Seeking Caring Community

I laid out the highlights of my not religious journey a few weeks ago, and it got me thinking about details along the way.

Some people have specific events that made them quit religion, but I’m not one of those. If anything, there were a few things I can remember that kept me hoping that I could get continued value from that community. One of those was meeting Rabbi Michael Lerner. He had written some books on applying his Jewish traditions to liberal politics and for a few years had been an advisor to the Clintons who were Methodists, just like me. Ideas like the Jubilee year where debts are forgiven or the Sabbath where you unplug all your electronic devices for a weekend. This was before smart phones. A lot a people talk about this as a good idea now.


https://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/images/header_lernerpage.png
A community formed around these and other ideas and that work continues. It’s good stuff, but the Biblical connections were not that direct. His work is a good response to fundamentalism. It shows you can go to church or synagogue or mosque and be inspired to work for justice and peace and equality. But if you’re looking to make a case that the Biblical narrative leans more to the left, I didn’t find that there.

For more detailed Bible study that does look for modern messages in the text, there was the Jesus Seminar. This group of authors was active the 1990’s. Dominic Crossan is still writing and speaking. Marcus Borg died recently. Robert Price has since become atheist, but he still studies the Bible. In the first book I read from that group, they put the gospels side by side and showed how they are irreconcilable. I have since come to see these things like this more cynically. They are things you can learn, but really not apply. It’s an anti-fundamentalist statement, but doesn’t tell you much about what the gospel authors were trying to say.

They are a way a church can show it is progressive and opening up to new scholarship, but they don’t integrate the study into the full mission. I read that book as part of an adult study class. That’s where this kind of study usually ends up, relegated to the basement with a small group. They are a spoon full of progressivism for those who are asking for it, but they are still feeding the same old buckets of liturgy every Sunday.

So, that’s my cynical view, but I have to admit that some of this education included the political messages of the narratives. These are stories of an oppressed people under the rule of a conquering empire that had co-opted their religious leaders by sharing some of their riches with them in exchange for keeping the populous in line. That’s a universal story that repeats itself throughout history up to this day. What the Bible offers are stories about how they dealt with it.

For example, when Jesus says, “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s”. He doesn’t mean, pay your taxes and shut up. Before he says that, he gets a Pharisee to pull a Roman coin out of his pocket. That coin has Caesar’s face on it, and he is considered a god. This is idle worship, and without saying it directly, Jesus just pointed out how the leaders of his religion are corrupted. We do this today by calling out Joel Osteen for not helping people during Hurricane Harvey.

So going down to the basement was one way to find deeper discussion about interpreting scripture, the other direction is up the leadership chain. There are a variety of seminars available to help potential leaders grow, and although you are again meeting in smaller groups, at least there is a sense this is the direction of the national organization, not just some pastor who found a book he liked. One of those classes I attended talked about something called the “Rule of Christ”. If you Google that you will get a ton of hits about Christ being the ruler of the kingdom. That’s not the one I mean.

The one I’m talking about is found in Matthew 18:15-20. It’s about how you handle a member of your group who is not on board with the mission. You speak to him privately then bring in more people if more understanding of the situation is needed. Then if needed go to whatever decision making body you have. If the situation still can’t be worked out, it may be the person has to go.  Now, there’s some danger of this being used to enforce “group think”, so 5 verses isn’t enough to cover that, but it’s a good start. It’s better than letting rumors fly or of letting one disruptive person poison every meeting.

That kind of study was going well for a few years then I thought it would be a great idea to become a lay speaker. A lay speaker can fill in for a pastor on Sunday and usually has some other leadership duties. I went to an all day event where we talked about what it was about and what the United Methodist Church was up to. One of their programs was called “Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors”. Sounds pretty self descriptive, and from the diverse group of people attending the class, it seemed like openness was the direction we were all headed. The church that was hosting the event had an entire set displaying the idea with doors and banners.

Then one of the speakers gets up and a few minutes into his talk, picks up one of the brochures for that “open” program and says, “we don’t need to worry about open doors, we need to get back to the miracles in the Old Testament.” A little later at lunch, he floated this idea again, asking rhetorically, “what would happen if we all got up in front of our churches and started saying that miracles were real.” No one said a word, probably a pretty common response to someone saying something like that. He tried answering it himself, saying it would cause miracles to happen or something.

I wrote the district Bishop about it and received no response. I talked to a couple pastors and got sympathy, but not much else. One of the other leaders at the event said she wasn’t happy about it either, but there wasn’t much she could do. What I saw was, the church leaders believe they need to keep as much of the old ways as possible even as they try to move forward. This is obviously about keeping butts in pews but it is also simply a lack of vision.

There are people like me who want to be part of an organization that is serving those who want to work for a better world. We can, if we want, find groups that address specific topics and volunteer our time doing something we consider worthwhile. It’s harder to find a place that addresses our need for community, our need for places where we celebrate our accomplishments and counsel each other on our failures, where we discuss the foundations of our values. You can see the numbers by looking at the declining church going population. There are polls showing many of those people left because the church is not open to new ideas. But churches are not good at addressing that population. They are experts at welcoming the fallen back into the fold, but when someone is going through serious doubts, they are almost silent.

When I tell stories like this, I often hear the response, “that’s not my church. We’re not like that.” I’ll address that next time.

No One Will Buy My Book

First off, I won't write a book about my approach to the Bible, so my prophecy in the title of this blog post will be fulfilled due to my own inaction. The reason I won't write it is I see what kinds of books people buy about the Bible. Most of them confirm what has been being said for hundreds of years. A few of them say they have something new to say, then they say how amazing it is and how you will discover God and Jesus by looking at it this way. I don't want you to discover anything that isn't true. Most people find reality pretty boring. Too bad, they don't know what they are missing.

In Rob Bell's latest book, he manages to both give this message to the church and tell you that he knows what God thinks and knows how you can know that too. He has the advantage of once having preached at a mega-church and he's studied the ancient languages and been seminary school. But I don't think you need to do all that to understand what he gets right and what he gets wrong.

Most organizations that say they are teaching something about reality that you can only find by following their ideas, their practices, will tell you anything except that you can find it on your own. John Prine may be one of the few people who could tell you that and still sell albums. Churches and fortune tellers and gurus and snake oil salesmen and politicians have a goal of self preservation.

The Bible does not teach you to hang on to one way of thinking. It teaches you to give things up. It teaches you that your tradition is corrupt. It teaches you that your leaders have an agenda that does not further the needs of the community. Sometimes, while doing that, it recommends fixing it by returning to the tradition, but in some more pious or more devout or more self-sacrificing way. This is one of the more commonly ridiculed flaws, but focusing on those just becomes a mask for the major theme, found throughout, that to make progress, you have to leave where you are.

Being a slave may be comfortable, but it's not who you are. Your family is great, but it needs to spread itself out over the land and maybe not get together as much. And later, you may find visiting that long last relative and reconciling old wounds may be just the ticket. Whatever it might be, getting together every Sunday with the same people and singing from the same hymnal is probably not it. Celebrating the glory of what someone said thousands of years of ago is not progress.

Rob's sub-title is about transformation, mine would be something like, "An ancient library that has some useless and wrong history and some stories that changed things in important ways a long time ago and just a few stories that can still inspire some people today." Probably not a blurb that is going to sell anything.

Naturalization of teleological language. Say what?

I’ve been tracking Bart Campolo lately and finding him well worth a listen. In a section of this podcast, about 10 minutes long, so many things are tossed around, it could take hours to develop. It’s a rapid exchange. Bart was passionate about his desire to incorporate the many voices he hears on campus while Tripp was trying to explain the value of the language of the traditions he holds so dear. Both were pointing in the same direction, but many differences need to be worked out before they can really work together toward that same goal. Or maybe there’s a third way.

Listen to the whole thing, or jump to around 20 minutes in and try to catch up. I took their words for the next 15 minutes and made these “study” questions. Some of them get expanded on later, but mostly they are left unanswered. I hope the two of them get together for more.

Questions that depend on belief

Did the human technologies of eating together, singing together and performing rituals develop naturally, through evolution, and then get incorporated into religion, or were they developed by inspired religious leaders?

Did all of that get associated with a supernatural explanation at a time when the only explanations we had were supernatural, or do they actually have a supernatural origin? Is there another explanation?

Questions that could be separated from the belief question

Did science emerge from monotheistic assumptions then move through secularization, removing the supernatural aspects?

Since we are now developing more natural explanations, is theological language being “naturalized” to apply to our teleological relationship to creation?

How are these two sets of questions related?

How does our language hold our beliefs in place?

How do we develop the language to serve the need of bringing people together to lead happier and more productive lives?

Discussion of Volf's pluralism

In chapter 4 of Miroslav Volf's “Flourishing: Why We Need Religion in a Globalized World”, he attempts to make the case that exclusivist religion can be compatible with pluralist politics. I'm not sure how many blogs it will take to cover this somewhat lengthy chapter. I'll begin with an overview.

The words “exlcusivist” and “pluralist” seem to make their own case against “compatible”, but his argument is thorough and compelling, complete with historical precedent. Even if he is wrong, I think the discussion of the possibility is worth the effort. Any attempt to address the current problems of fundamentalism, Christian or otherwise, deserves consideration. A program of elimination of religion or quarantining it is similar in exclusionary tactics to a program of converting everyone to believe in a particular god. A truly pluralist society consists of people with open minds, willing to engage any reasonable argument.

I have already laid several land mines for myself in that opening paragraph and I can see the jaws clenching and the eyes rolling. To allay some of those fears of hearing the same old arguments, Volf begins by noting the Puritans left the religious persecution of England, only to set up their own exclusive system in America. A seeming contradiction. He later explains how pluralism had roots in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and how the exculsivist and pluralist factions had to part company. He admits that there are limits to the use of reason by fundamentalist. That it is often used only to defend their own preconceived notions and breaks down when challenged. He quotes Popper and Rousseau. He admits not all who embrace exclusivist religion will go along with his ideas. He asks very little of the pluralist society and demands much from his fellow Christians.

When considering the possibility that religion can continue to some extent in the forms we see it now, it's important to take a broad perspective. We are decades into a movement sometimes called the Christian Right, but it is a recent phenomena and it's dominance is starting to wane. Before that, sociologist were pretty well agreed that science would continue to advance and religion would fade. Further back, people like Thomas Jefferson expected the world to move toward some form of the Unitarianism, akin to religion but without all the miracles. He was wrong about that, but he did pretty well with shaping democracy, so I'll cut him some slack. 500 years before that Aquinas attempted to reconcile Greek rationalist thought with his faith. There were other failed attempts, but the important point is that the dominant view of religion changes throughout time and we can influence that view.

In a rare moment for Christian theologians, Volf presents Peter Berger's steps toward the gradual disappearance of religious exclusivism. He contends social pluralism naturally leads to the affirmation of religious pluralism. When religious people mix with other ideologies, they experience a degree of “Cognitive contamination”. Certainly any cult leader who keeps his minions isolated knows this.

Whether this contamination is other religions or not, it eventually becomes secularism. This phenomenon could also be observed in the recent acceptance of homosexuality in America. As more and more people came to know a gay person personally, they found out they weren't so bad. The steps are:

1 Live with others

2 Learn to appreciate them

3 Realize their ways of living aren't utterly false

4 Their truth is as good as yours

Volf points out at least one flaw in Berger; not everyone makes that last step.

This is where Volf's theology steps in, providing a way to live between steps 3 and 4. He notes that the three major monotheisms and even Buddhism contain ideas not only that their god (or in Buddhism's case their ideology) is the only one, and the right one, but also that you should not be arrogant about this. If you are right, and of course you are, you should not need to boast. God will give you the strength and wisdom you need to endure the unbelievers and to convert them. Indeed, you should not fear hearing the ideas of others, you should apply the golden rule and treat those ideas with respect, just as you would expect your ideas to be treated, knowing that in the end you will prevail.

I would like to interject at this point, that Volf, throughout the entire book is notorious for ignoring large swaths of history. He never mentions the dozens of other versions of “do unto others”. I can't tell if this is purposeful or if he is actually unaware that Jesus did not invent that.

He shows a strong grasp of world history, so it is to hard understand how he could miss certain details or why he thinks them unimportant. He covers the unique aspects of Judaism and Christianity, and how they ended up being religions that grew beyond their tribal beginnings. He calls them “world” religions. Christianity for instance took a stand of consciousness against imperialist Rome. Those ideas lived on and have been adapted and used by many revolutionary cultures and oppressed groups. I would have liked it Volf did not slide past the harsh versions of that, when Christianity later partnered with empire and brutally oppressed and enforced its exclusiveness. He may think it would hinder his argument to do so, but I think it hinders his argument to not do it.

I am not suggesting that he, or anyone, meld their precious ideologies into some grand philosophy that is a mix of all human knowledge. I would like to see that, but I don't expect it to happen in my lifetime. What Volf suggests, and I would accept as a minimum, is that religions find an interpretation of their ideology that allows for co-existence with other ideologies. If they can do that, I'm fine with them hanging on to hope of a second coming, or for implementation of as many as their purity laws as they can find agreement for. As long as they maintain values of peace and order while attempting to achieve those ends, the rest of us can continue to work toward those shared values in our own ways. Hopefully we can all find ways to form partnerships and move toward those shared values.

Pray

If you are trying to follow the lectionary series in order, I just skipped a few weeks. I will have a website up in the next couple months that follows the schedule.

Hosea

This week's text

Explanation of the series

For Old Testament help, I frequently turn to John C. Holbert. This week, he lays it out pretty clearly. After discussing the odd behaviors of other prophets, he says, “…, but the use of a woman of the evening for an object lesson is quite something else. For those of us who are feminists—and I hope all you readers consider yourselves feminists, too—it is deeply offensive to use a woman as a metaphor for human idolatry. Such literary effects do nothing but demean women and hold men up for the crude and misogynist beasts that they too often are.”

So, yes, this is saying what you think it is on the first read. We don't get any details about just what they did wrong here, but God is obviously fed up with it. Depending on where you want to go with your sermon, you may need to do some more research into the context.

The names obviously have some symbolic meaning, so I'll cover those quickly. “Jezreel” is “God Sows”, in this case it will the bad kind of sowing. “Lo-ruhamah” is “not pitied”, that's followed by God's words about not pitying Israel. “Lo-ammi” is “not my people”. God is going back on his promise that Israel is his chosen people. It does get better, but scholars speculate that the verses about having pity on the house of Judah and how things are going to turn around, were added later, much in the way modern preachers would like to turn this whole passage around and make it something it's not.

Psalm

The Psalm goes perfectly with the Hosea passage. It accepts the idea that God can be vengeful and angry if he wants. It's saying its our job to let him know we are here for him and that we are certain he has a plan that we can all trust.

Colossians

I'm spending extra time on the parable this week, so I'm going to focus on only one aspect of the New Testament reading.

2:8 See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ.

Putting “philosophy” and “empty deceit” next to each other like that implies philosophy is deceitful. Bill O'Reilly now says Christianity IS a philosophy, so I guess he sees it different. Neither Bill nor the Bible discuss the details of this. Greek philosophy would have been known, certainly in the 1^st century, although we can't know how well versed in it the authors of the Bible were. There is no direct philosophical debate in the Bible. Here it is described as “according to human tradition”, so they are acknowledging that there is a distinction between Biblical teachings and some sort of secular school of thought. It also says, “elemental spirits of the universe”.

Rather than try to understand the mind of a 1^st century Palestinian who couldn't have heard of the word “science” since it hadn't been invented yet, I'll just make an observation. While Protestants and Catholics were killing each other for the right to worship differently, while thousands of new denominations were being created because new information about the Bible was coming to light and as people began to understand how the brain worked and that mental illness was not demon possession, we were also discovering that we are a small planet on the edge of a vast galaxy with galactic neighbors and all that took billions of years to come into being. We are gaining this knowledge so fast, the language is not keeping up. We are going to have to come up with a new word for “universe”. It's supposed to mean all that exists, but we are finding there is something before time and outside the boundaries of everything we know.

These discoveries, that the very fabric of our being was cooked in the first stars then blown apart only to come back together to form more stars and planets and atmospheres and creatures that could then reflect on all of this and ponder the mystery of it and experiment against that universe to discover why it is here and why we are here, none of this is covered in any part of the Bible or in any theology. We have discovered where we came from and evolution gave us a theory of how we came to care about each other. We found out that we were not put here as stewards of someone's creation with some unknown purpose, instead we are completely interconnected to that creation. We are part of its cycles on a biological level and if you get down to the smallest physical level, we are exchanging particles with everything around us. It is difficult to even find the boundaries.

These are profound discoveries that have altered the relationship of human beings to the planet, but religion refuses to integrate them. A few tepid attempts are made and they usually involve getting the science wrong. The Pope closed the universities in 1277 because he was afraid of anyone attempting to reach God using reason. If they had succeeded, why would we need a Pope, and if they failed, people would have to choose between thinking for themselves or not. He had to reopen the schools, but the world had already begun to move on.

There are references in this passage to pagan worship and other warnings to stay away from other religions. One of the few phrases I find agreeable is the one about not getting “puffed up”. That's wrong even if you happen to be technically correct. But I can't salvage much else from this passage. If someone has found a way to integrate all of our modern knowledge into their services, I would love to hear about it.

Luke

This passage starts with the Lord's Prayer, then tells us the parable of the Friend at Midnight, then tells us more about prayer. A basic reading might just see it as a suggestion to pray often. I will spend a little extra time on this parable because it is included in William R. Herzog III's Parables as Subversive Speech. This is a rare book that covers many modern interpretations and offers conclusions based on all data available to the modern reader. It considers the parables in light of Paulo Freire's work, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. It covers 9 parables, and is an invaluable tool for anyone serious about Bible study. Thankfully, it also accessible to the non-scholar.

Herzog spends 11 pages on this passage, going into great detail on the Greek word anaideian, which appears in verse 8 as “persistence” or possibly “importunity” in some translations. Translators have had trouble determining if this applies to the neighbor being awakened, or the friend at the door. Applied the wrong way, it can appear that Jesus is portraying God as the neighbor, who is reluctant to bother with the petitioner at his door. This could be a parable about being persistent with your prayers, something Luke definitely advocates.

To unravel this, Herzog spends almost a page just on how the community that Jesus is preaching to would handle its bread making; small loaves or large, community oven or not, everyone baking on Monday or a system of rotation. If this is not interesting to you, serious Bible study may not be your thing. If you want to have “our daily bread” mean anything other than a vague analogy to eating, these are important details.

Herzog doesn't just jump around wildly speculating, he sights theological, archaeological and textual evidence and how they support the different interpretations they have published. Without this information, we would be left trying to apply this story to our own experience. Would you even answer the door at midnight, even if it was a friend? Do you expect friends to make appointments? This is a family with children, is the friend being inconsiderate? Almost every word needs to be carefully considered to get the correct interpretation.

Herzog considers one theologian that he, and many others, think got it wrong. Herzog only gives us the name Levison, who says anaideian should be applied to the sleeping neighbor. If it doesn't it would lead to the view that prayer is nothing more than badgering God into submission. Levison needed to translate the word to “strengthen” to make this work. Herzog calls this “theological slight of hand”.

Preachers often do this, but rarely will they tell you they are doing it. Your only clue will be if you have not heard it before. If you haven't, you can check with your favorite source or a more familiar preacher, but even then, you are limiting your sources. This is the problem with theology, there is nowhere you can go to get a consensus answer. There is no code book like there is for electricians. It's not a science where some things are still speculation and others are well established theories based on empirical evidence, and data that has been verified as factual after repeated experimentation. This citing of many sources and discussing them is what makes a work like Herzog's so valuable.

To help us understand the irony in this parable, Herzog spends a few pages on the idea of “The Moral Economy of the Peasant”. They had to deal with the reality of a subsistence lifestyle, where they felt that any gain of their own was done at the expense of their neighbors. They felt powerless to deal with the ways they were being exploited, so they looked for how those means resulted in something left over for them. It is hard to understand for anyone living in a society where much is provided. They knew there was an elite status that they could never obtain, but they expected those elites to draw a moral line at limiting their exploitation in a way that left them with their subsistence living.

In this system, reciprocity was a norm. You helped others when they needed it and they understood the obligation to reciprocate. Also important, as was discussed two weeks ago earlier in this same chapter, there was a tradition of itinerant preaching. This tradition of receiving a traveler is included in the Holiness Code of Leviticus. This is not simple utilitarianism. It is friendships developed to alleviate the increasing pressures of those elite patrons. This act of giving mere sustenance, bread, is a participation in the hospitality of Abraham. As Herzog says, “every time they place their meager resources at the disposal of the village, they participate in some small way in the continual redistribution of wealth for the sake of protecting and caring for the vulnerable, as envisioned in the Torah.”

I've left out a lot of the details, but Herzog concludes that the parable is breaking a boundary. Modern readers can recognize this, but they have a very different set of boundaries. Boundaries were set by the Torah in 1^st century Palestine, but the elites had rewritten those boundaries with an oral Torah. They used that to continue to pursue their acquisitive greed at the expense of peasants and rural poor and still be Torah-clean. To them, extending hospitality to a stranger was shameless, using the “importunity” interpretation of that difficult Greek word. They were fools.

The parable delivers the punchline in verse 8 with irony. Jesus turns that judgment into an affirmation of village hospitality. By doing so, they created a messianic banquet, making a mockery of the lavish banquets of the elite that were done to promote themselves, not the community. This was a system of justice by the impure that those practicing the purity laws couldn't comprehend. The villagers didn't cave in to the desire to hoard and accumulate. This ordinary action of sharing bread was no small matter. 

8 points of Progressive Christianity

This one flew by my virtual desktop the other day. I don't remember whence it came. It sounds nice at first glance, and you know there is a “but” coming after that, don't you? By time you get to the bottom, it sounds like all the good peace and harmony things in one tidy list. They didn't even try to force it to 10 items. Kudos.

I'll start at the bottom, where all those nice things are.

Items 4 through 8 are just basic human dignities. No society can survive for long without them. Even a repressive regime tells people they have these rights. George W Bush said he only choose war because that's what he needed to do to achieve peace. The language may lean toward the “liberal” end of the spectrum, such as “restore the integrity of our Earth”, but even those who claim dominion over the earth will usually say they are stewards.

I'll give a few extra points for item 5, “search for understanding” and valuing questions. Not everybody gets the importance of that. Of course saying that is different than actually responding to a question that challenges your world view in a truly open minded and respectful manner. But I don't need to get into the problems of implementing the list.

Moving up to item 3, atheists are not included. Probably because it implies an end to all of that questioning. You could say that's true, but only for religious questions. Atheists of course continue to ask all the questions that everyone else does, like why are we here, what's right, what's good, and what's for breakfast. I have enjoyed spending time in awe and wonder with people who had no idea I didn't believe in their god. Atheism leaves wonder and openness intact while concluding that enough work has been done on all existing theories of Christianity.

I’m not interested in a church that accepts atheists anyway. I’m interested in a community that accepts everyone for who they are. This doesn’t mean anything goes. It means whatever the community is organizing to do, it’s rules about who can join in are related to reaching that goal. Churches have goals and committees and functions, but if you want in, you have to pledge allegiance to a character in a book. You have to say you believe that things in that story are true. Most people do it without their heart really being in it, but if someone comes along and questions what’s in their heart, the wagons begin circle very quickly.

At least that's how it is for me, maybe they had some other atheists in mind when they left them off, and the item does say “ALL”, so that's nice.

Now I need to jump up to Item #1 because #2 doesn't make sense without it. This list starts with the same old barrier that has been around since the beginning, “believeth in me”. I realize that without that, there's no point in having this be about Christianity, but with it, why call it “progressive”? If you want an open community like you say in #3 that accomplishes the things in 4 through 8, why not just say you are a progressive “org” and then say something about welcoming faith traditions if you want. It would really simplify things.

In Item #2, it's almost apologizing for #1. After saying Jesus is the path to the Sacred and Oneness and Unity, it says that there are other ways to get there too. This one also has implementation problems. Just where can you go for this other wisdom? I went to a church that had a Ojibwa pipe ceremony in the basement once, Sufi dancing now and then on a Saturday night, and read from the Tao Te Ching every Sunday. But that was about it. And that's the most progressive church I've ever heard of. Even Unitarians tend to stick to Western Christian ideas.

The general feel I get from this list is, you’re fine with me choosing any belief system, but heaven forbid I choose a system that isn’t based on beliefs at all. Back when I taught Sunday School, I put a poster up in my class that had 15 different versions of what Christians call “The Golden Rule” from a variety of faith traditions, and Confucius, who made no supernatural claim. I've never seen that poster in any other church. I've seen high ranking religious leaders who were unaware that there were other versions. And something like that is not really much of a stretch. I can't imagine an adult Sunday School bringing Hume to their discussion on ethics or Sam Harris to their discussion of free will.

The question not addressed in this list is, what are you trying to accomplish? Is it the stuff in the second half or is making a statement about being inclusive as in 2 and 3 important, or is it all about Jesus and the Sacred and Oneness? Just what those capitalized words mean is a problem for me. It seems when I ask that question, they lead to the other points, so why not just dump the first 3? It would be much easier to understand if you just said you were a group of people that wanted to save the world. That's enough to set you apart.

The only honest answer, the only reason I can see to why you would start off with a belief statement, is that you think that is of primary importance. Nothing else here explains why that is important, and no church I've ever been to or theology I've ever heard of does anything but make that as an assertion. It is simply stated that Jesus leads to these things and the only way to find out is to try it for yourself. If you don't get it, you're doing it wrong and you're not in the club. I don't see what is so progressive about that.

Bart Campolo

Hemat Mehta interviews Bart Campolo 

My search for a preacher who offers real value continues, but I’m getting closer. This one calls himself a secular humanist, but isn’t even comfortable with that label. The label for what I’m looking for probably doesn’t exist yet. His current title is Humanist Chaplain. He talks about rejecting the term atheist in the interview, and I’m fine with that.

It’s also worth mentioning he is a former minister and the son of a famous minister, Tony Campolo who advised President Bill Clinton. All of this is in the interview. If you want to skip that and some other good stuff, fine, but at least go to minute 26. They are talking about the controversy of secular chaplains in the military and Bart slides into a long discussion about dealing with death.

The discussion is very life affirming. Death is one of those things that keeps people in religion. You can get away with all sorts of sin in life, but you better be concerned about your everlasting soul. He quotes Robert Ingersoll extensively and explains how our desire for eternal life arises naturally out of the experience of death. We want just one more conversation with the one we just lost, we hope to see them again.

He goes on to talk about how an eternal life in heaven is really not a very good solution to this problem. The inevitability of death shows us to the preciousness of life. Knowing our time here is short draws us through the weeds between us, seeking a connection. It drives us to share our joys now and to let go of our anger now because we don’t want to waste this time. As Ingersoll says, “Love is a flower that only grows on the edge of a grave.”

It keeps getting better from there. See for yourself. 

Frank Schaeffer is Not an Atheist

This is my review of Frank Schaeffer’s new book Why I am an Atheist Who Believes in God. I gave it two stars. 1 star for his story telling and 1 for his liberal Bible study. He won’t say who his audience is. He wants to claim neutrality. But many atheists are saying he is clearly no atheist. I say this book is best for people willing to question the source of their religious feelings and want to learn more about Biblical scriptures and the traditions they say they are following. It refers to a few philosophers, but it is not a philosophy book.

My review is written in short sentences, so it (hopefully) gets read on Amazon.com. I expand it afterward:

Positive reviews for this book are an indicator of the complete lack of understanding of philosophy in culture today. Frank asks Philosophy 101 questions and comes up with bizarre answers. He goes on a rant about not being able to define the word “significance”, then ends the chapter with “it is if I say it is.” I wouldn’t mind that so much if he didn’t rail on Dawkins and Dennett for things they haven’t said. He quotes the Bible and others, but when he speaks against atheists, he puts thoughts in their heads and tells us they are wrong. The New Atheists never said that there is no meaning, okay Frank?

I find it suspicious that he doesn’t know the basics of how science works. He says all science is circular, showing a lack of knowledge of the last 400 years that have demonstrated the premises of the scientific method to be completely workable and in a very real sense, true.  I was starting to believe he was insincere until he said, “my hunch is that things were beautiful before we were around to observe them”. Of course they were, but that says nothing about God or materialism. We evolved to be aware of beauty, to reflect on it, and to create words and art to describe it. That all this happened without a creator does not make it meaningless.

The redeeming quality of the book is his liberal Bible studies. And he admits that he is cherry picking. I admire that. He quotes someone saying Christianity should be reforming itself. I agree. But he comes up with weird stuff, like saying the Enlightenment was an “empathy time bomb” set by Jesus. In other words, after the Kings and Popes had their power taken away, after people were allowed to think for themselves without threat of torture, then he says it was Christianity’s idea to be inclusive and multi-cultural. Wrong.

Now for the details:

Frank starts his book with the story of some unlikely circumstances that resulted in him meeting a good friend. Then he reflects on that and what she and others have meant to him throughout his life. Early on he says, “My brain recognizes but can’t explain how love and beauty intersect with the prime directive of evolution: survive. Nor can I reconcile these ideas: ‘I know that the only thing that exists is this material universe, and I know that my redeemer liveth’.” A few times it seems like he is getting close to making that reconciliation, but then the chapter ends and the next starts with another story of his grandchildren. For an atheist reading this, I think they will find it frustrating. For an open-minded Christian, I think they can find some good places to start a discussion or think about these philosophical issues.

Philosophers, biologists and physicists are referenced throughout, but only in brief introductions. I’ll get to some misrepresentations of them later. First, if you haven’t heard of Frank Schaeffer, he comes from somewhat famous parents. They started something called the L’Abri Institute that created much of the foundation for fundamentalist Evangelical Christianity. Frank admits he was “personally conditioned” by that (his italics, he loves italics). He has since renounced their teachings and regrets how they have been used. He speaks lovingly of his mother, who despite preaching about the sin of homosexuality, would gladly have them for dinner and listen to their concerns.

He also tells of his own guilt over being a terrible father and how he grew into a decent grandfather. He is still married to the woman he got pregnant as a teenager despite their difficult early years when he believed what his father taught about men being the rulers of their house. He also credits his parents for teaching strict rules about being faithful. If not for that, he may have made things worse by cheating on her. He says his religiously based “irrational guilt” kept him from doing that. He doesn’t explain why he calls that “irrational”. He does talk about the philosophy of materialism and theory of evolution leading to a conclusion that multiple sex partners would be a rational choice. But he ignores that the values of good parenting and family are easily traceable via evolution, the very things he says he discovered later in life. This pattern is repeated throughout; acknowledging the value of strict religious rules and passing over the values we all have through the evolution of civil society.

Almost every time Frank refers to a philosopher or theologian, he gets it wrong. Most of his quotes are in support of his argument, and they are terrible. Most of his comments on “New Atheists” are merely characterizations and misrepresentations with no quotes to back up what he is claiming they said. He quotes from Howard Wettstein; and summarizes by saying “I believe that psychology explains away altruism and debunks love and that brain chemistry undermines my illusion of free will. I also believe that the spiritual reality hovering over, in and through me calls me to love, trust and hear the voice of my Creator”.  If we were to find the people who said those things about psychology and chemistry, we would see that they or other psychologists and chemists also said that these sciences are in their infancy and we don’t fully understand consciousness.

Frank and Howard want to claim sole proprietorship of mystery and wonder. They want to say spirituality is real and not have to explain what it is, let alone how they can claim it is real. Wonder does not belong to anyone. It is not taken away when you discover truth. Answering one question does not end all questioning. It almost always leads to more questions.

You might be wondering where the “atheist” part of this book comes in, given my quotes from Frank so far. He does say things like “religion is a neurological disorder for which faith is the only cure” and “we act as if our pet paradigm can be stretched to fit every case” and “don’t go to church if it is not helping you be a better person” and “Belief is never the point – actions are.” These are usually said in a context that denigrates metaphysical naturalism a few sentences later. He talks about actions being more important than words, but never discusses how no matter how much good someone does, if they speak against inclusiveness, tolerance and acceptance, those words are still bad and cause others to make poor choices and take bad actions.

In the middle of the book he quotes chapter and verse extensively. He sticks to the good stuff about Jesus bringing women into the conversation and speaking out against the literalist interpretations of the Old Testament. He quotes Jacques Ellul who discussed how Nietzsche and Marx questioned ideology and the power of the Christian churches. Ellul said it would be better if Christians today did that work themselves, questioning the elites of their own churches. This is the redeeming value of the book. I will simply agree with it and leave Christians to decide to do that work or not.

After quoting a large section of the Sermon on the Mount he says, “if only the rest of the gospels were consistent with this passage.” He says this with no irony. Yes, “if only”. If only any prophet or philosopher got it all right and handed us a book that gave us rules that worked perfectly in every situation in all times. What a wonderful world we would have. But that isn’t reality. It is simply wishful thinking. Choosing one of those prophets and believing that he meant to be consistent, but somehow the message got messed up and it’s our job to fix it, that’s not thinking at all.

Statements like that are where his Bible study goes south. At another point he compares a section from Luke 10 on going to hell to Luke 6 on mercy and forgiveness, asking which is Jesus. But I ask, why ask? We have had 2,000 years to figure out that one of those passages is good for society and one is not. Whether or not a particular historical figure agreed with either one does not affect my life choices. It only changes you if you are first trying to figure who in history is special then deciding to follow everything that person said. I don’t think that is a good strategy. Today, we can know who said what, who changed those words later, who translated them, who misused them and we know the effect of doing all that on world history. We can learn from all of the wisdom of the ages.

It gets worse when he gets away from the Bible and tries to discuss the meaning of life. In Chapter 14 he types “Earth’s place in the universe” into google and finds “our place within the universe is very small and insignificant”. This puts him a riff about the word significant. He asks, “less significant than what? Where’s the standard?”, “it’s subjective”, “it’s as nonsensical as Pope Paul V threatening Galileo.” He says “today’s secular science… assigns us a contradictory groveling insignificant, significance.” He then brings in environmentalism and claims this a new form of original sin, calling us culpable for destroying other life forms despite our insignificance. Then he jumps to a rant about the poor quality of modern art.

It gets weirder when he quotes Sagan’s entire Pale Blue Dot  saying Sagan “takes great pains to obliterate any sense of cosmic significance” and calling it part of the “secular theology of nothingness”. He says this theology is in conflict with itself since it sees us as “nature at her worst” yet seeks to find signs of life elsewhere. He then names Dennett, Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens claiming “Religion’s chief sin, they argue, lies in elevating humankind above the pond scum from whence we came.” No reference for any of them saying anything like that is provided. He winds down this free association with the question that led him to write this book, “if we’re nothing, why bother to convince us of our nothingness?”

The answer Frank, is found in all the places you just referred to but failed to understand. Words have meaning. We use them to communicate. Breaking them down and understanding that they are “just words” is something fun for college freshman to do in a dorm room, but you’re writing a book about meaning. You should be clarifying, not deliberately obfuscating. Sagan asked them to turn the camera back toward Earth so we could see our real place in the solar system. He’s not saying we’re nothing, he’s saying we’re something, and there is a lot more. There is much for us to know and learn and explore and it matters that we are aware of it.

He spends next the few chapters expanding on these themes, including a perfectly useless history of art criticism in the mid 20^th century. He plays with definitions of other words like “natural”, saying murder is “natural” therefore a naturalist perspective says it is not wrong. He never defines spirituality but says those who believe it is an illusion “tend to demote notions of beauty along with demoting us (humans).” I realized at this point that he honestly doesn’t understand the philosophy of materialistic naturalism. He rarely uses the word “materialism” without including “meaningless” in the same sentence.

He never mentions the premises of science. He never talks about the wonder of science or how it constantly questions itself, the very essence of the title of his book, that you live with the contradiction of knowing and not knowing. He promotes the idea that Christianity should examine itself, but never acknowledges that is almost the definition of what science is. He doesn’t seem to know that the idea that everything is natural, is a premise, and if it were shown to be faulty, we would look for a different premise. The important thing to note is that in 400 years, it has repeatedly been shown to be a premise that helps us understand the stars, to build bridges and to cure cancer.

Frank’s message is no different than any sermon I’ve heard, liberal or fundamentalist. He quotes a story of a hanging in a concentration camp then says, “Either God is evil and should be punched in the mouth, or there is no God. Which is it? Perhaps there is another possibility: Jesus’ co-suffering love is the best lens through which to reconsider God, or at least to reconsider ourselves.” The only difference is Frank goes on to say the God of the Old Testament is “apparently a vindictive monster” and sometimes Jesus is “trapped in pre-Enlightenment ignorance” and that “we need to forthrightly pick and choose what we follow in the Bible.”

At this late stage in the book, he finally asks a philosophical question, what does “good” mean?

As an answer he tells the story of Mother Maria, a chain smoking, bar hopping nun who helped Jews escape Nazi’s and paid for it with her life. He says, “To me, Mother Maria’s death is an example of love embraced as a stark life-changing and essential fact as real as the carbon compounds that form the basis of life.” He follows that up with more of his questions that he can’t answer and for a second, I have hope that he has turned it all around when he says, “Our best hope is not found in correct theology, the Bible or any other book, but in the love we express through action rather than words.”

If he ended there, or if that came earlier and he expanded on that theme, this could have been a great book. But he continues, “Our best hope is that love predates creation and thus that the Creator sees us as ever young. Our hope is that when we look at God through the eyes of the loving Christ we will see who God really is. Our ultimate hope is that God will be looking back at us as we’d like to be seen.”

That’s not atheism.

Fundamentalists react

To understand what the Fundamentalists were reacting to, you need to know where liberal Christianity came from. Finding the roots of any philosophy always comes with the danger of not starting early enough in history, but you have to start somewhere. A good place would be the end of the “Dark Ages” because it was then that scholars started to more freely comment on the Bible.

The Italian scholar Petrarch coined the term “Dark Ages” in the 14^th century when he noted the lack of Latin literature over the preceding centuries. The name came to also denote the lack of historians and of any decent architecture. This was primarily a European phenomena as Baghdad in Iraq and Cordoba in Spain were flourishing.

If you look at lists of important writing through European history, you will see a huge gap after the Greeks, then Erasmus. He wrote of free will and religious tolerance, those were radical ideas in his time. He wrote of the need for church reform, as did Martin Luther, but Erasmus wrote in Latin and was less partisan than Luther. He did not gain as many followers. This is unfortunate as Luther was less tolerant of other religions and his Lutheran party became increasingly violent, something the scholar Erasmus wanted to avoid.

Fighting over who should be able to interpret the Bible and how, led to war. Catholics were reading mass in ancient languages and telling the congregation what it meant and Luther and others believed the scripture alone should be one’s guide. This was known as Sola Scriptura. This led to wars. At the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, part of the treaty stipulated that princes within the Holy Roman Empire could select either Lutheranism or Catholicism as their official religion. (Thank you oh wise Prince for selecting for me from so many choices). Later in that century, John Calvin entered the debate with another form of Christianity. Relative peace was maintained until 1618, the beginning of the 30 Years War.

Noteworthy, during this time, were the trials of Giordano Bruno and Galileo. Bruno’s ideas were less scientific than Galileo’s, but they were still considered wrong strictly based on dogma, not on a review of his scientific accuracy. Some consider the trial of Galileo more of a political one rather than anti-scientific, due to the pressure on the Roman Catholic Church from the emerging Christian sects. They may have wanted to demonstrate their resolve to remain dogmatic. Also at this time, one of the largest monarchies of the Holy Roman Empire, the Habsburg family, was allowing their subjects to choose how they practiced Christianity, further upsetting the Vatican. Notably, near the end of this war, Descartes published his famous works, stating, “I think, therefore I am”. He is considered the father of modern philosophy.

Finally, when the 30 Years War ended, The Peace at Westphalia stated that Christians had the right to practice their faith publicly under any denomination (any Christian one of course). Pope Innocent X called the treaty null and void, but his powers were diminished. This was the beginning of modern international law, ending the feudal system.

Soon, critiques of the Bible were openly discussed. Scholars began to notice errors and discrepancies. This became known as Higher Criticism. It is not criticism as in "criticizing", but a search for the true meaning of the text. Also about this time was the earliest written statement that the Bible was inerrant. I don’t think the statement came so late because it was a new idea, so much as it was the first time that anyone felt the need to write it down and make an explicit rule for their denomination. Simply saying the Bible is the word of God had been sufficient up until then, in my opinion.

Eventually, this led to the idea that the Bible is just another document. True spirituality comes from the individual’s soul. 

You might also notice that Isaac Newton was born near the end of The 30 Years War and his scientific breakthroughs were nurtured by the newly formed Royal Society. The society performed experiments, published their results and reviewed the works of their members. They repeated each other’s experiments and compared results. If someone refuted another’s ideas, evidence was required to back up what they said. In other words, modern science was taking off.

This leads us up to Charles Darwin and to where we were in the first of this series. The only question left is how did the Roman Catholic Church come to dominate Europe for 1,000 years? To the point wars had to be fought just for the right to go to the church of your choice. Today, most of the world considers that wrong. So, was the RCC right about their theology? So right that they should demand everyone follow them, lest we all burn in hell? If not, then what is right? Were the Lutherans or Calvinists right to start a war over their ideas? These questions seem almost silly today, but they dominated European history.

In the last of the series, I’ll look at how this idea of dogma, of one true God, took over all other philosophies. 

First in the series