Sprinkled throughout our Living the Questions" conversations is input from Bishop John Shelby Spong,. Here's how "his people" describe him and his work:
John Shelbly Spong,whose books have sold more than a million copies, was bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark for 24 years before his retirement in 2001. His admirers acclaim him as a teaching bishop who makes contemporary theology accessible to the ordinary layperson — he's considered the champion of an inclusive faith by many, both inside and outside the Christian church. In one of his recent books, The Sins of Scripture: Exposing the Bible's Texts of Hate to Discover the God of Love (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2005), this visionary thinker seeks to introduce readers to a proper way to engage the holy book of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
A committed Christian who has spent a lifetime studying the Bible and whose life has been deeply shaped by it, Bishop Spong says he was not interested in Bible bashing. "I come to this interpretive task not as an enemy of Christianity," he says. "I am not even a disillusioned former Christian, as some of my scholar-friends identify themselves. I am a believer who knows and loves the Bible deeply. But I also recognize that parts of it have been used to undergird prejudices and to mask violence."
A visiting lecturer at Harvard and at universities and churches worldwide, Bishop Spong delivers more than 200 public lectures each year to standing-room-only crowds. His bestselling books include Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, A New Christianity for a New World, Why Christianity Must Change or Die, and Here I Stand.
Bishop Spong's extensive media appearances include a profile segment on 60 Minutes as well as appearances on Good Morning America, Fox News Live, Politically Incorrect, Larry King Live, The O'Reilly Factor, William F. Buckley's Firing Line, and Extra. Bishop Spong and his wife, Christine Mary Spong, have five children and six grandchildren. They live in New Jersey.
Bishop Spong publishes a free weekly e-mail newsletter, as well as another online weekly reflection on one topic or another that you have to pay for to get. You may view them and subscribe to them by going to http://www.johnshelbyspong.com/. If you want the free e-mail newsletter, be careful to follow the instructions and links carefully to get the free stuff instead of the paid subscription.
I don't completely agree with every conclusion Bishop Spong comes to, but I do agree with most of them, and I do think that his voice is an important one in our on-going conversation.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Shuffling the Deck
I'm writing from Tower Hill Camp, where our two confirmation classes and some members of our High School Youth Community have headed off to the Warren Dunes, leaving me alone with my thoughts. Part of what happens on this retreat is that members of our 2nd year group work hard at writing "statements of faith." We push them to try to think "theologically" (kind of like the theme of our next gathering on April 28th), and to articulate some of what they think and feel about what most of us would call "religious" ideas.
In a lecture he called "An Ocean of God: The Innerconnectedness of all Being," Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, in response to a question about the vitality and viability of the world’s great religions, suggests:
“Imagine that there are an arbitrarily finite number of great religious ideas:
o you gotta worry about what happens when you die…
o you gotta worry about how to make atonement…
o you gotta worry about experiencing love…
o you gotta be aware of the presence of the Creator…
…fill in the list of holy ideas that every religion should have.
“[Now, for the sake of discussion,] let’s say there are 52 of them, 52, like a deck of cards. All religions are playing with a full deck. They all have all the cards. The only real difference among the religions, in my hunch,” posits Rabbi Kushner, “is the way the deck is stacked.
“If you are an orthodox Christian,” he continues, “the first card is perhaps you’re guilty and you’re going to need a lot of help right away. Jews have that card, too,” Kushner jokes, “it comes up at number 10. For Jews the top card is, What does God want now?’ Christians have that card in there, too, somewhere.”
It seems to me that you and I in our day and time and place have all those things at our disposal, that we, too, are playing with a full deck of great religious ideas. Our card game has fewer rules than some others, and, in our game, sometimes the rules change as the nature of the game and the participants in the game change, and the game itself changes to reflect and embrace new participants, rather than forcing new participants into rigid rules that reflect the realities of another day and time and place. I think our great theological task has always been to determine how that deck of great religious ideas is to be stacked. If pressed I'd argue that Jesus' instruction to “love your neighbor as yourself" is the "card" that should sit at the top of our "deck."
If the Gospels are any indication, Jesus spent very little time and energy engaging in great theological debate. While in conversation with scholars and religious bureaucrats, they talked about ancient traditions and rules and regulations, and Jesus talked about attitude and behavior. In the story of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10, someone presses him to be more precise than “Love your neighbor as yourself” by asking the question, “Who is my neighbor?” Rather than citing chapter and verse, Jesus tells a story that reflects attitude and behavior. A man on the Jericho road is mugged, beaten left for dead. A public official and a religious muckety-muck pass by the victim, and, for one reason or another leave him there in his suffering. Then a man deemed “unworthy,” a man labeled “outcast” because of the accident of his birth happens by, binds up the victim, carts him off to a place where he can be cared for, and arranges to pay for any future care the victim may need.
“Who was a neighbor to that poor man?” Jesus asks, already knowing there is only one answer, and knowing that they know there is only one answer, and knowing that the theological debate intended to justify their relatively cold and distant and superior attitude. When they mumble, “The man who helped him,” Jesus simply says, “Go and do likewise.”
So, it seems to me, Jesus suggests that the top card in the deck may well be “love your neighbor as yourself…go and do likewise."
In a lecture he called "An Ocean of God: The Innerconnectedness of all Being," Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, in response to a question about the vitality and viability of the world’s great religions, suggests:
“Imagine that there are an arbitrarily finite number of great religious ideas:
o you gotta worry about what happens when you die…
o you gotta worry about how to make atonement…
o you gotta worry about experiencing love…
o you gotta be aware of the presence of the Creator…
…fill in the list of holy ideas that every religion should have.
“[Now, for the sake of discussion,] let’s say there are 52 of them, 52, like a deck of cards. All religions are playing with a full deck. They all have all the cards. The only real difference among the religions, in my hunch,” posits Rabbi Kushner, “is the way the deck is stacked.
“If you are an orthodox Christian,” he continues, “the first card is perhaps you’re guilty and you’re going to need a lot of help right away. Jews have that card, too,” Kushner jokes, “it comes up at number 10. For Jews the top card is, What does God want now?’ Christians have that card in there, too, somewhere.”
It seems to me that you and I in our day and time and place have all those things at our disposal, that we, too, are playing with a full deck of great religious ideas. Our card game has fewer rules than some others, and, in our game, sometimes the rules change as the nature of the game and the participants in the game change, and the game itself changes to reflect and embrace new participants, rather than forcing new participants into rigid rules that reflect the realities of another day and time and place. I think our great theological task has always been to determine how that deck of great religious ideas is to be stacked. If pressed I'd argue that Jesus' instruction to “love your neighbor as yourself" is the "card" that should sit at the top of our "deck."
If the Gospels are any indication, Jesus spent very little time and energy engaging in great theological debate. While in conversation with scholars and religious bureaucrats, they talked about ancient traditions and rules and regulations, and Jesus talked about attitude and behavior. In the story of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10, someone presses him to be more precise than “Love your neighbor as yourself” by asking the question, “Who is my neighbor?” Rather than citing chapter and verse, Jesus tells a story that reflects attitude and behavior. A man on the Jericho road is mugged, beaten left for dead. A public official and a religious muckety-muck pass by the victim, and, for one reason or another leave him there in his suffering. Then a man deemed “unworthy,” a man labeled “outcast” because of the accident of his birth happens by, binds up the victim, carts him off to a place where he can be cared for, and arranges to pay for any future care the victim may need.
“Who was a neighbor to that poor man?” Jesus asks, already knowing there is only one answer, and knowing that they know there is only one answer, and knowing that the theological debate intended to justify their relatively cold and distant and superior attitude. When they mumble, “The man who helped him,” Jesus simply says, “Go and do likewise.”
So, it seems to me, Jesus suggests that the top card in the deck may well be “love your neighbor as yourself…go and do likewise."
Friday, April 10, 2009
More Multilingual (sort of)
Science. Evolution. Calculus. Physics. Quantum Mechanics.
God. Religion. Miracles, Theology. Philosophy.
The common opinion in our culture seems to be that these two lists are mutually exclusive, that they contradict each other, that you can't make a case for the one of the lists without denying the insight, wisdom, and potential of the other. Needless to say, I think that common opinion is off the mark.
In later editions of his classic book Creation Versus Chaos, renowned Biblical scholar Bernard Anderson talks about religious language and scientific language, and suggests that all our squabbles about incompatibility between the lists is that we try to make the two languages say the same thing about whatever issue is at hand. He says:
Religious language cannot be converted into scientific language any more than poetry can be reduced to prose. .. Scientific language...can hardly be equated with religious language that deals with who the Creator is and what the Creator's intent is. Nevertheless, these languages intersect at points of common cosmological interest. Therefore, when the scientist and the theologian meet, neither should claim to be "king of the mountain." They should be able to enter into dialogue as friends who stand humbly before the mysteries of creation.
In short, Anderson argues what Fermi Lab/University of Chicago physicist Leon Lederman and what the ancient mystics of every culture and religion and faith have long suggested, that the differences between the so-called "objective" stuff like our first list and the more "subjective" stuff like the second have to do more with language and metaphor than with the nature or goal of the pursuit. Theoretical physicists and mathematicians who convincingly postulate the origins of a still growing universe seek the same truth as the hospital chaplain who quietly listens as a family aches through the agony of waiting for someone they love to die. A "unified theory" eludes "objective" observers as cleverly as a decent proof for the existence of God has always eluded philosophers and theologians. The only real difference is vocabulary and symbol-sets.
Anderson suggests that we all are engaged in a quest to come to some understanding about three intertwined mysteries, the mystery of originations (where did it all come from?), the mystery of order (how does it all hold together and make sense?), and the mystery of the emergence of life (where did we come from? why are we here?). All of us search for a Great Unknown which we, at some level, think we already know a little bit.
The mathematicians and physicists and chemists and biologists and historians and sociologists and psychologists and philosophers and theologians exhaust the "toolboxes" of their disciplines and are still left with the nagging questions of creation and order and purpose. On better days these questions don't nag so much because we are somehow satisfied with our place in the order of things, and credit good luck, random chance, or the grace of God. On not-so-better days, they nag with persistence, and we're so unhappy with our place in the order of things, and we blame things like misfortune, wrong place at the wrong time, shallow gene pool, or the judgment of, or worse, abandonment by God (Psalm 22).
No matter the discipline, we discover that the homework load stays pretty substantial if we choose to keep on questioning. And there comes a time, as Thomas Aquinas suggested almost 800 years ago, when language, metaphor, commonly held knowledge is inadequate to describe an experience or phenomenon. Then and there we all find our ideas and theories and postulates coming up a bit short.
God. Religion. Miracles, Theology. Philosophy.
The common opinion in our culture seems to be that these two lists are mutually exclusive, that they contradict each other, that you can't make a case for the one of the lists without denying the insight, wisdom, and potential of the other. Needless to say, I think that common opinion is off the mark.
In later editions of his classic book Creation Versus Chaos, renowned Biblical scholar Bernard Anderson talks about religious language and scientific language, and suggests that all our squabbles about incompatibility between the lists is that we try to make the two languages say the same thing about whatever issue is at hand. He says:
Religious language cannot be converted into scientific language any more than poetry can be reduced to prose. .. Scientific language...can hardly be equated with religious language that deals with who the Creator is and what the Creator's intent is. Nevertheless, these languages intersect at points of common cosmological interest. Therefore, when the scientist and the theologian meet, neither should claim to be "king of the mountain." They should be able to enter into dialogue as friends who stand humbly before the mysteries of creation.
In short, Anderson argues what Fermi Lab/University of Chicago physicist Leon Lederman and what the ancient mystics of every culture and religion and faith have long suggested, that the differences between the so-called "objective" stuff like our first list and the more "subjective" stuff like the second have to do more with language and metaphor than with the nature or goal of the pursuit. Theoretical physicists and mathematicians who convincingly postulate the origins of a still growing universe seek the same truth as the hospital chaplain who quietly listens as a family aches through the agony of waiting for someone they love to die. A "unified theory" eludes "objective" observers as cleverly as a decent proof for the existence of God has always eluded philosophers and theologians. The only real difference is vocabulary and symbol-sets.
Anderson suggests that we all are engaged in a quest to come to some understanding about three intertwined mysteries, the mystery of originations (where did it all come from?), the mystery of order (how does it all hold together and make sense?), and the mystery of the emergence of life (where did we come from? why are we here?). All of us search for a Great Unknown which we, at some level, think we already know a little bit.
The mathematicians and physicists and chemists and biologists and historians and sociologists and psychologists and philosophers and theologians exhaust the "toolboxes" of their disciplines and are still left with the nagging questions of creation and order and purpose. On better days these questions don't nag so much because we are somehow satisfied with our place in the order of things, and credit good luck, random chance, or the grace of God. On not-so-better days, they nag with persistence, and we're so unhappy with our place in the order of things, and we blame things like misfortune, wrong place at the wrong time, shallow gene pool, or the judgment of, or worse, abandonment by God (Psalm 22).
No matter the discipline, we discover that the homework load stays pretty substantial if we choose to keep on questioning. And there comes a time, as Thomas Aquinas suggested almost 800 years ago, when language, metaphor, commonly held knowledge is inadequate to describe an experience or phenomenon. Then and there we all find our ideas and theories and postulates coming up a bit short.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Multilingual
Last week, I spent a week of vacation working for Peggy's company. I've done this every year for the last 15 or 16 years. Her company manages a trade show for people who do trade shows, and part of the experience is a certification program for people in the industry. That program includes a pretty broad range of classes and seminars for trade show folks, and my job is to get seminar materials are where they are supposed to be when they are supposed to be there, to make that room sets are correct, and that the seminar presenters are happy with everything before they begin.
One day a group of students from Northern Arizona University joined us for a "behind the scenes" look at how the show and program come together, and the small group that was with me included a freshman from China, a sophomore from China by way of a university in the Netherlands, and 3 others from the Netherlands, all of whom found their way to NAU as part of one international studies program or another.
We started talking about the different languages they all spoke. All of these young people were fluent in more languages than I; one of them, 19 years old, is working on her 5th language! We had an extensive conversation about how really knowing another language opens up different ways for us to perceive things, and more comprehensive understanding of other cultures and worldviews. Knowing different ways to say things, and to think about and through things, we agreed, made our worldviews more inclusive.
We are, I think, frequently seduced by the idea that there is only one "correct" way to look at things -- politics, economics, God stuff. Part of our journeying together is the attempt to allow ourselves (or maybe to push ourselves) to learn new "languages" and think about all of those "correct" things in different and challenging ways.
One day a group of students from Northern Arizona University joined us for a "behind the scenes" look at how the show and program come together, and the small group that was with me included a freshman from China, a sophomore from China by way of a university in the Netherlands, and 3 others from the Netherlands, all of whom found their way to NAU as part of one international studies program or another.
We started talking about the different languages they all spoke. All of these young people were fluent in more languages than I; one of them, 19 years old, is working on her 5th language! We had an extensive conversation about how really knowing another language opens up different ways for us to perceive things, and more comprehensive understanding of other cultures and worldviews. Knowing different ways to say things, and to think about and through things, we agreed, made our worldviews more inclusive.
We are, I think, frequently seduced by the idea that there is only one "correct" way to look at things -- politics, economics, God stuff. Part of our journeying together is the attempt to allow ourselves (or maybe to push ourselves) to learn new "languages" and think about all of those "correct" things in different and challenging ways.
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