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!important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv0406646269 #yiv0406646269templateBody .yiv0406646269mcnTextContent, #yiv0406646269 #yiv0406646269templateBody .yiv0406646269mcnTextContent p{ font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv0406646269 #yiv0406646269templateFooter .yiv0406646269mcnTextContent, #yiv0406646269 #yiv0406646269templateFooter .yiv0406646269mcnTextContent p{ font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;} } But letting the Church die doesn’t mean we abandon it. | | | | View this email in your browser | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Let the Church die, here's why | | | | | | | | | | Essay by Rev. Aurelia Dávila Pratt September 12, 2019 I was nine years old the first time someone asked me, “What are you?” Fast forward twenty-five years later, and I’ve been asked this question more times than I can count. I am Chicana. I am Filipina. I am the color of the earth. I am a dark haired, dark eyed, brown skinned woman. Throughout my life, I have been profiled because of these features. I have experienced blatant forms of racism. I have been the recipient of all sorts of micro aggressions. My identity has been the butt of jokes by strangers and friends alike. People have spoken degradingly about my ethnicity right in front of me, with complete ignorance of the fact that they were speaking about me. On the “bright” side, because of tokenism, I’ve been offered speaking engagements and board positions. Although people are usually disappointed when they discover I don’t actually speak Spanish. Personally, this has long been a source of deep shame. It has taken me several years to begin to understand the intersections between this deep-rooted shame I carry and the white evangelical-influenced culture I grew up in. The truth is, the more I consider it, the more I am convinced my language was stolen from me long before I was born. Seventy-three years after the Mexican-American War created a new national boundary at the Rio Grande River, my grandmother was born in the border town of Brownsville, Texas. She was a product of what her ancestors experienced first-hand when their land was stolen and their culture left on the other side of an unwanted boundary line. “The Gringo, locked into the fiction of white superiority, seized complete political power, stripping Indians and Mexicans of their land while their feet were still rooted in it.” (La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Gloria Anzaldúa) My grandmother was a part of a people forced into a new paradigm over the course of generations. It was a culture marked by “in between-ness.” No longer fully Mexican, but unwanted and unvalued by American society and government. Because of this liminal space my grandma inherited, she spoke a Spanish unique to the borderlands. She was fully Tejana. But she never taught her children her language. Instead in the late 1940’s, along with countless other Mexican-Americans of their time, she and my grandpa became migrant fruit pickers as a way to travel north. Chicago is where my dad was born and raised. He is part of a generation of young Latinos in middle America who were physically punished if they were caught speaking Spanish in school. White supremacy stole both language and culture from him and his siblings, by means of societal assimilation. My dad married my mom, a second-generation Filipina, and by the time I was born, they had relocated to Louisiana. Eventually my parents divorced, and my mom moved back to the north, leaving my dad to raise me and my two older sisters. We grew up in a small, rural town where everyone identified as either “white” or “black.” So it didn’t take long for the teasing and questions to begin. “What are you?” teachers and students would ask me. Through my experiences with racism as a young child, I came to subconsciously believe that my skin was ugly. I didn’t have words for this then, but now I realize that falling asleep to my brownness was required of me in order to be accepted. By adolescence, I had become a pro at it. By college, I was able to laugh along at the jokes directed toward me. By graduate school, I quit thinking about it at all. It wasn’t until I became an adult, a pastor, and mother, that I began to look back and process my experiences with racism. I began to remember, and I began to wake up. So, “What am I?” I am Chicana. I am Filipina. I am the color of the earth. I am a dark haired, dark eyed, brown skinned woman, and throughout my life, I have been profiled because of these features. Does my name sound like I speak Spanish, and do I look like I speak it? Yes. Definitely. Do people assume I speak Spanish? All time and from every direction. But I do not. I don’t speak Spanish, pero estoy aprendiendo! I am learning! The fact that I can say these words is important because they are a symbol of my awakening and inner liberation. They represent a great undertaking of courage. They are a rejection of shame and assumptions. Estoy aprendiendo! I will claim my autonomy and self-worth. I will reclaim what was stolen from me. My grandmother may be gone, but her story and my father’s story are mine, too. In them, I find identity and power. I find language. I find home. In the past I would not have been brave enough to even believe it, but my story and experiences are relevant to the future of the Church. Over the last several years, there has been a shift in society, including in many progressive white churches. For the first time, white people are attempting to make significant room for black and brown voices. But, alongside this beautiful work is something white people were not prepared for. Many have been caught off guard by the collective pain of black and brown people. They don’t understand it, egos become fragile, and they become reactionary and defensive when confronted by it. This is happening everywhere, including in the Church. The progressive white church can be among the most difficult places for progress because it commonly assumes it is not complicit in the racist foundations and tendencies of our social structures. Regardless, the tides are changing. And as a woman of color who is also a pastor, I have been taking notice. My assessment is that Christianity and its Church can either join the flow of justice or flail against its changing tides. This flow is happening with or without you. Spirit is moving, creating a path of love, equality, and peacemaking in its wake. If you are of the mind to jump in to this divine current, then I have several points of advice for you. First, people and communities of faith: listen to people of color. In listening, make room for our stories, understanding that they won’t be pretty. Most likely, they will sound like pain; like grief; like anger. And it will be difficult to hear some of it without feeling offended. It will be hard to absorb the anger without getting angry back. But the challenge is to listen, to empathize, and to question how you might contribute to the wound, instead of denying the wound exists. It’s a lot to ask, I know! But listen. Become a practitioner in radical empathy and bear our burdens. And then, do something totally radical: put us on your staff and leadership teams. Actively value our perspectives, and highlight our opinions. For the first time ever, center our voices. Make room for all of what we bring to the table, not just our black and brown skin, our exotic names, and our smiles. Do the hard work necessary to get and keep people of color in the room. Become truly inclusive. The inclusive church environment should be willing to engage multiple diverse perspectives in such a way that will define organizational policy and practice. I learned this from my cousin, Hanif Fazal, who is the co-founder and CEO of The Center for Equity and Inclusion in Portland, Oregon. Hanif has spent over two decades addressing issues of equity, diversity and inclusion in organizations, and he says inclusion is about more than a sense of belonging. It’s not enough that someone feels welcome or seen. Inclusion is a shift in power so that diverse voices are shaping the culture. When Christianity and its Church become truly inclusive of marginalized voices, be prepared for the image of God to evolve and expand. God is transformed because God is freed from her box now. Make space; make room. It will deepen your faith to hear from the God of a person of color. The change will likely be uncomfortable. It will be different. Make space; make room. Let this liberation happen. Avoid copying and pasting. It is a tool that prevents good change. I have been very attuned to the way church culture will often try to “copy and paste” their expectations onto pastors, especially women and people of color. This is often unintentional, so becoming aware of these tendencies is really important. I can’t preach with the same style, tone and intonation as the mainly male preachers I learned about in seminary, because I am not a male. I can’t pastor like a white man when I’m a brown woman. When I try to do anything other than be fully who I am, my creativity is stifled, and my imagination is held hostage. It may seem simple, but realizing I no longer have to conform to this “copy and paste” mentality was like being set free. Churches, set your pastors free! When they thrive, you thrive. The Church thrives. And if it’s not obvious by now, let me be clear: the Church must change in order to thrive. It has to do more than change. It has to die. In fact, the church is already dying. Evangelical Christians are grasping at thin air, desperate to protect oppressive traditions from “secular” culture. Politicians have combined their power hungry paradigms with a destructive, patriarchal image of God, and are using it to manipulate the masses. The teachings of Jesus are being completely abandoned for the sake of Christian nationalism. And yet, young people aren’t buying the institutionalized hate, and people of all ages are quitting church in droves. The flailing isn’t working. The pews are empty. The Church is dying, and I say: let it die. But letting the Church die doesn’t mean we abandon it. Instead we need to sit with it, hold its hand and keep vigil, ushering it from one life to the next. We need to let it die, so it can be reborn. This isn’t easy, but I believe rebirth is possible. On the other side of this rebirth is the transfigured Church. Transfiguration literally means a complete change of form or appearance into a more beautiful or spiritual state. At his own transfiguration, Jesus shone so bright that his dirty travel clothes became sparkling white, and his face shone like the sun. He must have been nearly unrecognizable. A transfigured church would also be unrecognizable. It would mean that it experienced a complete change of form or appearance. It would mean that everything old has passed away, and everything has become new (which sounds a lot to me like making room, by the way). What if we made changing and transforming until we didn’t even recognize ourselves anymore the work of the Church? What if we stopped at nothing until that work was done? The future of the Church has big implications. It has been the catalyst for much good, but also so much evil. Its power continues to be used to sustain oppressive domination systems, propping up -isms and phobias. The power of the Church is immeasurable, and because of this, I have come to realize that it is not enough to abandon ship. If we leave, not much will change. But if we work to reclaim, reimagine, and recreate, then people can be set free. People need permission and a safe space in which to shift their theological paradigms. These same paradigms influence their social understanding all the way to their political vote. We need to be a part of the Church’s rebirth, so that we can offer this important and sacred space. If I could sum up kingdom work, it would be this: Let the Church die, so it can be reborn as a catalyst for change. I’ve lived a lifetime of isolation from my heritage. I have lived in a house of shame that has kept me from moving, from doing my work in the world, from believing and sharing my own truth. I know shame when I see it, and I can recognize its mark permeating throughout the Church. Instead of owning how we have wounded people of color, women, and the LGBTQIA community, the Church has kept its head down, pretending these wounds don’t exist. Instead of acknowledging the ways in which racism continues to inform American Christian culture, the Church’s actions reveal a refusal to listen and an underlying assumption that the past is not our shared responsibility. But I think of my grandmother and her ancestors’ stolen land and culture. I think of how this shaped the trajectory of lives for generations, including my father’s. Including mine. For years I thought I was unique in my pain; alone in this liminal space. I was too ashamed to find my people, much less share my experiences with them. When I finally did, I realized they carried the shame, too. Every person I’ve asked: pain. We’ve all inherited it, and like it or not, we each carry it with us daily. The evils of white supremacy have kept us isolated and silenced. Pero estoy aprendiendo! But I am learning! No more! I will reclaim the language that was stolen from me. I will take back my voice. ~ Rev. Aurelia Dávila Pratt Read online here About the Author Aurelia Dávila Pratt is the Lead Pastor at Peace of Christ Church and is a licensed Master of Social Work. Her sermons and writings steer the listener toward contemplation while also boldly tackling social issues of the day. She prioritizes the work of Peace, believing it to be both a vertical and horizontal process that is disruptive and uncomfortable, but mystically healing. As a pastor, she promotes safe and creative space for all to participate in this work. | | | | | | | | Question & Answer Q: By Jeff What exactly is meant by the word ‘spiritual’? If it only refers to ghosts, angels, (theistic) gods, demons and such then it’s clearly just a metaphor for the unexplainable aspects of life. In what way is ‘spiritual’ different to emotional, psychological or even just our individual ‘personality’? We refer to body, mind and spirit – but aren’t mind and spirit just the same thing? Is the term ‘spirituality’ an outmoded concept? A: By Rev. Matthew Syrdal Great questions Jeff! Unfortunately, the word ‘spiritual’ is often used as a sort of catch-all for a lot of different meanings. For example, a First Nations person or a traditional Hindu might have a very different sense of what ‘spiritual’ means than a contemporary Western person like myself. In the West, the word ‘spiritual’ or ‘spirit’ derives from the Latin which is a transliteration of two Hebrew words ruach and nephesh. Ruach means ‘breath’, ‘wind’, and ‘spirit’. It is not differentiated from the Creation, the invisible not yet differentiated from the visible. The Spirit is the animating and animate living presence of the divine in and through the creation, which is consequentially closer to many indigenous and animistic understandings of the cosmos and the Creator. An orthodox Judeo-Christian view would be that humans participate in this life-breath as does the more-than-human world. We derive the word ‘inspired’ from this sense of being in-breathed by the presence of divinity that fills the whole world. In the Old Testament the inspiration of the Spirit of God contributed to master works and the craftsmanship of artisans, as well as the oracles of the prophets. The Roman sense of ‘genius’ or the Greek ‘muse’ would be somewhat close to this understanding of the inspiration of the Spirit. Nephesh on the other hand, often interpreted, ‘animated being’ or ‘living soul’ is the psycho-spiritual mysterious ‘personhood’ that transcends and includes our physical body. This term is closer to the animistic vision of animal guides and spirit beings of the otherworld who traditionally were associated with sacred places. When you refer to ghosts, angels, gods, demons and heavenly beings and the like, this sounds to me closer to a sense of the ‘spirit world’ or ‘spiritism’ than how many people use the word ‘spiritual’ as our personal transcendent function. This is significant, because we have a tendency in the West to psychologize the spiritual mysteries in a way the indigenous do not. The animistic view of the spirit world maintains the autonomy and freedom of spiritual realities and powers in themselves, without resorting to contingency or fabrication of the human mind or ego. I do not believe the study of ‘spirituality’ and the importance of it for our age of climatic transformation is outmoded in the least. The reason is because we stand at a threshold in ecological history. We are summoned to undergo a major collective shift in consciousness. Any exploration of spirituality must be experiential, and we must ask the double edged question: what is the Earth/cosmos really? And in light of that question, what does it mean to be truly human? Thank you for your question. ~ Rev. Matthew Syrdal Read and share online here About the Author Rev. Matthew Syrdal M.Div., lives in the front range of Colorado with his beautiful family. Matt is an ordained pastor in the Presbyterian church (USA), founder and lead guide of WilderSoul and Church of Lost Walls and co-founder of Seminary of the Wild. Matt speaks at conferences and guides immersive nature-based experiences around the country. In his years of studying ancient Christian Rites of Initiation, world religions, anthropology, rites-of-passage and eco- psychology Matt seeks to re-wild what it means to be human. His work weaves in myth and ceremony in nature as a way for people to enter into conversation with the storied world in which they are a part. Matt’s passion is guiding others in the discovery of “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. Matt has been coaching, and guiding since becoming a certified Wild Mind nature-based human development guide through the Animas Valley Institute and is currently training to become a soul initiation guide through the SAIP program. | | | | | | | | Please continue to send us your feedback… we are listening. We aim to give voice to many different perspectives that are relevant and inspiring along this spiritually progressing path. We are not here to tell you what to believe or how to act. We are here to support your journey, to share and learn together.Thank you for being a part of this community! | | | | | | Join our FB community today! Spread the word, share with friends. Thanks! | | | | | | | | Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited The Origins of the Bible, Part VI: The Third Document in the Torah Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong May 14, 2008 The name of the Torah’s fifth and final book according to the Bible is Deuteronomy. That name comes to us from the combination of two Greek words: “deutero,” which means second, and “nomas,” which means law. Deuteronomy thus means the second giving of the law and in that title the story of the book’s origin is revealed. First, a quick review of what I have covered in this series thus far. We began by identifying the oldest strand of narrative material that is found in the Bible, namely that part of the Torah that is called the “Yahwist” version, written in the middle years of the 10th century. This narrative represented the history of the dominant tradition of the Jews, located in the Southern Kingdom of Judah. It extolled the centers of power in that part of the Jewish world: the Royal House of David that ruled by divine right; the capital city of Jerusalem, which was believed to be the place where heaven and earth came together; the Temple, the very dwelling place of God; and the High Priest, believed to be the authoritative voice of God on earth. This was the only sacred history the Jews had until a civil war, following the death of King Solomon, succeeded in separating the ten Northern tribes of the Hebrew people from the Kingdom of Judah and its satellite, the little tribe of Benjamin. This successful revolution removed the Israelites in the North from each of those centers of Southern Jewish power, the House of David, the city of Jerusalem and the Temple and its priests. The Jews of the North could thus hardly continue to use the Yahwist document as their sacred story, since that text judged them with its own words as rebels against God, God’s Temple, God’s city and those thought to be both chosen and anointed by God. In time this new country, born in revolution, established its own monarchy, but on a very different and more democratic basis. The king was now chosen by the people and thus was subject to removal by the people. A new capital city of Samaria was built and the ancient shrines in Hebron, Beersheba and Bethel were set up to be worship places to rival the Temple in Jerusalem. In time these tribes even felt compelled to write their version of their sacred history and so a court historian was chosen to do this task. This narrative would focus not on King David, but on the one they portrayed as Jacob’s favorite son, who was the child of his favorite wife, Rachel. His name was Joseph and he was regarded as the patriarch and founder of the Northern Kingdom. Because this new history referred to God as Elohim it became known as the Elohist or “E” version of the Jewish sacred story. These two rival kingdoms lived together side by side, although not always in peace, until the Northern Kingdom was defeated in warfare by the Assyrians in 721 BCE. The people of the Northern Kingdom were then removed by their conquerors to other lands and disappeared into the DNA of the Middle East. After this disaster, an unknown person brought a copy of the Elohist document to Jerusalem and in time the two sacred stories were merged into one document with the Yahwist tradition clearly dominant over the Elohist story. This merged version was then the sacred scriptures of the Jewish people for about a century. In 621 BCE in the Southern Kingdom, encouraged and shaped by a group of prophets, among whom Jeremiah was surely one, there was a growing fervor for religious reform. These prophets focused their hopes on a young king named Josiah, who had succeeded to the throne at the age of eight when his father, King Amon, was murdered by his own servants. Josiah was a king who, in the eyes of the prophets, “did what was right in the sight of the Lord and walked in the way of his father David; he did not turn aside to the right or the left (II Kings 22:1-2).” Perhaps that was because King Josiah was attentive to and a supporter of the worship of the Temple. When the king reached the age of 26, he ordered major renovations to be done on the Temple that presumably had fallen into some disrepair and neglect under the reigns of previous kings in the line of David, who had allowed many pagan practices in the Temple. This restoration of the Temple was hugely popular with the religious authorities and the prophets. During this restoration, however, a mysterious event occurred that was destined to shape the worship life of the entire country. First, the Book of Kings tells us that these renovations were to be done with the money collected from the people over the years and presumably not spent by previous kings. Second, it was ordered that no accounting of their expenditures would be required for “they deal honestly (II Kings 22:7).” Next came an “electrifying discovery.” In the renovation, perhaps hidden behind some of the plaster that was being torn away, the workers found a book that purported to be “a book of the law.” The book even claimed to have been written by Moses, who by this time had been dead for some 600 years. The book, discovered by Hilkiah the High Priest, was sent to the king by a man named Shaphan, who was described as “the secretary in the house of the Lord,” and it was read to the king in its entirety. When King Josiah heard these words, we are told that he tore his clothes in an act of public penitence because it was obvious that the “Word of the Lord” found in this book had not been obeyed by their ancestors. Next, a female prophetess named Huldah was produced and she declared, in her most solemn voice I’m sure, that unless the commands of this book were obeyed, God would bring “disaster on this place and its inhabitants.” Huldah went on to say that because the good King Josiah had responded with penitence and had “humbled himself before the Lord,” by tearing his clothes and weeping publicly, that so long as he was king these terrible punishments would not occur. This message was then delivered to the king. Josiah, empowered by the word of God that in this newly discovered book claimed to be the words of the prophet Moses and said by the prophetess Huldah to have the ability of holding back the wrath of God as long as he was alive, clearly now had the authority to proceed. The words of this new book were then read to the whole people and a new covenant, reflecting its values, was adopted and it was established that this book would henceforth govern their common life. A great reformation of the worship practices of the Temple and Judah was then carried out. The reformers removed from the Temple all the vessels made for deities other than Yahweh. All idolatrous priests were deposed. All houses of male temple prostitutes, associated with the fertility rites of the deity known as Baal, were closed and torn down. Religious shrines suspected of encouraging pagan worship were destroyed. All mediums, soothsayers and fortune tellers were put out of business. Josiah even went into what had once been the Northern Kingdom and destroyed the rival shrines in Samaria and Bethel. This reform also required that the Passover be celebrated only in Jerusalem, where its liturgical purity could be guaranteed. The prophets of Yahweh said of King Josiah that there had been “no king like him, who turned to the Lord with all his heart, with all his soul and with all his might, according to the Law of Moses; nor did anyone like him arise after him (II Kings 23:25).” One purpose of worship is always the human attempt to please the deity and thus to win divine blessing and protection. That was certainly the hope of those who engineered this enthusiastic reformation. They were also the ones who, in all probability, wrote, planted and “discovered” this new book of Moses. They then engineered the political campaign that led to its adoption. We do not know the names of the people who constituted this group of reformers although the prophet Jeremiah clearly seems to have been one of them. They are simply called the “Deuteronomic Writers.” By the power of their leadership in this reformation, however, they took the Jewish sacred story previously known as the “Yahwist-Elohist” version of the scriptures and incorporated into it the Book of Deuteronomy, “the second giving of the law.” Then they set about to edit the entire sacred story into a consistent narrative until it became identified as the Yahwist-Elohist-Deuteronomic version of the scriptures. The third strand of material that would some day be called the Torah was now in place. The great hoped for protection of God that they believed would come to them if they only worshiped God properly, however, did not materialize. The distress and hard times that had fallen on the land of Judah not only continued, but seemed to intensify. The Book of Kings (specifically II Kings 23:26) recorded the fact that despite these wide-ranging reforms: “Still the Lord did not turn from the fierceness of his great wrath, which his anger had kindled against Judah.” The Lord was heard to warn that just as Israel (the Northern Kingdom) had been removed from the face of the earth, so Judah (the Southern Kingdom) would also be removed, but not so long as Josiah lived. A few short years later, Josiah was killed on the battlefield of Megiddo by Pharaoh Necho of Egypt, who was fighting against Josiah’s ally, the Assyrians. His death was so devastating to the Jews that Megiddo came to be thought of as the site where the ultimate battle that would precede the end of the world would occur. Armageddon is nothing but the modern spelling of Megiddo. The deluge that had been promised by the prophets to come only after the death of King Josiah now began to fall on the Jewish nation. It came in the form of defeat, devastation and an exile into Babylon from their land that was destined to last some three generations. It was in that desperate period of Jewish history that the final strand of material that was to constitute the Torah was written. Again, the earlier strands were edited in the light of this new material reflecting Judah’s new circumstances. We will turn to that story when this series continues. ~ John Shelby Spong | | | | | | | | Announcements The Visionaries Summit The Visionaries Summit is where innovative approaches to the most critical issues of our time are introduced, explored and amplified. Not only do we come together to cross-pollinate and meld ideas in order to create the future we all deserve, but we come together to shift our perspectives, and activate the next level of our potential for the evolutionary challenges ahead. READ ON ... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |