The following post by Johnny Ova on Facebook says much of what I was trying to say in my post here yesterday.
I do take some issue with the "... spoke with were the people the Church could not stand. They HATED Jesus because He chose to love and serve them rather than the religious" and "The love of Jesus is so deep, it's offensive to the flesh." We need to be clearer about the actual social, political and religious conditions that Jesus lived in. Amy-Jill Levine (see here and here for starters) is tremendously helpful in this area. It seems to me that "the flesh" yearns for the love of Jesus. An old Old Regular Baptist hymn puts this very well. But I think that the main points being made in Johnny Ova in his post are sound.
Johnny Ova wrote:
How weak does the Church think love is.
It was because of His love that I was forever changed.
You don't need to change, then meet Jesus . You meet Jesus and then change.
I was told to repent and change so many times and it did nothing but make be rebel even more. It wasn't until I experienced Jesus on a personal level, right where I was at...that changed my life and transformed my heart.
You don't earn His love with your choices. You already are loved by a perfect love. And it is in that meeting with perfect love, that all fear is cast away and transformation happens.
The Church is so scared of Jesus washing the feet of a "sinner" because they feel like they haven't "earned" their feet to be washed.
Every person that Jesus hung out with, named Apostles, ate with, spoke with were the people the Church could not stand. They HATED Jesus because He chose to love and serve them rather than the religious.
The love of Jesus is so deep, it's offensive to the flesh. He needs to love who we love and hate who we hate or else it's not "Christian".
A HUGE wake up call is taking place. Not to the non believer, but to the believer. A Revelation of who Jesus is, will be, and who He always was.
I saw this picture posted on the Appalachian Americans Facebook page the other day and asked Mr. James Dunaway if I could please post it and he kindly said that its okay. This is another example of what I'm talking about on this blog when I post about the beauty within us and around us. Mr. Dunaway says that this is "More of my wife’s work, the church gives them to charity" and he has been good about posting pictures of his wife's work. In a later message Mr. Dunaway told me that "We are Cumberland Presbyterian. But she does this we a group of ladies at the local Baptist Church, they quit, sew, crochet & knit for our Lord Jesus Christ." Not only this is beautiful and well-done work, but it serves a social purpose and connects people to one another all around. Our creativity works best and reaches its greatest meaning when it supports others and connects us to one another and---really no small matter---when it helps those who need the help most.In my world we call that solidarity.
I like listening to some of those old-timey-like preachers, the ones that start slow and build up to a crescendo in ways that make you sure that you’re going to fall through the floor and go straight to hell and then give you some hope to go home with. The ones that say at the beginning that they’re not sure that they can really preach but then call out names of those present as they go on and draw in your attention and pace around the altar and sweat, their voices wavering as they take satan on and win in a contest that is bigger than World Wrestling. The kind that shows up in Harley-Davidson shirts and have some dirt under their fingernails and look at you with that clear-eyed, almost teary intensity and tell you they love you and want to save you and you believe it. The kind that spontaneously ask you in a conversation about football what your favorite Bible chapter and verses are. The kind that know heaven and hell well enough that they can stomp, pound, shout, plead, cry, and sing and do all of that without notes. The kind who will play an electric guitar at the altar and warn you off of drinking and remind you about car wrecks, and the kind who preach in churches where you think maybe the woman playing the piano or the guy at the drums could have played with B.B. King. Lined-out hymns, where reverence and longing for heaven flows through the people, and the beginning of the Greek Orthodox Liturgy, where you get that feeling of casting off from a shore and beginning a heroic journey with others, will touch my heart with heavy hands.
I really do like all of that and respect it all.
Sometimes as I’m washing dishes, I put one of those preachers on and listen in and I go along pretty far.
I can go right up to that point where they start claiming that someone is trying to rewrite the Bible and they’re there to stop that, or where they start preaching against gays or liberals or abortion rights. They hit that point where they start making themselves the center of attention or our first barrier against liberals and satan and anything modern and you can just usually feel the shift in energy. When they get to that point, I shut the tablet off or start looking at the exit if I’m in church.
I’m not looking for validation or agreement, but I am there listening for something that will touch my working-class heart and teach me something and give me new insight and something to use when I’m trying to get through the day. I want to be reassured that God has his working clothes on and knows what kind of person I am under my own working clothes or Sunday Best. Brother Dave Stacy sometimes hits that for me these days, but I have longed believed that God has a preference for the poor and the oppressed and that this shows up in Scripture.
I’ll take that raw honesty from the preachers, conservative as it can be, over a dry lecture that is intended to make me feel good or over something lighthearted with reference points like what happened to the preacher or reverend in college or on the golf course that I don’t get.
I don’t want to paint with too wide a brush here. There is nothing wrong with a preacher, minister, or priest trying to make us feel good. And I have heard some incredible sermons that took the listeners through hidden meanings in the text of the day and the contexts for those meanings. I’m going to post a couple of those sermons from a Roman Catholic priest on this blog, and I believe that attentive readers will be wowed by them. I recently posted a sermon by Fr. Dennis Parker that I hope will wow you as it did me.
It's not like it’s always one or the other or has to be, either explosive and spontaneous are-you-washed-in-the-blood-of-the-Lamb sermons or we-don’t-know-who-Jesus-is-but-it-sounds-like-we-should-have-Him-over-for-supper-on-Thursday. The “Wow!” sermons that I’m talking about are on another plane. So are genuine mysticism, heartfelt and soulfelt responses to tragedies that occur in faith communities, and calls to action for the common good. But have you noticed a pattern that I have? So many of the preachers, ministers, and priests who preach from that other plane end up getting fired or tossed out. It’s not just what they’re saying or how they’re saying it, but that they’re trying to engage people through critical thinking and that is exactly what decisive numbers of Christians want to avoid.
Now, I want to back up here and acknowledge that there are rural and working-class mysticisms and Biblical interpretations being done and lived out that go further and better than what many astute students will learn in school or that you will get by reading a certain book. My impression is that most of this great work comes from people who live within their traditions and who use their Bibles as their only points of written-down reference. They do their work alone and in small groups, and quite a few of them pay steep prices as they take their inspiration into their churches and communities. Examples of this in my circles include the Primitive Baptist Universalists, Reese Maggard and Johnathan Buttry. Look them up on Youtube or Facebook. Now, I can’t always grasp what they’re talking about, and I know that we disagree on quite a few things, but I have come to the point of believing that these are matters of revelation. They have a different revelation than I do, a different tradition, and, really, a different Christianity, but “different” is not the same as “wrong.”
Truth be told, there isn't one Christianity except in the mystical sense of the term. And my conservative friends who are either suspicious of traditions and institutions or who claim to be within traditions deriving from the earliest Christians but have no historically accurate way of mapping this are missing something beautiful that they have at their fingertips: the traditions that have developed in their hollers and rural communities and storefronts and workplaces can enable a truly radical theology that others do not have at their fingertips.
The heart of my statement here is that God’s mind and will---these are impoverished human terms---changes in relation to what we’re doing and is so great and overwhelming and so full of gifts that we live with revelations that sometimes appear contradictory. God's nature and being and presence aren't changing, but our Scripture shows us how God's mind has changed in relationship to human will and action.
Our understanding of God also changes. Theological liberals make a good point when they insist that God is still speaking and that revelation is still unfolding. That’s half of a truth that should be followed by another truth---we need ears to hear, hearts to accept, and eyes to see because God’s revelations are unfolding but we don’t always get the help in churches that we need to hear, feel, and see. And we have this problem that the society we live in constantly tries to break down what is cooperative and collective and replace that with competition. It’s no surprise that we end up with competing churches and theologies and people who insist on leading and not serving.
I am coming to believe that the tests of which revelations carry God’s truth and are genuine come down to a few points that I can see (and more that I can’t see). Will a given revelation stand over time and develop? Does it meet the conditions we read of in Matthew 25:31-37? What tradition does a revelation exist within? Does the church, in a historically imminent sense, hold that revelation close to itself?
Three other points come up for me here. One is that doctrine only goes so far. It seems less likely to me that you will incur divine wrath if you get a point of religious dogma wrong and more likely that you will feel that wrath if you’re not taking Matthew 25:31-37 seriously and agitating for others to do so as well. Second, we would do well to take on the inquisitive and probing methodology that we see most clearly in Judaism. Complain to God and the saints, doubt and argue with the Holy Spirit, dissect, and reassemble---but do this from a place of dedicated study, and do it with others. Last, the Kingdom of God is an option, a choice, and choosing that Kingdom necessarily puts us at odds with the powers that be. It is a theological, faith, cultural, and social choice, but it is also an intensely political choice. More about this last point later.
The video below came from Joshua Outsey of Appalshop. I cannot recommend supporting Appalshop enough. This is real talk right here, and Appalshop is where you can go to hear more real talk and real music. Appalshop also sponsors WMMT, my favorite radio station.
In a support-raising e-mail Mr. Outsey says the following:
Black churches are central to our communities and cultures here in Appalachia. Some of these churches even predate the Civil War. Through digitally recorded oral histories, photographs and moving images, my goal is to tell their stories--including those of the black coal miner--and through those stories bring more visibility to black Appalachian history.
At age 36, I have spent the last 20 years of my life living and working throughout Central Appalachia. I am an activist, and cultural organizer. Being a Black Appalachian is something I take pride in because that identity challenges what most people think of when they hear “Appalachia.” I intend to use my work to alter the narrative and bridge cultural gaps that exist throughout our region.
I value faith, family, community, diversity and inclusion. My goal is to spread awareness of the similarities and differences that Black Appalachians may share with each other and Appalachian people as a whole. Working with Black faith based communities energizes me. I love learning and sharing historical details of information about these specific people and their lives.
The existence of Black communities in Central Appalachia has largely been ignored and erased from the mainstream narrative.
Now, I do not agree with Mr. Outsey's views on capitalism expressed in his interview with Rev. Leroy Cain. I can see that people struggling with planned underdevelopment and economic and political abandonment, a situation faced by many Black communities, might gain from capitalist development in the short-run. I can't see capitalism as a long-term solution to anyone's problems. But I also think that both Mr. Outsey and Rev. Cain hit some major points on faith, community, and history. There is an urgency to their conversation that we all need to hear and take to heart and put into action.
"As our society grows more frightened and more repressive, the church is faced with an urgent call for truth telling—concerning both the exposure of our predatory economic system, which produces and sustains poverty through cheap labor, and the articulation of an alternative way that will yield neighborly abundance. But as long as the church is in unthinking collusion with dominant economic assumptions, this hard and transformative truth is unlikely to be spoken aloud."
Walter Brueggemann (born 1933) is an American Protestant Old Testament scholar and theologian who is widely considered one of the most influential Old Testament scholars of the last several decades. He is an important figure in modern progressive Christianity whose work often focuses on the Hebrew prophetic tradition and sociopolitical imagination of the Church. He argues that the Church must provide a counter-narrative to the dominant forces of consumerism, militarism, and nationalism. Brueggemann is known throughout the world for his method of combining literary and sociological modes when reading the Bible.
I connected with this through The Witness: A Black Christian Collective on Facebook. The explain themselves in these words: "The Witness is a black Christian collective that engages issues of religion, race, justice, and culture from a biblical perspective. We are changing the way Christians engage the church and the world by challenging them to think and act according to the holistic message of Christ. We consciously draw on the expansive black church tradition to address matters of personal faith while also speaking to issues of public righteousness. We believe that the Christian message applies not only to our eternity but also to our present-day circumstances and lived reality."
One of the founding mothers of feminist theology has died. Rosemary Radford Ruether was among the first scholars to think deeply about the role of women in Christianity, shaking up old patriarchies and pushing for change.
Ruether died in California on Saturday at the age of 85 after battling a long illness, according to the theologian Mary Hunt, who announced the death in a statement on behalf of Ruether's family.
"Dr. Ruether was a scholar activist par excellence. She was respected and beloved by students, colleagues, and collaborators around the world for her work on ecofeminist and liberation theologies, anti-racism, Middle East complexities, women-church, and many other topics," the statement said.
"Her legacy, both intellectual and personal, is rich beyond imagining. The scope and depth of her work, and the witness of her life as a committed feminist justice-seeker will shine forever with a luster that time will only enhance."
Feminist and liberation theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether influenced generations of men and women in the causes of justice for women, the poor, people of color, the Middle East and the Earth. The scholar, teacher, activist, author and former NCR columnist died May 21. She was 85.
Theologian Mary Hunt, a long-time friend and colleague of Reuther's, announced the death on behalf of the family.
"Dr. Ruether was a scholar activist par excellence. She was respected and beloved by students, colleagues, and collaborators around the world," said Hunt, cofounder and codirector of the Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics, and Ritual (WATER).
"Her legacy, both intellectual and personal, is rich beyond imagining," Hunt said in an email announcement. "The scope and depth of her work, and the witness of her life as a committed feminist justice-seeker will shine forever with a luster that time will only enhance."
A classicist by training, Ruether was outspoken in her liberal views on everything from women's ordination to the Palestinian state. She wrote hundreds of articles and 36 books, including the systematic Sexism and God-Talk in 1983 and the ecofeminist primer Gaia and God in 1992.
In more than 50 years of teaching, Ruether influenced thousands of students, first at the historically black Howard University from 1965 to 1975, then at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary as the Georgia Harkness Professor of Applied Theology from 1976 to 2002. She was a visiting professor at Harvard Divinity School, Princeton Theological Seminary, Yale Divinity School and Sir George Williams University in Montreal.
Tertullian, referred to above, is generally regarded as "the father of Latin Christianity" and "the founder of Western theology" according to the Wikipedia entry about him. There is much in his work that does not stand up to conditions today, and some of his work caused both the Eastern and Western churches to not regard him as a saint. But it is impossible to ignore his lasting influences and what he got right if you're exploring Christian history. I think that the quote provided above is something that he got right.
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