Christian Love of God…including the earth and its ecosystems
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Archive for August, 2009
Affirmation 3, Part 1
Sunday, August 30th, 2009How I got here
Saturday, August 29th, 2009I have a CD set, Masters 1949-1976, of music by Tennessee Ernie Ford. Last week when I was playing it I was reminded of my theology when I was a teenager. The song that brought it to mind was That’s all. The lyrics pretty much sums up my theology of those days. I am a United Methodist now but started out in my religious life rather more evangelical. Sometimes refer to myself as a “recovering fundamentalist”. I have in turns been an ‘independent’ Baptist, Lutheran, Southern Baptist, Pentecostal, Episcopalian and finally a Methodist. I was 12 when “I gave my life to Jesus” in the lingo of my first church. From the list of churches I have attended you might be fooled into thinking that I was deeply religious and spent most of my time contemplating spiritual matters. Or you might think that I changed denominations and churches out of deeply held beliefs. Nothing could be further from actuality.
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I went to Goodyear Heights Community church in Akron Ohio because my mother wanted me and my brother out of the house for a week. The church had a summer camp that a neighbor knew about. There were many churches closer to where I lived including the Lutheran one in which I was later married. And that is how I became a Lutheran. The Pentecostal and Episcopalian phases were equally life driven. All through the many churches (there were several from each denomination) I kept the basic fundamentalism that I learned as a preteen. It wasn’t that I didn’t think about God and faith; I did. It was just that I couldn’t see anything other than the basic ‘truths’ I had heard when I first started attending a church. I also never heard anything in the churches I went to that contradicted what I had been told was the teachings of the bible or of God. And of course I never really thought about any of it in relation to the real world.
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It is almost as if I was schizophrenic. When I was in school learning about evolution, the age of the earth or any other subject that contradicted what I believed was the inerrant word of God I placed that data in the real world part of my brain. What I heard on Sunday went into the church side. Occasionally, I did have questions when the two parts were in disagreement but under the pressures of hormones at first and then the need to support a growing family I managed to stuff the tensions. That lasted until the early 1990s. Then life bumped up against my fundamentalist beliefs. Strangely enough it was my beliefs about homosexuality that caused the problem. This was really strange because other than believing that homosexuality was a mortal sin I had no beliefs about it. Nor did I have any real world knowledge because that subject wasn’t taught in any school I ever attended. The only thing life had ever taught me about it was that “queers” wore green on Thursdays. This, despite my high school Trigonometry teacher. He always wore green on Thursdays. He did this specifically to refute that bit of street wisdom. God bless him!
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But when I was in my 50s life came in the form of Gail who I met at work. Gail is a lesbian which in itself wasn’t a problem. I knew a lot of people that I believed were destined for hell. The problems came as I found out that Gail and I were very much alike. We certainly shared a work ethic and as we worked together I found myself liking her. Eventually I came to the conclusion that there was something wrong in my thinking. How could someone that I had so much in common with be destined for eternal punishment? If she was, why wouldn’t I be? It took me a long time to understand that in not believing Gail was evil (or an abomination) had put a crack in my fundamentalist belief system. It was then that I started to think about what I believed.
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I was aided in the thinking part by starting to attend Asbury UMC. How could it not help to have Jeff Proctor-Murphy as a pastor? Having Tex Sample around was another goad for thinking. It would be nice to be able to say that I first went to Asbury because of the theology. I can’t. I went there because it was #10 on the list of United Methodist Churches closest to where I live and I tried it first. But maybe the reason I went back the next Sunday is better. I was so overcome with emotion on seeing all the gay and lesbian couples going to the communion table holding hands that I knew Asbury was THE place. It was a short distance from there to CrossWalk America, the Phoenix Affirmations and walking to Washington DC from Phoenix. All of which is what started me blogging.
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I am completely surprised that I have been doing this for three years now (archived on Asphalt Jesus with all other CrossWalk America posts after 15 September 2009). I have finally figured out why I blog. You may have noticed that I am not the quickest thinker around. Writing a blog forces me to think about what I believe and perhaps more importantly why I believe what I do. The discipline of writing about the connection between the world and my theology forces me to think about that connection. My current theology is pretty simple. The Phoenix Affirmations states it much more eloquently than I can.
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I wonder what my thoughts on the subject would have been if I had enough courage to talk to my trigonometry teacher about homosexuality.
Don’t forget some things do change as per below!
Lydia Ruffin's music
Thursday, August 27th, 2009Lydia Ruffin’s “Art and Soul Cafe” is highlighted in Ch. 10 of Asphalt Jesus, dealing with Affirmation 4 and reclaiming the arts in worship. Lydia is an excellent guitarist/vocalist, incidentally. If you’d like to hear some of her music or order her latest CD, you can find her at http://profile.myspace.com/lydiaruffin.
Some things do change
Wednesday, August 26th, 2009It is somewhat ironic that after I wrote last week’s post (but before posting it), Somethings never change, that Rebecca Glenn telephoned me with the news that the CrossWalk America website is fading into the cyberspace. I have mixed emotions about this. It has been some time (June 1st 2008) since we moved under the TCPC umbrella and so it is time to move on. Against this is all of the posts that I and others have shared. It started on February 12th 2006 with Walk in the Path of Jesus. That post was Eric Elnes testing the blog. So it is with sadness that I move on.
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The archives will be moving to Asphalt Jesus which can be found here sometime before September 15 2009. The links to the CrossWalk website will no longer work.
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I will be moving to the TCPC blog located here (or www.tcpc.blogs.com/crosswalkamerica/ if you need to cut and paste into your browser window). Until that happens I will continue to post here.
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This is all scheduled to happen by September 15 2009. With any luck it will. I am too old a techie to have complete faith in predictions depending on computers but I have faith that it will someday.
Dr. Elnes appears on The God Complex radio show
Monday, August 24th, 2009This morning I had the privilege of speaking with two Christian leaders I value highly, Bruce Reyes-Chow and Carol Howard Merritt, who host The God Complex radio show. The God Complex is an internet radio show engineered by another leader I respect highly, Landon Wittsitt.
I thought the interview was going to be recorded for airing at a later date, and thus was waiting until I got that date before alerting you to it. But the show was actually LIVE this morning! I think most listeners probably listen later, via podcast or by clicking the audio link on the site, anyway.
We spoke mostly about the state of progressive Christianity, my books, the Phoenix Affirmations, and how the Phoenix Affirmations provide a lens for interpreting and responding to contemporary issues. It was great fun to be “with” them and an honor to be invited. You may listen, if you like, by clicking general The God Complex link above or go directly to it by clicking here. [UPDATE 8/25/09: The audio quality on this is pretty sketchy. They were having technical difficulties for much of the interview, but I thought it was going to sound better than it does.]
On their site you may also find other interviews with people you may want to hear from more than me, like Barbara Brown-Taylor, Diana Butler-Bass and Phyllis Tickle.
Affirmation 4, Part 2
Sunday, August 23rd, 2009…worship that is as sincere, vibrant, and artful as it is scriptural.
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Some things never change
Saturday, August 22nd, 2009The volunteer office I manage is located in an area that has many small businesses in several dozen business parks. Dispersed among the commercial enterprises are a few churches. I know of an Anglican, Baptist and one, Beth Yachad, I had not heard of before driving past its sign. Being ever curious I checked out the web site, bethyachad.org, advertised on the sign. According to the web site Beth Yachad – House of Unity – is a Community of Messianic Synagogues. Huh…They also have an association with the Assemblies of God which makes me believe that they are of a Pentecostal persuasion. So, it is a synagogue – and an Assembly of God church – which welcomes gentiles. Interesting. I have been thinking about attending a service at Beth Yachad ever since I noticed the signs several months ago.
Last month I read an article, Starvation mum on home arrest, in the Straits Times which started me thinking about Beth Yachad in a different context. The article was about the member of an obscure (at least obscure to me) Jewish sect that became the focus of riots in Israel. The sect, Toldot Aaron, is one of several very conservative anti-Zionist sects in Jerusalem. Who knew that there were Jewish sects that were anti-Zionist? In researching the various branches and sects of Judaism I have come to the conclusion that Judaism is as splintered and divided as Christianity is. And always has been. The New Testament records the Sadducees, Pharisees and Zealots with maybe the Herodians thrown in for good measure. From other sources we know of the Essenes. Note: The links I have given here are from the online version of the Jewish Encyclopedia of 1901-1906 and so from a Jewish perspective but not necessarily a modern one. Bart Ehrman often mentions Christianities in the plural with respect to the beginnings of our religion and it is understandable how we started out that way with the example of Judaism as a starting point.
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I always assumed that all Jews supported the Jewish state of Israel but there sects -loosely associated and called Eda Haredit – living in Israel that believe that a secular Jewish state is heretical and evil incarnate. Knowing of and recognizing the divergence of Jewish sects, in the past as well as in the present, enables me to understand the arguments that took place in the synagogues during New Testament times. Apparently they are still going on.
We believe in Messiah Yeshua’s life, his miracles yesterday and today. His vicarious and sacrificial death as our atonement [my emphasis added], His bodily resurrection, His personal future return for His followers, both living and dead, and His future establishment of His kingdom on Earth. Isaiah 53:8; 2 Corinthians 5:21; Isaiah 9:6-7; 1 Corinthians 11:26; Zechariah 12:6-10; Zechariah 14:16-21
From We believe section of www.bethyachad.org
…, I have explained that contrary to the missionary claim that blood sacrifice is the only method of atonement [my emphasis added] in the Bible, there are three methods of atonement [my emphasis added] clearly defined in the Jewish scriptures: the sin sacrifice, repentance, and charity. Moreover, the sin sacrifice (known in the Jewish scriptures as korban chatat) did not atone for all types of sin, but rather, only for man’s most insignificant iniquity: unintentional sins. The sin sacrifice was inadequate to atone for a transgression committed intentionally.
Rabbi Tovia Singer, Could Jesus’ Death Atone For Any Kind of Sin?, Outreach Judaism website
Rabbi Singer also quotes the Tanakh –what we Christians call the Old Testament. Notably, Leviticus 17:11, Numbers 15:27-31, Hosea 3:4-5, Hosea 14:2-3, I Kings 8:46-50. Outreach Judaism, where I found Rabbi Singer, is “Judaism’s response to Christian Missionaries”.
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I find the disagreement on atonement historically interesting but I believe that other issues are more pressing at present. The Assemblies of God believe that homosexuality is a sin (here); I wondered what Rabbi Singer’s position is on that issue. I asked him that question and submitted it through the Outreach Judaism website. This was his answer:
Male homosexuality is a mortal sin.
With love of Zion,
Tovia
Isn’t it nice that they can agree on some things?
Bass, with Ripples
Friday, August 21st, 2009Affirmation 4 of the Phoenix Affirmations affirms that worship needs to be as vibrant, sincere, and artful as it is scriptural. What gave rise originally to this Affirmation – as well as several aspects of Countryside’s worship that you may consider to be “new and different” since I’ve been on the scene – was an experience I had in 1999 at our lakeside cabin in Bandon, Oregon (Are you beginning to sense that Bandon is a very special place for my family?). I write about that experience in the introductory chapter of my book Igniting Worship: The Seven Deadly Sins (Abingdon Press, 2004). I don’t think Abingdon Press will mind if I cut and paste that introduction here. As you read it, bear in mind that this was written from a particular context which is not Countryside, and reflects experiences I had there, some of which translate directly to Countryside’s context and some of which do not (For instance, I don’t find many people at Countryside sitting blankly, looking bored out of their minds in worship at either service). I also no longer feel comfortable referring to myself as a “liberal” minister, and more often than not use the word “progressive” (not that I’m entirely comfortable with that, either. Basically, I’m just plain uncomfortable with any labels). Anyway, reading what’s below may help you understand why we do some of the things we do in worship, both at 9 and 11 am.
Bass, with Ripples
Why are people totally bored in church? Why do they sit there staring blankly, looking like they’re just waiting to be released from bondage? There doesn’t seem to be any connection between worship and everyday life.
Okay, I’ll admit it: I’m a minister—a mainline, liberal, Protestant minister of the United Church of Christ, in Scottsdale, Arizona. I’m also a renegade. In the summer of 1999, I and a handful of others were trying to start a revolution. We felt worship had drifted away from its moorings and become too tame, too pre-packaged. We wanted to start with a blank sheet of paper, so we asked, “What is worship?” We then began the task of refashioning it according to that vision, endeavoring to create worship for the Twenty-First century.
While on study-leave that summer, I found myself sitting at the edge of a weathered dock on a small lake on the southern Oregon Coast. I’d been staring at the surface for a long time, not knowing why I was looking at anything at all, given my normal routine of meditating with eyes shut. I guess I had been inspired by the book I’d been reading, Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, an incredible exposition of God’s mysterious hand in Nature. Dillard’s words turned my soul’s gaze from the heavens toward the earth, where it was asking, “What is the basis of worship?”
As I gazed into the water, I suddenly sensed motion at the periphery of my vision: the largest bass I have ever seen! It was so big that, though it was swimming next to the sand three feet below the surface, it was causing ripples on top. It shot right past me and I gasped.
Now, I’m not claiming that God spoke to me in the bass. But, in the moment after I gasped, “a plum” seemed to “drop from heaven,” as the Buddhists say.
“This is the foundation of worship. If you can take that hour or so you have on Sunday morning and open people to experiencing just a quarter second of the awe and wonder you just experienced, it is accomplished. You can pack up and go home. You have an hour or so for a quarter second.”
Something felt intuitively right about this insight, like I’d lived my entire life and entered the ministry just to “hear” it and do something with it. Yet I wondered, “How does one organize an entire worship service around an experience of the Divine, whether the experience lasts a quarter second or an hour? It’s not like one can simply say, ‘Okay, now we’re all going to have a God experience.’”
At the end of my study-leave, I returned to my church, Scottsdale Congregational United Church of Christ (SCUCC), where we explored the experience and the questions surrounding it from many different angles. Together we realized that, although we can’t create or manufacture an experience of God in worship (and wouldn’t want to if we could), we can create a context of openness to God’s Spirit at work in our midst. A rock-solid theological premise at SCUCC is that the Spirit of the Living Christ (the Holy Spirit) is really present in worship. Not only is the Spirit present, but it is waiting for us to open even the smallest crack in our hearts so that it may enter within us, stirring the deepest waters of our souls. Thus, we concluded, our job as worship leaders is to organize worship in such a way that it’s kind of like sitting at the edge of that weathered Oregon dock: You can’t predict when, or even if, a bass is going to swim by, but you can set yourself up to be awake and attentive, with eyes wide open, so if it does swim by you don’t miss it.
We started a second service based on this premise and called it The Studio, which is built on an experience-based platform. The Studio is a multi-sensory worship service drawing upon a wide variety of artistic resources, including music, painting, poetry, dance, drama, sculpture, multimedia, film, literature, as well as other “sacred” and “secular” elements, both ancient and modern. The aim is not so much to teach people about God as to open us all to experiencing God in a way that resonates with, and transforms, our everyday lives.
The experiential platform of The Studio makes it different from most “traditional” and even “contemporary” services in the United States today, which are commonly built on a message-based platform. By comparison, most services present a relatively fixed liturgy in which the sermon stands at the apex.
At The Studio, the liturgy changes each week and is organized around the kind of experience to which we are trying to open people. Thus, if the theme is “God as Creator,” the worship team does not ask, “How can we teach people about how God is Creator,” but asks instead, “How can we help open people to experiencing the Creator God during the time we have together, or at least model what an experience of the Creator might be like?” We understand that the resources of the entire world are at our disposal for doing this.
Furthermore, preaching takes a different form at The Studio. Instead of a pastor standing up and delivering a sermon for twenty minutes or so at a fixed point in the service, the pastor acts more as an interpretive guide throughout the service, reflecting briefly at various points on what has just happened to us, or providing an intellectual bridge between elements. Strong use is made of laypeople as well, who provide reflections (often in dialog with a pastor) and prepare or lead the congregation through various segments. Laypeople also play a critical role in helping plan The Studio.
Since The Studio was introduced in September 2000, our church has changed in wonderful ways we could scarcely have imagined. I can hardly wait to get to church on Sunday morning! Worship has become an expression of our entire community. Lives are being transformed on broader and deeper levels. Many people who had “given up” and left whatever church they were attending long ago have made their way to The Studio, are becoming breathtaking disciples of Christ.[1] Even our “traditional” service has been enhanced through worship insights gleaned from The Studio. Most importantly, we have found that by bringing elements from everyday life into worship, we begin taking worship with us into our everyday lives. All of life has become worship, just as worship has become all of life.
[1] Worship attendance has nearly doubled in the last four years, with approximately 80% of those new to us being from the “unchurched” population.
Gay Marriage and the Separation of Church and State
Monday, August 17th, 2009It’s good to be back from vacation, friends! My family and I had a great time in Bandon, OR. Sorry for not posting during that time, but I’ve gotten a lot better about making vacation a true vacation over the years …
Since the last subject I preached a (full) sermon on was homosexuality and the Bible, and the subject while I was away was Affirmation 7 and the separation of church and state, I thought it might be appropriate to post the article that Dr. Jim Keck (First Plymouth, Lincoln) and I wrote in the editorial section of the Omaha World-Herald last April concerning the Iowa Supreme Court decision on gay marriage. It speaks to both topics! By the way, I’ll be teaching a class on the Bible and homosexuality in September – one version on Sunday evenings at the church and another version theology-on-tap-style at Myth Lounge in the Old Market on Wednesday evenings. Sign up at the Information Station on Sundays or call the church office (402-391-0350). Now here’s the article:
An April 8 World Herald editorial regarding the recent ruling by the Iowa Supreme Court concerning gay marriage urged readers not to let debate on the issue “devolve into … ugliness and angry stereotyping.” It also asked some important questions of Omaha’s clergy: “How will clergy advise their membership on how to deal with this? Will they be accepting of gay couples, or will those church or synagogue members need to go elsewhere to worship?”
As the pastors of large churches in Omaha and Lincoln, we thought we would take this newspaper up on its query. This is how we would advise not only our congregations but any student of the Bible and the US Constitution:
According to the First Amendment, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Contrary to popular assumption, Christians overwhelmingly supported the adoption of this amendment, as they believed it to be vital for the protection of religion even more so than protection of the state. By and large, we in the US have tried to hold true to this principle in all areas except one: marriage.
As opposed to certain European countries, where marriage is kept strictly separated into a civil function and a religious one, we combine them in the US without batting an eye. For many couples in Europe, if they wish their marriage to be recognized by both the church and the state, they must receive a certificate of civil union issued by the state alone, and undergo a service of “holy matrimony” performed by the church alone. For those with no desire for church or other religious recognition, the civil union certificate is all they need. This arrangement recognizes that the state has an interest in marriage only in so far as it furthers civic interests, and that the church has an interest in marriage only in so far as it furthers theological interests.
In the US, where no legal differentiation exists between a civil marriage and holy matrimony, we place our clergy in the odd (and dare we say, unconstitutional) role of determining which relationships are in the state’s interest and which are not. Similarly, the state is given implied authority to determine which relationships are blessed by God and which are not.
Consider the problem posed by Cal Thomas, whose column appeared on the same day as the World-Herald editorial. In making his case that gay marriage is a “dangerous precedent,” he states that “the problem with the Iowa Court ruling is that it vitiates a standard that defined marriage as between two people of the opposite sex, which was God’s idea, not government’s (see Genesis 2:24), while failing to substitute a new standard.”
The fact that Genesis 2:24 makes no comment on the legal institution of marriage, and the fact that many God-honoring churches and synagogues in the US are in favor of gay marriage, are minor problems raised by his assertion, compared to the problem it raises for government. Is it the government’s role to discern the mind of God? And shall it pass laws based on its discernment?
The reason why debate on gay marriage tends to break down so quickly is because by failing to distinguish between the civic and religious functions of marriage, we give religious institutions and the state powers that do not properly reside with them, which they do not have the means to adequately arbitrate.
Realizing this Catch-22, some have suggested that gay people receive “civil unions,” reserving “marriage” to heterosexuals. Yet while this solution at least recognizes the problem of mixing the functions of religion and government, it actually reinforces the problem. The reasons for separating gay and straight relationships into civil unions and marriage remain strongly theologically based.
Until or unless the US adopts a stricter separation between civil and religious marriages that apply to all couples across the board, the best route through this issue is to allow states the ability to marry gays and religious institutions the right to marry or not marry them depending on their theological commitments.
This arrangement at least respects the fact that the First Amendment’ requires the free exercise of religion. It recognizes that, assured of this freedom, some religious institutions will marry gay people and some won’t. And by granting marriage licenses to both gay and straight couples alike, the state is protected from having to determine which marriages are blessed by God and which are not.
We feel the Iowa decision should be applauded by all religious people, regardless of their theological views on marriage, for it at least rebuilds a section of the wall that protects not only the state from religion, but religion from the state.
Death and denial
Friday, August 14th, 2009
Have you ever been to a twelve step meeting? In twelve step programs they often refer to a “higher power” which some people call “God” but others refer to the higher power as something other than God. The simplest definition I ever heard was that GOD stands for Good Orderly Direction. That is about as basic as you can get. Being pretty simple myself that definition has an appeal for me. The reason I am thinking about twelve step programs and addiction is that I have been reading a lot about death and addiction lately. First there was Diane Schuler in New York who drove the wrong way on the Taconic State Parkway. The police say she had way more alcohol and TCP in her body than was legal.
Schuler’s blood-alcohol level was well above the legal limit, and she still had undigested alcohol in her stomach, State Police Maj. William Carey said Tuesday.
Blood tests also showed she had smoked marijuana 15 minutes to an hour before the crash, said Betsy Spratt, chief toxicologist for the Westchester County medical examiner.
As reported in The Washington Post article, NY police: Wrong-way crash driver was drunk, high, August 4, 2009
Then there was the TV pitchman Billy Mays. Billy died of a heart attack but:
The medical examiner “concluded that cocaine use caused or contributed to the development of his heart disease, and thereby contributed to his death,” the office said in a press release.
As reported in Huston Chronicle article, Autopsy blames cocaine in Billy Mays’ death, August 7, 2009
I had a good friend that died of a heart attack in a Seattle hotel room while he was there on business. This was back in the 80s. I never heard of any drugs in my friends system. But then I might not have been on the distribution list for that information. I do know that he had done cocaine. It was something he had learned in Vietnam. Even then I knew that coke was associated with heart conditions. And I wondered.
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In both of these deaths the families are aghast at the idea that there was any abuse of drugs or alcohol. – Technically alcohol is a drug so I wonder why we always need to say “drug or alcohol” – I know about being aghast that a family member abuses alcohol. I was married to a woman that went to the original twelve step program, Alcoholic Anonymous, long after we were divorced. I asked her later if she had been drinking while we were married. Her answer was “Of course”! So much for my keen powers of observation. My denial (and that of Schuler’s and May’s families) is not that unusual.
“We were totally unaware of any non-prescription drug usage and are actively considering an independent evaluation of the autopsy results,” Mays’ family said in a statement.
As reported in Huston Chronicle article, Autopsy blames cocaine in Billy Mays’ death, August 7, 2009
Schuler’s husband, Daniel, and other family members said the 36-year-old Long Island mother and cable executive was never known to drink. His lawyer insists that a medical problem – an abscessed tooth, diabetes, stroke or a pulmonary embolism – might have led the mom to self-medicate herself.
As reported in LoHud.com article, Alcohol keeps ‘cagey’ grip on moms, August 9, 2009
Daniel Schuler has a lawyer because relatives of the three men that died in the accident caused by his wife’s driving the wrong way are planning to sue her estate. He even had a tearful press conference (available here with more about denial in the Schuler tragedy: Family denial or hidden personal demons?) in which he denied that his wife was an alcoholic. He has not only the shame to overcome but legal woes as well. The Mays family has only the shame but their denial is just as strong
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There are many twelve step organizations (AA, NA, CA for users; Al-Anon, Nar-Anon, ACOA for friends and family members of users; OA and EA for non-drug related abusers) that are based on the 12 steps developed by Bill W, a co-founder of AA. Many people have found them to be useful in dealing either with their own addictions or those of others. A basic premise of the twelve steps is that each individual is only responsible for his or her own actions (or addictions) and no one else’s. I believe both the Schuler and Mays family could use a dose of that.
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Billy and Diane are dead. Does it make any difference to them how they died? I don’t believe that it makes any difference to the other six people that died – because of Diane’s actions – either. Likewise, I seriously doubt that it makes any difference to God.
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I wonder: how one would go about praying to Good Orderly Direction?