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4/20/2023, Progressing Spirit: Rev. Brandan Robertson: Becoming A Digital Evangelist: An Invitation For Progressive Christians; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 20 Apr '23

20 Apr '23

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screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv9831754402 #yiv9831754402templateBody .yiv9831754402mcnTextContent, #yiv9831754402 #yiv9831754402templateBody .yiv9831754402mcnTextContent p{font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv9831754402 #yiv9831754402templateFooter .yiv9831754402mcnTextContent, #yiv9831754402 #yiv9831754402templateFooter .yiv9831754402mcnTextContent p{font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;}} By Rev. Branan Robertson | | | | View this email in your browser | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Becoming A Digital Evangelist: An Invitation For Progressive Christians | | | | | | | | | | Essay by Rev. Brandan Robertson April 20, 2023 The following is an excerpt from “Building Your Digital Sanctuary” Edited by Brandan Robertson Progressive faith communities are rightfully skeptical of the language of “evangelism.” In modern history, the word has come to mean something like “forceful conversion” rather than a demonstration of and an invitation to the way of Jesus. The communities that have defined themselves by their commitment to evangelism have, more often than not, been communities that are also committed to launching a social and political crusade to institutionalize their beliefs and values, forcing entire nations to align with and conform to their worldview. This so-called evangelism would more accurately be called “colonialism.” However, progressives fear of being identified with those who stand on street corners screaming at passersby about their hell-bound fate has prevented us from heeding one of the central commands of Jesus- publicly inviting others to his new way of seeing and being. Of course, most of us do not believe that joining the Christian religion or believing certain doctrines is a prerequisite to receive God’s love or saving grace, but we should believe that the message we’ve devoted our lives to is worth sharing with others, right? By letting our fear of being identified with evangelicals drive our behavior, many mainline and progressive communities have forsaken any effort to actively invite others to consider the transformative message of the Gospel of Christ. I am a millennial, which means I’ve grown up in a digital world. I don’t remember a time before the internet or personal computers, and I have lived most of my life with a smartphone in my pocket and some version of social media at my disposal. This also means that as a committed Christian, I’ve often utilized the internet to share aspects of my faith with my friends and followers across the internet. Whether through blogging, making YouTube videos, hosting internet radio shows, podcasting, making memes, sharing on Facebook, or composing Tweets, I, like a vast majority of people of faith on the internet, have talked about my faith and in so doing, invited others to consider the Christian faith path. Since the age of twelve, when I began doing this, I’ve interacted with millions of people on the internet, engaging in robust conversations and debates, sharing deeply personal stories, and forming profound bounds around our shared faith journeys. As my faith has evolved, much of this content creation online has focused on helping people separate Jesus from the institutions that bear his name and discover a progressive, inclusive way of being a Christian. This was just a natural part of my engagement online- my faith was important to me, so I posted about it and often was given incredible opportunities to invite others to this path. I never considered this “evangelism,” though I’d argue it was. In the internet age, where our whole lives are lived as hybrid existences between the digital world and the “real world,” a growing number of us are sharing more of ourselves and are more vulnerable on social media, which is creating profound connections with strangers and giving us opportunities to share “the hope within us” (1 Peter 3:15), even as we offer critiques of corrupt political actions, retweet inspirational quotes, or post photos about beautiful moments of our lives. This is precisely what it means to “evangelize”- to embody good news to the world around us. Everyone is an Influencer In this digital age, every person is an evangelist (or, in modern vernacular, an “influencer”). Every person can reach hundreds of thousands of people every time they engage on social media. The question we must ask ourselves is, what are we evangelists for? A simple scroll through our feeds on any of our social networks will quickly reveal this answer- is it our political party? Fitness? Sports? Parenting? What kind of content are we posting and regularly interacting with? And is it in alignment with the faith we claim as our foundation and core identity? What I am not suggesting is that everyone should devote their social media to religious content from here on out - especially if that would be inauthentic to how you embody your faith. Rather, I am suggesting that progressive followers of Christ be mindful of the messages we are sharing and how we might inject a bit of hope into the cynical world we now live in, and how we might express our faith-rooted values as we engage in social media. This is something “evangelicals” have done very well for a long time- evangelical communities have been effectively using digital media since the early 2000s, live-streaming their services, creating robust social media content, and encouraging their communities to like, share, and create their own faith-rooted content. But the playing field has at last been leveled after the COVID-19 pandemic- virtually every person and community in the world is now connected to social media and has equal access to the billions of people who are on the internet around the world. Why would we not use this moment to articulate a progressive, inclusive faith that challenges the corrupt and diluted versions of Christianity that have been promulgated so loudly for so long? My TikTok Transformation My passion around using social media for evangelism really emerged at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 when I decided to download TikTok. With our church closed down, I found myself with some extra time on my hands and I had seen a number of my clergy friends posting fun little TikTok videos on Facebook and Instagram of them dancing in their collars or declaring God’s love for all with some trending song in the background. I figured I would jump on to see what all the hype was about. After I posted a few cringe-worthy videos of me dancing in my collar, I decided to begin an experiment where I would create 30-second videos where I would talk about progressive Christian theology- my true passion. My first video was a fly-by summary of why the Bible didn’t condemn LGBTQ+ people. Then I did one on why hell didn’t exist. I continued to make videos like this, and to my surprise, they began to rack up a ton of views- some of those early videos spiking to 20,000 views within a day or two, and my follower count began to grow rapidly- 5,000, 10,000, 50,000 and so on in the first few months. Then the comments and messages began flowing in - young people saying things like, “If I had a pastor like you growing up, I’d still be a Christian” and “You’re making me want to join the church again.” Again, I didn’t set out to convince people to become progressive Christians or join a church- but what became clear to me is that progressive, inclusive Christians have been really bad at letting others know we exist. My TikTok account became a gateway for hundreds of thousands of people to simply learn that there was another way to be a Christian- and many of those people had been yearning for such a way to be illuminated for them. As my account continued to grow towards 200,000 followers and the comments streamed in by the thousands each day, it became clear to me that I needed to create a place where all of these individuals who were discovering progressive Christianity for the first time on TikTok could come together and have more substantial conversations. One way I began to do this was to utilize TikTok’s “Live” feature (which is available to all accounts that have more than 1,000 followers), which allowed me to go live and chat with my followers in real-time, answering their questions and giving advice and guidance. Once a week, I would log on to TikTok and go live for about an hour- over the course of that hour, 1,500 people, on average, would listen in to my real-time conversation about theology and spirituality with those who had submitted questions. After seeing this response, I began to promote a weekly Zoom gathering for my followers where we could see each other face-to-face and do a Bible Study from a progressive perspective. Within a week of advertising this study, 750 people had registered, and on our first study, about 200 people showed up to participate. There were people from remote parts of the world who didn’t have a progressive church in their country who were so elated to be a part of a digital community, and young queer Christians whose families didn’t support them that were discovering that there were, in fact, Christians who loved them just as they were. Night after night, once the study concluded, I would sit in silence, often tearing up at the blessing of being able to share my understanding of the Christian faith with these diverse people from around the world and actually see it transforming their lives. After nearly four years of full-time parish ministry in a brick-and-mortar church, I, like many pastors, had begun to grow cynical about the faith and it’s ability to have any tangible impact on people’s lives or our world. Yet here, in the digital sanctuary created by this strange little social media app, I was getting to do real ministry that was healing thousands of people. I could have never imagined such an opportunity, nor did I ever think I would find a passion for “evangelism” again after leaving my conservative understanding of Christian faith. Yet here I was, an digital evangelist, being reminded that the good news of Jesus truly was “good news of great joy.” (Luke 2:10) Eventually, the impact of this digital evangelism helped me to step away from my brick-and-mortar church and devote myself to full-time digital ministry. I launched the Metanoia Community, which gathered folks from my TikTok on Zoom each week for Bible Study, prayer, and meditation, and opened a Discord secure chat room for them to stay in conversation throughout the week. Nearly every week, I met one-on-one with folks from around the world who needed pastoral care and guidance and also spent a good deal of time helping folks find inclusive churches in their geographical area that they could connect to. The opportunity of digital ministry became a full-time job for me, and in many ways, was more life-giving than any ministry I had ever engaged in before because of the ability to have direct contact with an immediate impact on hundreds or thousands of people in real-time. An Unprecedented Opportunity Since joining TikTok three years ago, I have witnessed dozens of other progressive Christian clergy and lay people step into digital evangelism, collectively reaching millions of people with a version of the Christian faith that truly gives people hope. The impact of an individual clergyperson or even layperson utilizing social media to share their faith cannot ever be accurately assessed, but what I can say for certain is that everyone who produces content online will reach, influence, and impact someone- whether you ever know it or not. In this emerging digital era, it is an act of negligence to ignore the opportunities we all have to share good news with a weary world through social media. The goal of course isn’t to convert people to our religion but to show people that there is a better way to orient our lives, a way that brings about a sense of purpose and that helps make the world a more just and beautiful place. This message- the true message of the gospel- is being drowned out by so many other messages that saturate social media spaces. We need as many people as possible to use their voices and perspective to create social media content that equips and inspires the seekers, cynical, and suspicious. It has never been easier to share our faith, expand our digital sanctuaries, and reach millions of people with hope and help for their lives. If we do not seize upon this opportunity, we can be certain that the end of our churches is imminent. The future of the church is a hybrid of a local community connecting to an international digital community, but in order to create such an extensive digital reach, we must be willing to step out into the digital dimension without fear, with creativity, and with commitment, to showing up as our full selves, with our unique perspective, and trusting that God will use our voice to reach all whom it needs to reach. Whether you realize it or not, if you’re on social media, you’re a digital evangelist- the question, again, is for what? May we rise to the challenge and opportunity of this moment together.~ Rev. Brandan Robertson Read online here About the Author Rev. Brandan Robertson is a noted spiritual thought-leader, contemplative activist, and commentator, working at the intersections of spirituality, sexuality, and social renewal and the author of Nomad: A Spirituality For Travelling Light and writes regularly for Patheos, Beliefnet, and The Huffington Post. He has published countless articles in respected outlets such as TIME, NBC, The Washington Post, Religion News Service, and Dallas Morning News. As sought out commentator of faith, culture, and public life, he is a regular contributor to national media outlets and has been interviewed by outlets such as MSNBC, NPR, SiriusXM, TIME Magazine, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Associated Press. He leads Metanoia, a digital spiritual community at MetanoiaCenter.org | | | | | | | | Question & Answer Q: By Peter The perfection of nature amazes me, while the imperfection of human beings continues to disappoint me. What will it take for humans to learn the lessons of Jesus - that love is the only way to guarantee the survival of the world and its inhabitants? A: By Rev. Matt Syrdal Great question Peter! Love is a great word. Love as a verb is active, dynamic, inclusive, relational, and vulnerable. I would love to move us away from understanding love as an abstract noun or simply a virtue or emotion toward an ecology of relatedness, like how the systems of the human body work together for life and growth and greater consciousness. Jesus’ love was not soft, and he was not a pushover. He demanded hard things of his disciples. He spoke fiery words to the elites, the upper castes of the Roman world. His love towards others was not sentimental or rescuing, but focused and deliberate. Some languages have dozens of words for love. Jesus spoke of four primary types of love, with the whole heart, soul, mind, and strength... that is with the centered presence of the heart connected to deep emotion and feeling, with the soul’s imaginative and visionary faculties, with the heart-centered intellect, and one’s erotic vitality put into decisive action. Jesus modeled this four-fold way of loving God from his own wholeness of being. The second command is like the first, “loving one’s neighbor as oneself.” We have all heard that in this command is also the injunction to love oneself. It is pretty hard to really love someone else if we don’t love ourselves. What we have not wondered more about is the question, “who is my neighbor?” Does my “neighbor” extend to the more than human world, not just the human species? And if so does my self-hood extend beyond to the world itself? Can I love the world as myself? What would happen if I did? Poet David Whyte gives my favorite definition of sin when he says, humans are “the one terrible part of creation privileged to refuse our flowering.” By this he means the dark-side of self-reflexive consciousness, that is, of choice, is that we have the freedom to choose death rather than life. We have the freedom to live unconsciously, or selfishly. It is not just individuals either. It is systems and structures we have created that are hardwired to reward selfish greed and exploitation of Earth itself. I don’t think it is not that we have not learned the lessons of Jesus, it’s that we value our own personal comfort and gain over the survival of the world, even beauty and life itself. We are choosing to refuse our flowering. But one thing must be clear, choice is not fate, until it becomes too late to choose. ~ Rev. Matt Syrdal Read and share online here About the Author Matthew Syrdal, M.Div., is a pastor in the Denver area, a visionary, founder of Church of Lost Walls, and co-founder of Seminary of the Wild. Matt has begun a new venture called Mythic Christ, a mystery school and podcast for awakening mythic imagination and ritual embodiment. Matt speaks at conferences and guides immersive nature-based experiences around the country and his mentoring and coaching practice as a certified Wild Mind nature-based human development guide through the Animas Valley Institute. His work weaves in myth, archetype, dreams, deep imagery, and ceremony in nature as a way for people to enter into conversation with the storied world of which they are a part. Matt’s passion is guiding others in discovering “treasure hidden in the field” of their deepest lives, cultivating deep wholeness and re-enchantment of the natural world to apprentice fully and dangerously to the kingdom of god. | | | | | | | | 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 us on Facebook! | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | As a non-profit ProgressiveChristianity.org/Progressing Spirit rely heavily on the good will of our donors to help us continue to bring individuals and churches the messages of progressive Christians, Weekly Newsletters, along with the many other resources we provide. For years, the majority of our fundraising came at the end of the year. Looking at various ways to create a more reasonable amount of cash flow we decided rather than having a BIG ask at the end of each year, our more frequent asks give folks a chance to contribute when their funds are more flexible. We think that's a win for everyone. We also want to highlight the opportunity to become a sustaining supporter. If you are looking for the best way to help us continue to provide progressive Christian resources, become a sustaining supporter by choosing Recurring Donation. Help keep ProgressiveChristianity.org online and going strong - click here to donate today! * Another way to support us is to leave a bequest in your Will and/or Trust designating us a beneficiary. | | | | | | | | | | | Don't miss the next Episode of PC.org's Executive Directors Mark and Caleb on: The Moonshine Jesus Show - every Monday at 4:30pm Eastern Time – watch live on Facebook,, YouTube, Twitter, Podbean | | | | | | | | | | | | This Week's Featured Author Rev. Roger Wolsey Discovering Fire: Spiritual Practices That Transform Lives Igniting a spiritual expansion that bridges religious and non-religious sensibilities, this is a deep and intimate dive into a profusion of spiritual practices. Promoting diversity, respect, and a deeper connection with the Divine, Roger explores the intersections of Christianity with shadow-work, dream work, the Enneagram, yoga, astrology, tarot cards, shamanism, ecstatic dance, psychedelic plants, and more. With passion, cultural sensitivity, grounding in tradition, and the heart of an explorer Roger offers a go-to guide for the 21st century seeker, be they religious, spiritual, or anywhere along the spectrum of that human experience of longing for healing encounters with the Mystery some call God. Read More ... | | | | | | | | | Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited Part XII Matthew: Matthew Introduces John the Baptist-The New Elijah Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong January 30, 2014Matthew has thus far mined the Hebrew Scriptures for texts that will advance his thesis that Jesus has fulfilled the Jewish messianic expectations. In the opening genealogy, he has made Jesus “the son of Abraham,” the son and heir of King David and portrayed him as one who with his people survived the Babylonian exile. Only then did he flesh out his story with the narrative of Jesus’ miraculous birth, based on a text from Isaiah. When he introduced Joseph into his story, he patterned him quite intentionally on Joseph the patriarch, whose story fills the chapters in Genesis between 37 and 50. Matthew’s Joseph serves to bring together the Hebrew nation, uniting finally the two sides that had split apart after the reign of Solomon. Every one of his Jewish readers knew that this was a major expectation of the promised messiah.The messiah had cosmic implications, so his birth was announced with a star, the light from which shone all over the world. It drew Gentiles in the persons of the magi, suggesting that messiah will not only heal the divisions among the Jews, but he will also bind Jew and Gentile together in a single human family. They would bring symbolic gifts: gold for a king, frankincense for a deity and myrrh, which presaged the fact that the messiah would accomplish his purpose through suffering and death. The story of the magi, we now know, was based on a text from Isaiah 60. Matthew was weaving an interpretive narrative around the one who would be called Jesus of Nazareth. Matthew then proceeded to tell a Moses story, designed to remind his readers that Jesus was a new and greater Moses. Like Moses, Jesus was not only God’s deliverer, but he was also one who would be called out of Egypt. Next Matthew quoted Jeremiah who had portrayed Rachel, the ancestral mother of the Northern Kingdom, as weeping for her children, who had been destroyed by the Assyrians in 721 BCE. After all of these preliminaries, Matthew has properly set the stage to introduce the pivotal character we know as John the Baptist who, for Matthew, would stand as the life upon whom the Old Covenant would be transformed into the New Covenant. By this point in our study of this gospel, we ought to be aware that Matthew is not a historian, eager to set the literal record straight; he is rather one who proclaims the good news that he has experienced in the person of Jesus. His task is to interpret the significance of the life of Jesus and he will bend the record and history wherever necessary to serve this interpretive purpose.There was, quite clearly, a historical, first century itinerant preacher named John, whose movement was symbolized by an act of baptism. This John of history is, however, not the person we meet in Matthew’s gospel. As we piece the fragments of the historical record together, we can see the shadows of the one called “the Baptist” begin to emerge. We share those shadows in this column in order to put Matthew’s story into a context.The John movement was both independent of the Jesus movement and connected with it. There is much historical evidence to support the fact that the two movements were competitive at the beginning. A reference in the book of Acts indicates that the John movement existed late into the first century quite independent of the Jesus movement. The fact that the earliest three gospels, Mark, Matthew and Luke tell the story of Jesus being baptized by John suggests that Jesus actually began his career as one of John’s disciples. Certainly some of Jesus’ first disciples appear to have been former disciples of the Baptist. The constant references in the gospels to the priority of Jesus over John reflects the discomfort that the followers of Jesus appeared to have that John came first in history and that Jesus built on John’s ministry. That is why Matthew and the other Christian writers spend so much energy in the scriptures trying to diminish John the Baptist. Matthew has John say things like: “I baptize you with water, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” Matthew, perhaps embarrassed by the fact that John actually baptized Jesus, has John say: “I have need to be baptized by you and you come to me?” Later writers will have John say, “He must increase, I must decrease.” Luke goes so far as to suggest that even the fetus of John the Baptist leapt in the womb of its mother Elizabeth to salute the fetus of Jesus, still in the womb of Mary. So it is interesting to watch how Matthew interprets John. He takes his cue from Mark, who in his opening verse says, “Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, who shall prepare the way.” That is a quotation from the book of the prophet Malachi (3:1). Malachi had been re-interpreted in the light of the Jesus experience. Malachi actually closes his book with the identification of that messenger as a forerunner of the messiah. The messianic tradition had assigned this role to Elijah. So Malachi wrote: “Behold, I will send you Elijah, the prophet, before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to the fathers.” In the messianic tradition of the Jews clearly an Elijah-like prophet would prepare the way for the messiah’s arrival. The followers of Jesus, probably between the writings of Paul (51-64) and the creation of the first gospel Mark (ca. 72), had decided that John the Baptist was in fact that “new Elijah.” This idea had been introduced in Mark, but now Matthew would take it over and develop it to a new intensity. It is fair to say, that in this gospel we do not really meet the historical John the Baptist, we meet the John of Christian interpretation. Yes, John came first, they were saying, but this does not mean that John was primary. His role, as far as the followers of Jesus were concerned, was clear: He was the forerunner not the principle figure. Matthew now proceeds to develop this character.John the Baptist is described by Matthew as one who came preaching in the wilderness of Judea. Every Jew knew that Elijah was a preacher in the wilderness. Matthew then moves to solidify this identification by giving to this wilderness preacher the message: “Prepare ye the way of the Lord.” To make sure that Matthew’s readers got his point, he clothed John with the clothing of Elijah. Elijah was described in I Kings (1:8) as one “wearing a garment of haircloth with a girdle of leather about his loins.” Matthew says of John the Baptist that he “wore a garment of camel’s hair and a leather girdle around his waist.” The identification is clear.Next, Matthew described John’s diet. It was the diet of the wilderness: locusts and wild honey. He then records John’s message to be like Elijah’s. John is quite confrontational. Elijah confronted King Ahab and his Queen Jezebel. John the Baptist will be portrayed as confronting King Herod and his Queen Herodias.The story of the ultimate confrontation between Elijah and the royal family of Ahab and Jezebel was told in the first book of Kings (18:17-46). It took place on top of Mt. Carmel in the Northern Kingdom. It took the form of a dramatic contest pitting Elijah alone against 450 prophets of Baal, who was the God of the Canaanites and the God worshipped by Jezebel. The contest was to determine whether Yahweh, Elijah’s God or Baal, Jezebel’s God, could bring fire from heaven to burn up the sacrifice that each side had prepared and laid on their respective altars. The prophets of Baal were invited to go first, so 450 prophets of Baal came out praying, singing, dancing and cajoling their God to send fire from heaven upon their erected altar. This went on for quite a time while Elijah taunted them from the sidelines, urging them to cry louder, suggesting that perhaps Baal was asleep. When their efforts proved futile and their time was up, and no response from Baal had been forthcoming, it was finally Elijah’s turn. According to the biblical narrative, Elijah stepped forward in the style of a great showman. First, he erected his altar using twelve stones, one for each of the twelve tribes of Israel. Next, he laid his wood on his altar before placing the sacrificed animal on the wood. Then he built a trench around the altar and followed this by his ordering four cisterns of water to be filled and then poured over his altar. This procedure was repeated three times until the altar, the wood and the sacrificed animal were soaked and even the trench around the altar was overflowing with water. Only then did Elijah pray for God to answer with fire from heaven that would be of such strength that it would consume the offering. According to this story, the fire of God fell from heaven immediately and consumed the offering, licking up the water in the trench. Vindicated, Elijah then turned on the 450 prophets of Baal and beheaded them on the spot with his sword. It must have been a gory sight! When Queen Jezebel heard of this, she uttered this vow about Elijah: “So may the gods do to me and more also if I do not make your life like the lives of one of them (the prophets of Baal) by this time tomorrow.” Elijah, hearing this treat fled and so these solemn words uttered by the queen were left unfulfilled. Eventually, the sacred story tells us Elijah escaped death altogether by being transported into the presence of God in a fiery chariot drawn by fiery horses.The Christian tradition now asserted that Jezebel’s solemn vow had finally been fulfilled on John the Baptist, who died the death vowed for Elijah. John was beheaded with a sword on the orders of Herodias, the new Jezebel. His identification with Elijah was now complete. We are not reading history; we are reading interpretive writing by Jewish followers of Jesus, who are reading the Hebrew Scriptures in such a way that they seem to find their fulfillment in Jesus. To literalize these stories would have been nothing short of nonsense to this gospel writer.Christian scholars are not modern people seeking to destroy the scriptures by declaring them not to be literal history, they are rather people who are discovering the original meaning of the gospels themselves, a meaning that was lost when Christianity became a totally Gentile movement. Biblical literalism is nothing more than Gentile ignorance. We turn next week to the baptism of Jesus. It is a new Red Sea experience.~ John Shelby Spong | | | | | | | | Announcements Futures We Inherit: A Conversation with Larry Rasmussen Join us for an earth-day-dialogue with renowned Christian social ethicist and Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics (emeritus) at Union Theological Seminary, Larry Rasmussen. April 21, 2023 - 3:30-4:30pm EDT - Yale University READ ON ... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

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4/13/2023, Progressing Spirit: Rev. David M. Felten: Retiring Atonement (preferably with extreme prejudice); Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 13 Apr '23

13 Apr '23

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David M. Felten | | | | View this email in your browser | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Retiring Atonement (preferably with extreme prejudice) | | | | | | | | | | Essay by Rev. David M. Felten April 13, 2023 Well, Christians around the world have managed to endure yet another Good Friday. And who doesn’t love the obligatory wallowing in guilt at the hands of an institution hell-bent on controlling its constituents through psychological manipulation and shame, right? Let’s be honest. Christianity has an atonement problem. “Atonement” is the theological concept of the healing of the once-estranged relationship between God and humanity through the “work” of Jesus (not his life and ministry, but his self-sacrificing death). Unfortunately, popular understandings of atonement encourage self-loathing, portray God as a blood-thirsty tyrant, and glorify brutal violence as a legitimate means by which to resolve problems. With roots in the barbaric pre-historic practices of blood-sacrifice, atonement’s heritage can be traced through the ancient Jewish cultic Temple system and on to eventually be misinterpreted by Paul, the authors of the gospels, the book of Hebrews, and other unhelpful theologians. Add to that Augustine’s made-up guilt-soaked pass-the-buck concept of Original Sin and Anselm’s 12th-century foray into “fixing” previous atonement theories and the cavalcade of explanations go from inadequate to contemptible to worthless. Plus, our tradition’s mishmash of atonement hypotheses effectively misdirects people’s attention away from what Jesus was really on about - his teachings and example. Think about it. Christianity is the only major religion in the world where many adherents are perfectly happy to virtually ignore the life of their founder in favor of the so-called “cosmic event” that occurred at his death. In fact, Christianity is the only major religion where many followers believe the death of their founder is more important than his life. The deaths of the Buddha or Muhammad or Confucius or Zoroaster are all remembered with solemnity and noted as a great loss. But the focus today is on their LIVES, not their deaths. Sadly, many Christians believe that all of Jesus’ life, ministry, and teachings turn out to be secondary to one thing: me! (well, and you, too). We’re such horrible people and God is such a blood-thirsty vengeful tyrant that Jesus needed to die in our place to satiate God’s demand for blood. Just pray the sinner’s prayer and you’re on a rocket-sled to heaven to spend eternity strumming a golden harp with Jesus. Individual salvation is the whole point for most Christians. Everybody else can (literally!) go to hell. So yes, ditching the traditional ideas of atonement is a major challenge to the core of conventional Christian theology. But we have to take a stand against this primitive, outdated, and harmful betrayal of Jesus’ teachings. As Jack Spong urged for years, “We have to do Christology all over again.” Consider the Vacation Bible School a few years ago at a large United Methodist church near me. The staff decided they had to nix an entire day of the published curriculum. Why? Because it was on Substitutionary Atonement. If taught, the whole day would have been dedicated to telling the children, “You’re a 3rd grader and you’re so evil, Jesus had to die a horrible, painful death to save you from the wrath of a scary, angry God.” That claim is not only manipulative but emotionally and spiritually abusive — and it’s also the primary message the church delivers every day to children and adults alike. How did we get here? First off, the Bible is totally the problem. What it has to say about atonement is what my Aussie friends would call a “dog’s breakfast.” All by himself, Paul’s efforts are an absolute train wreck. While he claims it was all about “Adam being disobedient and Christ being obedient” (all sinners then, all righteous now), the mechanics he offers on how any of it is accomplished is a befuddling chaos of metaphors (expiation through sacrifice, ransom from captivity, redemption from slavery, victory in warfare) very few of which mean ANYTHING to most anyone today. Who expiates anymore?!? *sigh* Over the years, Paul’s conflicting suggestions blended with the Gospels’ inconsistent takes, Hebrews’ Temple-centric imagery, and later theologians to leave a lot of room for multiple theories to emerge. Here’s a painfully brief (and totally inadequate) overview of the biggies: Satisfaction Theory: Derived from ancient Jewish ritual practices (including the Day of Atonement) where animals were sacrificed to satisfy God’s need for blood. Jesus becomes the ultimate sacrifice to appease this God who is so offended by human sin that only the spilling of his own son’s blood will bring satisfaction. Incidentally, Canaanite religions were not the only ones to sacrifice their children to appease Baal and other gods. There are a number of Biblical examples of Judean kings and leaders who also ritually sacrificed their children, much to Yahweh’s displeasure. Substitution Theory: The death of Jesus is NOT a sacrifice, but a pay-off to God. Human beings are so sinful that each of us deserves a horrible, lingering and bloody death sentence. However, Jesus loves us so much that he was willing to step in and be our substitute. God would just as soon kill us for our sins, but the slaughter of the innocent satiates the divine’s blood lust. Ransom Theory: If through sin, humanity is now stuck in and operating on the Devil’s “turf,” God had to pay off Satan in order to win our freedom. How? By paying with Jesus’ death. Victory Theory: NOT a payment to the devil (which is the equivalent of giving in to terrorists), but a defeat-in-principle of the power of evil. Through Jesus’ “obedience unto death,” he showed he could take anything that the devil could dish out. Moral Theory: The real point of Jesus’ obedience and death was to provide an example for humanity to follow: to stay faithful to one’s convictions even in the face of injustice, brutality, and ignorance. Did you notice? These theories offer VASTLY different “cosmic” dynamics: The first two are directed toward God by appeasing or compensating God for humanity’s trespasses. The second two are aimed at Satan and mark the end of “demonic control” through two diametrically opposed methods (did God “pay off” or “punch out” the Devil?). Only the last “moral” theory suggests atonement as a change of disposition of humanity (not of God or Satan). Overall, the Satisfaction/Substitution Theories have tended to be the most popular. They’re reflected in Campus Crusade’s “Four Spiritual Laws,” the Roman Catholic’s sacrifice of the Lamb of God on the altar, and in the hymns of American Protestantism (“There is a Fountain Filled with Blood,” “Are You Washed in the Blood of the Lamb?” and “What Can Wash Away My Sins? Nothing But the Blood of Jesus.”) The Moral theory has been the least popular among orthodox theologians because it suggests that, if humanity needed only an example to follow, humanity must not have been so sinful after all. I’m still recovering from the ideological pandemonium of the church of my youth and am relieved to know that the lack of any uniform understanding of what has come to be called Jesus’ “saving work” is due to an unclear Biblical witness, centuries of theological wranglings, and a mishmash of imagery in each of our own religious upbringings. I’m also reassured to know that calling prevailing ideas of atonement into question is nothing new. Even in the 12th Century, French theologian Peter Abelard (1079-1142 CE) wrote: “Christ died neither because a ransom had to be paid to the devil, nor because the blood of an innocent victim was needed to appease the wrath of God, but that a supreme exhibition of love may kindle a corresponding love in the hearts of [humanity] and inspire them with the true freedom of [children] of God.” Ahhhhh! Jesus died as “a supreme exhibition of love!” Now we’re talking. Whatever the crucifixion comes to mean going forward, it makes so much more sense for the 21st century being about love and integrity — not suffering, substitution, satisfaction and all the other archaic explanations. Jesus didn’t die in some cosmic pay-off to an angry God or anthropomorphic Satan. He died as a result of the normal operating procedure of fearful, unjust, oppressive, and insecure human beings. And he did so in “a supreme exhibition of love” in order to “kindle a corresponding love” in OUR hearts. Diana Butler Bass has suggested that a major advantage of breaking our addiction to the old school atonement theories is that we can start to see how the teachings of Jesus brings a person to be “at one” (an at-one-ment) with the Divine so we can then live the way that God intended and the way that Jesus taught. Being faithful to convictions like non-violence, justice, and the needs of the poor and the downtrodden are ways to take atonement out of arcane theological categories and make it real in the world. So, if you look forward every year to being told that you’re a horrible worm, unworthy of living, and that you deserve a horrible death (that Jesus suffers in your place on Good Friday), go ahead. But may your tribe decrease. As for me and my house, we have some heavy lifting to do: We need to reject the anti-Semitism rife in our Holy Week stories. We need to repudiate a God modeled on a blood-thirsty Middle-Eastern potentate demanding blood sacrifice for made-up doctrines like Original Sin. And regardless of what the Fundamentalists and most of the rest of the church says, we need to “kindle a corresponding love” and retire our toxic and obsolete atonement schemes. No pressure.~ Rev. David M. Felten Read online here About the Author Rev. David M. Felten is a full-time pastor at The Fountains, a United Methodist Church in Fountain Hills, Arizona. David and fellow United Methodist Pastor, Jeff Procter-Murphy, are the creators of the DVD-based discussion series for Progressive Christians, “Living the Questions” and authors of Living the Questions: The Wisdom of Progressive Christianity. A co-founder of Catalyst Arizona and also a founding member of No Longer Silent: Clergy for Justice, David is an outspoken voice for LGBTQ rights both in the church and in the community at large. David is active in the Desert Southwest Conference of the United Methodist Church and tries to stay connected to his roots as a musician. You’ll find him playing saxophones in a variety of settings, including appearances with the Fountain Hills Saxophone Quartet. David is the proud father of three reliably remarkable human beings. Visit his website here. | | | | | | | | Question & Answer Q: By A Reader Why do some churches have difficulty fully embracing LGBTQ+ people of faith? A: By Rev. Irene Monroe Dear Reader,LGBTQ+ people of faith love Jesus as much as straight people, and we are not children of a lesser God. Churches' unwelcoming of us as part of the body of Christ is a pox on the universal message of hospitality to all people. The homo/transphobic spewings from pulpits as the word of God is deleterious to the LGBTQ+ worshipping communities on many levels, contributing to violence, anti- LGBTQ+ legislation, suicide, and homelessness, to name a few. As a child of the Black Church, I commonly heard the message about LGBTQ+ people, like myself, that Christians are to "love the sinner but hate the sin." I depict this statement as a condescending and theological qualifier that says to love the "sinner" (us) but to hate the "sin" (our sexual orientation). Our connections and contributions to the larger black religious cosmos are desecrated every time homo/transphobic pronouncements go unchecked in these holy places of worship. While the Black Church will argue that it stands on the literal "word of God" and therefore has justification to erect its homo/transphobic stance based on biblical passages, the church's argument about the "authority of Scripture" doesn't hold weight because historically the Black Church literally discarded all damning and damaging racial references. For example, the Curse of Ham (Genesis 9:18-27) and Apostle Paul's edict to enslaved people (Ephesians 6:5-8) served as the scientific and Christian legitimation for enslaving people of African ancestry. Another reason some black churches demonize members of the LGBTQ+ community is that they do not accept sexual orientation as a civil rights minority group. Many still think the comparison between the struggle for LGBTQ+ rights and black civil rights is, at best, "a stretch," and at worst, the white LGBTQ+ community "pimping" the history of black racial suffering to push a "homosexual" agenda to gain "special rights." Also, because of the persistent nature of racism in the lives of African Americans and the relatively small gains accomplished supposedly on behalf of racial equality, many African Americans see civil rights gains have come faster for white LGBTQ+ middle to upper-class Americans in several decades - from the Stonewall Riots of 1969 to the legalization of same-sex marriage - than it has for them in a lifetime. Every church, however, has its way of making LGBTQ+ people feel unwelcome. Last month, Pope Francis told the Associated Press, during an exclusive interview, that "homosexuality is not a crime. It's a sin." The pontiff statement hurts the global LGBTQ+ community by calling homosexuality a sin, although the goal was to create a movement to decriminalize homosexuality. Nearly 70 countries have criminalized their LGBTQ+ populations. Another example was in 2021, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican's orthodoxy office, issued a formal statement instructing its priests not to offer blessings to same-sex couples. The church's reason: God cannot bless sin. To the shock of LGBTQ+ Catholics and allies globally, Pope Francis approved the decree. His approval of the decree was a betrayal despite the many liberal-leaning LGBTQ+ optimistic pronouncements heard during his papacy. However, Francis stating that "Homosexuality is a sin" leaves in place his characterization and the church's belief of us as being "intrinsically disordered" and contrary to natural law. Being LGBTQ+ is not a crime. Being LGBTQ+ is not a sin. However, the church's stance about us is a sin upon itself and a crime against humanity. These churches do not embrace the world — as it is today — from an engaged and committed stance that does justice. ~ Rev. Irene Monroe Read and share online here About the Author Rev. Irene Monroe does a weekly Monday segment, “All Revved Up!” on NPR's WGBH (89.7 FM). She is a weekly Friday commentator on New England Channel NEWS. Monroe is the Boston voice for Detour’s African American Heritage Trail, Guided Walking Tour of Beacon Hill: Boston’s Black Women Abolitionists. A Huffington Post blogger and a syndicated religion columnist, her columns appear in the Boston LGBTQ newspaper Baywindows, Cambridge Chronicle, and the Boston Globe. Monroe states her “columns are an interdisciplinary approach drawing on critical race theory, African American, queer and religious studies. As a religion columnist, I try to inform the public of religion’s role in discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people.” Her papers are at the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College’s research library on the history of women in America. Click here to visit her website. | | | | | | | | 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 us on Facebook! | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | As a non-profit ProgressiveChristianity.org/Progressing Spirit rely heavily on the good will of our donors to help us continue to bring individuals and churches the messages of progressive Christians, Weekly Newsletters, along with the many other resources we provide. For years, the majority of our fundraising came at the end of the year. Looking at various ways to create a more reasonable amount of cash flow we decided rather than having a BIG ask at the end of each year, our more frequent asks give folks a chance to contribute when their funds are more flexible. We think that's a win for everyone. We also want to highlight the opportunity to become a sustaining supporter. If you are looking for the best way to help us continue to provide progressive Christian resources, become a sustaining supporter by choosing Recurring Donation. Help keep ProgressiveChristianity.org online and going strong - click here to donate today! * Another way to support us is to leave a bequest in your Will and/or Trust designating us a beneficiary. | | | | | | | | | | | Don't miss the next Episode of PC.org's Executive Directors Mark and Caleb on: The Moonshine Jesus Show - every Monday at 4:30pm Eastern Time – watch live on Facebook,, YouTube, Twitter, Podbean | | | | | | | | | | | | This Week's Featured Author Rev. Roger Wolsey Discovering Fire: Spiritual Practices That Transform Lives Igniting a spiritual expansion that bridges religious and non-religious sensibilities, this is a deep and intimate dive into a profusion of spiritual practices. Promoting diversity, respect, and a deeper connection with the Divine, Roger explores the intersections of Christianity with shadow-work, dream work, the Enneagram, yoga, astrology, tarot cards, shamanism, ecstatic dance, psychedelic plants, and more. With passion, cultural sensitivity, grounding in tradition, and the heart of an explorer Roger offers a go-to guide for the 21st century seeker, be they religious, spiritual, or anywhere along the spectrum of that human experience of longing for healing encounters with the Mystery some call God. Read More ... | | | | | | | | | Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited Part XI Matthew: Proof Texting the Birth Narratives Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong January 16, 2014Matthew never allows us to forget that he is a learned scribe in charge of a synagogue made up of Jewish people who are the followers of Jesus. He is writing at a time in history when a battle is being waged for the soul of Judaism. The issues were clear in his mind. Will Judaism turn in his direction and incorporate Jesus into the ongoing Jewish story, just as Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea and Amos had been incorporated in the past? Would Judaism be able to see and to admit what was so clear to Matthew, namely that Jesus fulfilled the prophets and met all of the concepts of messiah that had long intrigued the Jewish people? In the mind of Matthew the alternative to his proposal was to go in the direction represented by the Pharisees who, at that moment in Jewish history, were the dominant school of thought in Judaism. The primary emphasis of the Pharisees was first to recover the meaning and the power of the Torah by reinterpreting it in a more open direction, and then to install that newly cast Torah, as the central meaning of Judaism. The Pharisees were not eager, however, to incorporate Jesus into their future because he appeared to them to minimize the centrality of the Law. The tension between these two Jewish groups, the Pharisees on one hand and the followers of Jesus on the other, was palpable. One catches a glimpse of the depth of this mutual hostility when one reads what Matthew has to say about the Pharisees. These were the things operating in Matthew’s mind when he completed his story of Jesus’ birth prior to turning to his narrative of the adult Jesus. In this final column on Matthew’s birth narrative we look at what are the striking, recurring and dominant themes of what this author believes are the messianic claims for Jesus. Every episode in his groundbreaking birth narrative was written to demonstrate that Jesus’ entry into human history was both planned and executed “in accordance with the scriptures.” Today we conclude this first unit by looking at Matthew’s key argument, namely that the entire sacred history of the Jews pointed directly to the life of Jesus. Matthew was not a fundamentalist, but, he was both a convinced follower of Jesus and an avid student of the Jewish scriptures. In his gospel’s introductory narrative on Jesus’ birth he revealed how he was using these scriptures to document his thesis. By our standards of scholarship, the texts he employed do not come close to saying what he claimed that they said, but studies in first century Judaism help us to understand the mind of Matthew. So our task is to enter his mind and to embrace the way it operated. In the first section of the birth narrative Matthew chose a text from Isaiah (7:14) on which to build his story of the virgin birth. Next he used a text from Micah to assert a Bethlehem birth place for Jesus. Then he picked a text from Jeremiah to explain the murder of the boy babies of Bethlehem by King Herod. He followed this with a text he plucked from Hosea on which to hang his account of Joseph, Mary and the Christ Child fleeing to Egypt to escape Herod’s wrath. Finally, he quoted a text, the source of which we cannot locate in the Bible, through which to explain how it was that Jesus happened to have been raised in the Galilean town of Nazareth. None of these texts, we can safely assert, had been originally written to be prophesies anticipating the birth of the messiah. All of them were rather narratives through which Matthew tried to show that all of Jewish scripture ultimately found its fulfillment in Jesus. To treat any of those verses as if they had been written as predictions that Jesus had to fulfill is patently absurd. To stand where Matthew stood and to believe that all Jewish messianic hopes found their completion in Jesus required of him only a masterful and impressive ability to create a memorable story. To understand how he used scripture, one needs only to step away from our modern notions regarding fundamentalism by which the Jewish scriptures have been so deeply violated and read them from a very different perspective. In the words that have almost become a regular theme in this series we must proceed to free the Jewish scriptures from what I have called their “Gentile Captivity.” Let me try now to put these verses into the context of Matthew’s mind. First, we need to understand the historical context in which this gospel was composed. The Jewish nation was in dire distress. A war against the Romans had begun in Galilee by a group of Jews called “the Zealots” in the year 66 CE. This war, which had been encouraged by the Sadducees and the Temple authorities, ended in the tragedy of total defeat at a place called Masada in the year 73. In the middle of that war, namely in the year 70, Roman legions had conquered Jerusalem, destroyed the Temple, banished the Sadducees and the Temple priesthood and began a massive suppression of all things Jewish that would last well beyond the time that Matthew’s gospel was written. The Sadducees had been replaced by the Pharisees as the group that controlled the destiny of carrying Judaism into a Jewish future. Matthew countered their claim with the Jesus movement, which, he believed, was the only possibility of guaranteeing a Jewish future. Matthew’s vision was, however, of a far more universal religion than most Jews, and especially the Pharisees, could then imagine. To build his case, Matthew looked at the scriptures of his people in new ways. In Isaiah he found a scriptural justification to use for the supernatural birth, which he planned to describe. This birth was of God not of humanity, he argued. The Holy Spirit, not a human being, has fathered this child. This birth had nothing to do with biology. It was in his Jewish mind, the second great act of creation. In the book of Genesis the Holy Spirit had hovered over the original chaos in order to bring forth the gift of life in the first great act of creation. So now he quoted an Isaiah text that seems to him to make the claim that the Holy Spirit hovered over the womb of a virgin named Mary to bring about this new act of creation. It was in fact a huge literal stretch, but Matthew was willing to make that stretch, unaware perhaps that the word “virgin” never appeared in this Isaiah text in the Hebrew language in which this text was originally written. Another claim made by the Jews for their messiah was that he must be heir to the throne of David. Paul had first made this claim in his epistle to the Romans (1:1-4) written about the year 58, or 15-20 years before Matthew would incorporate that claim into his story by giving Jesus a Bethlehem birth place. Bethlehem was the city of David’s birth and for Jesus to be born there would solidify his messianic credentials. Micah, an 8th century BCE prophet, had written that the messiah must replicate David’s life. Being born in David’s city was just one part of that. In the power of Matthew’s writing style Jesus’ Bethlehem birth place became part of his story. In Matthew’s creation of Joseph, the author leaned on the Genesis narrative of the first Joseph in order to tell the story of his Joseph. Since Joseph the patriarch had saved the covenant people from death by taking them down to Egypt, so Matthew’s Joseph must also save the messiah from death by taking him down to Egypt. Then Matthew remembered that the messiah must also relive the history of the Jewish people whom God had long ago called out of Egypt. So without apology he quoted Hosea, who was talking about the Exodus, but Matthew applied it to Jesus as one more sign of messianic fulfillment: “Out of Egypt” God must call God’s “son.” Having borrowed his story from the Moses cycle in Exodus about the Pharaoh trying to destroy Moses, God’s promised deliverer, in his infancy, so Matthew now moved to replicate it in the life of Jesus. Reflecting the gift in Matthew’s quill, Herod became the new Pharaoh and sought to destroy God’s promised deliverer by killing all the boy babies in Bethlehem. The new Moses escaped, but the dastardly deed was done. Matthew then likened that experience to the destruction of the Jewish people at the hands of the Assyrians. The maternal ancestor of the Northern Kingdom was Rachel, the wife of Jacob and thus the mother of Joseph. So Matthew now quoted Jeremiah portraying Rachel as mourning for her children who “were not” for the Assyrian conquest had destroyed them. This then opened him to develop another messianic claim. Messiah must heal the historic Jewish division between the Joseph tribes of the North and the Judah tribe of the South. Only then would the tears of Rachel be washed away. Matthew did that by making Joseph the protector of the heir to Judah’s King David. Matthew then made another bold leap, but this time into messianic fantasy. He was aware that Jesus was a citizen of the town of Nazareth and thus a Galilean. In his development of the birth tradition he had maintained that Joseph, Mary and the Christ Child resided in a house in Bethlehem, about six miles from Jerusalem. To uphold his Nazareth and Galilean origins, he now sought a text to help him move Jesus from his place of birth in Bethlehem to Nazareth where Matthew understood that he had grown up. So he quoted an unknown prophet who said: “He (the messiah) will be called a Nazarene.” The only problem with this text was that no prophets that we know of ever said that. We are left to speculate. Did Matthew get it out of the Samson story where Samson was called a “Nazirite,” that is one who lived under vows not to drink wine or to cut one’s hair? That kind of Nazirite, however, had nothing to do with growing up in Nazareth. Or did Matthew find this crucial text in another quote from Isaiah that said: Out of the “root of Jesse,” the messiah will come. The Hebrew word for root is naser or nazir. We will never know. This text in Matthew’s birth narrative only reveals his eagerness to find in Jesus the fulfillment of all of the prophetic expectations. On that note, the first birth narrative of Jesus concludes and for the first time in Matthew’s gospel, the adult Jesus began to come into view. He is introduced by a figure we call John the Baptist. To his story we will turn when this series resumes.~ John Shelby Spong | | | | | | | | Announcements Awakening Mythic Imagination: Eco-Depth YearlongThis is an advanced yearlong course and will conclude with a summer “practicum” with an optional multi-day on-land nature immersion. Participants will have guided and supported space to develop specific capacities and hone your own facilitation skills to deepen your own wild soul work, and leadership in your specific context and call. Starting September 1st 2023 - Online and In-person READ ON ... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

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JUST A REMINDER: 4/20/2023 You are invited! Eco film night: Living the Change; info; link to registration
by Ellie Stock 10 Apr '23

10 Apr '23

JUST A REMINDER . . . ECO FILM THURSDAY NIGHT . . . Dear Friends, YOU ARE INVITED! SAVE THE DATE. The Ferguson Eco Team will be hosting its final environmental film for this season: LIVING THE CHANGE, Inspiring Stories for a Sustainable Future, via ZOOM, Thursday, April 20, 7:00 PM Central Time. Film length 1 hour, 26 minutes; conversation to follow. TO REGISTER FOR ZOOM LINK: https://bit.ly/FET20Apr2023 Also see attached flyer. Please share with your friends. LIVING THE CHANGE is a feature-length documentary that explores solutions to the global crises we face today – solutions any one of us can be part of – through the inspiring stories of people pioneering change in their own lives and in their communities in order to live in a sustainable and regenerative way.Directors Jordan Osmond and Antoinette Wilson have brought together stories from their travels, along with interviews with experts able to explain how we come to be where we are today. From forest gardens to composting toilets, community supported agriculture to timebanking, Living the Change offers ways we can rethink our approach to how we live.Conversation to follow the film TO REGISTER FOR ZOOM LINK: https://bit.ly/FET20Apr2023 For more information: (314) 521-8418, carletonstock(a)aol.com #yiv6137947484 filtered {}#yiv6137947484 filtered {}#yiv6137947484 filtered {}#yiv6137947484 p.yiv6137947484MsoNormal, #yiv6137947484 li.yiv6137947484MsoNormal, #yiv6137947484 div.yiv6137947484MsoNormal {margin:0in;font-size:11.0pt;font-family:sans-serif;}#yiv6137947484 a:link, #yiv6137947484 span.yiv6137947484MsoHyperlink {color:blue;text-decoration:underline;}#yiv6137947484 span.yiv6137947484EmailStyle20 {font-family:sans-serif;color:windowtext;}#yiv6137947484 .yiv6137947484MsoChpDefault {font-family:sans-serif;}#yiv6137947484 filtered {}#yiv6137947484 div.yiv6137947484WordSection1 {}

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4/10/23 PHOTOS—B½ OF ARCHIVE PROJECT
by Frank Knutson 10 Apr '23

10 Apr '23

Every human heartbeat is a universe of possibilities.

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4/8/23 PHOTOS—B½ OF ARCHIVE PROJECT
by Frank Knutson 08 Apr '23

08 Apr '23

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4/06/2023, Progressing Spirit: Rev Matt Syrdal: Conversation Therapy; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 08 Apr '23

08 Apr '23

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and (max-width:480px){#yiv7560758419 h4{font-size:16px !important;line-height:150% !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv7560758419 .yiv7560758419mcnBoxedTextContentContainer .yiv7560758419mcnTextContent, #yiv7560758419 .yiv7560758419mcnBoxedTextContentContainer .yiv7560758419mcnTextContent p{font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv7560758419 #yiv7560758419templatePreheader{display:block !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv7560758419 #yiv7560758419templatePreheader .yiv7560758419mcnTextContent, #yiv7560758419 #yiv7560758419templatePreheader .yiv7560758419mcnTextContent p{font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv7560758419 #yiv7560758419templateHeader .yiv7560758419mcnTextContent, #yiv7560758419 #yiv7560758419templateHeader .yiv7560758419mcnTextContent p{font-size:16px !important;line-height:150% !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv7560758419 #yiv7560758419templateBody .yiv7560758419mcnTextContent, #yiv7560758419 #yiv7560758419templateBody .yiv7560758419mcnTextContent p{font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv7560758419 #yiv7560758419templateFooter .yiv7560758419mcnTextContent, #yiv7560758419 #yiv7560758419templateFooter .yiv7560758419mcnTextContent p{font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;}} By Rev. Matt Syrdal | | | | View this email in your browser | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Conversation Therapy | | | | | | | | | | Essay by Rev. Matt Syrdal April 6, 2023 I have been thinking about the nature of language recently and its relationship to both consciousness and culture. This season of Lent, one of the things I decided to fast from was listening to public radio. My “experiment,” if I can call it that, has been what happens when I am selective and intentional about what I choose to listen to? Call it curiosity. I wanted to know, does language matter? More importantly, does our understanding of what language really is matter?The origins of our alphabet and the written word can be traced back to the birth of oral language rooted in the phenomenological ground of the nature and consciousness. Even our contemporary word “text,” which has been lifted from the page and digitized by the screen, comes from the Latin textus, meaning “texture” in the old sense of the weave patterned into cloth. In this sense, even the land is a “text” in the sense of textured sounds, scents, beings and intelligences—worlds interweaving worlds.Our written language itself is comprised of glyphs, primordial visual symbols of animals and landforms from oral Earth-based cultures. David Abram in The Spell of the Sensuous writes persuasively of the phenomenological origins of language (including the written word) co-arising within the context of human relationship to the land over the span of millennia. Arising in a polymorphic conversation of textures and senses, sounds and movements, animals, landforms, shapes that took on the forms of human vocalic sounds, and eventually abstract glyphs that adorned rocks and cave walls.The basic idea is that all phenomena, all sensations and experiences, all consciousness — whether human or more than human — all language, culture, and religion, co-arise in conversation with the whole, not from one individual part. The Whole is the great unseen weave, the context, the texture… the text.It has been said that words make worlds. And if this is true, that what we say and how we say it matters. If this is true, language is sacred. For in its origins language would be the Self-expression, not just of the human species—but of the world itself.John’s prologue to his mystical gospel opens with “In the beginning was the Word.” Not only do words make worlds, then, but the World makes words. “In the beginning was the Speaking,” is closer to the original Latin translation of Logos, that was Sermo before it was replaced for theological and political reasons by Verbum, which came to dominate Christian theology according to a fascinating journal article from Vigiliae Christianae in 1977 titled, “Sermo: Reopening the Conversation on Translating Jn 1,1” by Marjorie O’ Rourke. It is worth the read. She opens with, “In the beginning was the conversation, not the word.”Conversation. The ancestry of this word comes through the Latin, weaving up through the Old French meaning, “living among,” also “familiarity,” and “intimacy.” In other words “conversation” communicates a deep sense of kin-ship, of likeness but difference. If you wanted to break it down into con or com which means “together” and versare, which means “to turn,” you start to grasp an intentional “turning together,” a weaving together into or toward something greater.It seems to me that we are on the cusp of a massive tectonic revolution in worldview in the Western world — what American physicist and philosopher Thomas Kuhn called a “paradigm shift.” We see an interdisciplinary paradigm shift happening across diverse fields of science from biology to cosmology and philosophy, from psychology to theology. A new understanding of intelligence and communication is becoming evidenced at all levels of existence, from the microcosm to the macrocosm. Like trees in the forest communicating in their own language through roots and mycelial networks like the nervous system of the human body, we are beginning to develop a systems understanding of identity, and an ecological view of “selfhood”. What I believe is happening in Western culture today is a shift from a “conversion worldview” to a “conversational worldview”. Let me try to explain.“Conversion” is a four-letter word in some circles and rightly so. Funny, it is only two letters removed from a “conversation.” Apparently two little letters can make all the difference. Conversio originally means “turned about.” It comes from epistrepho in the gospels, “to turn” as of a person turning under their own volition and agency back toward God. In the healthy meaning of the word conversion, God, the great Mystery, is the Reality at the center of life that we turn towards. We all need a true conversion of the heart and life in this sense. In English the term became specialized and binary in its religious usage with the sense of the “turning of sinners to God.” Interestingly, in the field of advertising and marketing today the word conversion refers to an online advertising performance metric representing a visitor performing whatever the intended result of an ad is defined to be. If I as a company can get you to buy what I am selling, that is called a conversion.When we make the self the center, our particular beliefs, our western worldview, our church or doctrine, conversion becomes about shaping others into our own image. It is toxic when it becomes homogeneous and inauthentic. We have inherited this “conversion therapy” model through centuries of colonization, forced education of indigenous communities, violence and suppression. But nature’s model, a living ecosystem for example, knows no hierarchy, it knows no ranking—it is not homogenous. It only knows what is ultimately good for the thriving of the whole under constantly changing conditions.A conversion worldview simply sees that the “other” is wrong, maladaptive, or different and needs to be fixed. A conversation worldview by contrast understands that there is a third something, a mystery to be explored together of which we are an integral part. A conversion worldview cannot escape the binary prison of its own dualistic presuppositions: there are only two parties, two warring sides, bad guys and good guys, black and white, right and wrong, good and evil, us and them. A conversational worldview is dynamic and open, a developmental process of evolutionary unfolding and species interdependence.Conversion therapy is the hallmark of a corporatized, commodified world in which human beings are seen as individual units that need to be changed, controlled, broken down into specialized “markets” based on socio-economic ranking and purchasing habits. For thousands of years humans have been progressively stripped from the living tissue of an animate and mysterious cosmos, from hunters and gatherers in tune with the speech of the land, to agriculturalists needing to domesticate the wild world with the written word for survival, to producers that can spin a story and weave an appetite for more stuff, to… consumers.Perhaps the natural world provides the best blueprint for human development, mature spirituality and healthy culture. Uprooted from nature, conservatives and liberals alike continue to war with each other seeking to convert allies to their cause, reinforcing the split between humanity and the animate world. And we are all largely unconscious of the myths which we collectively draw upon to feed our insatiable desires. The same distorted myths and unconscious ideologies that gave birth to religious fundamentalisms of all kinds is the operative, unseen force behind Empire, colonialism, and the culture wars today.Poet David Whyte speaks in the vein of the bards, Earth-based Celts and Hebrew prophets, psalmists, shamans, saints and mystics about the “conversational” nature of reality. The conversational is what emerges “in the frontier between where your boundaries end and ‘the Other’ begins… you enter into a conversation with the world.”Perhaps it is time to learn to let go of the modern fantasy that there is a vantage point “out there” from which to address the prevailing dilemmas and crises facing these times in which we live. A conversational view of reality includes the senses and embodied experience, language and shared story in community, it includes the emotions and intuitions, dreams and the deep imagination, each thread woven through the ecosystem itself, “braided” together into one continuous fabric of meaning, communication, and life—one whole.I remember lazy Saturdays as a young boy exploring the woods behind my home with awe, reverence, and untamed curiosity. I believe young children intuitively experience the world this way, and we too can re-member the world in this way. Like trees in a forest, a whole underground communication system of roots and entangled mycelia, there is a deep and ancient intelligence—an ecological resilience—that a conversational worldview can offer us today. Paul’s theology of the body, reinforces a non-hierarchical kin-ship resilience like the author of Ecclesiastes 4, “a cord of three strands is not easily broken.” Like a Celtic wedding knot, we humans are to be wed to the divine and to Earth in order to become whole. Then, only then, can we truly turn together toward the repair of the world.~ Rev. Matt Syrdal Read online here About the Author Matthew Syrdal, M.Div., is a pastor in the Denver area, a visionary, founder of Church of Lost Walls, and co-founder of Seminary of the Wild. Matt has begun a new venture called Mythic Christ, a mystery school and podcast for awakening mythic imagination and ritual embodiment. Matt speaks at conferences and guides immersive nature-based experiences around the country and his mentoring and coaching practice as a certified Wild Mind nature-based human development guide through the Animas Valley Institute. His work weaves in myth, archetype, dreams, deep imagery, and ceremony in nature as a way for people to enter into conversation with the storied world of which they are a part. Matt’s passion is guiding others in discovering “treasure hidden in the field” of their deepest lives, cultivating deep wholeness and re-enchantment of the natural world to apprentice fully and dangerously to the kingdom of god. | | | | | | | | Question & Answer Q: By Roy About the miracles in the Gospels The miracles in the Gospels, where Jesus healed people who were sick, can they be taken literally or if not can they be interpreted and understood as ways of been kind towards those who are ill? A: By Rev. Dr. Robin Meyers Dear Roy,Your question has been asked countless times by people who struggle with the relationship between what is true and what really happened. In the time of Jesus, illness was thought to be caused by either the sin of the person who was ill or by demon possession. Nobody knew anything about pathogens, or about cancer, or about mental illness in those days. So, if you were going to cure someone, they needed to believe that you had the power to exorcize the demons that were causing their illness, or to restore their mental health by pronouncing you worthy and loved by God. So, if the healing stories are about the power of restoring wholeness and worthiness then they can be taken literally. If they are about miraculous physical changes, then some might not take those stories literally. Even so, we know the power of prayer and the psychosomatic dimension of healing. Not believing that a blind person could suddenly see, or that a paralyzed person could suddenly jump up and walk is not the same thing as discounting the power of someone like Jesus to restore health in other ways to human being who had lost all hope. He would always say, “Your faith has made you well.” That is, wholeness is not just outwardly physical, but is also inwardly spiritual. There is more than one way to be healed, and the miraculous is not to be confused with the magical. In the end, we may not be made perfect, but love can make us whole. ~ Rev. Dr. Robin Meyers Read and share online here About the Author Rev. Dr. Robin Meyers is pastor of First Congregational Church UCC, Norman, Oklahoma, and retired senior minister of Mayflower Congregational UCC church, Oklahoma City. He is currently a Professor of Public Speaking and Distinguished Professor of Social Justice Emeritus in the Philosophy Department at Oklahoma City University. He is a fellow of the Westar Institute and the author of eight books on religion and American culture, the most recent of which is, Saving God from Religion: A Minister’s Search for Faith in a Skeptical Age. A feature-length documentary chronicles his work on behalf of Progressive Christianity in Oklahoma (americanhereticsthefilm.com) and more information is at RobinMeyers.com | | | | | | | | 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 us on Facebook! | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | As a non-profit ProgressiveChristianity.org/Progressing Spirit rely heavily on the good will of our donors to help us continue to bring individuals and churches the messages of progressive Christians, Weekly Newsletters, along with the many other resources we provide. For years, the majority of our fundraising came at the end of the year. 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Help keep ProgressiveChristianity.org online and going strong - click here to donate today! * Another way to support us is to leave a bequest in your Will and/or Trust designating us a beneficiary. | | | | | | | | | | | Don't miss the next Episode of PC.org's Executive Directors Mark and Caleb on: The Moonshine Jesus Show - every Monday at 4:30pm Eastern Time – watch live on Facebook,, YouTube, Twitter, Podbean | | | | | | | | | Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited Part X Matthew: The Story of the Magi and Their Gifts Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong December 25, 2013The wise men from Matthew’s birth story have been deeply attached to our Christmas celebration, stretching all the way back to the time that Matthew introduced them in the middle years of the ninth decade of the Common Era. They are instantly recognized mounted on their camels and appearing in our Christmas cards, our decorated store windows, advertisements and our Christmas pageants. In our developing mythology they have even been given names: Casper, Melchior and Balthazar.These magi have even been interpreted as universal symbols representing the various races in the human family: Caucasians, Africans and Asians. Carols have been written about them, the words of which we know by heart. Many of us have played the role of one of the wise men in a pageant and we sang his verse of the familiar hymn. So deeply are these characters embedded in the life of our culture that few of us are aware that outside of Matthew’s gospel, they are never mentioned anywhere else in the entire New Testament. Only in Matthew’s birth narrative do the wise men have any existence. Furthermore, when we go to that single biblical source where Matthew introduces them, we discover, sometimes to our amazement, that nowhere in that text is there any mention of the fact that the wise men were three in number and nowhere in Matthew’s story does it say that camels were their means of transportation. Both the number three and the camels appear to have been placed into the tradition by human imagination!That should be enough data to cause us to look more critically at this familiar biblical story and to ask whether there is anything other than mythology operating in Matthew’s tale of the magi. If we conclude that the magi are mythological characters and not people who ever lived in history, then we need to ask: “What do they mean?” Those are the issues that I want to examine in this column as our series on Matthew’s gospel continues.First, we need to be aware that cosmic signs accompanying a human birth are always both interpretive and mythological. The stars in the heavens are physical bodies that operate according to the laws of nature. To treat the stars as if they can reveal events in human history or even discern the tides of the future is nothing more than uninformed superstition. Yet, it has long been a human passion as the popularity of astrology shows, but interpreting human history by studying the stars in little more than nonsense.Second, the assumption that the birth of Jesus was or could have been announced by a special star requires the definition of stars as lanterns hung in the sky by the deity who lived just beyond the sky. People in biblical times had no concept of space or of the vast distances in the universe. Copernicus would not be born for another 1600 years. In the mind of a first century human being the idea that a star could appear to announce an earthly event was as simple as imagining that the God, who was thought to live above the sky, could simply hang out a new lantern in the heavenly abode to announce whatever God wished to announce.Third, but in a similar manner, the idea that a star could travel across the sky so slowly that wise men could keep up with it, was as simple to understand as imagining that God, or one of God’s angels, could pull that star across the floor of heaven, which would be the roof of the world, to whatever destination God wished. Once we human beings learned what stars really are and the nature of the distances in space, the literalized reading of the story of the wise men is no longer intellectually credible. Given these advances in knowledge it is easy to see why first Copernicus and later Galileo were so threatening to the way people believed in the 17th century.A fourth problem becomes evident when we embrace the distances that separate the stars from the earth and understand that light travels at the approximate rate of 186,000 miles per second. This means that the light of the star that we see from our vantage point on this planet earth was actually emitted at a time in the distant past and it is only now reaching the point where we can see it. So, if God had wanted to announce the birth of Jesus with a star emitting light for us to see, God would have had to create that star millions of years before the birth of Jesus for its light to reach our eyes in the year 4 BCE, which is our best guess as to the time of Jesus’ birth. For these reasons treating this narrative literally is not an option for our generation, which in turn causes us to wonder if that was what the original author of this story actually had in mind. I suspect that the man we call Matthew would have been both surprised and chagrined to discover how later generations would literalize his story.Significant internal evidence from the first gospel reveals that Matthew was a Jewish scribe, the head of a synagogue and one deeply familiar with the Jewish scriptures. The books the Jews call “The Latter Prophets,” (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the Book of the Twelve, the books from Hosea to Malachi), were regularly read in rotation along with the Torah in the synagogue on every Sabbath of the year. After the crucifixion and before the time the followers of Jesus were expelled from the synagogue, local disciples of Jesus would then relate those readings to the life of Jesus. That is what synagogue preaching was all about. The story of the star in the east, the journey of the wise men and even the gifts that they brought were all born, I would suggest, in a sermon delivered by a follower of Jesus based on a text from a reading in Isaiah. Turn with me now to Isaiah 60 and watch the symbols in Matthew’s story of the wise men parade slowly before our eyes.The Isaiah 60 text says “Kings shall come to the brightness of God’s rising.” It was easy to transform “the brightness of God’s rising” into a star in the east. The East was the direction of mystery and fear for the Jewish people. To their west was the known Mediterranean Sea. Danger tended to come from the unknown East. Matthew’s text describes the wise men as magi or astrologers, not as kings. It was, I now believe, the originating text of Isaiah that turned them in our imagination into kings, enabling us to sing “We Three Kings” without fear of contradiction.This text from Isaiah says that these kings will come on camels. That is the place where camels entered the wise men story, since they are not found in Matthew. We begin to recognize that even in our current understanding it was the Isaiah text that created the story. Next, guess what these kings in Isaiah 60 brought to the “brightness of God’s rising?” It was gold and frankincense. Does that not sound slightly familiar? Those, however, who are committed to a literal reading of the Bible, immediately raise the question: “Where is the myrrh?” Getting only two out of three correct in regard to the gifts brought by the wise men, they argue, is not conclusive. Ah, but if one really knows how the Jews would read Isaiah, the myrrh is present in this text, although not overtly. Isaiah says that these kings will come from Sheba. Sheba was a land near current day Yemen, from which, according to the book of Kings, another royal figure, “The Queen of Sheba,” came to pay homage to another king of the Jews. Here we learn that she brought to King Solomon truckloads of spices. This is the source from which the myrrh entered Matthew’s story. Myrrh was the best known spice in the Middle East. It was derived from a sweet smelling resin of a small native tree. The Jews used myrrh first as a deodorant and then it became identified with death. This came about because the Jews did not embalm their dead; they simply wrapped the body in a cloth sheet or shroud into which they placed large amounts of myrrh, since its sweet smell drowned out the odors of death and decay. Now we have all of the elements that Matthew put together to create this segment of his birth narrative. Kings on camels come to the “brightness of God’s rising,” bringing gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh. The wise men were never meant to be understood as figures of history, they were rather dramatic characters born in Matthew’s familiarity with the Jewish scriptures.Over the years, those gifts of the magi were further defined once again as symbols, primarily by Christian preaching. Gold became a gift appropriate for a king and was used to define Jesus’ kingship. Frankincense became a gift offered to a deity and thus pointed to Jesus’ divinity. Myrrh became the symbol of death and presaged the crucifixion by which Matthew would assert that the ultimate meaning of Jesus was fully revealed, since it would be through Jesus’ death that the message of his life would most clearly be seen.Matthew knew what he was doing. He was a student of the Jewish scriptures. He understood the Jewish use of Midrash, by which the stories of the past were wrapped around people and events in the present to discern the workings of the Divine. The Jewish congregation for which Matthew’s gospel was written would also have understood the way he built his story. It was only when the Christian Church had left its Jewish roots and become a Gentile movement that literalism crept into the biblical text. Gentiles simply did not know or understand the Jewish scriptures and how a Jewish author would have used them to tell the Christ story. Gentile ignorance is the ultimate reason that Christians began to think that the gospels were history. Biblical fundamentalism is the direct result of a Gentile misunderstanding of Jewish scripture.One other symbolic theme lay behind Matthew’s story of the wise men. They were strangers from the east, which means that they were Gentiles, not Jews. The star signified that the birth of Jesus had cosmic significance. Its rays did not stop at the boundaries of the Jewish nation. They were seen all over the world and their symbolic purpose was to draw the whole world into the worship of this Jesus, who was God’s revelation to Jew and Gentile alike. Matthew used the birth narrative to draw the Gentiles into the story of Jesus. With that established, Matthew is ready to tell the story of Jesus. We will follow it as this series unfolds.~ John Shelby Spong | | | | | | | | Announcements Freedom Rising: Dismantling Fascism with Fierce Love April 28th - April 30th at West End Church, New York City In a nation torn apart by Christian fascism, join some of the country’s foremost leaders in a three-day conference to nurture liberation. Read On... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

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GLobal Schedule for April
by Sunny Walker 07 Apr '23

07 Apr '23

Hello from your Global Schedule Team, Here's the link to go and see what's happening this "Earth Month." There are a number of outstanding films and a study/conversation series, all related to climate and our love for this earth. And don't miss putting the next Global Archives Sojourn on your calendar for July. https://icaglobalarchives.org/social-research-center-events/ Grace and peace to all of you, On behalf of the Global Events Team, Sunny *Sunny Walker * *She/her/hers* *On **Arapaho, Cheyenne, Núu-agha-tʉvʉ-pʉ̱ (Ute), and Očeti Šakówiŋ (Sioux) tribal land* Certified Facilitator (Also Certified ToP Facilitator) ToP Methods Mentor Trainer - Upcoming Courses <https://www.top-training.net/w/> Virtual Facilitation Collaborative Senior Facilitator sunny.sunwalker(a)gmail.com 303-587-3017 For diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging inquiries: sunny(a)diversityinnovators.com www.diversityinnovators.com For virtual facilitation inquiries: sunny(a)virtualfacilitationcollaborative.com www.virtualfacilitationcollaborative.com

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4/7/23 PHOTOS—B½ OF ARCHIVE PROJECT
by Frank Knutson 07 Apr '23

07 Apr '23

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4/6/23 PHOTOS—B½ OF ARCHIVE PROJECT
by Frank Knutson 06 Apr '23

06 Apr '23

The earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons and daughters of the earth. This we know. All things are connected. Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web we do to ourselves. ~ ~ ~ Chief Seattle

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4/5/23 PHOTOS—B½ OF ARCHIVE PROJECT
by Frank Knutson 05 Apr '23

05 Apr '23

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