- OE - lists.wedgeblade.net

Re: [Oe List ...] Chronological History - Corrections and Additions
by via OE 11 Apr '17

11 Apr '17

Beret, Fred and I set up, recruited, hosted an RS-1 course in spring of 1969, I believe, in Ouro Preto, Brazil, taught by Jim and Lela Campbell who were on a teaching tour of South America. It was Gil and Lynn Woltjer into to E.I. When they returned to Berkeley, they participated in a galaxy church cadre there with Dan and Diane Smith and the Trussels. This is my first dive into the timeline. Will keep looking. Paul Noah took a lot of my posters last time he was here with Frank Knutson. Jann McGuire -----Original Message----- From: Beret Griffith via OE <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> To: O:E List <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net>; Dialogue <dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> Sent: Sun, Apr 2, 2017 4:01 pm Subject: [Oe List ...] Chronological History - Corrections and Additions Dear Colleagues, It has been two years since the Chronological History was published. David Dunn and I are starting the revision process. If you have sent corrections and additions we have been saving the emails and notes for the 2nd edition. Please continue to pass on your observations, comments, additions & corrections. Here are links... 1. https://wedgeblade.net/files/archives_assets/20197.pdf Corrections cannot be made directly into the document so please send in another document, electronic, email, or paper. Send paper docs to me at 1412 Blue Flag Court, Northfield, MN. 55057 2. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Y0IgEUDJLGzZJp_DVoZ0ZwE4hiLfZ7inTTTmD9n… The Addendum is for adding information from 1989-2017. You can comment/add directly into this document. We look forward to hearing from you! Beret and David _______________________________________________ OE mailing list OE(a)lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net

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Global Buzz April 2017
by ICA International via OE 06 Apr '17

06 Apr '17

Enjoy catching up with what is happening in ICAs across the globe.....If you wish to SEND a report...send to your ICA contact person OR...go to the members section on the ICA International website Please click the link below for the February 2017 issue of the Global Buzz Global Buzz Report: April 2017 or copy and paste this URL into your browser's address bar http://globalbuzz.icai-archives.org/7dayreport-17/2017-04-01.php ICAI Communications

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3/06/17: Spong Revisited (last article): Suspicions about Judas, Part II
by Ellie Stock via OE 06 Apr '17

06 Apr '17

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR Five Beliefs I Continue to Hold About the Church By Eric Alexander In the last article I talked about some of the things I still believe about Jesus, and in this post I want to talk about some of the things that I still believe about the Church. By “Church” I am referring to the institutions, buildings, denominations, and organizations. I am not referring amorphously to the people of Jesus, or body of Christ, as the Church here. I am also not referring to all churches, but rather the majority of them. But before getting into that, let me preface as I did last time in my article “Five beliefs I Continue to Hold About Jesus”, with my current synopsis of the Church. Five-Hundred years ago Martin Luther hammered his 95 thesis to the door of the Church, formally challenging their teachings and authority. At that time he was representing an upswelling of integrity and free thought of the people. Unfortunately though, whether he actually said this or not, his most famous quote went down in history as “here I stand.” In other words, he took a step, and then committed before God and country to stand firm again. Now, five hundred years later most of the Church still stands in that place that he stood. He was able to help pivot humanity to think more individually, and to read the Bible directly, which was monumental for the time. But it opened a whole new can of worms, which is interesting because his tribunal for heresy was held in a German town called Worms. Luther’s step forward could have been what the world needed. It could have been that magnificent shift of enlightenment that the Roman Catholic Church institution had been squelching for a thousand years or so, in order to retain power over the people. But whilst it resulted in more freedom from a corrupt institution, it led to further theological folly. To make matters worse, the institution then came back around and found a way to productize that new folly, and that’s what we’re dealing with today. I think it’s time we say loud and clear that the church of yesteryear, which many who are over age 40 identify with, is not connecting with the younger generations, and it is pushing many of the elders away too. The young are not buying it, and their parent’s generations are not pushing their kids and grandkids to adopt their path, as was once the standard generational cycle that church leaders could take to the bank. The Church, in my opinion, could be a lovely thing though. It could be, and sometimes is, an essential and critical part of the social and spiritual fabric within a community. But that is the very last thing that most churches have on their “what we believe” mission statements. In an individually empowered generation, where people have infinite expectation of integrity, the majority of churches aren’t going to sell a new generation of awakened souls a continuous path of cognitive dissonance that demands intentional ignorance. In today’s age of Google and free thought, very few newcomers are going to believe that Jesus was born of a literal virgin. Besides that, scholars have identified the source of that error, and neither Jesus, Paul, Peter, James, or John ever mentioned it in the first place. However, far too many churches still make that belief an intellectual pre-condition to take part in everything they do. If you want to go serve soup at the local homeless kitchen with them, that’s great, you’d just better agree to believe an untenable list of doctrines if you want to be fully accepted by the tribe. Also in today’s age of knowledge and logic, free thinkers aren’t going to believe that God sent a uniquely incarnate form of God’s self to earth in order to die as a sacrifice to God’s self so we could be saved from God’s self. And furthermore, hardly anyone is going to continue to believe that it was due to an original sin in the Garden of Eden caused by a talking snake. Yet, again, that is the pre-supposition that many churches lead with. It really doesn’t take a genius to figure out why the Church is shrinking. Sure, some churches are now conceding to the Garden of Eden story being figurative, but they continue to stick with it as an inerrant and infallible story about God’s purpose and character. That is still a major fail in my opinion. Most churches also use outdated 1700 year old creeds as the basis for their liturgy. They talk about a bunch of criteria that Jesus never once mentioned, and they ignore the actual teachings and examples of his ministry and mission when they recite the tenets of their faith. If the Church is going to remain relevant into the future, it would be well served to take heed of the following five beliefs that I and many others continue to hold: 1) Many people are still looking for a place to connect spiritually within their community. 2) Many of us still want to engage ourselves and our families in meaningful mission and service. 3) Many of us still want to collectively learn about the art and practices of love, peace, joy, forgiveness, and generosity in the world. 4) Many of us value inclusivity and mystery over rigid sets of prescribed beliefs and biases. 5) Many of us still love the example that Jesus set, but will no longer accept the Bible as literal, inerrant, infallible, or universally authoritative. (More on this in the next installment) If you ask me, that is a large, caring, and interesting group of people to pivot toward, and more than enough to “save” the Church if we wanted to. Current Church leaders may not have the fortitude or courage to make this shift, so it may be up to those of us on the fringes to guide it as it falls. Or to simply build the new thing. Now, if you’re over 40 and you are reading what I am saying with disagreement or frustration, I would be willing to give more leeway, because odds are that you were indoctrinated as a young person by every authority figure you ever knew. Particularly your parents, teachers, politicians, and pastors. That stuff got deep in many of our melons and is extremely hard to shake, no matter what evidence comes out to the contrary. But it’s important for even you to realize what is happening, and to also recognize that indoctrination based growth won’t continue on nearly the scale that it used to. Most of today’s youth aren’t taught to learn through indoctrination, but rather by practicing the scientific method. So they are not going to sign up so easily to faith based claims which contradict reality (and oftentimes even contradict common sense). Sure, most people reading this have gained enough wisdom to know not to limit ourselves in a box of our current scientific understandings. More is always possible, and any enlightened person recognizes that. But to limit oneself in a box of complete contradiction to reality is not going to be the future either. So there it is. My words on behalf of myself and millions of others who want a Church, but not the current Church in its majority form. And on behalf of those who are growing weary of swimming against the mainstream institution. There are many people who think like me, and a number of churches who are finding a new beneficial path that may represent the future. We love the potential of the Church, and we want to see a Church-like element remain for future generations to enjoy and find peace and hope in. I still believe in the idea of an institution based on love, inclusivity, and service. May it be so. ___ If you missed my last article on what I still believe about Jesus be sure to check that out in the archives or by clicking the link. In the next installment I will round out this opening series with what I still believe about the Bible. Then we will dive even deeper. Thank you for reading, and as always I look forward to your comments. I noticed last time that many of you wrote me directly through a variety of channels, which became difficult to keep up with. And while I love public comments below so others can follow and learn, if you would prefer to contact me directly, you can do so at EricAlexanderCE(a)gmail.com . Until next time, peace. ~ Eric Alexander Read the essay online here. About the Author Eric Alexander is an author, speaker, and activist. He is a board member at ProgressiveChristianity.org, and is the founder of Jesism, Christian Evolution, and the Progressive Christianity and Politics group on Facebook. Eric holds a Master of Theology from Saint Leo University and studied negotiations at Harvard Law School, and authored the popular children’s emotional health book Teaching Kids Life IS Good. Question & Answer Jeff from Lexington, N.C. writes: Question: With Easter almost here, I can't help but wondering what the point of Jesus dying on the cross was if it wasn't to save us from our sins? Answer: By Mark Sandlin ... Dear Jeff, To me, Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem – humbly riding into town, bouncing around on the back of a previously unridden ass as people gathered to greet him singing and shouting, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord,” signals that Easter is going to be a story about confronting The Powers That Be. You see, in stark contrast, the actual ruler of the region, Prefect Pontius Pilate, basically the Governor would have made quite a different entrance. As Rome’s official authority, he would have paraded through the front of the city's gates on a mighty steed while surrounded by Roman soldiers. The Easter story happens as folks are gathering in Jerusalem to observe Passover – the annual commemoration of Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt to escape a repressive, enslaving government. So, it happens in a setting that recalls the power of the people when it comes to escaping tyrannical and oppressive regimes. As you might imagine, Rome, actually BEING a repressive government, would have been somewhat weary of this kind of celebration. The Romans certainly didn't want the Hebrew people to get any ideas about another Exodus, this time from the occupying Roman government. And Jesus, after his humble entrance into Jerusalem, and seemingly out of character, enters into the Temple courtyard and strikes at the heart of a main source of the religious institute's funding. The moneychangers and traders who had set up shop in the Temple used their monopoly to take advantage of the mostly-poor travelers who came to the city to pay their taxes. Since the religious institute and the government were closely tied, Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple was the beginning of the end. He'd gone from an annoying sideshow (along with all the other supernaturally endowed teachers of his time) to being a viable threat to the state. >From that point on, the storyline gives us a reality check as to how far the Powers were willing to go to protect their status and wealth. It's a story that continues to echo in the world today. We can look to the life story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and remember how far American politicians and some of the people are willing to go to obstruct voting and civil rights. Confronting The Powers That Be can be dangerous work. It should not be taken lightly. It can be unsettling, unnerving, and downright frightening. The Powers That Be will not go down gently – they never do. They will use every tool available to them to maintain their status, wealth, and control. In confronting them, we risk our good name, our freedom, and even our lives. Or as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. put it, “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” The Easter story is a not-so-gentle reminder of how much is required to resist powerful and oppressive forces, and it is a reminder of how far The Powers That Be will go to protect their power. The Good News is that Easter's conclusion is a reminder that it’s also the story of how far love will go for the sake of divine justice. In the end, Easter is a story of confronting those who would use their power to oppress others and the real risks that go along with it. Ultimately, though, Easter is the story of the resurrecting power of love and hope. ~ Rev. Mark Sandlin Read and Share Online Here About the Author Mark Sandlin is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) from the South. He currently serves at Presbyterian Church of the Covenant. He is a co-founder of The Christian Left. His blog, The God Article, has been named as one of the “Top Ten Christian Blogs.” Mark received The Associated Church Press' Award of Excellence in 2012. His work has been published on "The Huffington Post," "Sojourners," "Time," "Church World Services," and even the "Richard Dawkins Foundation." He's been featured on PBS's "Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly" and NPR's "The Story with Dick Gordon.” Follow Mark on Facebook and Twitter @marksandlin ____________________________________________________ Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited My Suspicions about the Historicity of Judas Iscariot, Part II As the season of Easter dawns in the Christian world, two figures take center stage in the liturgical drama. One is Jesus of Nazareth, who came to be called by believers, “the light of the world.” The other is Judas, called Iscariot, portrayed as the incarnation of darkness and villainy. When the story of the final events in Jesus’ life are read in worship services during this holy season, the latent hostility toward those thought to be responsible for his death is once again raised to consciousness. John’s Gospel is quite overt in stating this theme: “He came to his own home and his own people received him not.” It was the beginning of a deep and killing anti-Semitism. Those who “received him not” were the Jews. More particularly they were two identifiable groups of Jews who were targeted in this rejection theme. First, there was the ruling class of the orthodox Jews, the Temple party, dominated by the tradition bearing Sadducees. Second, there were the Jewish zealots, the guerrilla fighters, who wanted to attack the hated Gentile Romans whenever the opportunity arose. The character Judas, who is portrayed in the Gospel narratives as the quintessential Jew, is in some sense a composite of both groups. It was appropriate, therefore, that his name would identify him with Judah, the name of the Jewish nation. Judas is nothing but the Greek spelling of Judah. Last week in this column, I shared my suspicions that Judas Iscariot was a literary figure not a person of history. I suggested that he was created in the second generations of Christians as the means for shifting the blame for the death of Jesus away from the Romans, who were so obviously responsible for his execution, to the Jews, who have borne the guilt of the crucifixion throughout history. I cited evidence from Paul and the Q document that the idea that one of the Twelve was the traitor was simply not present in the earliest Christian writings. This idea enters the Tradition first in Mark, which is dated somewhere between 70-75 C.E. It is then repeated and developed in all the subsequent Gospels. If my suggestion is to have credibility, a motive powerful enough to account for such a creation must be discovered. Then I would need not only to show but also to document the sources that the creators of the Judas tradition used to build their literary character. Those two things will be the focus of this column. The earliest Christians were all Jews. That single fact escapes the notice of many Christians. These Jews saw in Jesus the same God that their ancestors believed they had seen in the Jewish heroes of their past like Moses and Elijah. They interpreted Jesus, therefore, by wrapping stories about previous Jewish heroes around Jesus. I documented these connections at great length in a book entitled Liberating the Gospels: Reading the Bible with Jewish Eyes. After the earthly life of Jesus came to an end, his disciples, who first called themselves “The followers of the Way,” began to incorporate him into the ongoing faith story of the Jews. The story of the Transfiguration where Jesus appears on top of a mountain with Moses and Elijah is typical of this process. There is always tension in a religious community when new ideas challenge old assumptions. So it was that these revisionist ideas, held by the disciples of Jesus, disturbed the traditional Orthodox patterns of the Synagogue. When Paul began to incorporate Gentiles into the Christian Movement, the tensions increased. Yet, despite this provocation both groups somehow managed to stay together in the Synagogue until late in the first century. It was a classic demonstration of the perennial religious tension between those who see themselves as the conservative, tradition bearers and those who bring the liberal challenge to the tradition in the name of a changing world. During this same time, the tensions between the Orthodox Jews and the Roman Empire were also deep and constant. The Jewish guerrilla movement, designed to harass those who were the conquerors of the Jewish State, was a factor in Jewish life as early as the time of Jesus. This movement was located primarily in Galilee. The fact that one of Jesus’ disciples was called Simon the Zealot may indicate that these disciples had a deeper connection with the guerrilla movement than we have yet acknowledged, since the guerillas were widely known as “the Zealots.” In 66 C.E. this smoldering and underlying tension escalated into armed conflict in Galilee. The Roman forces moved to quell this rebellion, but the mountainous terrain in Galilee gave those the Jews called “Freedom Fighters” a natural advantage. Rome finally decided that the only way to destroy those whom they called “Terrorists” was to strike at the Jewish heart and so the Imperial Army moved against Jerusalem and besieged the city. In 70 C.E. Jerusalem fell and the rag tag Jewish defenders fled to Masada and held out for three more years until they were finally defeated. With neither food nor weapons at their disposal, the Jewish soldiers, according to the Jewish historian Josephus, ended the war by a massive act of suicide. The trauma of Jerusalem’s fall, however, was devastating to the members of the Orthodox party. In that cataclysmic event they lost their nation, their holy city, their Temple and the last vestiges of their religious freedom. The Romans had little patience with these defeated Jewish fighters specifically, and with the Jews in general. Powerful nations do not tolerate terrorists easily. For the Jews it was a crisis of survival itself so we see these Orthodox Jews doing what radically insecure religious people always do. They organized their lives totally around the quest for survival. One part of this survival was the fanatical frenzy with which they built a rigid defense system around their one remaining religious symbol, their sacred scriptures, centered in the Torah, which they called ‘the books of Moses.’ They are the first five books of the Old Testament. These Jews thus began to make excessive, fundamentalist claims for the Torah. “It is the inerrant word of God,” they said. “It admits to no relativity. It is complete. Nothing else is necessary. In the Torah we have the ultimate truth.” This defensiveness, however, flew in the face of the disciples of Jesus who were also part of the Jewish world. As revisionist Jews they were saying, “God has acted in a new way in Jesus. Our traditions must be open enough to incorporate him and what he has taught us about God.” The two positions were mutually antithetical. All Jews were now at risk since Rome did not distinguish between the Orthodox Jews and the Revisionists. It did not help the tensions within Judaism that the Jews who were the disciples of Jesus began to say that the destruction of Jerusalem had been brought upon their nation by the rigidity of the Orthodox party. “That is what religious zealotry gets you,” they said. “It blinds you to what God is doing today. It distorts your view of reality.” The Jews who followed Jesus did not want to be linked inside the minds of the Roman authorities with the Orthodox believers. They wanted to show that they were different, more pliable, more willing to cooperate with Rome. “Look at the Christ whom we follow,” they would say. “and you will see that we too, like the Romans, have been victimized by these same rigid Jews.” So it was, that as the story of Jesus evolved, Pilate and the Roman authorities were increasingly whitewashed, while the Jews were increasingly vilified. The Roman procurator was portrayed as saying of Jesus, “I find no fault in this man,” and making plans to release him. The Jewish crowd was portrayed as shouting, “Crucify him, crucify him,” Pilate was reported to have washed his hands publicly and to have said, “I am innocent of the blood of this just man.” The Jewish crowd was quoted as having said, “His blood be upon us and upon our children,” So the shift was made. The Romans were exonerated. The Jews were blamed. The Jewish disciples of Jesus and the Roman authorities had a common enemy in the Orthodox Jews. I believe that the story of Judas grew out of this tension. The ultimate traitor was made to bear the name of the Jewish nation, His motive was said to be money. He symbolized the nation to whom Jesus had come and, “they received him not. Once the fantasy figure of Judas emerged, its creators needed content to flesh out his character and identity. Where did they find the material with which to build this portrait? Every detail ascribed to the story of Judas in the Gospels can be found in other stories of betrayal in the Hebrew Scriptures. All one has to do is look them up. In the book of Genesis another group of twelve is portrayed as handing over one of their own to his enemies. This is the narrative in which Joseph’s brothers sell him into slavery. It is striking that the brother who suggested that they get money for their treachery is named Judah. In the David cycle of stories, Ahithophel, a member of David’s inner circle of advisors, betrayed the king, who was called “the Lord’s Anointed.” This betrayal was thus by one “who broke bread with him” at the king’s table. This passage from the Jewish Scriptures is quoted in the Gospel of John, to demonstrate that Jesus’ words, about being betrayed by one who ate at his table, actually fulfilled a prophecy. The passage quoted, however, was about Ahithophel. When this act of betrayal was discovered, Ahithophel went out and hanged himself just as Matthew later was to say that Judas did. The story of the kiss of the traitor is also found in the Bible. When King Solomon replaced David on the throne of the Jewish nation, he replaced his father’s military commander, Joab, with Amasa, one of his own loyalists. Joab, violently angry about his dismissal, searches out Amasa under the guise of congratulating him. When he finds Amasa, he takes Amasa’s beard to draw his face close to him so that he can give him the kiss of friendship. But with his other hand he disembowels Amasa with a dagger. In the last half of the book of Zechariah (9-14), the shepherd king of Israel is betrayed for 30 pieces of silver. The money is later thrown back into the Temple. The people to whom he is betrayed are those who buy and sell animals in the Temple. Every detail of the Judas story is an echo from other betrayal stories in the Hebrew Scriptures. Is that just a coincidence or is it additional evidence that Judas was a literary creation born in a polemic designed to blame the Jews for the death of Jesus and to exonerate the Romans. It is certainly a strong possibility. My suspicions about the historicity of Judas are not without significant foundation. Holy Week and Easter have historically been the time when anti-Semitism has been unwittingly encouraged in Christian history. By raising to consciousness the sources of this anti-Semitism perhaps we can help it to die. Those of us who claim to follow the Jewish Jesus as his disciples, need to hasten the day when hostility toward the Jews, who gave us this Lord, is forever removed from our faith tradition. ~ John Shelby Spong (Originally Published April 9, 2003) Announcements The Movies and Meaning Festival Movies & Meaning was founded in 2015 as a gathering of people around art and activism—those who desire to heal our personal and cultural wounds as a diverse community, laugh and cry around the “campfire experience” of great movies, and gain tools for constructive, respectful, and thoughtful dialogue across boundaries of religion, class, race, and age. Read On ... Embrace Festival May 4 - 6th in Portland, OR Click here for more information/registration .

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Chronological History - Corrections and Additions
by Beret Griffith via OE 03 Apr '17

03 Apr '17

Dear Colleagues, It has been two years since the Chronological History was published. David Dunn and I are starting the revision process. If you have sent corrections and additions we have been saving the emails and notes for the 2nd edition. Please continue to pass on your observations, comments, additions & corrections. Here are links... 1. https://wedgeblade.net/files/archives_assets/20197.pdf Corrections cannot be made directly into the document so please send in another document, electronic, email, or paper. Send paper docs to me at 1412 Blue Flag Court, Northfield, MN. 55057 2. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Y0IgEUDJLGzZJp_DVoZ0ZwE4 hiLfZ7inTTTmD9nLEdo/edit The Addendum is for adding information from 1989-2017. You can comment/add directly into this document. We look forward to hearing from you! Beret and David

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"Journey Reflection" Blog Posts (March 2017)
by John C via OE 31 Mar '17

31 Mar '17

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Book Age of Discovery
by Jeanette Stanfield via OE 31 Mar '17

31 Mar '17

Dear Colleagues, I am reading a book that challenges me so thought I would share it with you. It is called Age of Discovery: Navigating the Risks and Rewards of our new Renaissance by Ian Goldin with Chris Kutarna at Oxford University. Ian was an adviser to President Nelson Mandela. They have a whole research team from Oxford working with them. Here is link to to Ian's website which includes 4 minute video sharing context of book:. https://iangoldin.org/books/age-of-discovery/ I am using book to help me plot what is happening using the social process triangles as a screen. Take good care, Jeanette

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3/30/17: Spong/Sandlin:“Hopey-Changey”; 3rd article: Spong revisited: Historicity of Judas, Part I
by Ellie Stock via OE 30 Mar '17

30 Mar '17

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR “Hopey-Changey” By Mark Sandlin Churches are dying at an alarming rate. Every year more than 4000 churches close their doors for good and more than 2,765,000 people leave the church each year. Yet we, the Church, insist on doing the same thing over and over again and somehow expecting different results. When confronted with change we tend to insist that “it has always been done that way,” as if history is an acceptable excuse for continuing down our path to demise. Far too many congregations are denying the reality of the New Reformation in favor of the comfortable old religion of their grandparents who practiced a religion that last had true relevance in the 19th century. As we ponder that difficult reality, I think it is helpful to turn to Dr. Paul Batalden. In looking at the dysfunction of our healthcare system Dr. Batalden, a Dartmouth Medical School Professor, is fond of saying, “Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.” That brings me to the even more difficult reality that, if your church is dying, it is perfectly designed to die. Said differently, you can keep repeating the comfortable religion of your grandparents over and over again, and if you do, you can consistently expect to get the results of a dying church – for that matter, a dying theological perspective as well. That’s exactly what most churches are doing. For years and years churches have joined in with movement after movement, each designed to help the church change. Most of them don’t work – at least not in terms of change. They do tend to be very good at distracting from real, substantive change. They are very successful at taking away our guilt for having a church that can’t attract new members, because we think “at least we are doing something.” The problem with why these programs fail more times than they work is also part of the problem with many churches themselves: our ability to accept cognitive dissonance. Talking the talk, but not walking the walk… and not really being bothered by it, more or less acknowledging it. The world outside the church, in large part, sees most churches (and their members) as hypocritical. And we’ve given them every reason to see so. Churches profess love of neighbor yet either explicitly condemn people of certain lifestyles or implicitly condemn them by our silence when others claiming to be Christians do. We profess that we are all made equal and that we are equal in the eyes of God, yet we are astoundingly silent on issues of social justice. The list could go on and on, and I’m not saying that some churches aren’t authentically living into these things (because some are). What I am saying is that the world outside the church just doesn’t see it much. What they do see leads them to deem us all as hypocritical. That kind of existence allows us to work our way through programs on emerging\transforming\re-imagining church without ever really doing much more than the head work. We have learned the skill of cognitive dissonance well. It keeps us from having to do things that make us uncomfortable like spending time in low income housing areas, talking to the homeless, ministering with those in jail… you know all the things Jesus said we were doing to him when we do them. Cognitive dissonance means we get to be ‘Christian’ without actually being very Christ-like. Naturally our churches get to do the same. We can read all about the “hopey, changey” stuff, talk about it in positive tones, and ultimately back away from it when it leads us to do something as “drastic” as playing a guitar instead of an organ during worship – or worse yet, playing a guitar instead of an organ during worship and feeling like we have really stretched ourselves. While we “study” the programs on changing, we get to feel like we are doing something. The problem is the companies who market them have to actually be able to market them, so the programs always have some kind of a release valve built in that allows those who don’t really want to commit to change to be able to do a little something different, feel better about having done something, without actually, really addressing any of the systemic problems. It leaves the core system intact and it continues to, perfectly, get the results it gets, but we feel better because, “Well, at least we tried.” Sit Boy, Sit. Good Dogma. In order to understand a little better what we need to do as spiritual communities in the face of the New Reformation, I think we first need to understand a little about how we, the Church, arrived at our current location as well as what that location is. There was a time, frequently referred to as “the good ol’ days,” when the church was the center of society. A large percentage of a community’s life centered around the church. It was not only the moral compass and center for their lives, but it was the social and philanthropic center of their lives as well. This afforded the church the ability to define for its community what was acceptable and what was not. It was really unlikely that people would challenge the status quo that was being established (one that was, not so surprisingly, heavily weighted down with dogma of centuries upon centuries.) Challenging the thing that defined your community and was the center piece of many people’s daily lives and activities would have probably been a really good way to make sure you were not accepted by those who had power in the establishment and ultimately you would probably be pushed out to the margins of the circle of society, if included in it at all. So, the status quo that’s being established goes unchallenged and ever-unchanging. As you could probably guess, this kind of influence (and let’s just be honest, power) was somewhat intoxicating. The Church, particularly its leaders, began to believe the myth that they had established. The myth wasn’t that they were at the center of community, because in many ways they really were. The myth that they had begun to believe was that they deserved to be there, that it was by some divine right that they had so much influence (and power.) That was the beginning of getting left behind. Over time, society began changing. The Church, in its perceived place of godly instituted influence and power, did not change even though it has a history of changing and, at times, doing so dynamically. The more society changed with the times, the more the Church did not. With each passing year, the Church became less and less relevant for a quickly changing society. Now we’ve arrived at a place where society has moved on well past where the Church stayed stuck and, much to the surprise of the Church, society has done just fine without us. Much as our scriptures should remind us, people are responsive and quite dynamic and are able to find other social centers, other ways to express their philanthropic needs and other ways to fulfill their spiritual desires. These difficult realities are not the reason why the Church needs to change. They are, however, the results of the Church not changing when it needed to. Our dogma and theological foundations are outdated and deny advancements in science as well as in literary criticism. Our churches are built around male dominated, hierarchical systems of governance that are perfectly designed to “maintain” the system, to bend but not break, ultimately insuring that those who have power remain in power. Said differently, they are perfectly designed to get the results they get. And that’s not a good thing. At this point, we are so far behind the need to change, that the only way forward is going to be intense change, sometimes painful change. That’s why people like Bishop Spong, and the work they have done, are vitally important to the Church as well as believers outside the Church. It’s why resources like this New Reformation newsletter are so important. We have to start learning new ways to look at our Christianity. We have to learn to use every modern advancement available to us in order to get back to what appears to be a truer understanding of our history and religious texts than what they have evolved into. As we do, I suspect that we will find a fuller and more satisfying spiritual journey. Also, I suspect we will find fewer and fewer folks seeing hypocrisy within our belief system. And with that, I believe we will find some of the folks who have walked away from Christianity will see new hope within it and may once again not only find personal value in it, but their communities will as well. ~ Mark Sandlin Read the essay online here. About the Author Mark Sandlin is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) from the South. He currently serves at Presbyterian Church of the Covenant. He is a co-founder of The Christian Left. His blog, The God Article, has been named as one of the “Top Ten Christian Blogs.” Mark received The Associated Church Press’ Award of Excellence in 2012. His work has been published on “The Huffington Post,” “Sojourners,” “Time,” “Church World Services,” and even the “Richard Dawkins Foundation.” He’s been featured on PBS’s “Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly” and NPR’s “The Story with Dick Gordon.” Follow Mark on Facebook and Twitter @marksandlin Question & Answer Robert J. Freer from Cincinnati, Ohio writes: Question: Why do we assign a gender to God? I feel that it started with the Lord's Prayer (Our Father who art in Heaven. . . . .) That paternalism was objected to by the feminists who started calling God she. If God is not human, how can there be a gender assigned? I am still trying to rid myself of the image of a man up in the sky somewhere, wearing flowing white robes, keeping track of my good deeds and misdeeds!! Answer: By Fred Plumer Dear Robert, You ask an interesting question and unfortunately a complete answer would take several pages. But let me try and answer your excellent and timely question the best I can. Actually, we would have to go back roughly 10,000 years ago to even begin to understand what really happened. As the Hunters and Gatherers began to settle in the Mesopotamia Valley, they moved away from what anthropologist have suggested was a balanced responsibility when men and women had equal job responsibilities. Every single person had a “job,” a responsibility, including children, and there was no hierarchy because each person’s job might impact the survival of the tribe. Up until this time in history most of the most powerful gods were female. It was frankly a more matriarchically society as you might guess. But when the Hunters and Gatherers realized they could build fences, raise animals and crops, protecting the boundaries became paramount. It was the men who began to take on the warrior mentality. To raise their crops, they needed workers, so the women stayed home to raise children to work in the fields. It was during that time that these societies moved from a matriarchically to a patriarchic society. The most powerful gods had become males. Keep in mind there were still many gods, but the most powerful were pictured as men at some point in this development. When we get to the beginning of what we know as the Jewish tradition, roughly 5,000 years ago, there was still many gods, but the most powerful came to be known as YHWH, a word that was intended to never be spoken by practicing Jews. However, as centuries passed, different groups, in different eras, had their own name for god, i.e. Yahweh, Adonai, Elohim, and El. Scholars generally propose that the Torah, the Christian Old Testament, was compiled from various original sources, two of which (the Jahwist and the Elohist) are named for their usual names for God (YHWH and Elohim respectively). Many modern Jews today, do not necessarily see their “God” as male or female. However, the more conservative Jews are still extremely patriarchal. They are still protecting their turf. We really have no idea when the Jewish people decided there was one God, but it is clear from passages in the Torah that it was not the case in their earlier years. From Exodus 20:3…you shall have no other gods before me. This is repeated in the same citing in Deuteronomy 5:6. However, I have used the term “God” here several times to explain how we became more patriarchal. But the truth be told, no one has been able to decide where the word God came from or how long ago. The word God is a relatively new European invention, which was never used in any of the ancient Judeo-Christian scripture manuscripts that were written in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek or Latin. Scholars tend to agree that is was sometime in the 6th century, probably in the Germanic culture and a derivation of the word, gudan. So Robert, here is my point. It is the current society that decides who and what we call God, or god or Adonai or “Max.” And it is the society that decides what kind of attributes we assign to this thing we currently call God. Yes, it takes a long time, many lifetimes to make these changes. But our society is changing very rapidly right now and frankly our young people, the millennials, are not buying our ancient idea of God or the power we have given this figure, whether male, female or transgender. We now know it is not “a man up in the sky somewhere, wearing flowing white robes, keeping track of good deeds and misdeeds.” Many of us now have agreed it is not a male or female. The more scientists study our animal kingdom, the closer we humans seem to be. Are animals judged? Should we be judged? We all come into this world with different gifts, and wounds, opportunities and failures. How would a judging god decide how to weigh those factors? Personally, I have found the String Theory encouraging. The idea that we are all inner-connected (by “string” or “god”) sits well with me, although I am not certain how to put that idea into a theology. However, this means when a “butterfly waves it wings, the entire universe is changed. That means what you do or what I do matters to the entire universe. Can you imagine what kind of world it would be if we people started acting as if this were true? Can you imagine the entire universe dependent on your actions? And so you ask, what does Progressive Christianity have to say about this? It is about the very human Jesus, who in spite of, or because of, a troubled beginning, overcame the natural inclination to strike out or punish others. He became a mystic who showed us a way to live that transcends all of the things that have been piled onto Christianity that have little to do with living a full and joyful life. Rather than focusing on sin, he taught us to find the joy. Rather than focusing on the bad things in life, he taught us to look for the positive. He taught us to recognize the interconnectedness of all life and the power of love over hate. And he taught us not to fear death. That is why I still am a follower of him. And these are some of the reasons, Progressive Christianity is still growing. Thank you for your question. I hope I have answered it. ~Fred Plumer, President ProgressiveChristianity.org Read and Share Online Here _________________________________________________________ Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited My Suspicions about the Historicity of Judas Iscariot, Part I One of the primary personalities of the Easter story is Judas Iscariot, the anti-hero of the Christian Gospel. Judas has traditionally been painted in dark and sinister colors. His act of betrayal has been described as the worst villainy in human history. The name Judas, once popular as a name for boys in the Jewish tradition, has all but disappeared from history, a fate not suffered by such biblical names as Peter, Simon, John or James. As the story of the crucifixion is recounted this week in churches throughout the world, the tale of Judas’ betrayal of Jesus will be related once again, and “the Jews” will be said to have been responsible for the death of Jesus. That has happened annually for two thousand years and through this familiar narrative we Christians have poured a steady stream of virulent anti-Semitism into the life of the world. Perhaps the time has come for us to look at this story with a different set of eyes. I am suspicious of Judas. Everything about him raises questions in my mind. My suspicion is that he is not a person of history at all but a totally fictitious character created in the second generation of Christian history. I suspect that the purpose for which the story of Judas Iscariot was developed was to shift the blame for the death of Jesus away from the Romans, who were surely responsible, and to place it on the Jews, who were destined to be scapegoated for that death through all of western history. When this suspicion is voiced, however, people argue that the historicity of Judas Iscariot has been assumed for so long and that it is so integral to the Christian story, that this revisionist idea would reorient all of Christianity in a radical way. They demand to know the data for my suspicions. Since I believe that Christianity must be reoriented if it is to continue to live, I am glad to offer these data. First, my suspicion that Judas is a mythological character is aroused by his name. Iscariot seems to be derived from the word “sicarius,” which means ‘political assassin’ and is attached to his name to identify his act of treachery. The name Judas, however, is nothing but the Greek spelling of the word ‘Judah,’ sometimes written ‘Judea,’ and is the name of the Jewish homeland. Judah is also the word from which the English word “Jew” is derived. Jewish prisoners of the Nazis at the time of the Holocaust had to wear a sign on their clothing that said “Jude,” the German word for a Jew. When the name of the traitor is identical with the name of the nation of people from whom the Christians were trying to separate themselves when the Gospels were being written some 40 – 70 years after the life of Jesus came to an end, it causes me to wonder about the authenticity of the story. My second reason for being suspicious is in the dramatic detail found in the passion story of the gospels that locates the act of betrayal at the precise stroke of midnight that separated the first Maundy Thursday night from the first Good Friday morning. To place that which the gospel writers thought was the darkest deed in human history at a time thought to be the darkest moment of the night, serves well to provide a dramatic touch to the story but it does not strike me as serving well the truth of history. Thirdly, my suspicion is aroused when I recognize the fact that the word ‘betrayed’ enters the Christian story, not in the Gospels, but in Paul’s first Epistle to the Corinthians written about 15 years before the first gospel saw the light of the day. Paul, in the 11th chapter of that Epistle, recounts the inauguration of what came to be called “The Lord’s Supper.” He dates this narrative with the words, “On the night in which he was betrayed.” Two things about this text are significant. One is that the word we translate “betrayed” is more accurately rendered “was handed over.” It is the same word used in the Joseph story in the Book of Genesis, when Joseph’s brothers handed him over to the Ishmaelites or the Midianites, depending on which version in Genesis one is reading (see Genesis 37:25 and 28). While in some sense to hand Jesus over to his enemies might be understood as an act of betrayal, the connotations are not quite the same. The next thing about this Pauline text that is unique is that Paul does not associate this ‘handing over’ with anybody in general and certainly not with one of the twelve. This suggests to me that the Judas story was not known by Paul. This point is solidified in Chapter 15 of that same Epistle when Paul says, “I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.” The twelve certainly included Judas! After the crucifixion Judas was, in the mind of Paul, still one of the twelve. That would hardly be so if Judas had been the traitor who brought about that crucifixion. I think it is fair to say that Paul seems to know nothing of the tradition that one of the twelve was a traitor. The Judas story had simply not yet entered the Christian consciousness. My fourth reason for being suspicious about the historicity of the Judas story is rooted in a theoretical document that scholars have named Q which is short for quella, a German word which means source. Q was discovered, according to this theory, when scholars recognized that both Matthew and Luke had sufficient common material, other than Mark, that could not be explained by suggesting that one knew the other. The conclusion was that they both must have had a second source in common upon which they drew when they composed their gospels. So everywhere that Matthew and Luke were identical or nearly identical and where that material is not derived from Mark, it is assumed to be Q material. Further study of this material seemed to indicate that the Q document was basically a collection of the sayings of Jesus and was earlier than any written gospel. If this is so then Q is a primary source of Christian material that predates the canonical Gospels. One passage found in that Q material has Jesus speaking to the disciples during his earthly life and promising them that they will sit on ‘thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.’ Judas was, on this occasion, clearly one of the twelve. But neither Matthew nor Luke thought to edit this passage in the light of the betrayal story. This material appears to reflect a period in the development of the Christian history before a story of a betrayal by Judas was known. That assumption is further enforced when one notes that when Matthew tells the story of the Resurrection, he says that the Risen Christ appeared only to ‘the eleven.’ Matthew has, by the time he composed his gospel, edited his narrative to conform to the Judas story, which had entered the tradition in Mark, some ten years earlier and which Matthew was not just copying but also expanding. Finally my suspicions are aroused about the historicity of Judas when I look at the way the Judas story appears in the gospel tradition. It is, first inconsistent, and second the story grows as each new Gospel is written. All four Gospels, for example, have a story about identifying the traitor as one who broke bread with Jesus at the last supper. But what it was that Judas actually betrayed is hard to isolate. Starting with Mark, the first Gospel to be written (70-75 c.e.), we discover that this author says that it was the chief priests who initiated the suggestion that Judas would receive money, but no amount is mentioned. Judas next appears in Mark’s story at midnight to identify Jesus with a kiss. It is hard to imagine why identifying Jesus was important since he was publicly teaching in Jerusalem and had by this time, the narrative says, driven the moneychangers out of the temple. Surely these authorities knew who Jesus was. Judas then disappears from Mark’s Gospel. Matthew (80-85 c.e.) enhances Mark’s story by having Judas request money for the act of betrayal. The price is set at 30 pieces of silver. The betrayal in Matthew also takes place at midnight but this gospel writer has added dialogue between Jesus and Judas. Matthew goes on to give us additional details. Judas repented, said Matthew, and tried to return the money. The chief priests and elders refused. Judas then hurled the money back into the temple and went and hanged himself. The chief priests and elders, Matthew says, then took the silver and bought a potter’s field with it in which to bury strangers. Luke (88-92 c.e.) further embellishes the story. The traitor did this, said Luke, because, “Satan entered into Judas.” Finally, in Luke, we are told what Judas actually did for the authorities. He betrayed Jesus to them “in the absence of the multitude.” It is a weak answer to a perplexing question. Could the authorities not have tracked him to a place where he was alone? That should not have been a problem, since people in the first century certainly knew how to tail a suspect. Once again in Luke the act of betrayal took place at midnight. The dialogue is increased. The disciples are said to have fought back. One of them, who is unnamed, cut off the ear of the slave of the high priest. Jesus healed him. That is all we hear of Judas in Luke. In the books of Acts, however, which Luke also wrote, we are told that Judas himself bought a field with “the reward of his wickedness” and “falling down headlong, he burst open and all his bowels gushed out.” That is clearly not the same as hanging though the effect is quite the same. In John’s Gospel (95 – 100 c.e.), Judas becomes more sinister. He was a thief, said John. When Judas leaves the Last Supper, John notes, “it was night.” Judas leads the authorities to the place where Jesus could be found in Gethsemane. Here the dialogue is enhanced, but the kiss of the traitor has disappeared. Judas’ act is said to fulfill the expectations of the prophets. Both the disciple who cut off the ear of the high priest’s slave and the slave himself are identified in John’s Gospel. Their names are Simon Peter and Malchus. Then Judas disappears from John’s Gospel and is not seen again. The story grows. The details are enlarged. The narrative is enhanced. But when those details that constitute the Judas story are studied every one of them appears to have been lifted out of other accounts of betrayals known in Hebrew history. The Judas tradition seems to have been crafted out of the whole cloth of the Jewish Scriptures. Is that not enough to make one suspicious? I will return to this theme next week and fill in the details. I will also look at what was happening in that region during this period of history when the Gospels were written, to see if we can discover anything which might provide a motive for encouraging the second generation of Christians to create a traitor whose name was Judas. I believe we can, so stay tuned! ~ John Shelby Spong (Originally Published April 2, 2003) Announcements Click here for more information/registration

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Global Buzz reminder
by ICA International via OE 27 Mar '17

27 Mar '17

Reminder for entries This reminder is for the Global Buzz that will be published April 5th. 2017 (Please send your entries at least a day ahead) Please send all your entries by regular e-mail to: inform(a)ica-international.org with your entry as an attatchment. Send details of news items, training programmes, your peer to peer connections with other ICAs, any concerns you may have and of any events that are coming up at your location. Your report can be long or short, but remember that all other ICAs would really like to know about the things that matter where you are, and what you are doing as an ICA. Peter, for ICAI Communications Pour les entrées de rappel Ce rappel est à la Global Buzz qui sera publié le 5 Avril 2017 (Veuillez envoyer vos entrées au moins une journée à l'avance) Veuillez envoyer toutes vos entrées maintenant par courriel ordinaire à : inform(a)ica-international.org avec votre entrée comme un attatchment. Envoyer les détails des articles de nouvelles, des programmes de formation, vos connexions peer to peer avec d'autres CIAS, de toute préoccupation que vous pourriez avoir et de tous les événements qui sont à venir à votre emplacement. Votre rapport peut être longue ou courte, mais rappelez-vous que toutes les autres CIAS aimerait vraiment savoir à propos de choses qui importe où vous êtes et ce que vous faites comme une ICA. Recordatorio de las entradas Este aviso es para el Global Buzz que se publicarán 5 Abril 2017 (Favor de enviar sus entradas al menos con un día de antelación) Por favor envíe todos sus entradas ahora por correo electrónico a: inform(a)ica-international.org con su entrada como un archivo adjunto. Enviar detalles de noticias, programas de capacitación, el peer to peer las conexiones con otros convenios o acuerdos internacionales, las preocupaciones que usted pueda tener y de los eventos que se aproximan en su ubicación. El informe puede ser a corto o largo, pero hay que recordar que todos los demás convenios quisiera saber realmente sobre lo que realmente importa, y lo que están haciendo una ICA.

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Test email
by Jim & OliveAnn Slotta via OE 26 Mar '17

26 Mar '17

To: OE & Colleague list serves Quite a few days have gone by without our receiving emails from either list serve. It may simply be a period of inactivity or a problem with our Earthlink Account. Jim Slotta

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info re: Sheila McGuire
by Shelley Hahn via OE 12 Mar '17

12 Mar '17

Does anyone have any contact info for Sheila McGuire (O'Halloran)? I have recently been in touch with someone who was a volunteer translator/interpreter in Termine and Rome who would like to re-connect with Sheila, if possible. If you have any info, you can contact me off-list at shellhahn at gmail dot com. Thanks! Shelley Hahn

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