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#4487cf;text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=205744dc07&e=db34daa597">Homepage</a> <a style="color: #4487cf;text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=011ff859b1&e=db34daa597">My Profile</a> <a style="color: #4487cf;text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=249937aadb&e=db34daa597">Essay Archive</a> <a style="color: #4487cf;text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=14db79785b&e=db34daa597">Message Boards</a> <a style="color: #4487cf;text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=1a85321514&e=db34daa597">Calendar</a></h5></td> </tr> </tbody></table> </td> </tr> <tr> <td align="center" valign="top"> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="600" id="aolmail_templateBody"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top" class="aolmail_bodyContent" style="background-color: #ffffff;"> <table border="0" cellpadding="20" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top"> <div style="color: #000000;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><h1 style="color: #003d4a;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 34px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">The Season of Relief</h1> <h3 class="aolmail_null" style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 26px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">By Gretta Vosper</h3> <p><a style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://"><img align="left" alt="Gretta Vosper" class="aolmail_wp-image-49753 aolmail_alignleft" height="154" style="border: 0px;width: 125px;height: 154px;margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;line-height: 100%;outline: none;text-decoration: none;text-transform: capitalize;display: inline;" width="125" src="https://johnshelbyspong.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Gretta-Vosper-copy-242x300.png"></a>The calendars we give and receive as Christmas gifts – Sudoku-a-Day desk tear-offs, or expensive, hang-on-the-wall art photography – don’t pay much heed to the Christian calendar aside from noting its two largest festivals – Christmas and Easter – and helping retailers take advantage of a few minor ones – Valentine’s, St. Patrick’s, and Hallowe’en. Denominational church calendars fill in more of the blanks, but we all know that the year we follow starts on the first of January, a bleak and dreary date in the northern hemisphere and a riot of colour and beauty in the southern. I don’t know anyone who hangs up a calendar that starts the first day of Advent and marks their year in the way Christians once did long ago. Of course, I don’t know any monks. Perhaps they do.</p> <p>The Christian calendar moves the church through a series of festivals and seasons beginning with Advent at the very end of November or the beginning of December and concluding three hundred and sixty-some days later with the celebration of the Reign of Christ. And then it starts all over again. Whether the calendar was established to deepen the faith and devotion of the simple Christian or came into being as an elaborate, guided tour through the narratives and, thus, the theology of the Christian faith, there are others better equipped to discuss than I. Bishop Spong, for that matter, has explored liturgy – Christian and Hebrew – on many occasions and drawn rich conclusions regarding the story behind the story, revelations that most Christians do not know. <em>Liberating the Gospels: Reading the Bible with Jewish Eyes: Freeing Jesus from 2,000 Years of Misunderstanding</em> is an engaging exploration of the rolling back of the gospel stories over the Hebrew liturgical calendar. It is a fascinating read.</p> <p>Technically, as many of you may know, Easter is so much more than Easter Sunday. We merely enter the <em>season</em> of Easter on that day. After that, we fall victim to the stronghold commercial calendars have on the naming of the year and live as though Easter’s over and done with. Oddly, considering the potential for extended chocolate sales, the commercial world never alludes to the fact that Easter lasts for fifty days and covers seven Sundays. Indeed, until mainline denominations began to show more interest in liturgy in the mid-seventies, I don’t think many self-respecting Protestants would have been able to tell you how long Easter lasts, even if they did notice the absence of a Prayer of Confession for several weeks.</p> <p>Is the Meaning of Easter Getting a Little Fuzzy?</p> <p>I recall driving some years ago past this clever quip on the sign outside a church not far from my own. Word on the street now has it that the church, the local outlet of another mainline denomination, is within months, if not weeks, of closing. Who knew the sign would prove to be more ironic than clever? The use of one of the classic attacks on liberal Christianity by her conservative big brothers – that it isn’t doctrinally pure enough – may very possibly be what has resulted in the congregation’s own demise. As liberal Christianity moved further and further away from literal belief in the stories that framed its original doctrine, a journey that kept pace with its social embrace of reason, younger generations no longer found Sunday mornings in church services still couched in classical theology a meaningful use of their time. Church closures at the dying edge of too many missing generations are one of the more obvious results.</p> <p><strong>Seasonal Mania</strong></p> <p>I know Easter preparation and survival well and I know the challenges of leaning into liturgies with which I do not resonate and trying to infuse them with new life. Lent isn’t just about penitence and seeking forgiveness. It isn’t just about wandering through the wilderness and seeking a new way. It is the great prelude to Holy Week. To Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, and Good Friday. It is about building the drama and coming up with new ways to make it come alive. It is about (sometimes real) donkeys and crosses and all the lead-up to rolled away stones. There’s a lot of drama building during Lent. For clergy creatives, it was as bad as Christmas, which simply means “a disaster waiting to happen.” One of my church secretaries used to get so high-strung during these periods in the Christian calendar that I stopped requiring bulletins for any of the extra services. It didn’t help. Her anxiety was most likely a manifestation of my own.</p> <p>I remember a Good Friday service that had gone on longer than expected. The organist took it upon himself to speed it up a bit, playing “O Sacred Head, Sore Wounded” at a pace faster than any Christian hymn I’ve ever heard. He literally trilled his way through it. I was devastated. The service had been perfect right down to the very last piece. He had destroyed the whole thing.</p> <p>And then there was the Maundy Thursday Tenebrae service during which the hall was reverently stripped of all decoration and the lights completely extinguished, perfectly in synch with trays of candles previously imbued with deep meaning. I’d marked the light switches carefully so that the last spotlight glared baldly down on the thirty-foot-tall steel cross suspended above the congregation. But one whole bank of lights, I realized too late, didn’t have a switch on the inside of the hall. You needed to be outside to turn that bank off. So the when it got down to the last minute, instead of the drama of a single light illuminating the cross and then, bam, utter darkness, it was the cross illuminated and then, bam, one side of the sanctuary still bathed in light. I wept all the way home.</p> <p>I spent one whole season of Lent developing an art installation that grew and changed each week. Starting with two plain purple banners, I first added black vines with twisted paper on each, then joined them across the space in between. Eventually, thorns appeared on the vines and then, the whole thing was draped in black for Good Friday. Easter morning, I had to stand outside the building as the installation was completed. I was so nervous, I thought I was going to throw up. Two brave volunteers tore the black drape from the wall to reveal golden banners covered with Sunday School crafted lilies. Nothing crashed to the floor. Everything went as planned. But I was a wreck. The next year, a permanent fabric sculpture was installed. You have no idea the relief I felt.</p> <p><strong>Maniac Analysis </strong></p> <p>What was all that about? Why the need to be ever more dramatic, ever more artistic, ever more ever more? My craziness came down to one simple reality, as much of our craziness often does. It was easier to worry about the art installation or the choreography or the music than it was to face the truth. I didn’t believe the Easter story. It was that simple. I created huge distractions so that no one, not even I, would notice that, when it came to the biblical story, the lengthy reading of the passion narrative, the Easter hymns, the rock and the empty tomb, I believed none of it.</p> <p>For my liberal and progressive colleagues, surviving Easter is a major dilemma. We’ve studied critical contemporary theology and been challenged by all the big Christian festivals to line up a poorly-known human Jesus alongside the biblical claims made about his divine alter-ego. These high holy days eat holes in clergy consciences, though many struggle as I did, oblivious to the underlying source of their anxiety. Stress levels skyrocket, diversionary tactics abound, and congregations swell and disappear with the Christmas and Easter crowds who leave delighted by the fanfare and often none the wiser.</p> <p><strong>Brought to Our Knees</strong></p> <p>Most of the time, the biblical narrative is not an issue. Much of it shares ageless wisdom about how we should live (though much of that is very wrong) and the rest lays a people’s history alongside the passage of ancient time. But Christmas and Easter are particularly difficult because at these very crucial moments in the Christian calendar, the biblical narrative lines up literally alongside doctrine many of us no longer embrace. So when Easter is all over, we sink to our knees, not in prayer, but in mental and emotional exhaustion and move, gratefully, into the longest and newest season on the Christian calendar: the Season of Relief. There, we get to relax through the many weeks between Easter and the renewed challenges of Christmas.</p> <p>The dissonance with which leaders in liberal and progressive branches of Christianity live exacts a great cost to themselves, their congregants, and Christianity in general. Held fast by expectations we believe our congregations have, we neglect the very real human narratives that underlie the biblical story of passion, death, and resurrection. In the decades of our doing so, we have driven ourselves near crazy, watched generations abandon the church and us (let’s face it, we take that personally), and compromised the very real good our faith tradition might have continued to do. We have sealed our own passion away. It’s time that tomb broke open.</p> <p><strong>An Endless Season</strong></p> <p>It took more than a few deep breaths, no small amount of naivete, and an engaged and educated congregation to get me through the shift that freed me of the stress of my high holy perfectionism and allows me to lead every Sunday, all year long, in the Season of Relief. Together with my congregation, we explored and unearthed the human drama of Easter – dream, celebration, devastation, new dream – and tell it each year, still a bit manic on the production side, but lived without any sense of dissonance or delusion.</p> <p>Turning ourselves into love for the world is too great and all-consuming a task to compromise it by perceived obligation to the images, stories, and metaphors a people, long ago, used to inspire that very same work. We are to create our own stories, our own rituals, our own narratives of passion for our own time. Only in the Season of Relief, away from suffocating expectation, do we have the perspective and the space to consider how we might better do that.</p> <p>Welcome to that season and to this exhilarating work.</p> <p>~Gretta Vosper</p> <p>Read Online <a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=ea5741b9c2&e=db34daa597">Here</a> <strong>About the Author</strong></p> <p>The Rev. Gretta Vosper is a United Church of Canada minister who is an atheist. Her best selling books include <a style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=68862bccb8&e=db34daa597"><em>With or Without God: Why The Way We Live is More Important Than What We Believe</em></a>, and <a style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=6d372f6b00&e=db34daa597"><em>Amen: What Prayer Can Mean in a World Beyond Belief</em></a>. She has also published three books of poetry and prayers.</p> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <table border="0" cellpadding="20" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top"> <div style="color: #000000;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><hr> <h2 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 30px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">Question & Answer</h2> <p><span style="font-size:18px">Andrea from Atlanta, GA writes:</span></p> <h4 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 22px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">Question:</h4> <p>How does the death of Jesus 2000 years ago save me? What is the substitutionary doctrine of the atonement?</p> <h4 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 22px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">Answer: <span style="font-size:20px">By Cassandra Farrin</span></h4> <p><img alt="Cassandra Farrin" class="aolmail_size-full aolmail_wp-image-49713 aolmail_alignleft" height="125" style="border: 0px;width: 125px;height: 125px;margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px;float: left;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;line-height: 100%;outline: none;text-decoration: none;text-transform: capitalize;display: inline;" width="125" src="https://johnshelbyspong.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Cassandra-Farrin.jpg">Dear Andrea,</p> <p>Thanks for this challenging question! The standard definition of substitutionary atonement is that Jesus, as God’s son, fully human and fully divine, took the sin and corruption permeating the world upon himself and was sacrificed on the cross like a lamb on the altar. He did this as a radical act of divine intervention to rescue the world from darkness.</p> <p>If you go hunting in the Bible for the explanation I just gave, you won’t really find it there. It is an amalgamation of many different statements and stories from the sacred texts of the Christian and Jewish traditions. Actually one of the best places to read and thoroughly understand the Christian concept of substitutionary atonement, ironically, is John Bunyan’s 17th-century work <em>Pilgrim’s Progress</em>, or the children’s version, <em>Dangerous Journey</em>, as abridged by Oliver Hunkin in 1985. A man named Christian embarks on a journey to remove a terrible burden, which only leaves him after the following encounter as recounted in <em>Dangerous Journey</em>:</p> <p><span style="color:#FFFFFF">.<em>.........</em></span><em>At the foot of a hill, he passed an open tomb. Then up again, <span style="color:#FFFFFF">..........</span>upon a little knoll, he found himself beneath a wayside cross. <span style="color:#FFFFFF">..........</span>And as its shadow fell across him, so suddenly the burden, <span style="color:#FFFFFF">..........</span>slipping from his shoulders, fell from off his back. It tumbled <span style="color:#FFFFFF">..........</span>down the hill, it tumbled into the mouth of the tomb. It was <span style="color:#FFFFFF">..........</span>never seen again.</em></p> <p>The vision continues from there, but it’s important to see that this idea of atonement is not due to the work of the person but is envisioned as a gift freely given to those who seek it. All Christian had to do was set out on his journey, and once he did, the relief from his burden came almost as a surprise—an unforeseen event. Christian’s journey is not even close to finished at this point in the narrative, as he still has to make his way to the heavenly city without returning to the old life with the old burdens (sin), but it is clear that the moment of freedom was not the result of his own actions.</p> <p>When I was a teenager attending a Pentecostal church, one of our youth ministers created a vivid “choose your own adventure” game based on this and the works of C. S. Lewis to help instill the message in our young minds. Do I believe in this anymore? Well, no. I hate that it requires God to be so rigid and punishing, an old-world being that demands an old-world sacrifice in blood. Also, I think it fundamentally misunderstands corruption. Decay is a natural element of creation. Decay is an underpinning of life. We literally are born out of the destruction of what came before us, carrying with us the energy of the past lives of other entities, both living and nonliving. I think our biggest mistake (like the Apostle Paul) is in collapsing <em>moral</em> corruption with <em>physical</em> corruption. That’s a necessary assumption of atonement theology, and I can’t go along with it.</p> <p>What I do believe and <em>will</em> carry forward from this childhood belief I held, is that we can find relief from our burdens in this life. We do not have to cling to and carry our vices and our failures as <em>burdens</em> with us into every new relationship and situation. We can carry them in other ways, such as a commitment to do better next time, but we don’t have to remain shackled. And sometimes, amazingly and wonderfully, we are unshackled by free acts of love done on our behalf by others. If we can be that person for someone else, too, we should.</p> <p>~ Cassandra Farrin</p> <p>Read and Share Online <a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=68f4992068&e=db34daa597">Here</a></p> <p><strong>About the Author</strong></p> <p>Cassandra Farrin is the marketing director of the <a style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=e2c71242bb&e=db34daa597">Westar Institute</a> and the editor of Polebridge Press. Her poetic retelling of the Nag Hammadi text On the Origin of the World is forthcoming in <em>Gender Violence, Rape Culture, and Religion</em> (Palgrave Macmillan). A US-UK Fulbright Scholar with more than ten years' experience with cross-cultural and interfaith engagement, she has an M.A. in Religious Studies from Lancaster University (England) and a B.A. in Religious Studies from Willamette University.</p> <hr> <h3 class="aolmail_null" style="text-align: center;color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 26px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;"> <strong>Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited</strong></h3> <div style="text-align: center;color: #000000;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;"><strong><span style="font-size:24px"><span style="font-family:georgia,times,times new roman,serif">Insights from Finland</span></span></strong> </div> <div style="text-align: left;color: #000000;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;"><img align="left" height="106" style="border: 0px;width: 100px;height: 106px;margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;line-height: 100%;outline: none;text-decoration: none;text-transform: capitalize;display: inline;" width="100" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/b51b9cf441b059bb232418480/images/84fbd945-363f-48e0-97f1-129010755fed.jpg">Finland is a beautiful country, bounded on the west by Scandinavia, the east by Russia, the north by the Arctic Circle and the south by the Baltic Sea. Its five million ethnically diverse people include Laplanders, central Europeans and Russians. The Finnish language is closely related to the language of Hungary. Historically Finland has been a pawn, passing back and forth between the ancient kingdoms of Sweden and Russia. As a relatively new independent state, it has always been a social democracy. Women now serve this EU member state as prime minister, president and chief justice. I had a chance to visit Finland this past month. It was exciting for me for two reasons. First, Finland has always projected a favorable image. It was extolled as “the only nation in the world that repaid its World War I loans,” and it won my boyish admiration when its brave army, whose soldiers fought on skis in white camouflaged uniforms designed to blend into the snow, held off the army of the Soviet Union in 1939. Second this trip to Finland offered me an opportunity to test a proposition that I had long suspected about the vitality of the Christian Church. Part of the Church’s propaganda about itself is that it seeks unity in obedience to Jesus’ high priestly prayer recorded in the 17th chapter of John’s Gospel, “that they all may be one as you, Father, and I are one.” However, my reading of Church History suggests that when the church is monolithic it spawns things like the Inquisition that sought to remove any non-conformist idea. Heretics were burned at the stake to preserve the myth of unity. When that monolithic power was broken in the Reformation the first effect was a century of religious wars as Protestants and Catholics tried to recover their dream of religious unity by imposing a single religious system, their own, on all people whether they wanted it or not. A willingness to tolerate diversity was quite impossible with each side claiming to be the “only true Church of God.” Given the wide range of human personalities, tastes, cultures and life styles, I always wondered why there could not be multiple paths by which people could walk into the mystery of God. My reading of history also suggested to me that wherever the Christian Church spoke with a single voice it became less vital, less alive and more corrupt. I had earlier had an opportunity to test this proposition in the monochromatic Roman Catholic country of Belgium. Now Finland was going to offer me the opportunity to test that premise in a monochromatic Protestant country. Observing Christianity’s decline, especially in the West, it seems to me that this decline is most pronounced in those nations where there are no competing voices. At the invitation of a Roman Catholic monastic, I went to Belgium last year to meet with his order, to lecture at the University of Ghent and to have conversations with teachers on a theological faculty where Roman Catholic priests were trained. In Belgium the Roman Catholic Church is dominant to the point of exclusivity. So powerful is its Catholic identity that religion was the principle reason that the Netherlands and Belgium became separate nations in the 19th century. Belgium could unify its Dutch speaking Catholic constituency with its French speaking Catholic constituency far more easily than the nation could combine Dutch-speaking Catholics with Dutch-speaking Protestants. What I found, however, in this religiously uniform nation was a dying church. The four churches nearest to the University of Ghent, that had once been vital and filled, were today almost empty and their congregations quite elderly. Few priests remain to serve even these small numbers. The average age of the priests and nuns in Belgium has moved above 70. The theological college, where I met with faculty who trained future priests, had not graduated a single ordinand since 1998. At that moment there was not a candidate for ordination in the entire pipeline. The theological faculty was thus, for all practical purposes, unemployed, though they continued to draw their stipends from the State. By every measure the Christian Church in Belgium was dying and the depression among its leaders was palpable. The rest of Europe revealed a similar picture in other monolithic Roman Catholic nations. Germany, on the other hand, divided generally between the Roman Catholic South and the Protestant North, has in the last century produced world-class theologians and biblical scholars such as Rudolf Bultmann, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Paul Tillich, Emil Bruner and Hans Kung. The Netherlands has tension between its Protestant and Catholic constituencies and traditionally has encouraged freethinking and debate. The Vatican keeps trying to suppress this rebellious quality expressed in such people as radical New Testament Catholic Scholar Edward Schillebeekx, who though actually a citizen of Belgium enjoys the protection of the more open Dutch Catholic Church. The United Kingdom has religious divisions that are real with Presbyterian Scotland, Anglican England and the religious tensions in Northern Ireland, where Protestants seeks to remain on the island that Catholics believe belongs to them. Yet within England, even with its established Church, there is a vibrant Roman Catholic and Free Church presence, to say nothing of growing numbers within the immigrant population, who are adherents of Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. Charles, the Prince of Wales, created an enormous public debate several years ago when he announced that as king he hoped to be “the defender of faiths not the defender of The Faith.” I think it is fair to say that Christianity is more vital in these nations where religious pluralism exists than it is in Belgium where religion is uniform and monolithic. So Finland which claims a 96 per cent identity with Lutheranism, intrigued me. Does being a monolithic Protestant country make a difference? If the same problem that I saw in Belgium is also present in Finland, would it not say something negative about religious uniformity, no matter what the dominant religion is? Finnish Lutheran leaders told me that the Lutheran Church of Finland is in a serious decline. Less than 4% of Finland’s citizens ever darken the church doors. That 4%, I was later told, included worshippers who attended weddings, funerals and baptisms, reducing the Sunday worshippers to something closer to 1%. The Lutheran Bishops were portrayed to me as managers of a declining institution. With one notable exception, their primary concern, I was told, was preserving the unity of their decreasing membership. That still observant core reflected a rather conservative fundamentalist attitude, and were greatly disturbed at the prospect that someone might actually challenge their presuppositions and think outside the box of their particular dogmatism. I discovered that merely my presence, plus the fact that I had been invited to address something called “Church Days,” an annual event of the Lutheran Church of Finland, was a source of great controversy in the religious press weeks before my arrival. I was amazed first, that I was even known and, secondly, that I was considered controversial and threatening to the religious status quo. None of my books had yet been translated into Finnish, yet before my plane had landed, the debate was real. The result was intense media coverage, including a twenty-minute interview on Finland’s version of “Good Morning America” or similar programs in England, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. When I addressed the Lutheran “Church Days” audience, it was three times the usual gathering. The Sunday morning church attendance where I preached was far larger than usual. Tension obviously creates vitality and interest. Controversy is not destructive, it is a life sign. That was my learning. The primary difference between the dying monolithic Catholicism of Belgium and the dying monolithic Protestantism of Finland was not that one was less dead than the other. On that score there was little difference. It was rather that in Protestant Finland, which was less autocratic and less punitive of deviation, it was demonstrably easier to challenge a moribund hierarchy in a Protestant setting than it is in a Catholic setting. There is in the Protestant system less ability to stifle discussion or to penalize those who want to chart a different vision. In Belgium I found a defeated theological faculty who appeared to have no options. They complained of powerlessness but did nothing. In Finland I found a feisty group of minority voices unwilling to watch their faith die without a struggle and people whose vision for a revitalized, engaged Lutheran church would not allow their silence. My conclusions thus challenge the common wisdom of church people. Dominance is not a virtue. Unity is not a desirable goal. Competitive voices for Christ are a sign of hope that give rise to visions that will challenge old stereotypes. The quest for unity is revealed as little more than an institutional power game. It is not a sign of life. Controversy is a necessary gateway into growth. Diversity is resisted only when security and not truth has become the unconscious goal of entrenched religious systems. What wonderful insights to be gained from a brief visit to beautiful Finland. ~John Shelby Spong Originally published June 11, 2003</div> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <table border="0" cellpadding="20" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top"> <div style="color: #000000;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><hr> <h2 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 30px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">Announcements</h2> As we count down to <a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=bdde82d0ab&e=db34daa597">Embrace Festival</a> think about joining your friends at ProgressiveChristianity.org for one day, two or just an evening of socializing! <div style="text-align: center;color: #000000;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;"><a style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=ac8a3e6b92&e=db34daa597"><img height="333" style="border: 0px;width: 500px;height: 333px;margin: 0px;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;line-height: 100%;outline: none;text-decoration: none;text-transform: capitalize;display: inline;" width="500" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/b51b9cf441b059bb232418480/images/0fe13b45-6a52-47f7-a0cd-c5f836611a25.jpg"></a></div> <p style="text-align: center;">Click here to go to Embrace Festival <a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=ed4e8d956a&e=db34daa597">website</a>/sign up for <a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=ff947f704e&e=db34daa597">email list</a></p> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> </td> </tr> <tr> <td align="center" valign="top"> <table border="0" cellpadding="10" cellspacing="0" width="600" id="aolmail_templateFooter" style="background-color: #FDFDFD;border-top: 0;"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top" class="aolmail_footerContent"> <table border="0" cellpadding="10" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr> <td colspan="2" valign="middle" id="aolmail_social" style="background-color: #FAFAFA;border: 0;"> <div style="color: #707070;font-family: Arial;font-size: 12px;line-height: 125%;text-align: center;"></div></td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" valign="middle" id="aolmail_utility" style="background-color: #FDFDFD;border: 1px dashed #d3d3d3;"><div style="color: #707070;font-family: Arial;font-size: 12px;line-height: 125%;text-align: center;"><div class="aolmail_vcard"><div class="aolmail_adr"><div class="aolmail_street-address"></div></div></div></div></td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" valign="middle" id="aolmail_utility"><div style="color: #707070;font-family: Arial;font-size: 12px;line-height: 125%;text-align: left;"></div></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></center><center><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" id="aolmail_canspamBarWrapper" style="background-color:#FFFFFF; border-top:1px solid #E5E5E5;"><tbody><tr><td align="center" valign="top" style="padding-top:20px; padding-bottom:20px;"> </td></tr></tbody></table></center></div> </div> <style type="text/css">#AOLMsgPart_2_614aa880-b533-4ddd-a7e7-2bc1cac79b46 td{color: black;} @media only screen and (max-width: 480px){ .aolReplacedBody table#aolmail_canspamBar td{font-size:14px !important;} .aolReplacedBody table#aolmail_canspamBar td a{display:block !important; margin-top:10px !important;} } </style>