HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR REFORMERS, ALL By Rev. Gretta Vosper We’ve been anticipating the celebration of the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation for some time. Now that the month is upon us, it seems more like a private birthday party than something worthy of global attention. In truth, I suppose it is. With the global number of Reform Tradition Protestants diminishing, the celebration of the dramatic and cataclysmic leave-taking that was our birth seems of little interest to any but those enchanted by the history of such things and the few others taking advantage of the liturgical and party possibilities offered up by the date. The Lutheran-Roman Catholic dialogues of the past few decades culminated in the document From Conflict to Communion, published in 2013. Within it, Five Ecumenical Imperatives are laid out, providing a base from which the two traditions could ramp up together for a joint celebration of the Reformation, a healing of the centuries old rift between them. Shoving a new foundation of respect under the violence and rancour of the past, the Catholic and Lutheran ecumenists have demanded a new and generous spirit from their adherents: choose unity over disunity; start from a place of agreement rather than focusing on easily spotted differences. They seem simple and wise choices. If only we had managed to get to this place four hundred and ninety-five years earlier. So much hatred, horror, and bloodshed may have been avoided. There is no doubt that our great faith traditions have provided the human family much that has been of benefit. Perhaps their most important work was built of the evolutionary advantage provided humans by what we might nowadays call “group think”. Religion gave us a bigger and stronger clan than family. Members would die for us just as quickly as we would die for them; we were no longer alone but had the safety of our religious affiliates to add strength to our prejudices and personal desires. And those prejudices and personal desires were, in turn, further refined by our religious beliefs. Put in such a way, it is easy to see how, in the early 16th century, neighbours could turn against one another to the point of death, uncovering allegiances that damned an individual or family to the ultimate exclusion from God’s grace and forgiveness for all of eternity. Taking leave of an institution with that much power was a risky thing to do. The rhetoric continues to be chilling to this day. Bishop Spong has presented visionary work on what a new reformation might look like, what it might provide humanity in the third millennium, and how we might get there. His forthcoming book will take that work further, providing much more than the meticulously negotiated but necessarily simplistic Lutheran Catholic Imperatives. I expect this book will crown the past four decades of his leadership in this progressive Christian landscape, a terrain still tragically unknown to so many. CHOICE At any point in time, a range of possibilities lie before us. We make the best decisions we can, given the information we have at the time. Decades later, we sometimes realize that a single choice resulted in a myriad of other choices, each circumscribed by the first, and all resulting in a reality that, had it been clear to us from the beginning, we may have refused. We cannot see what the future brings and we are very poor at extrapolating our possibilities out much further than our immediate creature needs. And so we end up in situations, relationships, jobs, communities, social structures, or a whole world we may not have chosen had we been able to see the extrapolated implications of our every choice. But you don’t need to keep going in the same direction just because that is the direction you happen to be going. You certainly can and many do. But others, either because of a sudden reorientation of their perspective or because they were just born without a personal comfort zone, refuse to just keep on keeping on. To them, the cost is too high. In fact, it is idiocy. Enter, the Reformer. Many are the times I’ve heard Martin Luther compared to Jesus in the work they both undertook. They didn’t start dramatically; reformers rarely do. It may have been a conversation here or a private rant there. It may have begun in whispers and only risen to an audible level over many months or even years. It may have been with or without design, beginning with a broad, unfocused list of laments or emerging from the womb, so to speak, with a well-honed mission. But both Luther and Jesus, at some point in time, and very likely supported by the gifts of countless unnamed others who listened, shared, cajoled, and criticized, noticed that the faith traditions they cherished had veered in directions that were unacceptable to them. Choices made by those in leadership developed norms for the practices, thinking, attitudes, and prejudices embraced within the tradition, each chosen from the creative potentialities of time and place. For most believers, all was accepted as it was received. But for Reformers, what is normal for the masses is anathema to them. Both Jesus and Luther honoured their traditions. Though we long assumed Jesus was Christian, we now know he wasn’t; he was a Jew. Luther learned the only acceptable religion of his day, a Rome-centred Catholicism. They were steeped in their traditional religions, born into and formed by them. Like everyone around them, they were supposed to fit in. Their education, far above the level of the average believer, was supposed to further hone their beliefs. It was not supposed to expose the little hypocrisies and gross abuses that had been so artfully woven into the everyday business of religion. Once noticed, however, the normal way of doing things became unacceptable. There were no options for Jesus or Luther but those that would bring about catastrophic change in their religious traditions. Even as others fought to maintain the status quo, forcing banishment or conspiring toward more final solutions, the Reformers laid out and presented their arguments. And the world changed. LEGACY We stand on the shoulders of great men and women. Countless Reformers dared challenge the norms of their day – religious, political, economic, and social. And they did it at great cost. We are grateful to them for their struggles, for their lives, for their blood, and for the first discomfort noticed that set them on their course. They created the world in which we live, the freedoms we cherish, the perspectives we are welcome to embrace or refuse, the right to make our own decisions, whether wise or foolish. They set in course the possibilities from which we have chosen our new realities and so have become, with them, co-creators of the world we know. They also, however, created gross disparities and abuses that yet plague humanity and the planet: the economic enslavement of whole nations for the provision of privileges assumed by others; the legal jargons that entrap indigenous peoples in politically ritualized battles for sovereignty; the lines that set out who is worthy of the right to choose their own lifestyle and who is not; the notion that humanity is separate and above the natural world rather than enfolded within and vulnerable to it; the entertainments by which we anaesthetize ourselves to the truths that quake around us; the cruelties endured by herded, caged, and crated animals so we might pleasure our taste buds and sooth our sun-scarred skin. And we, in making our choices, remain co-creators, complicit in a litany of normals that, had we the heart of Jesus or Luther or the millions of unnamed men and women who have poured their lives out in the pursuit of justice and compassion and the building up of love in the world, would make every one of us a Reformer. There is a legacy in the Reformation that I believe belongs in the middle of our work, calling out the power brokers, the hegemonists, the deceivers. Ours is not the work of complacency or settling for imperatives that take decades to conjure only because it takes that long to soothe the sensitivities of those still wielding ecclesial powers that make no difference to the challenges facing our world. Our reforms must be much bolder, our work in the world more creative than what those beyond our walls believe is all we do. It may be that humanity is facing the greatest crises of its too-brief history as it reels with the challenges of global warming and climate change, exponential population growth, and resource depletion. There may be no future moment for us to step up. Now may be all there is. Literally. Change is our very birthplace. It is our right and responsibility as heirs of the Reformers, to stare down every comfortable “normal” that sings its siren song and refuse to be enchanted by it. It is our right and responsibility to count up every ease and privilege we enjoy and educate ourselves about its source – what makes it possible? Who pays for our pleasures and how? And when we find that “normal” is built on the subjugation of others – our tea, our chocolate, our party-ready shrimp rings – work to redistribute or limit those pleasures until all have access to shelter, security, food, clean water, and the joy of planning for their children’s futures. ECLESIA AS REFORMER But change is costly and few have the strength or fortitude to bring about its grander accomplishments. That’s why those usually identified with the most highly evolved faith in James Fowler’s Stages of Faith, a Universalizing Faith, are so few, so well known, and all assassinated: Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. We aren’t that strong, most of us. We might start out heartily, but we then draw up far short of our goals, beaten by our own fears, our own comforts, our own weakness. We may be legion but we are ordinary, too. Throughout the New Testament, the word translated to “church” is originally ecclesia. It’s a poor translation. Rather than “church”, it shared the idea of government. In Greece, the ecclesia was the council of elect elders who governed the city. It’s use in the early Christian writings was a radical refusal to live according to the rules of the day by a ragtag group of people who believed they had a better way. They believed they were called to a bolder and more perfect reflection of the dignity of humanity as they had seen it represented in or inspired by a heretical Jew who’d once moved among them and left a residual and radical idea of what community should look like. Perhaps it is not we, frail and human as we are, but our ecclesia that can set out upon the sea of change and call us forward. Perhaps we can use the New Testament ideal of an alternative ecclesia to set the standards, the ideals, the vision by which the corrective to human destruction of the earth might be realized. Perhaps my United Church of Canada and your United Church of Christ, United Methodist, or Disciples of Christ could be called to this greater and most urgent vision that lies in the roots of all our Christian traditions. Perhaps the sacramental traditions, Reformed and Roman, might step up together in this celebratory year and cry out the words that need to be heard by all, challenging us to notice that normal isn’t acceptable, even if it is the culmination of all our choices. We need our religious institutions to be the ecclesia they were called to be, to be great for us and challenge us to be the reform we want to see in the world. Perhaps this is the year for our ecclesial institutions to step into the role of the Reformer and built a vision we can work toward. Isn’t this the nature of the gospel call, that our ability to notice provides us the challenge to change for the better, to take and make good news and not simply welcome it? Like most, I’ve been largely indifferent to the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. It seemed to esoteric, to trivial in the face of what challenges us today. But perhaps it is exactly the opposite. Perhaps, like Jesus and Luther before us, it is time to challenge the traditions by which we have been formed. We would challenge them to reawaken to the purposes set out in their deep, deep roots: to bring the people together, to be the assembly of Christians and call us all to the frightfully challenging tasks ahead of us. To be sacrificial in their work, giving everything even if it leads to death. Or perhaps the Reformation anniversary is, more personally, a reminder that to each of us that we are a people born of cataclysmic change and inheritors of its demand: notice what lies all about you, what humanity’s choices have led to, what a continued trajectory might mean. Notice, and then stand up and make your stand. ~ Rev. Gretta Vosper About the Author The Rev. Gretta Vosper is a United Church of Canada minister who is an atheist. Her best-selling books include With or Without God: Why The Way We Live is More Important Than What We Believe, and Amen: What Prayer Can Mean in a World Beyond Belief. She has also published three books of poetry and prayers. Read the essay online here. Question & Answer Lesley from Minnesota, writes: Question: What are your views about so many Christians being in favor of gun ownership? Doesn’t that completely contradict the Jesus of peace we read about in the Bible? Answer: By Eric Alexander Thanks for your question Lesley. This is a timely question for me as I was in Las Vegas during the recent shootings. Being so close to an event like that made this issue feel even more urgent than it already did to me. What made the Las Vegas shooting so interesting to me is that it involved a large group of mostly white conservative casualties. It made a large demographic of people suspend their NRA sponsored talking points and deal with the reality of the situation in their own hearts and minds. And I should note here that I enjoy a good skeet shoot as much as the next guy, but that is not the issue at hand here. I think it’s an absolute perversion of the U.S. 2nd amendment to allow nearly anyone who can fog a mirror to have a cache of assault rifles. In my mind, there is no way America’s founding fathers intended that. And even if they did, they may not have imagined what the world would come to hundreds of years later. People say “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” and I say fine “let’s not put the guns that kill people in the hands of those people that kill people…” There are many sensible steps we can take to find a more sustainable footing here. The bottom line is that many Christians are not all that interested in Yeshua of Nazareth. Rather they follow a Jesus who has been morphed into a pawn of radical right-wing political agendas. I don’t think there is any way a disciple of Jesus, or someone who was brimming with love, compassion, and forgiveness in their hearts, would feel a need to accumulate military grade weapons and thousands of rounds of ammo. Disparate militias have no place in 21st century American politics, especially in a nation with over 325,000,000 people. No hunter alive needs to take more than one shot per second to put dinner on the table. And even though full automatic weapons are now illegal in many cases, it is quite easy to master or manipulate a semi-automatic weapon to inflict mass destruction. We need more stable progressive voices countering the NRA arguments within Christian circles. And as a side note, this was a key reason why I started the Progressive Christianity and Politics group on Facebook a couple years ago. It is now over 2000 members strong and we are propagating progressive principles out to compassionate and thoughtful people all across the world. If you or anyone else reading this would like to join, please feel free to register at www.JoinPCP.com ~Eric Alexander Read and Share online here About the Author Eric Alexander is an author, speaker, and entrepreneur. He is a board member at ProgressiveChristianity.org, and is the founder of Jesism, Christian Evolution, and the Progressive Christianity and Politics group on Facebook. Eric holds a Master of Theology from Saint Leo University and studied negotiations at Harvard Law School, and is the author of Teaching Kids Life IS Good. ________________________________________________ Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited The Bible, Corporal Punishment and Human Guilt - Part 2 The physical abuse of children under the guise of "proper discipline" has been practiced in western history so frequently as to be thought of as normative. It has had the approval of those recognized sources of cultural value - tradition, Bible, Church, School and family. It found expression in popular novels written by such noteworthy authors as Charles Dickens and Mark Twain in the 19th century and by no less a person than the 20th century's ultra-conservative political pundit, William F. Buckley. When some of these novels were turned into motion pictures, the corporal punishment scenes were quite graphic. In the schools of western history, which were normally church-related parochial or church-influenced public schools, corporal punishment was regularly employed until quite recently, certainly within my lifetime. Almost always this discipline was administered with parental approval. In boarding schools of the 19th and early 20th centuries this disciplinary activity sometimes had about it a quality of a ritualistic act and even came to be thought of as a kind of "liturgical observance." That is, the act of discipline was carried out at a time-certain. It was scheduled on a particular day for all offenders during a specified period of time for which the school staff prepared the instruments to be used, such as a bunch of bound switches or a freshly prepared cane. It was followed through in a prescribed, unchanging and traditional manner. The intended victim or victims would have to wait in fearful anticipation until the proper moment when the price of their misbehavior was exacted. The disciplinary act clearly defined boundaries and made all aware of where authority resided. In my own experience, as a public school boy growing up in the Southern Bible Belt, corporal punishment was employed, but much less ritualistically. It was administered on the spot whenever it was deemed essential to control the classroom and as a response to a particular act of misbehavior. Yet it also followed a set form that we all recognized. It was not used frequently. I recall that in my seventh grade class, which was the last time I knew it to take place, only two of my classmates were subjected to this discipline during the entire year. The fact, however, that I can still recall both instances some sixty years later, indicates that each of these occasions made an indelible, albeit not a positive impression, upon my young mind. Most of us who were not the actual recipients of the punishment were in fact intimidated by it. The offending student, in both cases, a boy 12-13 years old, would be asked to accompany the teacher who had ruler in hand, to the room adjacent to the principal's office, which was reserved solely for this purpose. That room also happened to be next door to our classroom, so even though we could not observe the act of discipline, we could not fail to hear it. The students remaining in the classroom sat in silence during the period of time it took the teacher and the pupil to reach the required location and to assume the proper positions for discipline. Then the noise of the ruler landing on its target resounded. No cries were ever heard because proving that "he could take it" preserved the pupil's last shred of dignity. Finally the blows would cease and in a few minutes the chastened student would return to the class, followed by the teacher, still gripping her ruler. The student would take his seat saying something about it "not hurting at all," a brave attempt to reestablish his place in the social fabric of the class. The teacher would then use this episode as a teaching moment by warning the other students that a similar fate awaited each of them if their behavior made it necessary. It seemed to me that it took the disciplined child a day or so to absorb the humiliation before he began to ease back into the life of his school community. The ever-present threat that the ruler would be employed again, however, instilled apprehension, fear and developed something of a herd instinct among us all. Instead of enhancing life, it seemed only to bruise a fragile ego. It certainly taught by example that physical force was a proper way to deal with those who are smaller and weaker. It surely issued in a more controllable classroom, but it was never, in my opinion, a pathway into maturity. It is interesting to note who, besides children, have been subjected to corporal punishment in the history of our Judeo-Christian world. There were basically four types of adults on whom corporal punishment was deemed to be appropriate discipline, at least during some part of our history. The one thing each of these four groups of people had in common was that they were thought to be deserving of the status of a child. The first category was adult prisoners. Those who had violated the rules of the society in such a way as to be judged a threat that must be removed, jailed and punished. I suppose the reasoning process was simple. If physical punishment made school children more pliable and obedient, to say nothing of being easier to control, then why should the same tactic not be used on those adults who consistently disrupted the well being of society's life? So the right to use corporal punishment was written into the penal codes of most Western, and by implication, Christian nations. The public whipping post was a regular feature in the criminal justice system in nations like Great Britain and the United States until the 20th century. The last state to make it illegal in America was Delaware. It is still employed to this day in Singapore and in several Muslim nations like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The familiar jail diet of "bread and water" was just another form of corporal punishment; that is, the punishment of the body. By extension from the penal codes physical discipline was used in situations where control was deemed essential to survival. It was a standard practice, for example, on the ships of the colonial powers in the 18th and 19th centuries when the whole world was shrunk to the dimensions of an individual boat, with the captain exercising the decision making responsibility for discipline, indeed sometimes for life and death, with no further appeal. Physical discipline was also employed on the Lewis and Clark expedition across the Continental United States on their journey to the Pacific Ocean, opening the West. The diaries from that journey describe what they thought were its salutary effects. The second class of adults to be treated in this physically abusive manner during our history was the slave population. Christians must never forget that the institution of slavery was accepted as normal, even in the New Testament. Paul directs a runaway slave named Onesimus to return to his master Philemon, not with the request for his freedom, but with the request that he be treated kindly. In the Epistle to the Colossians (3:22), slaves are ordered to "obey in everything those who are your earthly masters" and masters are urged to "treat your slave justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a master in Heaven (4:1)." With no rights accruing to the slaves, who were defined as sub-human and therefore childlike, it followed that disobedience was to be punished in slaves in the same manner that it was deemed to be appropriate in children. It is worth noting that even the popes have historically been slaveholders. No one denies that slaves were lashed in the United States for everything from disobedience to running away. The master had the right to do to his property whatever he wished. When slavery ended following the Civil War, these tactics of intimidation continued to be employed against powerless blacks in the South by quasi-religious organizations like the Ku Klux Klan. It is not as large a step as people now think to move from the corporal punishment of a slave or former slave with the bare back absorbing the lash while the victim was tied to a tree, to the ultimate act of corporal punishment called lynching, where the victim was hanged from the tree. Violence is always violence. The degree of violence is the only difference. What the inmate or prisoner and the slave had in common was that neither had power and no vestige of adulthood accrued to their status so they could be treated like children who had no rights. If it was the proper thing to do to powerless children, it must be appropriate for powerless adults. That was the reasoning. Violence is never contained. It always seeks new victims. Corporal punishment was and is legalized violence. Corporal punishment has been used on two other types of adults in our history: women and people in religious orders. To their story we will turn next week. ~ John Shelby Spong Originally published June 23, 2004 Announcements 5th Annual Climate and Creation Stewardship Summit The 5th Annual Climate and Creation Stewardship Summit will be Saturday, October 28 from 9:30 am – 4:30 pm in Hamden, CT. The focus of this summit is on water, both on land and the oceans. It will consists of speakers, panels and workshops on different aspects of our current climate change crisis and other critical environmental issues ... Click here for more information/registration