Jesus, poverty, and wealth

This week's readings from the Revised Common Lectionary include a passage from the Gospel Mark that I consider one of the most remarkable in the New Testament:

As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"

Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: 'You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.'"

He said to him, "Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth."

Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, "You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me."

When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions. Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, "How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!" And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, "Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." They were greatly astounded and said to one another, "Then who can be saved?" Jesus looked at them and said, "For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible."

This passage was deeply influential to me as an early teen. I remember once speaking to my Sunday School teacher about it when I was in the eight grade. I asked him, semi-rhetorically, if these passages meant that one could not really be a Christian if one were rich. I can still picture in my mind's eye the way my teacher shook his head in response to my query. Like a good conservative Christian, he had no problem with reconciling being rich with being a Christian. I don't remember anymore the reasoning that he gave me for his position, but I do recall that I didn't really accept what he told me at the time.

Rereading the passage above now, though, several interesting points emerge. First, Jesus takes the humble position of denying that he is "good", and he clearly differentiates himself from God. Mark was the first of the four Gospels to be written, and this passage was clearly so embarrassing to the later Gospel writers who used this as a source. In particular, Matthew, which was written some ten years or so later, and which incorporated almost the entire Gospel of Mark within it (sometimes verbatim, sometimes with changes), clearly didn't like the way Jesus denigrated himself in that verse. So Matthew changed Jesus's words to say, "Why do you ask me about the good? There is only One who is good."

Secondly, Jesus went further than just condemning rich people. He told the rich man not to live a comfortable middle-class existence, but to sell all his possessions and follow him. He was asking the man to become an itinerant like himself.

As a 13-year-old Christian, I was not prepared to do anything like that. I don't think that, at that point in my life, I knew what to make of that. I focused more on Jesus's statement that rich people, for all intents and purposes, were excluded from the Kingdom of God. To me, ostentatious wealth was, in effect, stealing from the poor. Once you provided yourself with food, shelter, the basic comforts of life, and a modicum of pleasures, what else was necessary? I was not a poor child. I was well fed and well taken care of by my parents. I lived a modest middle income existence. We certainly were not a rich family by any means either, or even a very well off one. I knew many of my schoolmates who lived in more upscale neighborhoods than my own. I did not consider Jesus's radical statements about selling all one's things, but I did believe that when I became an adult, I would live a relatively simple life.

In contrast to that, we have all sorts of Christians who preach a kind "prosperity Gospel". This phenomenon made the cover of Time magazine a few weeks ago. One megachurch pastor of this prosperity Gospel is Joel Osteen, whose church services are held in a former sports arena each week before a crowd of many thousands of parishioners, and whose services are broadcast to hundreds of television stations. Osteen is a charming and entertaining speaker who is himself quite wealthy. He has certainly benefited personally from the prosperity Gospel, and one cannot imagine him selling his possessions and following Jesus as Jesus asked that man in the passage above to do.

In many ways, variations of this Gospel of prosperity have been with us a long time. New Thought denominations, such as Unity, Religious Science, and Divine Science, have long used the word "prosperity" in their teachings; they believed that this prosperity was achieved through positive thinking and through tithing to their churches, although their definition of prosperity was broader than just to refer to economic wealth.

Even more traditional Christianity has often been used as a means toward, if not a justification of, ostentatious wealth. Just consider how much the Protestant work ethic has, when practiced, led to enormous payoffs for its adherents.

We may give out our Nobel prizes to the Mother Teresas of the world, but few of us actually walk the talk. We call them saints, those people who live the simple life and who devote themselves to helping the least fortunate. We admire them as we revel in our own comfort. Where I live, in San Francisco, there is something called the Night Ministry, led by a pastor who walks the dark streets of the poorer neighborhoods in town. Volunteers for this ministry provide phone counseling services to people in distress throughout the early morning hours. This is Christian ministry at its best.

But does God want us to be uncomfortable in order to enter the Kingdom of God? Does self sacrifice just for its own sake make sense? Or does God want us to build a society in which all of us are modestly comfortable, rather than one in which a few are very well off while others live in poverty? Why did Jesus tell that rich man to sell his possessions?

John Dominic Crossan argues in his book Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography that Jesus founded a revolutionary movement of rural itinerants who were

on a mission to rebuilt peasant society from the grass roots upward. Since commensality is not just a technique for support but a demonstration of message, they could not and should not dress to declare itinerant self-sufficiency but rather communal dependency. Itinerancy and dependency: heal, stay, move on.

In this kind of lifestyle, it made no sense to own possessions. In fact, the peasant itinerants who followed Jesus depended on the hospitality of those they visited. They depended on generosity, but behind that generosity lay a principle of commensality. Jesus's vision was a radically egalitarian one. If those they visited did not welcome they, then these missionaries needed to move on. That is why in Mark 6:11, Jesus tells followers that if they are not welcomed, they should "shake the dust" off their feet.

We no longer live in a peasant society, but poverty remains with us. Does the life of the itinerant make sense anymore? Peasants may have shared their food and shelter with itinerant preachers two thousand years ago, but most of us live in an urban society now, and we fear strangers knocking at our doors--for good reason. It is a dangerous world out there. So how can we best implement Jesus's ideal ethic of radical egalitarianism under present conditions? For Jesus, the lifestyle he led and asked others to lead was a means to an end--the end being social justice. What means are available to us now?

At thirteen, I may have envisioned my future adult self as living the simple life. As an adult, I know I haven't exactly lived up to that ideal. It is hard to escape the Western capitalist ethic of consumption and the acquisition of wealth. It is hard for any of us not to want to acquire a better income. As an American, I live in a society with a very porous social safety net. I would worry about how I could get by if I lost my job. I worry about having enough money for retirement. If I give away all my material possessions, how would I managed to survive into old age? Not to mention the fact that I like having my computer, my comfy bed, my television set, my cable TV. I am relatively comfortable, and I like it. The way I saw it when I was thirteen was that I also wanted everyone in the world to be able to share equally in the bounty of plenty that our world had to offer; the point was not for me to be poor, but for me not to be rich--me, and everyone else. I wanted to see a world where each person had available to them a modestly comfortable lifestyle, rather than one in which some people were very rich while others were very poor.

What happened to the radical poverty of the Jesus movement after he died is another interesting question. When Jesus was arrested, his followers fled. They were understandably afraid of the consequences of being associated with a radical religious leader who was executed for having opposed the earthly Kingdom that he lived in, in favor of the Kingdom of God. The execution of a leader in those times easily brought on a crisis in the movement. In the case of the Jesus movement, the followers probably went back to their jobs in Galilee, back to making a living. Their movement seemed shattered. There was no need to continue on. But something else took hold even after they fled Jerusalem; they were deeply affected by Jesus in ways that his death did not crush. It was only after some of them came to believe that Jesus after his death was exalted into heaven that the movement took a new phase. The crisis brought on by Jesus's death led to something new, a sect of Judaism that became the origins of a new religion.

This new religion continued to be a movement that, for a time at least, offered a radical critique of the wealthy. The author of Luke and Acts reports that the early Christian followers of Jesus lived a communal lifestyle after the Pentecost: "All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need." It is hard to know how the Christian movement evolved away from this kind of theological socialism, but it is worth noting that the epistle of James, written many years later, still expressed a strong negativity towards the rich:

Let the believer who is lowly boast in being raised up, and the rich in being brought low, because the rich will disappear like a flower in the field. For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the field; its flower falls, and its beauty perishes. It is the same way with the rich; in the midst of a busy life, they will wither away.

James also wrote in the same epistle:

Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court? Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you?

and

Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you. Your riches have rotted, and your clothes are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you, and it will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure for the last days. Listen! The wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you.

It is my guess that the preachers of the prosperity Gospel don't get around to emphasizing these words from the New Testament very often. Within the New Testament can be found radical language that resists against a social system in which a certain percentage of people control enormous sums of wealth while others live in poverty. Today we still have this same kind of injustice in our society. How can we in the modern world pursue the dream of social justice in ways that make sense in the contemporary economic and political system in which we live?

Church shopping on the internet - examples

I think the following sample of some church web sites for some mainline congregations in the San Francisco Bay Area illustrates both the usefulness and the limitations of using the web as a church-shopping tool. These web sites interested me because they came from churches that seem to represent pockets of progressivism--whatever that means. One of the questions that continues to arise for me is that when a church calls itself progressive, is that because of its theology or because of its politics, or both? Many evangelicals, for example, are committed to social justice, but they are theologically conservative. (For the record, I want a church that is committed to both social justice and that accepts open, inquiring minds about theological matters.) And this is one question that is not always resolved to my satisfaction when I look at a church web site.

The other obvious limitation, which I pointed out in my previous posting, was that there are intangibles that clearly cannot be discerned from a web site--the chemistry that you feel when you interact with the members, how you relate to the pastor, how you like the services, and so forth.

Among the churches in the sample below, many of them seem attractive to me (in theory) because they seem to be progressive in a way that I define it; some don't interest me so much; and some are just a little too far away from me to visit on a regular basis with my 18 year old car that has over 200,000 miles on it. I do not wish to disparage those churches that do not interest me; to say that a church is not a good fit for me is not to say that there is anything wrong with that church, and presumably it is a good fit for those who are involved in the life of that church. I also realize that churches don't always have the resources to put a lot of effort into their web sites, and in many cases they are simply doing the best they can in trying to create a web presence.

In any case, here is a sampling of church web sites that I have taken a look at, for better or worse. Note that I have not actually visited any of the Sunday services at the churches that I describe below. All the information I glean is strictly from the web sites. Here they are, in no particular order:

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College Heights UCC, San Mateo, CA. The main web page for this site says, "At College Heights Church, there are no right angles, no right answers, and no righteous dogma." Wow. When I read that, I was immediately intrigued.

The Who We Are page on this site includes a wonderful quote from Jim Burklo, a former pastor of the church and a member of the Executive Council of the Center for Progressive Christianity. The quote includes this statement about a progressive church: "Let it open to all who seek the kind of relationship with God that Jesus had, no matter how they sort out the myths from the facts of Jesus' life story." I note that they talk about the relationship with God that Jesus had, rather than about a relationship with an allegedly divine Christ. I like that wording. The page also says that the church is, "small caring community of independent thinkers that support each other on his or her own spiritual journey with a zest for life and a quest for knowledge." Phrases like "independent thinkers" and "spiritual journey" all ring true for me. The How We Worship page suggests that there are some creative practices in their Sunday worship. Of course, it is possible that what all of this means in practice would not actually appeal to me. The bad news--this church is some 20 miles away from where I live.

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Congregational Church of San Mateo (UCC), San Mateo, CA. This church is larger than the College Heights church. It also seems to be similarly progressive. Some of the wonderful things that they proclaim under the heading of Guiding Principles are:

"Christian" means we perceive in Jesus the divine qualities of love, peace, joy, and justice. It does not mean we think Jesus is the only path to God.

"Christian" means we eagerly explore the Bible for its spiritual wisdom contained in symbol, metaphor, and history. It does not mean a literal or heavy-handed approach that uses the Bible to prove we are right or righteous.

"Christian" means we have a specific tradition and history to which we are drawn. It does not mean we are constrained from exploring other traditions and creating new ideas that will themselves become history for later generations.

All I can say is--Wow.

Unfortunately, like the College Heights church, it is situated a little bit too far away from me.

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Sausalito Presbyterian Church, Sausalito, CA. This church is pastored by the same Jim Burklo who was quoted above. He appears to have switched denominations, from UCC to Presbyterian. The web site has an Our Beliefs page that emphasizes its affiliation with the Center for Progressive Christianity. It says that the church:

• Measures itself more by its deeds than its creeds.
• Welcomes people of all kinds and backgrounds as partners in the spiritual journey.
• Takes the Bible seriously because it doesn't have to take it literally.
• Keeps the faith but drops any dogma that gets in the way of the love that is God.

Not only am I impressed by this, by I am also impressed by the pluralistic and non-dogmatic philosophy expressed in the statement of faith:

• Jesus Christ is the foundation to our path to God, but we recognize that He represents one of the many ways to know God.
• We recognize the faiths of other people who have other names for the pathway to the Divine. We welcome and love people of all races, cultures, classes and abilities. We don't believe in converting anyone from one set of beliefs to another.
• We invite everyone to join in our worship, our communion, and our extended SPC family. Everyone includes believers and agnostics, conventional Christians and questioning skeptics, homosexuals and heterosexuals, females and males, the despairing and the hopeful and any other descriptor that may fit you.
• We believe that the way we treat one another and other people is more important than the way we express our beliefs.
• We are a spiritual community. We strive for justice and peace among all people, and bring support and hope to those that Jesus called the least of his sisters and brothers.
• We find more grace in the search for meaning than in absolute certainty, more in the questions than in the answers.
The web site also includes many sermons by the pastor, which are helpful in evaluating the church.

The church is on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge from where I live, though, and so it lies essentially out of range for me.

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First Congregational Church of Berkeley (UCC), Berkeley, CA. This church, which is affiliated with the Center for Progressive Christianity, describes itself on its web page as a "progressive Christian church". It appears to be remarkably vibrant and active, with a large congregation. It has listed as an upcoming event a "town meeting" on the subject of "What does it mean to be a 'progressive' Christian church?". The church has regularly scheduled speakers, it has a Wednesday thrift shop, and lots of activity groups. However, the question of what they mean by a progressive church is an interesting one. The web site didn't necessarily emphasize the specifics of its outlook towards theological questions. I was able to get a better answer to this by perusing some of the sermons that the include online. Some examples of a few statements taken from a sermon reassured me:

I said last week, that for me, the Bible contains words of truth for my life, but is not the literal word of God. Marcus Borg speaks about the Bible as "a sacrament of the sacred, a mediator of the sacred, a vehicle by which God becomes present, a means through which the Spirit is experienced." That describes how I understand its authority in my own life.

and

As the Bible has become more of a means through which the Spirit of God is revealed, I have discovered that it has become less and less of the infallible Word of God and more of a lens through which the Spirit is revealed. Years ago I learned a Haiku about seeing that has always stayed with me. "Since my house burned down, I know can see the rising moon." For me it means that once things, even beloved things are out of the way, we might be able to see more clearly, more deeply the way of wisdom in our own lives.

Those statements speak volumes, and overall, I get a very positive impression. Unfortunately, for me, the church is across the Bay Bridge from where I live, and thus a little too far away for regular attendance. I also don't know in practice whether I would feel at home in such a large congregation. I would not know about that unless I became a regular attender, which does not seem likely, because of its distance from where I live.

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Noe Valley Ministry (Presbyterian), San Francisco, CA. This church describes itself on its web page as a "progressive Presbyterian church", and it is affiliated with the Center for Progressive Christianity. The church does seem committed to social justice issues. However, it is difficult to for me to determine where the church really stands on matters of theology. I turned to some of the sermons that are online, and found the sermon from Easter of this year. The pastor said, "Now, I am not a teacher or a pastor who demands that any of you believe in the literal resurrection of Jesus Christ." I appreciated this commitment to openness and free inquiry, although the pastor also made it clear that "I believe in the literal Resurrection of Jesus Christ." It is difficult for me to really determine from the web site how theologically open the church really is; if the church really is not committed to rigid orthodoxy, that doesn't seem to be emphasized on the web site, although that doesn't necessarily mean anything.

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Saint Gregory's Episcopal, San Francisco, CA. This church, which is affiliated with the Center for Progressive Christianity, may just have the most unusual Episcopalian worship services you will ever find. Its Sunday morning services include elements borrowed from many traditions, full of bright costumes, umbrellas, and dancing by the congregation. That's right--if you attend, you are going to dance (they teach you the steps before that part of the service.) The web site has some photo slide shows that show pictorially and describe in detail each phase of 8 AM and 10:30 AM morning service. Communion is shared, with the cup passed from person to person, and it is open to all. Audio recordings of the sermons are available online. I have to admit that, while traditional Episcopalian services are too creedal and too filled with orthodoxy to suit me, this particular church definitely interests me.

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Seventh Avenue Presbyterian, San Francisco, CA. The church is affiliated with the Center for Progressive Christianity, but the web site doesn't give many clues to the church's views on the Bible or theology. Neither sermons nor newsletters are available online. The church does clearly have a social justice mission. The church also emphasizes a certain kind of inclusiveness: "We feel strongly that all people of God are welcome regardless of gender, race, age, physical ability, sexual orientation, political party, educational achievements or financial resources." While that is certainly a positive statement, it doesn't say much about how welcome theological seeking would be within the life of the congregation. So when the church defines itself as progressive, are they primarily referring to its social justice mission? Or do they also mean theologically progressive?

This same ambiguity shows up in its statement on membership: "Many people who have said YES to our community have come from non-Christian backgrounds or no faith-tradition at all. Recently, we have welcomed persons who have been raised as atheist, Buddhist, Hindu, Mormon, and Muslim as well as those whose faith was formed within one of the many Christian traditions (i.e.: Roman Catholic, Assembly of God, Episcopal, MCC, Lutheran, Methodist, etc.)." To say that people in the community have in the past been involved in diverse traditions doesn't necessarily say anything about how diverse their views are in the present. The only real suggestion of openness outside of orthodoxy that I could find on the web site is an adult education class next February on the noncanonical Gospel of Mary Magdalene.

Overall, then, it is unclear from this site how much the church welcomes a questioning, nondogmatic view of the Bible. Perhaps they do, but I can't tell from the web site alone. The only way to really know would probably be to attend. I do note that the church does conduct Taize services every other Wednesday night, which I think is a point in this church's favor.

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St. Peters Episcopal, San Francisco, CA. The web site proudly proclaims on its main page that the church is an affiliate of the Center for Progressive Christianity. The nature of the services is not indicated, so without any further information my guess is that they are conducted in a typically traditional Episcopalian manner, presumably based on one of the rites from the book of common prayer. The one sample sermon that they have on the web site includes a reference to something that the Gospel of John reports Jesus as having said, and then begins a comment on it with the phrase "if he said that"--that is to say, if Jesus said what the Gospel of John claimed he said. Thus the sermon conceded that John's gospel might not have been historically accurate in reporting something Jesus said. This scores points with me, and it is a good sign in my view that the theology is indeed progressive and doesn't take a literalistic view of the Bible. There is a "links" page that includes links to the Gospel of Thomas, and some contemporary writers as diverse as Deepak Chopra and Karen Armstrong. I'm actually not sure what to make of the Deepak Chopra link, which perhaps suggests a little New Age-iness, but perhaps I am reading too much into that. Without knowing more about the nature of the services, though, I can only assume at this point that they would, like most Episcopalian services, involve some orthodox creedal affirmations that I would not be comfortable with, but theologically they give something of an impression from the web site of being open and progressive. Again, probably the only way to know for sure would be to attend services or to talk with the priest or members of the congregation.

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Saint Mary's Episcopal, San Francisco, CA. This church is not affiliated with the Center for Progressive Christianity and probably would not have caught my attention, but I noticed that they have a Sunday evening service that they called "Saint Mary's unplugged". This service does not conform to the usual Episcopal rites, and is thus an alternative form of worship: "Readings are taken from the Old Testament, the appointed gospel and related works. Spiritual texts from other traditions and contemporary writers are desirable. During Communion, the community gathers in a circle around the altar. Alternative or original Eucharistic prayers are used. New music is welcome in addition to well-known hymns and/or folk songs." The web site also says, "We value ecumenical and interfaith worship, a good sense of humor, ease with spontaneity, intellectual challenges, and fluidity with children in the service. We gladly welcome visitors!" I am intrigued.

(I note also that Saint Mark's Episcopal in Berkeley, CA has a Sunday night service where "throughout the year we use alternative liturgies at the 7:30pm service, drawing upon the rich resources of the worldwide Anglican Communion as well as ecumenical sources." So it appears that it is not unheard of for Episcopal churches to offer alternative forms of worship during service times other than Sunday morning.)

Church shopping on the internet

The best way to find out what a church is like is to attend a service. But I am not too crazy about reckless experimentation. I am afraid I might waste a Sunday morning attending a worship service that I don't really enjoy, when I could have gone somewhere else instead. Maybe the church I visit pushes certain dogmas that I strenuously object to. I ran screaming from a theologically conservative church when I was a teenager; having rediscovered the idea of going to church as an adult, the last thing I need to do is reopen old wounds.

That's where the internet comes in so handy. I don't know what people used to do for their research. I guess they just took chances and church-shopped willy nilly; or maybe they found out about churches through acquaintances and gave them a try. It must have been an arduous process of sorts. But for me, my Sunday worship experience is too precious to waste on such adventurism. I value too much the spiritual high that comes from attending a meaningful worship experience to risk going to a service that instead deflates my spiritual expectations.

One problem with the internet is that church web sites vary widely in the kind of information they give. What I look for are some signs, some clues, of progressive Christianity and tolerance of my own heterodoxy. If they are affiliated with the Center for Progressive Christianity, that is a good starting point. Another good sign is some expression of inclusiveness and theological openness. On the other hand, if I see words like "we believe that the bible is the inerrant word of God", or "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God", or "everyone who doesn't believe the right things is going to hell", then I am not likely to be interested. If the church seems promising, I also like to see descriptions of what worship is like, and perhaps also some sample sermons--either text or audio.

Of course, it is only if I dip my toe in the water and actually visit a church do I really know for sure what I might be getting myself into. The web site only points the way; the actual experience may not meet expectations. But it is scary enough for me to go to a strange church; there is so much theological baggage that I carry, and I am highly sensitive to any hint that a church pushes a little too far in a certain direction. The important point is that even if a church seems good in theory, only by interacting with the congregation would I know if it is a good fit.

It was via the internet that I discovered the church that I've been attending the past few weeks. I knew it was affiliated with the Center for Progressive Christianity, and it was also affiliated with the UCC, which is generally a very progressive denomination; but otherwise I wasn't entirely sure what I was getting myself into. I was so nervous about it that I went by myself and parked outside the church one Sunday morning, then turned around and went back. When I finally got the nerve to attend a service, it turned out to be as inclusive and theologically open as I had hoped, and the people were remarkably friendly. Whew.

On keeping God under control

This quote comes from a blog entry written by Glynn Cardy, the vicar of St Matthew-in-the-City, a church in Auckland, New Zealand:

Proponents of Christianity throughout the ages have tried to keep God under control by creating fences out of the Bible, the Creeds, synods, clergy, hymns, and liturgies. Yet, we need to be aware of who and what we are dealing with. For God continually breaks out of our constructs and language - popping up in others’ holy texts, speaking through social and political outcasts, refusing to favour any one race, religion, or sexual orientation, and generally being a darn nuisance to those who like decency and order. Be aware, this God is not safe.

Creeds

One of the most moving, inspiring, beautiful worship experiences I have ever had was a Wednesday night Taize service at an Episcopal church. The Taize service was Christian based but drew from other, non-Christian sources, and thus was not focused on theology or dogma but on the mere experience of worship and being in the presence of God. I was curious about what this church's regular Sunday services would be like. The church is affiliated with the Center for Progressive Christianity, and its web site indicates that its liturgy "comes from many sources, and that "we try very hard to be as inclusive in our language as possible." That sounds pretty good, although they do add that "traditional liturgy is still a great part of our service." That is also fine--I don't necessarily mind a little traditional liturgy, especially if it is mixed with more non-traditional forms.

But then I took a look at a scanned image of the program for one of its Sunday services, which was located on the web site. I admit that I've never actually attended a regular Episcopal service, but what I saw looked very much like I imagined an Episcopal service to be, and not in a good way. In particular, what I did not like was the section titled "Affirmation of Faith", in which the attenders were expected to rise and repeat the following: We Believe in God the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named. We believe in God the Son, Who lives in our hearts through faith, and fills us with his love. We believe in God the Holy Spirit, who strengthens us with power from on high. We believe in one God; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

I could never stand up and say those things. I do not believe in that Trinitarian formulation, and for me to say it would be dishonest; and for me to listen to the rest of the congregation saying it in this context would make me uncomfortable. This kind of affirmation of a creed is not what I want to experience in a religious service.

My admittedly limited experience with the United Church of Christ has so far been free of this kind of direct and formal recitation of creeds (although Trinitarian formulations have cropped up in some of the hymns, particularly the doxology.) Somehow I am able to put up with it in the doxology, but I feel that affirming it as a formal statement of faith is another thing altogether. The official position of the UCC seems to be that the creeds are "testimonies, not tests of the faith." I come from a non-creedal tradition (Quakerism), and in that context I am not crazy about creeds at all; but I can deal with creeds if they are framed in that sort of way. I can accept the concept that creeds reflect the historical understanding of those who went before us. Indeed, I see them in that sense as "testimonies"--and I am happy that they are not considered by the UCC to be tests of faith. What I just do not want is anyone expecting me to include a recitation of them as part of a worship experience, as if I believed them.

Is nature perfect?

Thanks to the internet, anyone can sit at their computer and read the texts of, or even listen to, sermons from far flung churches that one has never attended. I listened to an interesting and thought provoking sermon by an Episcopalian priest in San Francisco, which I enjoyed; but I did give pause when I heard him issue this quote from Thomas Merton: "In nature," according to Merton, "everything is doing the will of God perfectly at every moment."

According to this view, everything both animate and inanimate in the natural world--from dogs to trees to stars--are the perfect expression of divine will. This means, for example, that every action an animal takes manifests divine will; but it also implies, to me anyway, that even the form that nature takes is the perfect expression of divinely willed creation. Birds have wings and fish have fins, in other words, because it is perfect that it should be so.

As profound and inspiring as this view is, I disagree with it.

If nature truly reflects God's will perfectly, a question immediately comes to my mind--are we, as human beings, not also part of nature? After all, we obey the same physical laws as dogs and trees do. We hunger, we thirst, and we break if we fall. We die as every living thing does. We share the same basic genetic framework that all living creatures do. We evolved on this earth as descendents of the first living forms billions of years ago, and we participate in the planet's ecology. We are, in other words, integrated fully into the natural world. To claim that we humans are not included in Thomas Merton's statement about nature, I would argue, is to suggest that we stand apart from nature, that we are not part of nature. And yet we are indeed part of this natural world in multiple ways--in every way, really. And if we humans are integral part of nature, then Merton's statement implies that we must also be carrying out the will of God perfectly at every moment. And I don't think that many who believe in God would accept that. And that is one way in which I think Merton's statement breaks down. How can we say that the rest of nature perfectly expresses divine will while we, who are also part of nature, do not?

The answer that some would offer would be to say that humans are different from the rest of nature because we have free will and the rest of nature does not. To me, though, this offers a problematic and arbitrary solution, because it creates a distinction between categories of "nature"--that which obeys divine will and that which does not. In addition, humans are an integral part of nature, and we interact with the rest of nature continuously. When hurricanes strike, when wild animals kill or maim people, or when any other calamity of "act of God" takes place that results in human suffering or death, are we to believe that these events represent the perfect expression of divine will? Does God will shark bites?

This gets into the question of theodicy, of course. If we ask ourselves if God wills everything that happens, even those that seem to be quite evil in the short view, we are left with the idea that Leibnitz came up with, that we live in the "best of all possible worlds"--that God, through his infinite wisdom, knows that all the evil that appears in our complex world nevertheless has a greater overall purpose, that God in his wisdom knows to be the best. Even if something seems bad, according to this view, God actually knows that overall everything that happens has a greater purpose and is for the best.

One problem with the "best of all worlds" theory is that it doesn't do the individual victims of evil much good to know that somehow their suffering will have some greater abstract benefit for the universe. And when one applies this theory to human evil, one would have a very hard time arguing that something as horrible as the Nazi Holocaust could ever be justified as an expression of divine will.

There is another way out of this dilemma, however. Instead of claiming that anything in the universe represents the perfect expression of Divine will, one could instead assume that free will is an inherent characteristic of everything that exists in the universe. If every event that takes place in all of creation is, if only in some small sense, a kind of act of free will, then that means that, first of all, humans and nature both share both this same free will as part of their basic natures. It means that neither "nature" nor human beings are necessarily the perfect expression of the divine will. This is the view of process theology.

Under this view, God calls out to each moment in time (Whitehead called this an "occasion of experience") , offering the best possible action in response to the events that preceded it. Nature, to an unknown degree, has complied with God's will over the course of the evolution of the universe, when it chose to do so. But God didn't control the outcomes of any of the individual events in the continuing process of creation. God and the universe are, in essence, co-creators.

That doesn't mean that inanimate objects are conscious. Obviously, humans have a consciousness and rocks do not, so in that sense we are obviously different in how our free will manifests itself. It does mean, however, that free will, even at the most rudimentary and primitive level, is essential to every level of the universe. Nature is not a perfect expression of divine will, but instead a free co-creator with God. God guided the evolution of the universe, in all of its glory--the Big Bang, the creation of the universe, the evolution of life on earth, and the arrival of homo sapiens--but did not control it. The difference between acting as a guide and a controller is that in the former case, the nature doesn't always carry out divine will--in other words, it imperfectly expresses God's will. Thus our human capacity to not carry out God's will is built into the very fabric of the universe. Free will is everywhere, and God doesn't always get her own way 100% of the time.

Yesterday's New York Times ran an article that commented on the Nobel Prize that was awarded to Smooth and Mather for their work on researching the Big Bang. The article pointed out that the universe has actually become more complicated for scientists to explain and understand then it was back when those two physicists did the pioneering research that earned the Nobel Prize. It turns out that there is some sort of dark energy that is causing the universe to expand at a faster rate than it ought to be; but what is interesting about this is that there seems to be a lot less of this dark energy than physicists think there ought to be if any exists at all. The thing is, if there really were as much of this dark energy as they think there should be, the universe would never have produced the conditions that would have allowed the universe to evolve life.

So this confirms that the universe is, in an odd sort of way, exactly consistent with the conditions and physical laws necessary for life, despite the improbability that it should be so. Are we, seemingly insignificant and small creatures on a tiny little planet within a vast universe, the result of a universe whose laws were produced with God's encouragement and guidance just so that we would result? Or is it the case, as seems to be the position taken by the author of the New York Times article, that every moment in time creates a new set of parallel universes where each possible event has occurred, and we just happen to be living in one in which the Big Bang produced the conditions ripe for life, while billions of other parallel universes exist without life? While the former allows for the possibility that God lured the universe to evolve in a certain way, the latter says that there are infinite universes and at every decision point, every possible decision is being made in some parallel universe somewhere.

While there has been some controversy lately on whether string theory is valid science, it is interesting to note that the Times article also points out the following implication of string theory:

By one reckoning, the number of conceivable universes, each with a different dose of dark energy, is so vast that it is "measured not in the millions or billions but in googols or googolplexes." Why we find ourselves in, say, universe number 110,310,077,252 would again be a tautology: if we weren't we wouldn't be here to ask.

But again, this seems to take for granted that there are parallel universes. What if there is just one--the one we know and live in? The answer as to why we exist in a particular conceivable universe among a dazzling array of possibilities could lead one to suggest that perhaps there was a divine purpose that led the universe to evolve in the way it did. Of course, relying on scientific understanding to make a theological statement is very dangerous territory, and what we think to be a scientific truth today may turn out to be a disproved falsehood tomorrow. But it does make one wonder. On the one hand, perhaps the universe is able to produce human beings on this planet because of a divine influence from the beginning--one that was not completely accepted at each stage of the way, but still accepted enough that the very physical laws were able to result in our evolution. On the other hand, was this same free will that is inherent to the universe, which prevented divine influence from being absolutely obeyed in every instance, the source of our own incomplete manifestation of Divine will?

The Big Bang and Genesis

The physicist Michio Kaku has written an article for the Wall Street Journal that comments on the most recent Nobel prize that was awarded to John Mather and George Smoot for their work on the Big Bang. Kaku points out that one of the principle architects of the Big Bang theory, George Gamow, was never awarded a Nobel prize for his work. This miscarriage of justice may have been because of his playfulness that didn't quite match some people's expectations of what a physicist was supposed to be like. Writes Kaku:

Some have argued that no one could take him seriously because he was an amateur cartoonist who wrote children's books (e.g., the classic "Mr. Tompkins in Wonderland" series, which were the first to inspire generations of schoolchildren, myself included, to the wonders of quantum physics and relativity). Others have said it was because he was too colorful a figure, notorious for his practical jokes. He once added physicist Hans Bethe's name, without his permission, to a paper written by him and his student Alpher, so it could be called the Alpher-Bethe-Gamow paper. He was also famous for his silly limericks. He once wrote: "There was a young fellow from Trinity / Who took the square root of infinity / But the number of digits / Gave him the figits; / He dropped Math and took up Divinity."

Gamow and some of his students proposed back in 1948 that the Big Bang was so hot that it left behind a background radiation as a kind of afterglow that is still with us today. This prediction was later borne out by radio astronomers in 1965, who then won a Nobel prize for their discovery. This discovery was a key proof of the Big Bang theory, a theory still accepted by scientists.

Kaku, in his article, pointed out that "this echo from the Big Bang makes up a significant fraction of the static you hear on the radio. Says Kaku,

It's a disgrace that Gamow and his students never got the Nobel. But perhaps they got something even more important. Prizes come and go. But the ultimate testament to their monumental work comes out every night, when the residual radiation they predicted fills up the entire night sky, bathing all of us with the glow from Genesis itself.

I am always a little weary when anyone conflates Genesis with the Big Bang theory. As John Shuck has pointed out in his blog, Genesis has no literal scientific value, because it was constructed from a cosmology that prevailed during the time that Genesis was written but that we know to be untrue. Figuratively speaking, we can talk about Genesis as having theological value. Genesis makes general theological statements that may still ring true to us in some way--statements about God's creative role in the universe--but its scientific merit is nonexistent.

As Marcus Borg writes in his book Reading the Bible Again For The First Time,

To the extent that there is a literal affirmation in ancient Israel's creation myths, it is simply this: God is the source of everything that is. As one of my seminary professors said several decades ago, "The only literal statement in Genesis 1 is 'God created the heavens and the earth.'"
(p. 72)

Borg also points out in the same book that the creation story, with its refrain after each day that "God saw that it was good", is also a theological statement about the nature of reality. Says Borg, "against all world-denying theologies and philosophies, Genesis affirms the world as the good creation of the good God. All that is is good."

These are the theological truths that can be gleaned from Genesis--but theological truths are not the same as scientific truths. The Priestly authors who wrote chapter 1 of Genesis knew nothing of the Big Bang; their cosmology was primitive and fundamentally wrong by contemporary scientific standards.

It is true that the background radiation leftover from the Big Bang lives with us as a constant reminder of the initial phases of the creation of our universe. But, I would argue, the creative process in which God participates is still with us today. God did not stop creating at the moment of the Big Bang. And in a sense, all that preceded us, including not just the Big Bang but everything that followed it, is still with us in some sense, has left its legacy with the universe. Everything that came before has influenced in some way all that came after. If the world is in constant creation, as I believe it is, then every act of creation is incorporated into every creative act that follows it.

It is therefore not just the case that the echoes of the Big Bang are still with us. Our own legacy lies before us, influenced by every action we make.

My Religious Life

When I was a sophomore in high school, I went to church a lot. Not just Sunday mornings, but sometimes Sunday evenings.

I had a friend, who happened to be a Roman Catholic. I mentioned to him once that I went to my (Protestant) church on Sunday evenings, and he expressed some interest in attending with me. But then I let it be known that I also went to church on Sunday mornings, which he found a little strange. I realized that he probably thought of Sunday evening church as something you did instead of going in the morning.

Lately I've been reflecting a lot on my religious experiences as a teenager. Just before I underwent a crisis of faith at age sixteen, I was more than a little religious. I was a lot religious, although my faith was theologically immature, and somewhat fundamentalist; then again, my theological immaturity was probably matched by my emotional immaturity, which was rather high at that time in my life.

I was already pretty religious by the time I reached my sophomore year in high school, thanks to family influences; but then I had a friend from grade school days whose family had recently transferred from another church to mine, and he was quite active in the church youth group for teens, a group that I had heretofore barely known to have existed. He would participate in the youth group activities that took place on Sunday evenings, and through him I became acquainted with this youth group and started going to Sunday evening services.

I liked the evening services at that church because they seemed to be somewhat less formal and stodgy than those conducted on Sunday mornings, which were so solemn, complete with a minister who droned on like a college professor when he spoke.

My friend once invited me to an autumn leaf raking activity at an old woman's house; the youth group did this one Saturday afternoon as a volunteer activity. I thought it was a great way to participate in an act of Christian charity, so I agreed to participate. How disappointed I was to discover that the young people who did this work earned some kind of "points" by participating; by earning enough points, they could win valuable prizes, or something like that, and apparently that was at least in part the motivation for their participation. I had no idea that there was any selfish aspect to this charity work; I thought they were just doing it because it was a good thing to do.

A little piece of my idealism died when I learned that.

The youth group had a Halloween weekend sleepover in a large cabin somewhere in the woods outside of town, chaperoned by the director of the youth group. I wasn't sure I really wanted to attend, but when I told my mother about it at the last minute she put together a sort of a costume for me to wear and so off I went. We did the usual wholesome church youth group sorts of things--bobbed for apples, told ghost stories. I slept in a sleeping bag, shivering much of the night because I underdressed, wearing a t-shirt in an unheated cabin in late October. I also didn't have a pillow; the next morning I woke up feeling dizzy, apparently from having slept with my head flat on the ground. But it wasn't a miserable experience altogether for me. We held a Sunday morning service. It was outside, as I recall, and we sat there in our blue jeans and autumn coats. A girl who was part of the youth group delivered a sermon based on the love chapter of Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians. I loved this "service" for its informality, in stark contrast to the dullness of what I experienced in normal Sunday services. I loved most of all that I was attending "church" in my blue jeans rather than in a suit and tie.

When I later started having doubts about religion, I had a conversation with the same girl who had delivered that sermon from 1 Corinthians. She was a grade ahead of me in school, I think. I told her about the doubts I had been having, and she gave me her answers, but they were unconvincing to me. I started to say, "The idea of Jesus doing such and such--it..." "Jesus isn't an it,", she replied. Uh, I was talking about the idea of Jesus being an "it", not Jesus himself, I felt like saying, but didn't, because even if she was missing the point, she really wasn't answering any of my other questions to my satisfaction anyway. My doubts about the doctrines of hell and salvation, about the contrast between biblical literalism and science and reason--the answers she gave to me just didn't work. It was shortly after that that I announced to my parents that I had become an atheist.

Before that crisis of faith happened, though, I was religiously active, and not just in my own church. Down the road from my house was a Baptist church that held a Saturday night coffee house for young people. Teenagers sat downstairs on the floor of the coffee house and sang songs and prayed and talked about God and Jesus. There was one guy, who was a couple of years older than me, who played guitar, and he played songs, including at least one that he wrote, that I remember being quite catchy.

My church, which was a restoration movement independent Christian church, was theologically very close to the Southern Baptists on most points. So attending this Baptist coffee house for teenagers wasn't a big deal to me. I also attended Baptist church that sponsored the coffee house at least a couple of times. They might have been evening services--I'm not sure. I remember singing a hymn once and getting my timing off and starting to sing the next verse a little too early, meaning that my own, not very good singing voice was the only one heard, a second or two before the rest of the congregation joined in. I was so embarrassed over that incident that I still haven't gotten over it to this day--when I attend a church, I am afraid that my singing voice, which I am not proud of, will stand out in some way. I also remember once having a conversation after services with the minister, who asked me if I had been baptized. I said yes, I had. He said that he didn't mean to embarrass me by the question. I actually had not been embarrassed; I was proud to say that I was a baptized Christian.

The youth group in my church staged a play my sophomore year. I somehow got stuck with, or maybe volunteered for, a small part that had just one line. I was feeling out of sorts and regretted having taken on even that small part. I didn't feel very accepted in the group. I was kind of nerdy, kind of an outcast, and in addition I was probably having my theological doubts by that point. The day of the play, I tried to get out of doing the one line part. One of the girls in the cast had a phone conversation with me and explained that even though I just had one line that had no importance to the plot, they couldn't do the play without my participation, because it would throw off the cue for the next line. So I went. My mother asked me if I wanted her to come watch. I said no. Before the play started, the girl who had convinced me on the phone to come asked all the boys in the cast, one by one, for a good luck kiss on the cheek. I was embarrassed about doing that, but didn't want to insult her, so I complied along with the others. Immediately after doing that, I was even more embarrassed. During the play, I slightly bungled the line when I delivered it, but apparently not enough to throw off the next actor to speak. After the play, all the cast but me gave each other hugs and were very pleased and excited. I was depressed, feeling completely excluded from that post-performance joy, feeling more alone and excluded from this group than ever.

When in my early twenties, I ran across that girl who had convinced me to participate in the play--she was of course an adult woman at this point. She worked a teller in a bank in my home town. I was living there for about a year after my college graduation. She recognized me, and although she wasn't necessarily terribly friendly--we weren't exactly friends in high school--but she was cordial enough. She asked me if I remembered her. I did, and then said her name--except that I got the last name slightly wrong. Ah, embarrassed again! She corrected me, and added that it wasn't her last name anymore now that he she had married. Many years later--maybe six or seven years ago--I ran across her comments in a class reunion web site message board. She mentioned being divorced. I didn't bother to contact her or respond to anything she wrote. I have no idea if she even still remembers me . I kind of hope not.

When I was in my mid to late twenties, after years of atheism, I got my first inkling that maybe I was more interested in religion than I had realized, when I bought a copy of Elaine Pagels's book The Gnostic Gospels. After a while, I became actively interested in religion, becoming a Quaker in the process. This was more than fifteen years ago. But then, about ten years ago, my interest in religion seemed to die down. Partly this was because I had not found a religious home to suit me after moving to my current California location. It has only been recently that my interest in religion has been rekindled.

And one thing I have realized is that this interest in religion is both deep and persistent. Just going to church on Sunday mornings doesn't entirely satisfy my religious cravings. As when I was a teenager--when I attended church twice a Sunday and went to a Saturday night coffee house and participated in activities of the church youth group--I find myself involved mentally and spiritually in religion more than just on Sunday mornings. That was what brought me to attending a Taize service on a Wednesday night this week. That is why I write a religious blog. That is why I read books on religion almost every day of the week. That is why I study the weekly lectionary readings in advance of the Sunday services. That is why I read other people's religious blogs.

Am I drawn to religion in this constant, persistent way because it fills some kind of emptiness in my soul? Is it a crutch to make up for a life that is missing some kind of complete fulfillment? Or am I drawn to religion in this way because something inside me, something in my upbringing or genes or whatever, has made me at some deeper level a religious person? What has held me back for so many years has been the problem of religious dogma, and finding a religious home. I have suddenly discovered in the past few months, though, that there are pockets of religious liberalism even within the mainline churches, that it is possible to find religious satisfaction in ways that don't force me to check my mind at the church house door. And now that I know this, I find myself deeply craving to experience spirituality, and to connect with God, often.

Maybe this is a passing fancy. The last time I became more spiritually focused, the religion faded away after a while from my life. But the circumstances were a little different, because I was more limited in where I was seeking religious sustenance. I know now that more options are available to me. Where this will all lead, I do not yet know.

Taizé

I attended a Wednesday night Taizé service tonight at a San Francisco church. It was an amazingly wonderful experience. The service was conducted in candlelight, and included a mixture of singing and readings. The singing was performed by a cantor, who rang out certain repeated phrases in a beautiful voice. The readings included some non-conventional texts, such as a passage from the Q'uran, a paraphrased version of psalm 51 translated by Nan Merrill, and a version of the Lord's Prayer that comes from the New Zealand Book of Common Prayer. This version of that prayer is:

Eternal Spirit, Earth-maker, Pain-Bearer, Life-giver, Source of all that is and that shall be.
Father and Mother of us all, Loving God, in whom is heaven:
The hallowing of your name echo through the universe!
The way of your justice be followed by peoples of the world!
Your heavenly will be done by all created beings!
Your commonwealth of peace and freedom sustain our hope and come on earth.
With the bread we need for today, feed us.
In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.
In times of temptation and test, strengthen us.
From trials too great to endure, spare us.
From the grip of all that is evil, free us.
For you reign in the glory of the power that is love, now and for ever. Amen

I came away from that service feeling calm and refreshed.

Atheist Schmatheist

John Shuck, a Presbyterian minister and progressive Christian, has referenced in his blog an article by a man, Robert Jensen, who recently joined a Presbyterian church and has been persecuted by some members of his denomination after publishing his beliefs in a newspaper article.

Robert Jensen describes his belief not so much in a personal God but in God as another name for the deepest mysteries in our life. He writes of the way that he was drawn to participating in a church community to serve certain needs that are often best served by churches. He also describes how he had to face an inquisition within his church, no doubt largely because he had described himself in the aforementioned newspaper article as an "atheist".

I actually don't consider Robert Jensen an atheist, despite his self-description. But that word seems to have served as a huge red flag that set off the conservative element within his denomination. His theology was not acceptable to conservatives to begin with, but to go public with his theology and to use the word atheist was probably just too much. The church's intolerant right wing tried to get him expelled.

From what I can tell it wasn't his own congregation that was the problem--his church is affiliated with the Center for Progressive Christianity. But within his broader denomination, it was another story. As I read Robert Jensen's account, I was struck with the horrible reality of him facing an inquisition like this--having to defend his very right to be a member of his own church.

I think his theology isn't much different from that of a lot of other people who are church members throughout mainline Protestantism--he just made the mistake of writing an article about it in a newspaper. Thus the lesson here seems to be this: you can be a dissident or free thinker, as long as you keep your mouth shut about what you think. What a terrible lesson that is. I am not a Presbyterian, but it seems to me a wonderful thing if a church will accept one who is an earnest seeker, if he wants to be a part of it and feels he has a role to play there.

During the inquisition process, some of those who reviewed his case defended him. Says Jensen, "one person used the image of Christianity as a circle, saying that so long as people could put one toe in the circle -- no matter what doubts they might have -- that was enough for membership." I wonder how many members of mainline Christianity have little more than their own toe within the Christian circle, as defined by the creeds or doctrines of their particular church? There are probably more than one imagines. And there are many others whose toes would be within the circle, but who stepped away from organized religion altogether because they sensed the intolerance and rigidity and the recitation of creeds that made no sense to them--those who became members of what John Spong calls the "church alumni association"?

I mentioned that I disagreed with Jensen's self-characterization as an "atheist". One reason he calls himself an atheist is that he views himself as one who lives as an atheist. Jensen writes:

In that sense, most people in this culture, no matter what their stated beliefs about God, live like atheists. Most of us accept the results of the Enlightenment and the application of the scientific method. We assume that actions in the world are governed by laws of physics that scientists have begun to identify, however incompletely. Whatever our views on the power of prayer, most of us also seek medical help when we are sick and trust in some worldly system of healing -- whether Western medicine or alternative traditions -- that is rooted in accumulated experience and/or scientific experimentation.

I will point out that I think Jensen is implying a dichotomy that really isn't there. He suggests that a belief in a personal God is incompatible with a belief in a world that is ordered and rational and that obeys the laws of physics, and since he accepts a modern scientific understanding of the world, he therefore believes that he cannot believe in any kind of personal Deity at all. Here he accepts implicitly that a personal God is necessarily a patriarchal figure who actively intervenes in the world, either according to His personal whim or maybe in response to our prayers if we pray hard enough or if enough of us pray. But I believe that God need not be reduced to this simple conception.

The point is, though, that he does devote his life towards a deeper, sacred reality, regardless of what he conceives God to be--and he does so within the context of a faith community rooted in Christian traditions. And for that reason, I do not consider him an atheist. Rather than believing in a personal God, he instead conceives of God as another name for Mystery. As long as he is seeking to probe the depths of that Mystery which he calls "God", then he is living the religious life. And if he is living the religious life, then I for one refuse to call him an atheist. It isn't about believing in miracles or divine intervention. It is about pointing one's life towards the depths of the deep, sacred Mystery that undergirds our reality.

And that's good enough for me.

Who needs the Holy Spirit, anyway?

In Marcus Borg's book The God We Never Knew, Borg distinguishes between what he believes to be two different models of God. One, he calls the monarchical model; the other, he calls the Spirit model. Borg makes a point of distinguishing between conceiving of God as Spirit, and the very specific doctrine of the Holy Spirit that is part of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Borg writes that "as a root metaphor for the sacred, Spirit images God as a nonmaterial reality pervading the universe as well as being more than the universe" (p. 72). Borg here is describing panentheism. Borg goes on to write

As used in the Bible (and as used here), its meaning is broader than the specific Christian doctrine of "the Holy Spirit", which sees it as one aspect of God. But in the Bible, Spirit is used comprehensively to refer to God's presence in creation, in the history of Israel, and in the life of Jesus and the early church. Its meaning is sufficiently broad to make it a synonym for the sacred. Spirit "evokes a universal perspective and signifies divine activity in its widest reaches." Strongly associated with God's presence in and engagement with the world (God's immanence), Spirit also points to God's transcendence. It images "God's ongoing transcendent engagement with the world."

It is important to consider this question of immanence and transcendence when we consider the Christian doctrine of the Holy Spirit, which holds to a very specific conception. The Holy Spirit, according to orthodox Christian doctrine, is seen as one of the three persons of the Divine Trinity, who the resurrected Jesus promised would be bestowed upon his followers after his ascent to heaven. According to the book of Acts, Jesus told his followers "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." Jesus was then lifted "up" into heaven (the author of Acts, like others of his time, imagined a tiered universe in which heaven lay literally and physically above the earth.) The author of Acts then reports,

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

Shortly thereafter, the author of Acts reports that the apostle Peter proclaimed, "Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit."

That is to say, according to this passage, the Holy Spirit is a "gift", only offered to those who have faith in Christ. So, according to this view, the Holy Spirit, far from being a manifestation of the universal immanence of God, is something that is only available to a select few.

As I see it, there are therefore three important implications of this doctrine of the Holy Spirit. First, according to this view, God's immanence (unlike God's transcendence) is conditional rather than necessary; second, it is offered to the world from the outside; and third, because it is available only to a certain set of true believers, it serves as a kind of legitimation of their doctrinal pronouncements. The theology of the Holy Spirit relies on God's transcendence as being primary, his immanence being thus secondary and dependent. God exists outside our plane of reality, according to this view, and he offers his immanent presence on a limited basis, at certain points in history to certain individuals. Further, this viewpoint suggests that God's immanence is not available to all (although, curiously, the author of Acts has Peter proclaiming the gift of the Holy Spirit as having been foretold by the prophet Joel, who said that God would pour out his spirit on all flesh.) The Holy Spirit, with its limited availability, is given credit for inspiring individuals or religious institutions to discovering certain "true" doctrines, which they then know to be true because they have the authority of the Holy Spirit to back them up.

God's spirit, as referred to in the Hebrew Bible, thus became interpreted to mean, according to many Christians, the Holy Spirit. Even though the writers of the Hebrew Bible who used the word ruach (meaning "wind" or "spirit") had no concept of the Trinity, which is clearly a specific Christian doctrine that came much later, Christians retrofitted their theology onto the words of the Old Testament. When the book of Genesis says, for example (according to the NRSV translation), that "a wind from God swept over the face of the waters", many Christians often translate the Hebrew word ruach in that passage as "spirit", and then further interpret that to mean the Holy Spirit.

If, on the other hand, if you take a panentheist view of creation, then God's spirit as an immanent presence participated in, and continues to participate in, the acts of creation taking place in the world. The spirit is not some doctrinally obscure "person" within a divine Trinity, but rather simply the expression of God's immanent presence working in the world. And because the spirit is available to all of us, doctrinal authority no longer becomes the exclusive province of a select few.

To me, as a panentheist, the divine presence is universal and necessary. I see God as both immanent and transcendent. That means that God's spirit is everywhere--it is not conditional, and it is not available only to a select few, and, it did not only penetrate the world at one or more specific times in history. I also believe that some individuals more closely relate to the immanent divine spirit than others do, that some people, through their lives, disclose what it means to be in an intimate relationship with God's spirit. I believe that Jesus was one such person. But one's relationship with the divine is not an either-or proposition; the spirit of God is available to all of us, although some of us are more adept at relating to her spirit than others are.

From "The Onion"

This headline from an article in the satircal newspaper the Onion reads: Super Priest Can Turn Anything Into Body, Blood Of Christ. You can read the rest of the article here.

Supernatural theism versus panentheism

Marcus Borg, in his book The God We Never Knew, compares two different conceptions of God within the Christian tradition:

The first conceptualizes God as a supernatural being "out there", separate from the world, who created the world a long time ago and who may from time to time intervene within it. In an important sense, this God is not "here" and thus cannot be known or experienced but only believed in (which, within the logic of this concept, is what "faith" is about.) I will call this way of thinking about God "supernatural theism." Widespread within Christianity, it is perhaps what a majority of people (both believers and non-believers) think of when they think of God. Some accept the existence of such a being, and some reject it. But it is the notion of God as a supernatural being "out there" that is being accepted or rejected.

The second root concept of God in the Christian tradition thinks of God quite differently. God is the encompassing Spirit; we (and everything that is) are in God. For this concept, God is not a supernatural being separate from the universe; rather, God (the sacred, the Spirit) is a nonmaterial layer or level or dimension of reality all around us. God is more than the universe, yet the universe is in God. Thus, in a spatial sense, God is not "somewhere else" but "right here." I will call this concept of God "panentheism". (p. 11-12)

In a previous posting, I mentioned that, after having read John Shelby Spong's book Why Christianity Must Change or Die, Spong clearly rejects "supernatural theism" (which Spong simply calls "theism"), but it wasn't at all clear to me whether he embraced panentheism or not. He mentioned the word "panentheism" once, almost in passing, without saying whether he agreed with it or not. Meanwhile, he used the language of Paul Tillich to describe God as the Ground of Being. He rejected the idea of a personal God. And he wrote a lot of God as being the depths of reality. While he embraced the immanence of God fully, he seemed to reject transcendence out of hand, seemingly equating transcendence with the "theism" that he rejected. Thus it seemed to me that he was in fact taking a position that seemed more pantheist than panentheist.

Borg explains the key difference between pantheism and panentheism in this way:

Pantheism lacks the extra syllable en, which makes all the difference. Pantheism (without the en) identifies the universe with God: God and the universe are coextensive (literally, "everything is God"). Pantheism affirms only God's immanence and essentially denies God's transcendence; though the sacred is present in everything, it is not more than everything. But panentheism affirms both transcendence (God's otherness or moreness) and immanence (God's presence). God is not to be identified with the sum total of things. Rather, God is more than everything, even as God is present everywhere. God is all around us and within us, and we are within God. (p. 32)

If Spong believes in transcendence of any sort, he seems to de-emphasize it to such a degree as to make it irrelevant to his theology. On the other hand, I believe that God is everywhere among us, that God is within us and that we are within God, but that God is also more than the sum of everything that is, that she is a sustaining infinite reality that supersedes the finite universe.

"Not many of you should become teachers"

We all know the difference between being sorry for what one said and being sorry that others were offended by what one said. The first is an expression of genuine contrition, while the second clearly isn't. And the Pope's "apology" with respect to his recent remarks that offended many of the world's Muslims falls into the second category.

Coincidentally, the readings from last week's revised common lectionary included the following text from James 3:1-12:

Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. For all of us make many mistakes. Anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is perfect, able to keep the whole body in check with a bridle. If we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we guide their whole bodies. Or look at ships: though they are so large that it takes strong winds to drive them, yet they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits. How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire. The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of nature, and is itself set on fire by hell. For every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, but no one can tame the tongue--a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and brackish water? Can a fig tree, my brothers and sisters, yield olives, or a grapevine figs? No more can salt water yield fresh.

Wow, could the timing of this lectionary reading have been more appropriate?

Interestingly enough, the Pope's apparent hostility towards Islam may have a long history, which did not begin with his recent remarks. According to a column published last January in the Washington Times, the a friend of the Pope, Father Joseph D. Fessio, reported in a radio interview that the Pope held strongly negative views on Islam. (One of the pope's alleged assertions was that Islam is inherently incompatible with democracy, a strange complaint to come from the leader and former chief inquisitor of an authoritarian religious institution that has operated a top-down hierarchy and that has suppressed free inquiry and stifled the theological expression of dissidents.) The Washington Times columnist considered this at the time to be a "bombshell" that "has yet to explode because no one wants to touch it." It would seem that the bombshell has finally exploded.

A believer in exile

I have been reading John Shelby Spong's book Why Christianity Must Change or Die: A Bishop Speaks to Believers in Exile. In many ways, this book serves as Spong's manifesto, a philosophical treatise where he criticizes traditional Christian theology, offers a theology of his own, and suggests certain implications of his theology for prayer, ethics, and worship.

One of the most compelling and important parts of his book is Chapter Two, The Meaning of Exile and How We Got There. Here Spong points out that, contrary to what fundamentalist Christians will tell you, the great Western religions have never been static phenomena that dropped out the sky whole and complete. Judaism, the parent religion of Christianity, underwent important theological changes, long before the birth of Christ; it did not emerge from Moses's time a finished product that then didn't change up to Jesus's time. On the contrary; Spong cites the Babylonian exile as a key moment that introduced a crisis into the Jewish faith, and to which Judaism responded by developing new theological precepts. Although there were further changes that came later, Spong focused on the exile because he used this as a model of what he sees happening in Christianity today--and to bolster his point that modern Christianity is in crisis, he devastatingly shows how much of the Bible was built on a world view that has since been repudiated by modern understandings of how the universe operates. Although Spong doesn't cite Thomas Kuhn, his argument certainly brings to my mind an analogy between what Spong is claiming about Christianity and what Kuhn argued about paradigm shifts in science being precipitated by crises in the previous paradigms.

I believe Spong is correct in his assessment the failures of traditional Christianity to cope with the world as we now know it to be. What Spong hopes to do is rescue Christianity by replacing the old theism with something else. And this is where it gets tricky, and where I find myself in disagreement with him.

Spong admits that he has been influenced by the ideas of Paul Tillich. As such, he wants to replace the old theism that emphasized divine transcendence with something new, a theology that views God as the Ground of Being. What Spong means by this isn't entirely clear to me. He says that critics may call him a pantheist, which he doesn't directly deny, instead only saying that "many theologians, revealing their own limitations, seem to believe that if they can name an idea, they can dismiss it." He also suggests that others might call him a panentheist, but this clearly isn't the case, since panentheists believe in divine transcendence as well as divine immanence, and he clearly rejects transcendence as a divine attribute. He points to God instead as a deeper reality of the world we know. Citing Tillich's definition, he says that

the God to whom Tillich pointed was the infinite center of life. This God was not a person, but, rather like the insights of the mystics, this God was the mystical presence in which all personhood could flourish. This God was not a being but rather the power that called being forth in all creatures. This God was not an external, personal force that could be invoked but rather an internal reality that, when confronted, opened us to the meaning of life itself.

If I understand him correctly, this sounds an awful lot like pantheism. By denying that God has any externality outside of the world, he is essentially equating God with the world, or at least he characterizes God as a deeper reality that underlies it. My experience with pantheists in other contexts is that they consider God to be a deeper reality that underlies the world and unifies it--one analogy being that God is the ocean and we are its waves. The problem that I see is that Spong seems to be committing the fallacy of assuming that a transcendent God is necessarily omnipotent, and since he rejects omnipotence, he rejects transcendence; he should know better, especially since he even goes so far as to cite Alfred North Whitehead as one of the philosophers who hammered a nail into the coffin of traditional theism.

This is the issue that I have with Spong's conception of God. While I agree with his criticisms of fundamentalism and of traditional orthodoxy, and I agree with his criticisms of the idea of God as a transcendent being who acts omnipotently on the world from the outside, I disagree with him that this necessarily implies rejecting the idea of God as a transcendent being. Panentheism, which Spong refers to briefly before ignoring it entirely, agrees with Spong that God is not an external being who acts omnipotently on the world from the outside, but panentheism still sees God as encompassing something greater than just the universe. Instead, panentheism believes that God is both immanent (as Spong believes) and also transcendent--that God is the universe, and also something more. Spong equates a belief in transcendence with a belief in a father-figure God who intervenes in the world from outside by violating the normal laws of the universe. In fact, a panentheistic God (at least under certain understandings of the concept), who is both all of the universe and also external to it, acts in the world as a co-participant and co-creator who operates within the universe. By rejecting transcendence altogether, Spong is throwing out the baby with the bath water.

And yet, despite my disagreement with Spong's rejection of "theism", I think that there is much in what he writes that I can agree with. I agree with him that we cannot appeal to a father-figure God to intervene in the world. I agree with him that prayers to God to intercede on our behalf are ineffective and serve as bad theology. He rightly points out that it is morally unjustifiable to suggest that those who are alone in the world and who have no one to pray on their behalf are therefore not going to receive as much of God's favor as those who are popular or who otherwise have high profiles, and who are therefore more likely to have many who would pray on their behalf. The very idea that God is a favor-dispensing autocrat who will only intervene in certain circumstances if someone is lucky enough to have others who will pray for them is, on the face of it, absurd. What kind of God would act in that way?

We know how much injustice there is in the way fate deals out its blows to the people of the world. Bad things happen to good people. This has been understood for a long, long time--certainly going back at least as far as the book of Ecclesiastes. Spong is right to point out that this has nothing to do with who has received God's favor and who hasn't.

Interestingly enough, Marcus Borg, who describes himself as a panentheist, takes the curious position that intercessionary prayer for the healing of others does work, although he seems to suggest that this is because of some force at work that may not be God's doing. I think Borg is wrong on this score. Thus, even though I agree more with Borg's concept of God than I do Spong's, I am on this question more in agreement with Spong regarding this type of prayer than I am with Borg.

But even here, I differ with Spong. Spong admits never to having had any kind of mystical experience of the divine presence. He says that he has tried, for years, to achieve this kind of experience, writing,

I have always wanted to be a person of prayer. I have yearned to have that sense of immediate contact with the divine. Yet for longer than I have been willing to admit, even to myself, prayers addressed to an external supreme being have had little or no meaning for me.

From this personal experience he then makes the leap that, since he has not experienced the divine presence of a trascendent being, apparently no one else has either. This seems like a highly presumptuous assertion. His experience is not everyone else's, and he should know better than to assert that it is.

I can't address Spong's inability to sense the divine presence in this way. For most of my life, I haven't either. But, in a sense, I think that it was because I was either not looking or I was looking too hard. Recognizing the divine presence and cultivating its experience is not something I really could have ever tried to figure out. At times in the past, I used to be jealous of those who said that they felt the presence of God. But I do believe, over the course of time, that I have experienced it, and lately I feel I have been experiencing it much more often.

I admit that I have little use for the formulaic words and tones of most prayers. The words "Dear God" don't work for me very much as a way to begin a prayer. After all, I know that God is right there next to me and with me and within me. Saying "Dear God" to begin a conversation with God makes as little sense to me as turning to a friend who has been walking with you the entire length of a long journey and starting off a sentence with "Dear Bill". You are with God all along, and God is your deepest, closest presence--so, from my perspective, I see no reason not just say something to her without the formality.

Sometimes a conversation I might have with God is short, referring to something I just thought or said or did. In my mind I sometimes just say something like "Hey, I'm sorry!", or "You're right!", or just a simple "Hey there!" Sometimes I say nothing at all, just feeling the presence, because, after all, God knows what I'm thinking anyway. I find the structure of formal prayers, including formal prayers spoken by others, can often act as a barrier for my ability to relate to the Divine.

Of course, that's just me. Am I limiting myself by doing this? Is it a "better" path to God to use formal prayers? Do others know something I don't? I don't think so, but all I know is that I have to be true to my own spirituality rather than try to emulate what others do in a way that doesn't seem right to me. Certainly I am not saying that my way of relating to God is better or worse than anyone else's. In fact, I am saying just the opposite--I am aware that different people have different people of experiencing the Divine, and it is not my place to judge them or deny the reality of their experiences. What people take away from those experiences, on the other hand, is inevitably colored by their prejudices, their theologies, their cultures, their time in history, and so forth. When they try to name and describe their experiences, that is when things get complicated. As humans, we don't always understand God correctly. All we can do is try.

It is true that I don't feel the divine presence all the time. My mind is often focused on other things, probably most of the time--the details of my work, or the other traffic on the road when I am driving, or the plot of the movie I am watching. Cultivating the experience of the Divine in my life is something that I perhaps I think that may be why I attend worship services--as a way of cultivating my experience of God--even if the actual experiences of those services themselves aren't always completely satisfactory for me.

Looking at the different ways that Spong and Borg view God, and the different ways that they view prayer, and comparing those viewpoints to my own, it seems inevitable that I will never find a religious community that exactly meets my own theology. I may always be a believer in exile.

Christianity and Empire

Here is an interesting quote from Marcus Borg's book Reading the Bible Again for the First Time:

Paul's execution in Rome merits pondering. Was Rome simply mistaken in killing him? Was the execution based on a misunderstanding? Was it due to the decree of a crazed and callous emperor? Was Paul and his message actually harmless to the empire that killed him? Was it all about words--about calling Jesus "Lord" and refusing to give Caesar the same honor? Or was it about something much deeper and more important?

Certainly Paul and his small communities scattered through Greece and Asia Minor posed no immediate political threat to Rome. But did Paul's proclamation of a rival Lord and a rival social vision genuinely and ultimately threaten the imperial vision of life?

We who live after centuries of Christian accommodation with imperial systems are inclined to think that Rome simply made a mistake--that Rome failed to recognize that Christianity is harmless to empire (and maybe even helpful). But what happened to Jesus and Paul should give us pause. Christianity is the only major religion whose two most formative figures were executed by established authority. Accident? Plan of God? Or is there in Jesus and Paul a vision and a program, a message and a mission, that should cause systems of domination, ancient and modern, to tremble? (emphasis added)

Borg's allusion to "centuries of Christian accommodation with imperial systems" is itself quite interesting and also quite true. How Christianity evolved from a small movement of Empire resisters to become the official state religion of that same Empire is itself an interesting question to ponder. (In the modern era, the continued association with certain elements of Christianity with imperial systems continues. The ruler of the most powerful Empire of the present time claims to be a Christian and thus a follower of the religion of Jesus and Paul. Of course, not all of Christianity is guilty of collusion with Empire, and a social justice component has always been an important part of Christianity as well.)

Borg also implies that the mere words of Jesus and Paul seem hardly to have served as much of a threat to imperial Roman power. John Dominic Crossan, in his book Who Killed Jesus?, makes a similar point: the Romans did not concern themselves too much with those who merely said things. On the other hand, they were brutally repressive against those who acted in ways that challenged imperial authority. He cites the example of a different man named Jesus, who, in the year 62 wandered around Jerusalem proclaiming a dire fate for the Temple and lamenting "Woe to Jerusalem". He was brought up on charges for possibly seditious behavior, which could have gotten him executed. As Crossan puts it, "But this is only speech, not action...Roman authority finds it all politically irrelevant, judges the man mad, and lets him go free." The Romans were not so magnanimous with Jesus or with Paul. (Nor were they so magnanimous with John the Baptist.)

The conclusion is clear: Jesus and Paul challenged the prevailing authority of the Empire of their time. I would argue that to follow in the footsteps in Jesus means to challenge the Empire of the present time.

God is waiting for us to act

John Dominic Crossan, in his book Who Killed Jesus?, contrasts the radical visions of John the Baptist with those of his protege, Jesus. Both men were religious radicals who opposed the prevailing socioeconomic and political system of their day, and both men were eventually executed by the Roman authorities for their subversive activities. But Jesus's views were different from those of his mentor's.

John preached a doctrine of what Crossan terms apocalyptic eschatology. This was a belief that God would intervene in the world against the prevailing oppressive system of his time, through a cataclysmic act. John baptized his followers who then would await this moment of divine intervention. But, unfortunately for him and his movement, he was executed. This was "because his apocalyptic vision radically criticized and fundamentally subverted the religious, political, social, and economic basis for Herodian and Roman control of the Jewish homeland." By mobilizing a large group of people opposed to the dominant paradigm of Roman rule, John was a threat, and he was killed for it.

John's death no doubt brought on a crisis among his followers. Waiting on God to intervene appeared to be a failure; Roman rule still prevailed. One of those followers, Jesus, appears to have reacted in the wake of the crisis by developing a new, greatly more active message in response to the worldly corruption that he lived in. In contrast to John's passive and expectant waiting on God bringing on the apocalypse, Jesus lived and preached what Crossan calls sapiential eschatology. According to Crossan, sapiential eschatology

announces that God has given all human beings the wisdom to discern how, here and now in this world, one can so live that God's power, rule, and dominion are evidently present to all observers. It involves a way of life for now rather than a hope of life for the future.

The difference between John the Baptist and Jesus can be summarized in this way, according to Crossan: "In apocalyptic eschatology, we are waiting for God to act. In sapiential eschatology, God is waiting for us to act."

In Crossan's book Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, he elaborates on this point by stressing that while apocalyptic eschatology waits for a future Kingdom of God, Jesus's sapiential eschatology believed in a Kingdom of God that resided in the here and now, available for all of us to participate in. "One enters the kingdom by wisdom or goodness, by virtue, justice, or freedom. It is a style of life for now rather than a hope of life for the future.

This points to the power of Jesus's message. In Who Killed Jesus?, Crossan evokes the important social justice component of Jesus's teachings:

Jesus's phrase Kingdom of God evokes an ideal vision of political and religious power, of how this world here below would be run if God, not Caesar, sat on an imperial throne. As such it always casts a caustically critical shadow on human rule. It includes especially an eschatological rejection of the world as it is currently run. But the solution is that we must act now to incarnate God's power on earth rather than that God must act soon to do it for us.

Thus the sayings and parables of the historical Jesus often describe a world of radical egalitarianism in which discrimination and hierarchy, exploitation and oppression should no longer exist. This is his utopian dream of the Kingdom of God, in which both material and spiritual goods, political and religious resources, economic and transcendental favors are available to all without interference from brokers, mediators, or intermediaries.

Imagining a world of radical egalitarianism certainly made him a threat to the Roman authorities, just as his mentor was. And like John the Baptist, he was executed.

Jesus's followers responded to the crisis caused by his death in a different way than how Jesus reacted to the death of his own mentor. His followers came to believe that despite his death, he was still present and living in God's presence. Eventually, this belief became mythologized into tales of a physical resurrection, but originally his followers believed not in a physical resurrection but in simply the ascension of Jesus into God's presence.

So much of Christianity over the centuries has been wrapped up in theologies about Jesus and claims about his birth, resurrection, and presumed divinity, that it has forgotten what it was that he sought to do in his life. His radical message of egalitarianism, of living the Kingdom of God that is here with us if we only choose to allow it, remains as important and valid today as it was two millennia ago. God is still waiting for us to act, to bring about the Kingdom of God, the Dominion of God, the Presence of God. We cannot do this by waiting on God to magically intervene. We can only make God's presence possible through a socially just world by acting ourselves.

Art and religion

I went to a Monet exhibition today at a San Francisco art museum. As I looked at one of Monet's paintings, Road at la Cavee, Pourville, and considered the ways that he took the view of a path between two steep ridges and created an image made out of beautifully constructed triangular forms, an analogy occurred to me:

The Bible is to historical truth what a Monet painting is to a photograph.

Just as the Bible is often not a literal depiction of history in the religious events that it depicts, neither is a Monet painting a photographic record of what it represents. A Monet painting is an interpretation of reality that says something more, and often more beautifully, than a photograph can do, filtered through the imagination of the painter. A Monet painting is a metaphor for the reality that it conveys. And the same can be for how the Bible conveys religious truths and ideas about God. The Bible points to God, but it is filtered through the religious imagination (and biases) of those who wrote the Bible. The Bible is not a photograph of the Divine, or of Divine truth. And yet, just as art can be "true" without literally capturing an exact image of reality, so can the metaphors and images in the Bible be "true" without being literally accurate records of the events that they depict.

Intolerance from the Archbishop of Canterbury

According to the London newspaper the Telegraph, Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and thus the heads of the Anglican Communion, has now come out against homosexuality as being acceptable within his church. This appears to be a 180-degree turn from a position that he used to espouse. What the implications of this are for the Episcopal church in the US is not clear to me. I am not an Episcopalian, and as an outsider the intricacies of that church's politics are not always clear to me. Last summer he seemed to be waffling on this issue at a time of division when a clear moral voice for justice and inclusion was called for, and thus he had already shown himself to have failed the test of moral leadership just by not taking a stand. But now he has gone from straddling the fence to actively taking the side of exclusion and intolerance, and that is a disturbing development. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out among Episcopalians.

It is sad to say that few Christian denominations seem willing to take a positive stand for social justice on this issue. Among the mainline Protestant churches in the US, the UCC is one of the few--perhaps the only one--that has taken a progressive stand on homosexuality. However, the issue is not quite as simple as that, since the UCC is a congregational church, and the views of individual congregations may not always match up with the official stance of the denomination as a whole. Similarly, the congregations and pastors of some other denominations, such as the Presbyterians and Methodists, in some cases may take a progressive stand on this issue, despite the intolerant position espoused in official church doctrines.

Nevertheless, I think that how a denomination officially comes down on an issue of social justice does matter. I am glad to see the UCC continue to be at the forefront of this issue. I am sorry to see that the leader of the Anglican communion appears to have, when push came to shove, backed out of his moral responsibility for social justice.

Pay phones as a social justice issue

Here's an item that I found in the September newsletter of the Unitarian Universalist church in San Francisco:

Following a policy of profit before people, AT&T disconnected our pay phone on July 14, 2006. This phone (415–441–9395) has served many visitors and members and never had vandalism or repair issues. It was especially helpful to persons who needed to call for a taxi during the evening hours when our office is closed.
A letter detailing our reliance on this phone for both service and emergency preparedness was sent to AT&T at 134 Northwest 6th Street, Evansville, Indiana 47708, and many phone calls were made by Nancy Evans to retain the pay phone, all to no avail.

AT&T replied that unprofitable pay phones are being pulled from locations much needier than ours, and had no sympathy with our concerns for safety. However, “customer advocate” Carol Schlachter (yes, that’s her real title) offered us AT&T’s option – a “convenience line” agreement at $75 a month!

We now have a phone with no dial tone. Senior and disabled members have already called the office to complain.

This is an example of something that has been going on for some time. As more people use cell phones, pay phones are being removed by the phone companies. But the fact is that large numbers of people don't own cell phones, and this is particularly true among the poor. Pay phones are not just a consumer commodity; they are a public service. The first sentence of that newsletter item, which pointed out that this is an example of "profit before people", identified the broader problem that lay at the heart of this issue. What is happening to pay phones is just a symptom of a broader phenomenon that affects much of society, in which profits are more important than human needs.