram in the Narrative Tradition. He is the founder of the Healing Arts Center of in Marquette, Michigan, and the author of five books, including I Have Called You Friends, Holding Beauty in My Soul’s Arms, and My Heart is a Raging Volcano of Love for You and Beyond my Wants, Beyond my Fears: The Soul’s Journey into the Heartland. Visit Kevin’s Blog: Essential Living: For The Soul’s Journey. | | | | | | | | Please continue to send us your feedback… we are listening. We aim to give voice to many different perspectives that are relevant and inspiring along this spiritually progressing path. We are not here to tell you what to believe or how to act. We are here to support your journey, to share and learn together.Thank you for being a part of this community! | | | | | | Join our FB community today! Spread the word, share with friends. Thanks! | | | | | | | | Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited The Origins of the New Testament, Part I: Introduction Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong September 17, 2009I launch today a series of columns that will appear regularly over the next twelve to eighteen months. As I always do in this column, this series will augment the essays that are time sensitive and that seek to illumine contemporary issues through my theological lens. Last week’s column on the health care debate is a case in point. The purpose of this unfolding series is to take you, my readers, deeply into those books that constitute the New Testament. There are twenty-seven in number and together they form the volume that arguably has been the most influential and shaping piece of narrative writing in the history of the world. The earliest book of the New Testament is probably I Thessalonians, generally dated around the year 51 CE, while the latest is probably II Peter, generally dated around the year 135 CE. The influence of this book, while always powerful, has been both positive and negative. On the positive side it is clear that the institution called the Christian Church, which grew out of these twenty-seven books, has inspired quite literally millions of people in many ways. Most of the great universities of the world were begun as part of the Christian Church’s commitment to knowledge and, in particular, to impart to people the saving knowledge of the sacred scriptures. Most of our healing institutions, from hospitals to hospice, arose out of that Christian sense that every human life is of infinite worth, which carried with it the compelling need to alleviate suffering insofar as it is possible. Most of the great art of the ages, at least up until the 17th century, has as its content scenes from these twenty-seven books. These art treasures are of such immense value today that for the most part they are stored in the world’s greatest museums as a constant source of enrichment for the people. Most of the great music of the ages, at least up until the dawn of modernity, was an attempt to put the primary themes of the New Testament into the indelible sounds that we today still recognize and sing. One thinks of the St. Matthew Passion and the St. John Passion by Johann Sebastian Bach and of the Christmas Oratorio, “Messiah” by George Frederick Handel as familiar and much loved cultural treasures. One cannot understand the history of the Western world or explore these cultural artifacts without becoming deeply aware of the impact the New Testament has had on the life of our civilization. There is, however, also a dark side of the New Testament that must be faced and lifted beyond the stained glass accents of antiquity into full consciousness. The New Testament has had victims whose lives have been diminished at best and destroyed at worst by the direct impact of reading from this “sacred” source. I think of the Jewish people who have suffered throughout Christian history because of this book. The words attributed to the Jewish crowd by Matthew in his narrative of the crucifixion, “his blood be upon us and upon our children,” have caused much Jewish blood to flow in everything from the Crusades to the Holocaust. The Fourth Gospel’s use of the phrase “The Jews,” spoken so often through clenched teeth, has not infrequently been used to legitimize anti-Semitism. The portrayal of a man called Judas, a name that is nothing but the Greek spelling of the name for the entire Jewish nation, as the anti-hero of the Jesus story, served to give permission to Christians through the ages to justify their feeling of revenge against this ethnic group of people. Lost in this hostile passion is the truth that Jesus was a Jew, the disciples were all Jews and the writers of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament were also Jews. The only possible exception to this statement is Luke, thought to be the author of both the gospel that bears his name and the book of Acts, who is believed to have been born a Gentile, but to have converted to Judaism and thus to have come through the Synagogue into the Church. This means that when we read the New Testament, we are reading only the words of Jewish writers, interpreting the experience and impact of the Jewish Jesus primarily in the light of the Jewish Scriptures and under the ongoing influence of the Synagogue traditions of the Jews. Yet these books have fueled over the centuries a killing frenzy of anti-Semitism. The single greatest carrier of this hostility has been nothing less than our Sunday school curricula and materials. Jewish people thus have a hard time seeing these twenty-seven books as “sacred scriptures.” The institution of slavery was affirmed throughout history from words in the New Testament. Slavery was practiced in the west by God-fearing, Bible-reading Christians. The popes at various times owned slaves. The section of the United States that fought fiercely to preserve this evil institution was also known as the Bible Belt. It was the Bible-reading people of the South who made lynching legal, who replaced slavery with segregation and who resisted every effort to keep racial justice from being achieved. Much of their justification for this behavior came from quoting St. Paul, who in his letter to Philemon urged the runaway slave Onesimus to return to his master, while simultaneously urging Philemon, his master, to be forgiving to his slave. In the Epistle to the Colossians, Paul, or one of his disciples, instructed slaves to be obedient and masters to be kind. Perhaps it could be said that a kinder and gentler slavery is better than a cruel and harsh one, but it is to be noted that Paul clearly accepted the legitimacy of this cruel institution, making no effort to abolish it and thus legitimizing it in the minds of others for centuries. One wonders how those who were enslaved and their descendents might view the New Testament from which texts were cited to justify both slavery and second-class citizenship. These scriptures were not sources of life to these victims of our prejudice. Women have also not fared well at the hands of these male written, male read and male interpreted books of the New Testament. They have rather fed the deep-seated cultural misogyny of the ages with such admonitions as those found in Ephesians for wives to obey their husbands, or in Corinthians for women to keep quiet in church, or in Timothy where women are forbidden to exercise authority over men. Under the influence of the New Testament women in the Christian world were denied higher education for centuries. As a result they were denied entrance into the professions, denied the right to vote, denied the ability to own property in their own name and denied leadership roles in the Christian world until well into the 20th century. When progress did come for women it was driven by the secular spirit while organized religion as expressed in the Christian Church resisted these changes with scripture-quoting vehemence. In major sections of the world this anti-feminist Bible-laced rhetoric continues to be articulated both officially through ecclesiastical bodies and by individual believers. One wonders how women would ever be drawn to the texts of this book. The same could also be said for the victimization of the gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender segments of our population. They too have lived throughout history with Bible-fueled hostility that manifested itself in gay bashing and in actual murder. Texts were quoted from Romans that called homosexuality “unnatural” and condemned it, to references in other epistles that mistranslated the Greek word arcenokoitus, which refers to a passive male, as deviant, sodomite or pervert, even though its original meaning appears to have been male prostitutes. There is no doubt that the center of homophobia in the western world today remains the Christian Church, now ghettoized from the mainstream of society, and is regularly articulated by Christian voices from the Pope to Pat Robertson. One wonders how homosexual people could ever appreciate the message of the New Testament. In my experience, I do not find it possible to overestimate the levels of biblical ignorance present today inside the Christian population. Most of these just-cited abuses rise out of that ignorance. Much preaching that emanates from both Catholic and Protestant pulpits not only reflects that ignorance, but also continues to spread it. In this series of columns I will, therefore, attempt to counter this biblical ignorance and to break the grip that it has on much of our population. While seeking to avoid the technicalities of biblical scholarship that seem to amuse so many in the academy, I will try to state clearly how these books came to be written and so endeavor to oppose the rampant literal misunderstanding that embraces so much of our culture today in regard to the Bible. I will go into both the meaning and the key points of each book in the New Testament, as I have done in past years with the books of the Old Testament. I will try to show the differences among the four gospels that reveal more contradictions than most people believe to be possible. I hope you will enjoy the journey. I know I will. One final note. A number of small churches across the English-speaking world now use this column for their Sunday morning adult education classes. These essays are subscribed to by the members of the various classes with extra copies reproduced for visitors so that the class and the discussion can have a common basis for discussion. The leader of the class simply convenes the group and introduces the topic. That leadership role can be constant or rotated so long as the purpose is accomplished to allow people to discuss issues openly, to raise any questions they wish and to engage in any debate that arises. When the group gets too large for discussion, it subdivides into two groups. I am gratified to learn this and rejoice that this column might be an instrument in the New Reformation for which many of us yearn. At the very least I hope people find a richness in this book that small ecclesiastical minds have tried for centuries to hide from the average pew sitter. Have fun!~ John Shelby Spong | | | | | | | | Announcements Love in Action – Conversations with Andrew Harvey Join Andrew Harvey for a powerful LIVE lecture and Q&A session, Thursday July 23rd at 4pm PT, 7pm ET. Find the meaning you’ve been searching for in this global crisis… and discover how love-in-action, compassion, and sacred activism can reshape your experience of these unprecedented times. READ ON... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

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change of address
by Del Morrill 17 Jul '20

17 Jul '20

I have a new e-mail that I created just for OE conversations when they are coming through you. It is delmor87(a)gmail.com <mailto:delmor87@gmail.com> . Please confirm. I became aware that my new address of DHMorr87@outlook might not have gotten to you when Ann Epps, one of our close friends, asked me this week whether we knew John had died quite a while ago. We didn't and were shocked. She must have thought we were Fairweather friends! So, you might keep the outlook address as a 2nd, in case the gmail one comes back or isn't working for some reason. God help me if I have to go through not getting my e-mails again for 2 months from anyone like when my former one with wamail suddenly no was longer functioning. Grace and Peace, and keep well. Del Del Hunter Morrill Facebook.com/del.morrill.85 Location: Earth, USA, Pacific Northwest, Washington State, Tacoma www. www.hypnocenter.com <http://www.hypnocenter.com> We are all united, in "it", creating together, as if we are all part of one vast, single atom. (D.H.M.)

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