About Temptation And Testimony

A friend of mine in West Virginia recently offered up the following testimony:

So i noticed something today about temptation. On days that i dont really get into prayer, or just read some of the bible basically just so i can say i read for the day, and also when i stay to myself and don't really interact with people, ive found that im more susceptible to sin and temptation. Today ive prayed throughout the day, also prayed for others, witnessed to people and just prayed with others and brought the name of Jesus to peoples attention, ive realized that temptation wasnt as strong. When we witness and step out in Jesus name, thats where we get our strength. People want to pray as a last resort, but we need to put our relationship with God first. Im preaching to myself as well. Our Lord is a good Father. This year i have gained so much wisdom and knowledge through his Holy spirit, and the word of God. i still have a long way to go, for instance there are times i feel i havent learned anything and thats when the Lord will minister to me, and showing me that ive learned more than what i think i have. I wanna stay plyable, and always ready to learn more about our Savior. I know sometimes people get tired of me talking about Jesus and sometimes they might think im acting high and mighty which isnt my intentions. I just want others to know his goodness, and his mercy and grace. Also want others to know him the way i am coming to know him. I love yall i pray this helps someone in Jesus name.

This is real talk, and its sincere and comes from a place of great struggle and growth.

Now, no one should confuse me with being any kind of spiritual person or any kind of counsellor, but I want to offer up a few points in reaction to this testimony.

It's a true story that if you're trying to do any kind of internal work, including the work of repentance and salvation, that you're going to face incredible difficulties if you try to do it alone. Even monks most often do their work in preparation to reenter the world or do their work in communities. Our brother has his finger on the pulse here.

I get what our brother is saying about prayer coming first, not last, and I will offer that we need to somehow find the balance between prayer and good works and then turn each into the other. What I mean is that prayer could or should be a good work or deed and that the work that we do with others to uplift them can or should be prayers. Doing something prayerfully is a step towards that, but why don't we push it more often and go further?

In the book Raising Lazarus there is an especially moving and real scene in which someone is trying to help someone living in a homeless camp in West Virginia who has a substance abuse disorder problem and has a badly infected feet and is about to get rousted by the police. The person washing the houseless person's feet and trying to assist them was so involved in that work that it became a prayer, I think. The line separating our best desires that lead to justice and peace and wholeness, on the one hand, and holiness, liberation, and salvation on the other are more fluid than we think.

Most Christians will pray for a person and for easing or a solution to whatever difficulties that person is facing at a particular moment. Perhaps we get this wrong. It may be more meaningful and helpful to pray for the person, take the basic affirmative actions with them to help them get their life together, try to see that person in the contexts of their history and their family's histories, try to meet their basic needs without enabling their difficulties and disempowering them, make this about values and prayer and action, and build movements to make life for all of us easier.

It sometimes feels to me as if the "thoughts and prayers" messages we send out and praying for specific solutions to what we think are root problems is either manipulative or sentimental. We don't intend this to be so, but in the United States we have a Christianity that often holds to manipulation and sentimentality even as the churches empty out.  

Our brother speaks for so many of us when he says "i still have a long way to go, for instance there are times i feel i havent learned anything and thats when the Lord will minister to me, and showing me that ive learned more than what i think i have." I think that about every person who is open to salvation feels this. When someone says this out loud the common response from many believers is to tell the person to pray for wisdom and strength. I think that that's good advice as far as it goes, but someone should be offering an embrace and assuring people who are seeking something in spirituality or religion that they're better and smarter and more creative than they probably think they are and encourage people to start with the small things. The theologian Richard Rohr suggests that people learn to love a common object or being---a rock or a tree or a pet, for instance---before they try to love God.

We live in a world where love is distorted. We're told to love God, but our ideas of love come from Hollywood or are sentimental and so it is no mystery why people feel that they are failing to love and to know God. We're not going to fit God into anything, much less into our ideas of love that come from corporations and romance novels. We're told to think of God as Father, but so many people have never known a real loving father, or they never had a functional family and cannot grasp what God as Father really means. We set impossible goals for ourselves and one another and we crash. Most of us need to start with the small things and build from there.

The familiar point that God is love goes over most of our heads, and its an arguable formulation anyway, but there are enough good people around who testify that they found total love and acceptance and forgiveness in God and their testimony is mostly beyond question. Two points come to me from this. First, that we should not be quick to tell people who live different lives than we do that God doesn't love them, or that God may love them but certainly hates whatever sins we think they're committing. Be ready to accept the testimony of others and watch over time how that testimony plays out. Second, love has hidden and personal qualities---its intimate by definition---so we have to look for ways to publicly acknowledge God's love and God's working within us and amongst us. For me this means understanding social justice as the public evidence of God and God's love. I hope that you agree with me on this.

I think that one of the biggest walls we face when we want to find God's "goodness, and his mercy and grace" and share this with others is generational trauma. We pray and study with the thought that our relationship with Jesus Christ is only personal in the first place. But I want to offer up that our salvation depends on so much else. We come to our moments of prayer and good works as human beings with family and social histories and these have to be addressed, and especially so when these are the flashpoints for our pain.

Our brother's testimony above stands by itself, and nothing that I'm saying is intended to be critical. He's teaching us something. Every voice matters. Please listen up.

Class struggle and the revolutionary hope of Christmas by Tim Yeager

This post offers a view of the Christmas story that will surprise many readers and, I hope, provoke some study and discussion. The author of this piece is Tim Yeager, who is described at the end of the article as " Long-time labor organizer, civil rights and peace activist in the U.S., Rev. Tim Yeager is now Associate Priest at St Albans Cathedral and Volunteer priest at Waltham Abbey Church, U.K." This article first appeared in the December 20, 2017 edition of the People's World. Please go here in order to read the entire article.

A mural imitating the religious painting "The Last Supper" covers a wall of a popular housing complex in Caracas, showing from left to right: Fidel Castro, Ernesto 'Che' Guevara, Mao Zedong, V.I. Lenin, Karl Marx, Jesus Christ, Simon Bolivar, Venezuelan rebel fighters Alexis Gonzalez and Fabricio Ojeda, and Venezuela's late President Hugo Chavez. | Fernando Llano / AP

Christmas time can be so depressing. It brings out some of the worst features of capitalism and rubs them in our faces. You can’t escape, whatever your philosophical or religious belief.

Advertisements spur on feelings of guilt if you don’t buy enough of the right kinds of consumer products for people you love. Creative financing is offered so that lenders can make even more profit. And it is an environmental disaster … more plastic, cardboard, and packaging is produced, carted about, and dumped into landfills, vacant lots, and incinerators at Christmas time than at any other time of the year.

And yet… Nearly smothered beneath piles of gift catalogs and sale circulars, nearly drowned in a sea of synthesized elevator-music Christmas carols, in a locked theological vault guarded down through the centuries by legions of preachers, priests and pontiffs, there burns a persistent secret flame. It is the flame of a revolutionary hope—hope for a better world, a more just society, where the social order is turned upside down so that the poor are fed and the rich are relieved of their ill-gotten gains. And it is something that working people of any culture, any religious or philosophical background can relate to.

What does Christmas have to do with the class struggle? In a word—everything. The story goes like this:

Once upon a time, in a land far away on the edge of a great empire, there was a people with an ancient culture, a storied past, and a great literature, who had been conquered by a technologically advanced imperial power. They were occupied by foreign soldiers and ruled by corrupt local despots who collaborated with the foreign oppressors. There were periodic revolts of local peasants and slaves that were put down mercilessly.

In the midst of all that, a young unmarried girl becomes pregnant out of wedlock. You might think she would regret this development, but on the contrary, she finds in the anticipated birth of a child a reason to rejoice and to hope for a better world. In her joy and determination, she sings an ancient song of liberation:

My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden. For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed; for he who is mighty has done great things for me: He has shown strength with his arm, he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts, he has put down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of low degree; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty. (Luke 1:46-53)

She and her fiancé are then forced to make a difficult journey while she is in the last weeks of her pregnancy, ostensibly to comply with the demands of their imperial rulers to register for a census. They are denied lodging in local inns. Homeless, the young family takes shelter in a stable, where the mother goes into labor and gives birth to a baby boy among barnyard animals.

Hardly an auspicious beginning for a child in whom his mother had placed such hope. And then things get worse. The local ruler, a collaborator who is kept in power through an occupation army, decides on an act of terror. Convinced that a revolt is brewing in the village where the young couple has just had their baby, he sends in death squads to kill all the male children under a certain age.

Follow the rest of the article here.

Ten Minutes of Torah---Dinah's Legacy by Rabbi Stacy Rigler

I hope that some readers of this blog are paying attention to my suggestion that Christians humbly engage with ReformJudaism.org and consider the Ten Minutes of Torah study that can be found there. Rabbi Stacy Rigler has a study of the story of Dinah (Genesis 32:4−36:43) that shows a good method for understanding theology and building bridges from the ancient past to today.

Rabbi Rigler writes

As a young rabbinic student, I thought that it was silence that perpetrated violence against women. I imagined if more people understood the prevalence of abuse, they would be more likely to act. In the past 20 years, as stories of abuse against women, trans and non-binary people, and children emerge in every arena, I wonder if the problem might be that these topics are so difficult, we avoid them all together. The story of the rape of Dinah in the middle of Genesis reminds us that sexual violence is part of every society and cannot be ignored . As I re-examined her story this year, I learned that Dinah was likely younger than 13 years old when she was raped.

It has been 20 years since I gave my first sermon on the rape of Dinah. In that time, the rates of reported sexual assault have declined and awareness of sexual violence has increased. There is so much more work to be done. Dinah's name means "justice." Together, this week and every week, let us continue to work towards justice to prevent the prevalence of sexual abuse in every arena... Reading the parashah this week we are reminded that sexual violence is part of our society, both in the past, and in our current day. How will you learn more, do more, listen more, to honor her legacy this week?

The Rabbi provides a helpful list of things that can be done to stop sexual abuse, sexual assault, and the victimization of children that speaks to circumstances within Jewish communities. We need Christians to step towards the work being done by Rabbi Rigler and adapt that for Christian communities.

A meditation/reflection by Carl Davidson

MANY THINGS DON’T BOTHER ME MUCH, BUT A FEW THINGS BOTHER ME A LOT. One is how our minds work, especially about what we think we know, mainly the memories and lessons we draw on when we are faced with choices and problems. Some are rules we believe workable. But most of us most of the time, and all of us some of the time, rely on NARRATIVE, OR STORIES, some told to us yesterday, some we overheard, many more that we recall from our memories, both of things we directly experienced or indirectly heard or read about.

Our minds are full of bundles of stories. When we confide in friends about our troubles or our victories, we start with telling stories. I’ve given thousands of speeches, and by far the best way to give a speech is to start with a story about yourself. (You don’t usually forget these, so you get rolling comfortably). Then you connect that story to other stories about the topic at hand, and so on. Audiences like stories more so than a string of propositions or a list of facts. So make sure you put these facts and propositions into your stories.

But here’s the hard nut to crack. What if our stories are fully imaginary and have little to do with the real world? In fact, a few philosophers today tell us there is no ‘real’ world,’ that we only have our ‘lifeworlds’ that are comprised of our stories, and who is to say one lifeworld is superior to another? Wouldn’t that be tyrannical? (These people are called ‘postmodernists,’ and they posit a ‘post-truth world’, so now you have a decent idea of what these $10 words mean.)

Why is this a problem? Because it leaves your mind open to narratives and stories that make you feel good, that confirm what you and those close to you like to hear about yourselves, your family, your friends, your fellow church members, your country. But it also allows leaving you open to anger and outrage over undermining stories that make you uncomfortable, and these thus become lies and ‘fake news.’ iT LEAVES YOU OPEN TO FASCISM.

The truth will make us free, Scripture tells us. But I’m also reminded of Jack Nicolson’s movie outburst, ‘The truth? You can’t handle the truth!’

There is a real world, a multilayered universe of inorganic, organic, social and intellectual values that operate by laws and rules. Here I’m affirming a social reality, and we can find it, but sometimes the means of finding it are uncomfortable, even painful. I’m not a postmodernist, but a dialectical guy, asking pointed questions like Socrates did. If it stings a bit, good. That means you’ll remember it.
One tool I use these days is to ask some disgruntled people what seems a simple question, ‘Who is your neighbor?’ A few will immediately mention family or people on their block, but they quickly realize it’s far from a simple question.

It’s a profound one, and like Jack Nicholson said in the movie, many people can’t handle it. They know where it’s coming from. They’ve heard it for years. It’s the question a snarky lawyer tossed at Jesus to trip Him up. Jesus answers with a story too, a story about a Samaritan, a group of people despised by Jews back then. It’s perhaps the deepest story in the entire New Testament, one that applies to all faiths and people of no faith, well worth reading again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Good_Samaritan

Preachers, Priests, Ministers, And Pastors---Part One

Please read Part Two here.

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.

Two good random thoughts

 

A working-class theology of place, time, and care

This post is taken from a post put up on the Appalachian Americans Facebook page by Libby Helms Patterson. I think that it speaks very well to how working-class people can take care of one another and how we hold on to memory and history. It also speaks well to what some people call "clutter" and how we find and keep meaning in our lives. Behind that are impressive theologies of place, solidarity, care, and memory and recollection.

When my mom was cleaning out her house over 23 years ago to sell it, I wasn't very sympathetic over her attachments to things. I would go over on weekends to help her and we would go through things, things for a yard sale, things to donate, things to throw away. I would usually get upset over how long it was taking her to decide. For instance, we were going through kitchen cabinets and she spent 20 minutes looking at an iron kettle with a lid. Finally I said,
“Mom, at this rate it is going to take us another 2 years.”

She told me that her mother used to make meals in that kettle and leave them at doorsteps of neighbors during the depression, mom would deliver them, and then they would reappear back to her with an apron, or a wood carving, something in return for the meal. I realized that everything that my mom was going through was really a reliving of her life.

If you are reading this and are under the age of 60, you wont get it. You haven't lived long enough. Most of you have not had to move your parents into a nursing home, or emptied their home. You haven't lived long enough to realize that the hours you spend picking out the right cabinets, or the perfect tile will not be what matters in the later years. It will be the handmade toothbrush holder, or a picture that you got on vacation.

So, if your parents are downsizing, and moving to smaller places, or selling a home, give your mom and even your dad a break. Those things that you don't understand why they can’t just pitch, and why you think you know what needs to be tossed or saved, give them a little time to make their decisions. They are saying goodbye to their past, and realizing that they are getting ready for their end of life, while you are beginning your life.

As I have been going through things, its amazing just how hard it is to get rid of objects. But, life goes on, and you realize they are just things, but sometimes things comfort us. So give your parents or grandparents a break. Listen to their stories, because in 40 years, when you are going through those boxes and the memories come back, it will be hard to get rid of those plastic champagne flutes that you and your late husband used at a New Years party 40 years ago. You will think nothing of the tile or the light fixtures that were so important then.

As happy as they are for you, and as much as they love you, you just don't have a clue until it happens to you and then you will remember how you rushed them, and it will make you sad, especially if they are already gone and you cant say I’m sorry, I didn’t get it.

~ Original Post Melissa Vaughan

It's Trinity Sunday

Most western Christians celebrate today as Trinity Sunday.

The Episcopal Church describes Trinity Sunday in this way:

Feast that celebrates “the one and equal glory” of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, “in Trinity of Persons and in Unity of Being” (Book of Common Prayer--BCP, p. 380). It is celebrated on the first Sunday after Pentecost. Trinity Sunday is one of the seven principal feasts of the church year (BCP, p. 15). The proper readings and collect for Trinity Sunday are used only on the feast, not on the weekdays following. The numbered proper which corresponds most closely to the date of Trinity Sunday is used (BCP, p. 228). The BCP also provides the proper “Of the Holy Trinity” for optional use at other times, subject to the rules of the calendar of the church year (see BCP, pp. 251, 927). The Hymnal 1982 presents ten hymns in a section on The Holy Trinity (Hymns 362-371), including “Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!” (Hymn 362), “Come, thou almighty King” (Hymn 365), and “Holy Father, great Creator” (Hymn 368).

Celebration of Trinity Sunday was approved for the western church by Pope John XXII in 1334. This feast is associated with Thomas Becket (c. 1118-1170), who was consecrated bishop on Trinity Sunday, 1162. His martyrdom may have influenced the popularity of the feast in England and the custom of naming the remaining Sundays of the church year “Sundays after Trinity.” The Sarum Missal and editions of the Prayer Book through the 1928 BCP named these Sundays the Sundays after Trinity. The 1979 BCP identifies this portion of the church year as the season after Pentecost, and names these Sundays the Sundays after Pentecost (see BCP, p. 32).

I'm sorry that I don't know where this icon came from, but it expresses Trinity Sunday in the Indigenous/Native American context quite well. We will do well to contemplate what it is saying to all of us.

Two great and short (but very meaningful) books come to my mind today. One is Leonardo Boff's Holy Trinity, Perfect Community and the other is Geevaeghese Mar Osthathios' Theology of a classless Society, both published by Orbis Books. These come from the experiences two theologians from the Global South and speak in different ways to us about the radical consequences of truly believing in and embracing a divine Trinity. The relationship of the three distinct but united forces within the Trinity gives us a model for linking our liberation to creativity and realizing both together in practical ways.      

One approach to universal salvation

There are many kinds or schools of universalism, or understanding universal salvation. Here is a short and Scripturally-based and Christian-centered approach to one school of universalist teaching.

Catching up with Carlton Pearson

I have not posted anything from Carlton Pearson for a while. When we last heard from him he was speaking in a Unitarian church about racism, his past life, and his developing humanism and universalism. Whether you agree or not, he's almost always thought-provoking. I think tat he is on strong ground starting around 39:30.

"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 in a recent book review:

"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.

Feminist and liberation theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether has died

From National Public Radio:

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."

Read the entire story here.

This came from the National Catholic Reporter:

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.

Read the NCR story here.

The Liberation Theologies Online Library and Reference Center entry on Rosemary Radford Ruether is here.

Stephen Mattson says:

"Despite the fact that the Bible documents Jesus only presenting a few public sermons, much of our faith tradition has become structured around the attendance of a weekly sermon presented by a church leader.

Although a large percentage of our Christian existence is made up listening to teachings, Jesus only had one talk that was labeled a sermon: the Sermon on the Mount. It’s within the middle of this Sermon on the Mount that Jesus declares “… whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 7:12).

The great irony of our modern Christian practices is that we spend a significant amount of our time participating in the discipline of listening to sermons, upon which we learn that Jesus spent a significant amount of his time facilitating acts of social justice.

We’ve transformed Christianity into a set of beliefs rather than a state of being. Discipleship has become a matter of theological indoctrination, denominational certification, and philosophical training rather than a way of loving our neighbors."

-On Love and Mercy: A Social Justice Devotional

Stephen Mattson is a writer and activist whose work has been published in Relevant, Huffington Post, Sojourners, Red Letter Christians, and a variety of other venues. Mattson graduated from Moody Bible Institute, served as a youth pastor, and now works at University of Northwestern—St. Paul. He is the author of The Great Reckoning: Surviving a Christianity That Looks Nothing Like Christ, published by Herald Press in 2018. He and his wife and children live near Saint Paul, Minnesota. His first book, The Great Reckoning: Surviving a Christianity That Looks Nothing Like Christ, released in 2018. You can order On Love and Mercy here.

"One of the hallmarks of indigenous spirituality around the world is dance..."

"One of the hallmarks of indigenous spirituality around the world is dance. Indigenous people express their theology through the sacrament of dance. They engage with worship not only as a mental exercise, but a physical one as well. Indigenous people embody worship. Through dances that are either exuberant or solemn, they are immersed in all of their senses. Dance is an ancient pre-verbal language. It tells our story. It connects us to one another and to the universe, all at once: through the motion of our bodies and the cadence of our dreams."---The Rt. Rev. Steven Charleston, Native American/Indigenous Ministries of the Episcopal Church

Taking On Racism---And Winning!

 

Greenleaf Christian Church and Bishop William J. Barber II preaching "Reasons to Rejoice in the Resurrection"

Check out the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists here.

Seeing the Other in Ourselves: Cultivating Empathy Beyond Difference---D'VAR TORAH BY: RABBI EMILY LANGOWITZ

This is a much-needed word of Torah (d'var Torah) from Rabbi Emily Langowitz that appeared on the ReformJudaism.org. I know that many people will resist reading this or pass this by as much out fear as ignorance, thinking that this doesn't belong here, but I hope that you will this and wrestle with it. I think that this goes with the "Truth in Transition" post here with Carlton D. Pearson, but not because they take similar views or approaches but because each will challenge you to think critically. We need this. Rabbi Langowitz is a blessing to us.

D'VAR TORAH BY: RABBI EMILY LANGOWITZ


At some point in its history, the Reform Movement made the ideological choice to change the Torah reading for the afternoon service on Yom Kippur. Jewish tradition assigned the 18th chapter of Leviticus, which details laws around sexual prohibition, among other ways that the Israelites should distinguish themselves from surrounding cultures. This chapter contains a verse that has been claimed, in some religious contexts, as a weapon of hate. "You shall not lie with a man as you lie with a woman; it is an abomination." (Lev. 18:23) Our movement maintains that a Torah reading which contains such a verse should not be read aloud to the community on the most sacred day of the year.

The irony is that another principle of our movement reintroduces this chapter, on its own, into our regular Torah reading cycle. Because the Reform Movement holds that festival holidays should be celebrated, as in Israel, for only one day, we alter our calendar so as to not move too far out of sync with the reading cycles of other North American communities. Every three years or so, then, we need to make space for an extra week of Torah reading. Acharei Mot gets split from one week into two, and the second week, this week, is the very portion we do not read on Yom Kippur: Leviticus, Chapter 18. Perhaps by encountering this piece of Torah during the weekly cycle, we have more of a chance to read it with a critical eye.

I am a rabbi. And I am queer. And I thank God every day that our movement stands by its principles: not only to remove harmful text from sacred days, but to strive to break down the barriers for full participation by LGBTQ+ folks in its communities. It's because of such principles that I never questioned whether my spiritual standing could be harmed in the pursuit of love and self-discovery. But I'm also proud to be a part of this movement because of the tools it has given me to encounter text on my own terms too, as one of my teachers often said, "wrestle it for a blessing." I can be grateful not to have to hear this portion read aloud in community on Yom Kippur, and I can also be ready for it, every few years, when it arrives in our weekly Torah cycle.

Read the rest here.

An Assyrian Orthodox Priest Calls For Humility, Honesty, And Repentence In The Church

 

I think that these three statements go together...

 

Li

Contrasting ideas of who Jesus is and what our response to Him should be

 

Liberation Theology Reflects On Ther Christian Mission And The Meaning of The Crucifixion