A New Template for Religion: A Conversation with Michael Morwood, Part 2

What follows in interview form is the second of three columns inspired by a presentation Michael Morwood offered at the Common Dreams Conference in Brisbane, Queensland, in 2016. In this installment, Morwood offers a new perspective on revelation, a re-visioning of who Jesus was, and continues with thoughts on whether our conventional ideas of religion have any real value anymore.

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David Felten: It seems to me that one of the most persistent “proofs” people use to add credibility to their beliefs is the notion that God has personally communicated certain “truths” to human beings through some sort of direct – but external — revelation.

Michael Morwood: Yes, since the beginning, Christians have been expected to embrace a picture of reality that imagines an external deity who, although disconnected from humanity, manages to manipulate people and circumstances to further his own devices. God “chose” the Hebrew people to be his “chosen people” to fulfill his plans on earth. But when they failed, God sent his son from heaven to reveal God to us and to open the way to heaven for us.

For many Christians, an essential aspect of the revelatory process is the idea that God himself chose particular people to reveal his thinking and his opinions on a wide range of topics through “sacred texts” – and almost thirty years after the supposed reforms of Vatican II, the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992) continued to promote the same fanciful idea:

“To compose the sacred books, God chose certain men who, all the while he employed them in this task, made full use of their own faculties and powers so that, though he acted in them and by them, it was as true authors that they consigned to writing whatever he wanted written, and no more.” (#106)

The only way that image of reality has any credibility is when we are locked into imagining a distant male deity intervening from the heavens.

Felten: Then how is wisdom or insight conveyed to humanity in this new template for religion?

Morwood: If we believe that what we’re dealing with today is a mystery present and operative throughout the whole universe, then our understanding of “revelation” and “inspiration” changes quite dramatically — and has monumental consequences.

Rather than coming from elsewhere, the revelation of the great mystery we are dealing with comes from the ground up, from what is all around us. The great mystery we are trying to comprehend is embedded in everything that exists. Everything that exists gives expression to it.

Felten: So we move from our fixation on the peoples, texts, and stories of, say, the last 3,000 years, to a perspective that embraces the whole of creation?

Morwood: Just think about it: on this small planet in a cosmic nowhere, this mystery has been given earthly expression for four-and-a-half billion years — and we can marvel at what is possible when the conditions are just right: life in abundance.

Felten: And the human species is a product of this abundance of life.

Morwood: Yes! And in telling the contemporary story of the emergence of the human species, the significant theological shift is to move from imagining an external deity directing that emergence to taking seriously and imagining this creative, energizing, mysterious reality being embedded within human beings – just as it is in everything that exists.

The big mistake in theological thinking has been to misplace the grounding of reality in the heavens in the form of gods. Then human “middle-management” needed to be developed to deal with the gods.

Case in point is the Hebrew people developing the notion of one almighty deity. This was a time when people thought gods ruled the world from above. So within this framework, they developed the most inspiring religious understanding of themselves they could imagine: a people selected by this God to create “God’s rule” on earth. This vision embodied their highest aspirations, a society characterized by justice, compassion and peace.

However, along with the development of their structured, institutional religion came the distractions of power, political influence, wealth, and straying from the goals set before them.

So prophetic voices of great wisdom and insight were raised to keep this religion on track.

Inevitably, these voices were couched in the religious thinking of the times. God was perceived to be a heavenly deity who intervened in human affairs and made his thoughts known through human messengers. So, the insights of many a wise human being is therefore attributed to “God” and we end up reading and hearing: “This is what the Lord God says…” “This is that God wants…”.

Felten: And this is another element of what you referred to earlier as the “floppy disc version”?

Morwood: Yes, and if we’re to make sense of this great wisdom and insight in the 21st century, what we need is a whole new operating system. These ancient insights and wisdom are real and not to be cast aside. But they need to be understood and appreciated as being a by-product of this mystery embedded in human speakers and writers, not coming from outside or coming down to them from “heaven.”

This mystery, this source of this wisdom – call it “GOD” if you wish – is embedded in humans.

While Amos and Hosea and Isaiah and Ruth and Naomi were giving expression to this great mystery in human words and actions, the same was happening all around the world in all peoples, in all cultures, and in all places. Men and women gave human expression the best they could to this presence and power and mystery within them.

While Jeremiah was speaking and acting and allowing this embedded reality to have its way in and through him, the same phenomenon was happening in the aboriginal people who lived throughout what is now Australia. Revelation is no longer a matter of one people hearing and giving human expression to this “GOD” reality. It is a matter of acknowledging this reality everywhere, in all people, at all times, and putting an end to exclusive institutional or cultural claims to access this mystery.

Felten: You mentioned earlier that changes to our understanding of “revelation” and “inspiration” would have monumental consequences. Can you elaborate?

Morwood: Briefly, here are just four consequences:

First, most Christians are familiar with the response to Scripture readings, “This is the Word of the Lord.” Going forward, this “Word of the Lord” language has to be explicitly understood as metaphor or figurative language – and as such has to be expanded to include all human wisdom.

Secondly, let’s pull Paul back somewhat. He was a first century Jewish theologian. Let’s treat his writings in the same way we would explore the writings of any theologian of any religion. The writings of Paul have to lose their mystique as the never-to-be-questioned “Word of the Lord.” In other words, stop trying to end all discussion about the resurrection, about “the Christ”, about the end times, about the sending of God’s Spirit from heaven, about God’s eternal plan of salvation, about justification, about God’s wrath, and about salvation with proof-texting from Paul

Three. I believe the “Christ” religion – in its many official formats – is generally more concerned with defending ideas that protect and preserve its institutional identity than it is with open and honest theological thinking. It closes its thinking to new understandings of revelation because new understandings may call into question its institutional identity claims – claims that depend on the understanding that God is disconnected from humanity and the connection can only be restored through one particular interpretation of “Christ.”

So, for number four, I believe that the day is over when a religion can put revelation in a box and say, “No more.”

Felten: So being aware of the “everywhere” nature of revelation opens up the possibility that everything is cause for wonder – even the pedestrian task of being human.

Morwood: Today we can tell the story of our beginnings in a wonderfully dramatic way, borne out of the explosion of a giant star four-and-a-half billion years ago. From the stardust of that explosion, every atom in our bodies began a long journey, through transformation after transformation, to who and what we are today. There are atoms in our bodies that were once in dinosaurs, carbon atoms that were once in the Buddha, in Jesus, in Constantine.
Going forward, this scientific story will be foundational for religious thinking and imagination for future generations.

Felten: So what does this scientific story say about being human? What does this new template for religion say about the nature of our humanity?

Morwood: We are stardust. We are stardust become human. We are a life-form that gives the universe a way to reflect on itself. Each one of us has the gift of a lifetime to give human expression to whatever drives the universe and the evolutionary process that drives the development of life on earth – but not without some urgency. We only have one chance to do this, just one lifetime.

Hopefully, religious thinking will use and build on the scientific story of our beginnings and come to the inevitable conclusion of, “Wow, there’s another, even more astonishing, dimension to the human story.” To be human is to give human expression to the great mystery that sustains and holds everything in existence. We all give this great mystery – call it “GOD” if you will – a way of coming to human expression.

Felten: Ooooh. I can think of a lot of conventional Christians who would object to this idea. They’d say, “Jesus was the only human expression of God!”

Morwood: OK, so let’s tell an updated story of Jesus, one that reflects the scientific story and an understanding of the world in which we actually live (instead of clinging to the institutional Christology of the creeds). Instead of telling the story about Jesus as if God had disconnected from humanity and withdrawn friendship and forgiveness, and that Jesus alone had “the Spirit of the Lord” within him, and that the Spirit of God was waiting for something momentous to happen on earth before descending onto selected humans, let’s tell a story of this great mystery, of “GOD,” being embedded in all humans.

And since this great mystery is truly in every person, we would expect its presence to be revealed among all people. It would surface in the creativity of gifted men and women the way Mozart gave expression to music. Wasn’t his brilliance an expression of this great mystery in the human species?

Likewise with Jesus and his religious insight. In the language of his religion and time he was able to say, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” as he knew it had been in the prophets before him. Jesus looked around and saw his reality dominated by violence, military power, greed, fear and oppression. With this Spirit in him and knowing that the dream of his religion was to create God’s rule on earth, he must have wondered, “Is this the best we can do?”

Knowing that the ideal behind the Torah was to make people God-conscious in their everyday activities, Jesus must have wondered how he could be so God-conscious and so many people around him were not. How come people couldn’t see and experience what he saw and experienced? How could this dream of “God’s rule or kingdom” be realized in the reality he encountered?

In the long term, the only option with any hope was to go to the populace, the “crowd,” and try to help them become aware of the “Spirit of the Lord” in them. He did this by addressing their fear of God and their sense of distance from God. He wanted to affirm a presence, a power in them. His task was to convince people that there was more to who they were than they realized. He wanted to empower them to take responsibility for making the world a better place.

The way Jesus saw it, there was nothing more urgent than for people to grasp and work with the Spirit already within them. It may be like a small seed, but it had to start somewhere. He was driven by this dream and the task it presented.

I doubt that Jesus ever thought he would see his dream realized in his lifetime. Human experience tells us that it can take decades for significant religious and social change to take place. I think Jesus worked on the “Go home and think about this” principle of educating people as he told parables and gave clear teaching on how God’s rule could be implemented. I think Jesus was looking well ahead to what could be in place when the Roman Empire ended and people began looking for a more satisfying way of life.

Felten: But I can hear well-meaning traditional Christians asking, “What about Jesus suffering and dying to save me from the “wrath to come”?

Morwood: There is nothing in Jesus’ preaching about a God whose forgiveness was conditional on some dramatic human event. There is nothing about a God disconnected from people. There is no concern whatever about saving people from God’s “wrath” or getting to heaven.

There is nothing about Jesus needing to be anointed by God in heaven to become the central figure in a cosmic story about salvation and God directing the universe to its final conclusion with this heavenly “Christ” as the pinnacle of creation.

The Jesus we know in the synoptic gospels focused on this world, the desperate need for people to work together to make it a better place, and a Way this could be accomplished, despite the world being organized in a way that blocked the “kingdom of God” from being realized. And for attempting to empower people so they might question and challenge the religious, social, and political status quo, he paid the price.

The future for any group that gathers around the Jesus’ story has to return to and focus on these basic issues if its members are, in any true sense, to be called followers of Jesus.

~ Rev. David Felten with Michael Morwood

In the final installment of “A New Template for Religion,” Felten will ask Morwood to apply his three questions to the concepts of worship and prayer.

About Michael Moorwood

With over 40 years’ experience as a sought-after retreat leader and educator, Michael Morwood is well known around the world. Bishop John Shelby Spong writes: “Michael Morwood … is raising the right and obvious questions that all Christians must face. He provides fresh and perceptive possibilities for a modern and relevant faith.” With a dozen books to his name (two of which were banned before he resigned from the Catholic priesthood), Morwood brings an extensive background in spirituality to what he sees as the urgent need to reshape Christian thinking for a new millennium.

Be sure to visit Michael Morwood’s website by clicking HERE

About the Author

David 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.
 
A co-founder of the Arizona Foundation for Contemporary Theology 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 and his wife Laura, an administrator for a large Arizona public school district, live in Phoenix with their three often adorable children. 

Read the essay online here.

 

Are there parts of the Old Testament that are said to be relevant today and why?

Dear Janet,

I think a case could be made that all of the Hebrew Scriptures are relevant today. One really can’t truly understand all of the many nuances, or perceive the many allusions, contained in the books of the New Testament without being familiar with the Hebrew scriptures that they expand upon. A very high percentage of the words attributed to Jesus in the Gospels are either direct quotes from verses in the Hebrew texts, or are obvious riffs upon and variations on them. Moreover, if we seek to follow Jesus, we’d do well to be familiar with the texts that informed and inspired him. Based upon the topics he spoke most about, and which verses he tended to quote or allude to the most, it seems clear that Prophets and the Psalms were the books that Jesus spent the most time with, followed by the books of the Torah. So, one might say that the Prophets and the Psalms were Jesus’ “canon within the canon.” And he clearly employed a hermeneutic (interpretive lense) of love as he grappled with those texts that were written long before he was born and sought to make them relevant for his time. I think we’d do well to do the same.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, and the U.S. Civil Rights Movement frequently employed motifs from the Hebrew texts – especially Exodus; as well as Micah, and the other prophets. That was just four decades ago. And, tragically, that Movement still has work to do.

On a related note, I’ve encountered not a few liberal and progressive Christians who say, “I don’t believe in the God of the Old Testament. I only read the New Testament.” Not only is this problematic for the reasons mentioned above, it’s actually committing the “heresy” known as Marcionism. I don’t normally use that word, but in this case I’m okay with it. Marcion felt that “the God of the Old Testament” was cruel and monstrous and that the “God of the New Testament” is markedly different and more loving. While there clearly are a few passages in the Hebrew texts that are most unfortunate and unhelpful and many of us might wish they weren’t there at all, it is unfair and intellectually dishonest to assert that there is only “one God” or “one theology about God” in the Hebrew texts. There are far more books in the Hebrew scriptures than in the New Testament (39–46 depending on who is counting) and they contain as many, and in fact more theologies about God. The books therein are in conversation with each other – and in the case of Isaiah for instance, within themselves. They are a midrash of assertions, discussions, and dissenting voices. This messy project is ongoing and very much relevant today.

Finally, here is a link to a resource that I wrote that many have found helpful: “16 Ways Progressive Christians Interpret the Bible.” I hope this helps.

~ Rev. Roger Wolsey

Read and share online here

Rev. Roger Wolsey is an ordained United Methodist pastor who directs the Wesley Foundation at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and is author of Kissing Fish: christianity for people who don’t like christianity; The Kissing Fish Facebook page; Roger’s Blog on Patheos “The Holy Kiss”

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Intolerance and bigotry seem to be written into the very fabric of religious life, causing people to act in ways that are diametrically opposed to what they say they believe. A tremendous need for certainty that overwhelms our rationality appears to be part of our very humanity. It is visible in the excessive claims that every religious system makes for both its ultimate truthfulness and its exclusiveness. Listen to the language of religion: "We possess the only truth." "Our scriptures are the inerrant Word of God." "Our Pope is infallible." "No one comes to God except through our particular pathway." These pious claims are little more than the power assertions of frightened people. To validate these claims it becomes psychologically necessary for believers to attack and dismiss any competing religious system, setting the stage for religious persecution, religious violence and religious bigotry. Everywhere one looks in the world today, one discovers the manifestations of that human need. God is always invoked to justify our cruelty, our attacks and our prejudice.

Religion began its journey through history as a dimension of tribal life, interpreting the world to a particular clan of people. In time, individual tribes merged into larger and larger constellations until in our day three major religious systems dominate the world. Hinduism and its child Buddhism are dominant in the eastern part of the world; Islam blankets the Middle East, and the Judeo-Christian faith holds sway over the western world. Judaism, while the mother of Christianity, exists today as a tiny presence in an overwhelmingly Christian world, constantly resisting efforts at assimilation. Over the centuries Christianity, as part of the dominant west, had no great need to engage the other religions of the world. Islam could be ignored at least since the eighth century, when in the battle of Tours the Muslims were driven out of Europe. The eastern religions were also generally outside the orbit of western consciousness and thus they raised no great concerns. However, Judaism as a minority tradition inside the dominant system, was a living symbol that Christian claims were not universally acknowledged. While Christians were regularly making assertions of divine revelation, of a heavenly invasion by God to save the world or claiming that they alone control the exclusive doorway into God, there were Jews in their midst constantly reminding them that not all people believed as they did. In that place deep down in our souls, where the hysteria of powerlessness collides with the security-providing mechanisms, which make self-consciousness and humanity itself possible, religious prejudice is born. Anti-Semitism is thus the constant shadow, the ever- present underside of Christian claims of certainty.

In my last column, I began a walk back through history to trace the development of anti-Semitism in the Christian West. I started with the holocaust in the middle years of the twentieth century in Nazi Germany and journeyed until I reached the time of the bubonic plague in the fourteenth century. I continue that trek this week in search of the origin of this prejudice that has been a constant reality inside the Christian tradition.

I come next to that bizarre period of western history that we call the Crusades. The desire to win eternal reward and the need to oppress a rising religious threat, combined with an obsession to free our holy places from the control of the infidels, fueled centuries of crusading fervor. The holy city of Jerusalem, which included such sites as the Mount of Olives, the Garden of Gethsemane, the Hill of Calvary and the place of Jesus' tomb in Joseph's garden, were all being "defiled" by Muslim control. Six miles away lay the little town of Bethlehem, the sacred birthplace of Jesus, also under Islamic auspices. Encouraged by the Vatican, local princes identified this external Muslim enemy and were easily able to rouse the population of Europe into a frenzy. Eternal reward, it was said, awaited those who led a contingent of followers to the Holy Land to kill the infidels and free the holy places. Some battalions of Christian crusaders were large, led by the ruling kings of Europe. Some were smaller, led by a local duke or nobleman. Others were organized by a single citizen who usually had more enthusiasm than wisdom. Militarily, all of them were quite unsuccessful. The Holy Land has generally remained under Muslim control until this day, but the crusades left a hatred deep in the souls of the Islamic people and nations, that plagues the western world at this very moment.

In our search for the origins of anti-Semitism, we need to note that most of these fervent Christian soldiers who set off on these "romantic" crusades, never actually made it to the Holy Land. They only made it to one or two villages or towns away from their homes where they acted out their vehemence against the only "infidels" they could find in these communities that were unfortunate enough to be in their pathway. The infidels there were not Muslims but Jews. "One infidel is as good as another," became the motto of these crusaders as the Jews were killed in village after village. They deserved it the Christians said. They killed Jesus and, more than that, they had admitted it, bragged about it and accepted the consequences for themselves and their children. That is what the "Word of God" had stated. The echoes of the words penned by Matthew that had the crowds take responsibility for the blood of Jesus and volunteering that blame for their children in generations as yet unborn were not far from the minds of these Christian warriors.

This persecutory mentality had also expressed itself even earlier in European history when the Christians barred the Jews from owning land. To survive economically they became bankers and jewelers. Christians were taught that usury was sinful so no Christian could charge interest on loans. This made it unprofitable for Christians to engage in banking, thus opening a rich market that allowed Jews to become the dominant financiers of Europe. Kings borrowed money from Jewish bankers to underwrite their wars and even their crusades. This enabled the Christians to feed their stereotypical prejudices that portrayed Jews as money-grubbers, who would do anything for money. If there were any doubts about this, the story of Judas Iscariot was retold. Had he not betrayed the Lord for thirty pieces of silver? It all fitted together. Christians needed the Jewish bankers but they hated them simultaneously.

Banking was not a safe haven for Jews. Whenever the king's debts to Jewish financiers became excessive, it was easy for him to begin another round of persecutions in which Jewish property would be confiscated. That property frequently included those liquid assets called bank loans and the king's debts disappeared into thin air! In time, the Christians would abandon their principles about the sinfulness of interest. Banking was too lucrative an enterprise to leave in Jewish hands. Another layer of anti-Semitism is thus laid bare.

Continuing this journey backward through time, we arrive at the period of Christian history in which the church celebrated its Founding Fathers -- Polycarp, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Jerome, Tertullian and John Chrysostom, just to name a few. They were the key players as the church learned how to survive in a period of persecution and to prepare their faith tradition to become the dominant religion in the Roman Empire, which happened in the fourth century. It is fascinating to discover how deep and virulent the anti-Jewish rhetoric was in almost every one of these "Fathers." Their words, when read today, are still chilling. Jews were called "evil, vermin and unclean people." They were said to be 'unfit to live.' Christians were taught that it was a virtue to hate Jews actively. They castigated and caricatured the Jewish faith in ways that would make it impossible for a faithful Jew to recognize it as his or her faith. Jews were not to be trusted, not to be allowed access to power, not be considered as potential friends, not to be people with whom any Christian would break bread.

When we arrive at the second century, still searching for the origins of this prejudice that seems to have infected Christians at a very early stage, we come to a man named Marcion who did his work around 140 C.E. Marcion regarded the God of the Jews as a demonic figure. He proposed that Christians rip the Old Testament out of their Bibles and edit out of the New Testament any references to the God of the Jews. His desire was to sever Christianity from its Jewish roots and allow it, even force it, to deny its own ancestry. Marcion might be called the culmination of the first great wave of Christian anti-Semitism. The church to its credit refused to go along with Marcion, ultimately condemning him as a heretic, but Marcion's anti-Semitism was destined to continue to exert its ugly prejudice in the life of the church. Marcion forced the early church to draw up its own Canon of Scripture, which quite specifically included the Old Testament. It could hardly have done otherwise since the canonical gospels included thousands of references to the Hebrew Scriptures. Those Jewish texts had long been the primary way through which Christians had portrayed Jesus as the fulfillment of the law and the prophets. Christians even began to appropriate Jewish concepts to themselves, calling themselves "God's Chosen People, God's elect," and identifying themselves as the New Israel. To do this implied that the Jews no longer had a right to these claims, since they were defined by the Christians as God's rejected, the ones who did not live up to their calling. "He came to his own and his own received him not," is the way the fourth Gospel described it.

The next step backward in this journey takes us into the New Testament itself. We Christians do not like to face the fact that anti-Semitism is present in the gospels themselves, but it is. The word of God actually teaches us to hate. Exploring that will be my topic next week.

~ John Shelby Spong
Originally published May 12, 2004

 

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