August 23, 2012

What is a "Christianist"?

This morning a friend sent me a definition of Christianist from The Urban Dictionary

Christianist*

1. Christianist
One who claims to be a follower of Christ and His teachings but who actively engages in acts and deeds that are contrary to His teachings.
A pastor who calls for the murder of someone whose political beliefs are disagreeable to him (or her) is a Christianist, not a Christian.

2. Christianist
A member, or members of the Christian religion that uses it as a negative weapon against a person, or an entire group of people.
An anti-gay Christianist group, NOM, believes they're protecting marriage by banning gay marriage.

3. Christianist
A member of the Christian faith who seeks to use a religion of peace and tolerance for political and personal gain.
Pat Robertson and his band of Christianists are doing everything they can to keep the Republicans in power.
*Definitions from the Urban Dictionary


Perhaps Rep.Akin fits this definition. This sort of thinking escapes the NTS category. While I struggle with the distinction, I find I must believe that there is a difference between Christians and Christianists.

August 9, 2012

These things are happening in Texas!

TWO BIG EVENTS COMING TO TEXAS THIS FALL!
FAITHANDREASON® will partner with other progressive organizations to present two seminars designed to promote critical thinking about faith and religious practice.
___________________________________________________________________________
OCTOBER 12 - 13, 2012
DR. AMY-JILL LEVINE presents
"JESUS, JUDAISM, AND JEWISH-CHRISTIAN RELATIONS"
in SAN ANTONIO, TX
Amy-Jill Levine is University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of New Testament Studies, and Professor of Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University Divinity School and College of Arts and Sciences. She holds the B.A. from Smith College, the M.A. and Ph.D. from Duke University, and honorary doctorates from Christian Theological Seminary, Drury University, the University of Richmond, the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest, and the University of South Carolina-Upstate.

This seminar is in partnership with THE WORK SHOP, St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Temple Bethel, Trinity University, Oblate School of Theology, Church of Reconsilation, The SoL Center at University Presbyterian Church, all of San Antonio, Texas, and Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, TX.

Connections Live! 2012
September 28-29
Temple, TX

BARBARA WENDLAND, a life long Methodist and author of Misfits: The Church's Hidden Strength
is hosting Connections Live! 2012 on September 28-29, in her hometown of Temple, TX. The event will be an opportunity for thoughtful, forward-looking Christians to meet in person, in order to reassure each other that even though our views may be in a minority in our churches or local communities, we're not alone; to see how we might promote needed change in the church and the world; and to plan how to support each other in concrete, practical ways.

Talks and a workshop on Friday evening and Saturday morning will be presented by Dr. Robin R. Meyers, tenured professor at Oklahoma City University, and author of Saving Jesus from the Church: How to Stop Worshiping Christ and Start Following Jesus; The Underground Church: Reclaiming the Subversive Way of Jesus, and others.
PROGRESSIVE CHRISTIAN ADULT CURRICULUM
ARE YOU LOOKING FOR SUNDAY SCHOOL CURRICULUM FOR THIS FALL?

FAITHANDREASON® audio and video productions are deliberately designed to promote critical thinking about faith and religious practice. There are many who claim that "thinking" is somehow the enemy of a sustaining faith. We categorically reject that notion and say faith without critical thinking is blind, unaware and often dangerous.

Visit our website at www.faithandreason.org and explore our progressive Christian adult curriculum products.

August 8, 2012

Some observations

For the last two months I have been on a retreat. On purpose I have been without radio, TV, e-mail, internet, DU, newspapers or even much conversation about what has been going on in the political world. I needed to see the world with fresh eyes. We were in Muslim countries, nations of the former Soviet block--including Russia and what was East Berlin, in the Christian capitals of Scandinavia, and throughout the mid-western Bible belt of the United States. I have garnered a few religious impressions during these weeks

We would all be poorer without the marvelous inventiveness of the Muslim world. The Blue Mosque in Istanbul matches for beauty any of the European cathedrals. The Muslim world has also given us: coffee, the tooth brush, algebra, the first universities, surgery, the first flying machine, optics, the crank, musical notations, hospitals, an ethical sensitivity and much more. Unfortunately this progress stopped dead when some centuries ago Islam became preoccupied with religious fundamentalism.

For centuries Mother Russia found her meaning in the Orthodox Church. When the Soviet took over and installed both a political and atheistic fundamentalism, a grayness descended from which Russia has yet to recover. A wise old woman in St. Petersburg opined that for centuries the church offered a solid cultural ethos. Then came atheistic communism, and when that dissolved Russia was left with no sense of who she was. From that vacuity she has not yet emerged. She currently has no story which tells her people just who she is.

For centuries the Scandinavian nations were steeped in a Christian ethos. In recent years they have drifted into a liberal secularism, which still relies on a Christian ethical system, but has abandoned doctrinal and ecclesial control. All surveys tell us that these previously
Christian socialist nations are the happiest healthiest, best-educated, most-contented people on the globe.

Much of the American mid-west and south has reverted to an angry Christian fundamentalism. Massive evangelical churches are everywhere. We saw, along a major highway, two mammoth white crosses visible for twenty miles and unconnected with any religious institution. Scattered throughout the land were billboards linking religion to a virulent opposition to Obama and the Affordable Care Act.

While for decades we have believed that the world has grown much smaller, it has also been narrowed through a variety of religious, economic and secular fundamentalisms. When any society or social group is squeezed into believing that it has all the truth, which is what fundamentalism is all about, it is bad for everyone else. The more we have seen of the world, the truth of that axiom becomes increasingly obvious. A healthy society is best served by a mixture of religion and secularism, as well as by a variety of economic and political notions, capitalism and socialism, including an openness to multiculturalism. At best ours really is a very large multifarious world, and we had better learn to accept each other.
In the words of Edna St. Vincent Millay:
The world stand out on either side,
No wider than the heart is wide.
Above the world is stretched the sky,
No higher than the soul is high.
The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand’
The soul can split the sky in two
And let the face of God shine through.
But East and West will pinch the heart
That can not keep them pushed apart;
And those whose soul is flat—the sky,
Will cave in on him by and by.

June 6, 2012

two very different notions of society, each flowing from religious roots

The political divisions in society flow from two very different notions, both of which are deeply rooted in religious thought. Republicans and Democrats are both supported by religionists who come from widely diverse notions of what makes society function. Political opinions are often tied to how individuals view these religious perspectives.

On one hand is the concept that society is a collection of individuals whose only responsibility is to the self. The role of government, and every other societal institution, is to keep out of the way. This ideology is derived from a deeply embedded notion called “Social Darwinism,” which posits as its primary axiom, the survival of the fittest. The naturally strong are those fit to inherit the earth. Their genetic equipment is backed up with personal drive. These are the able who have the genetic substance and the will, which allow for progress through individual initiative. If one’s religion is focused on personal salvation, this perspective is most often at root.

In modern times Social Darwinism has taken shape in the Objectivism of Ayn Rand. She spelled it out in 1962 newspaper article.
—Every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life.

While Social Darwinism has long since been refuted in much of the world, it still enjoys currency here among America’s religious and political right-wing.

The opposite understanding of culture is dominant among liberal religionists who see the good of society flowing directly from their religious convictions. While individual rights are not discounted, they lie embedded in a social fabric. We are all partners of one another and have a responsibility for one another, particularly the weak. No one is an island entire to itself. Every person is connected to every other person. It is the only way society can survive. The implications of this notion run all the way from the establishment of a defense force to food stamps.

This egalitarian notion flows from the religious roots which have guided much of American history. If one is honored, all are honored. Nobody is left out. The least able are served. Justice is a societal demand. If one suffers, all suffer. You probably are familiar with the texts. Interdependence lies at the core of this notion of religious ethics.
Beyond that, our Constitution defines a government of mutual concern and support. It begins. “We the people,” and goes on to detail what the people are going to do together through their elected officials. Nowhere does the Constitution suggest that we are no more than a collection of isolated individuals.

While we are not a Christian nation, most of our founders drew their perspectives from Christian roots. This religious dynamic found common cause with a non-religious dynamic springing from purely secular sensitivities. Religionists and non-religionists came together to form the basis of America’s ethical commitments. Our day calls for a similar joining of those who share a notion of an interdependent society, albeit from widely different religious and humanistic roots.

May 30, 2012

Check out the motivation!

“RELGION, ETHICS AND SOCIAL PRACTICE”—AND 20 AMAZING COLLEGE STUDENTS
This past semester my wife and I were enrolled in Religion, Ethics and Social Practice, a class composed of 20 undergraduates and 10 elders. This academic offering was part of the curriculum offered by the college’s Department of Religious Studies. While we sign up for a class each term, this intergenerational experience was different. I had never before encountered a group of 20 year olds as turned on to what their faith had inspired them to do in the community or the wider world, as were these bright men and women. Each undergraduate designed a project she/he was prepared to execute. Here is a sampling: Teach women’s soccer in the slums of Nairobi as a way to encourage self-respect. Work with women ex-convicts who make jams and jellies for sale in local stores. Work for a Constitutional Amendment overturning the “Citizens United” Supreme Court decision. Mentor minority youth, by teaching them the meditative skills which might help them prepare for college. Assist kids on drugs by providing them the testimony of ex drug addicts/

One of the proposals that got my attention was nothing quite so grand. A nearby city, here unnamed, had passed an ordinance which provided guards and locks for the toilets at the public library. No one is permitted to use them unless thev have a valid library card. Who does this bar? Why the homeless, who have no address, and therefore cannot obtain a card. And that restriction defines the purpose of the ordinance. If the homeless have nowhere to do you know what, maybe they will gravitate to some other city where they can.

This student, and those who will work with her, will do the hard political work necessary to reverse the ordinance. This will involve, among other things, discovering who promoted the ban in the first place, who are the others in the community who want to reverse it, and what necessary steps need to be taken.

Saul Alinsky, the nation’s best-known community organizer, faced a similar issue at a municipal airport, so he organized a “sit in” by which his group controlled every toilet in the terminal! It didn’t take long until the terminal’s operators realized they had a losing battle on their hands, and Alinsky got the changes he wanted. Rational discourse is one way to institute change. Guerilla theater is another.

At the same time, a spin-off of a local Occupy has secured a grant to find ways to provide the homeless with the personal identification needed to get a library card, a Social Security card, a driver’s license, voter registration, a post-office box and other documents necessary to re-enter society. Street people often have none of these things. These twin projects plan to work together. If the homeless in this community can get a card, then the toilets at the library will be free for the sitting!

But back to the class. From time to time I get disheartened by what is going on in America. Few things have more soured my appreciation of our nation than the rise of the Tea Party. Its inherent racism, selfishness, bitterness and support of inequality caused me for a while to wonder just where we were headed. And then I ran across this group of students, most of them coming from affluent families, who. had a vision of some noble possibility for their lives. While most of these young adults have a religious motivation which impels them on their journeys, there are others all across the country who have come to some nobler way to live through other motivations. Maybe there is yet hope for the re-flowering of America’s more gracious spirit. At least the students in this class have provided me with fresh hope.

May 28, 2012

A prayer for memorial day

William Sloan Coffin, one of the nation's clearest voices for peace and justice, was pastor of the Riverside Church in New York. Bill died just a few years ago, but left a distinguished trail of wisdom. Here is a memorial day prayer he once offered.

"Grant, O God, that they may not have died in vain. May we draw new vigor
from past tragedy. Buttress our instincts for peace, sorely beleaguered.
Save us from justifications invented to make us look noble, grand and
righteous and from blanket solutions to messy, detailed problems. Give us
the vision to see that those nations that gave the most to their generals
and least to their poor were, throughout all history, the first to fall.
Most of all, give us the vision to see that the world is now too dangerous
for anything but truth, too small for anything but love. Through Jesus
Christ our Savior, who became what we are to make us what he is. Amen."

~ William Sloan Coffin

May 21, 2012

What the Bible is really about

More than occasionally in “religion” there are references to some Biblical text or story which seeks to portray a miracle, paints God as a tyrant, and authorizes some horrible activity or prejudice. Take every word of the Bible literally and those are things you can certainly find.

Indeed, fundamentalists believe the Bible was handed down from God, and every word is God speaking. This Biblical notion is an easy target, and many posters here have taken some pretty good shots, even if a fundamentalist hardly ever appears in “religion.” Attacking a perspective which is not present, doesn’t advance anything very far.

Historically, this notion espoused by fundamentalists, is a late appearing doctrine. It developed in the US about a century ago. Ignored here is the Biblical scholarship which has been alive and well from long before the fundamentalists appeared. “Historic critical” Biblical research is at least 200 years old, and you can go back almost to the beginning of Christian history and find a very different notion than that assumed by the fundamentalists. Serious critics might well look at this scholarship instead of spending their energy making fun of the fundies. Any scientist or even non-professional ignoring everything science has developed in the last two centuries, would be laughed off he stage. And what is true of the scientific discipline is true of every other human intellectual activity—history, literature you name it. And yet there is an insistence that one can ignore all that Biblical scholarship has produced and be thought of as engaging in intelligent dialogue.

So what do we now know about the Bible? IT DID NOT FLOAT DOWN FROM HEAVEN, BUT WAS WRITTEN OVER MANY CENTURIES AND FROM DIFFERENT CULTURES, AND REFLECTS WHAT WAS GOING IN THOSE CULTURES. In its various parts it was always a product of the culture, not the absolute word of God from above. It therefore bears all the marks of the various cultures which produced it.
Out of primitive cultures came primitive readings of religion. A culture steeped in chauvinism and bigotry will produce a similar religion. No one can understand either the Hebrew Scriptures or the New Testament unless they understand the nature of the societies which produced them.

At the same time, these culturally condition documents were being developed, there were those with a different vision and ethical sensitivity who saw the limitations in culture-generated religious traditions. In the name of a very different notion of God, they stood in judgment on what they saw, and offered a radically wider, more inclusive, gracious ethic. We know them in the Hebrew Scriptures as the 8th century prophets. Amos condemned a society which made the rich richer and everybody else servants of their wealth. He condemned the popular religion which reflected that perspective. “I hate your religious rituals—but let justice flow down like a river!” Amos was told to go back home and shut up! Micah called a military nation to “beat swords into plowshares, and spears into pruning hooks, and to study war no more.” Jonah is a tale about how God loves the foreigners that the religious Jonah hated. None of these prophets represented the vast majority of religionists of the day. But they did represent what they saw as God’s higher ethic. No secularist of the times made the case. If these religious prophets had not made it, it would not have been made.

In the New Testament, Jesus is the embodiment of this prophetic tradition. He began his ministry quoting Isaiah, “He has commissioned me to offer good news to the poor, freedom to the captives, sight to the blind, liberty to the oppressed…” When confronted with the legalisms of the majority religionists of his day he replied, “You have heard it said of old, but I say to you….” He said that all the negative commandments the religious kept spouting could be summed up in only two: honor God and love one another. His friends were all those the religious conservatives despised. His work was almost entirely with the left out.

Today most fundamentalists simply replicate in religious language the radical conservatism of their culture. And they are in the religious majority. But as has always been true, there is today a small minority of Christians who have a different view of what is good, and explicate this good news over against the majority. They honor the Bible, not as the words of God, but as the best ancient cultures tried to do, even as they reflect sometimes very awful societies. Their colleagues are people of other religions and of no religion. All those who share this higher ethic are their brothers and sisters.

Throughout Christian history these two traditions—one usually very large and the other very small have offered highly different notions of God’s will and purpose for the world. You find this minority in seminaries and universities, in liberal denominations, councils of churches, thousands of progressive congregations and now and then in otherwise conservative churches. They always take Biblical criticism as vital to rational discourse.

It is my hope that when posters in “religion” discuss the Bible and the meaning of religious faith, their attention might be given to this minority tradition, using the scholarship and insights which have been around for a long time. To ignore what this long-established tradition has known because the other makes an easier
target, would not be acceptable in any discussion of science or other important disciplines. No one is asking posters here to agree with me, but only to take seriously what is going in the religious world.

May 16, 2012

It is clear that I am a theist, and have little patience with the atheists here who despise

all religion and spend their time lambasting it, NEVERTHELESS,
when it comes to the fight for values, I count as my partners those of religion or no religion who stand with us in these vial struggles. They are my colleagues!

This has been spelled out for me in a recent long piece in Alter Net. We progressives of any stripe need all the partners we can get, and I applaud non-believes who are in the struggle for human rights etc.

http://www.alternet.org/story/155370/why_atheists_have_become_a_kick-ass_movement_you_want_on_your_side[link:http://|

May 14, 2012

Obama breaks the bigotry barrier

Those who know him best tell us that Obama has supported Gay rights for a long time. For a while he, like many others, had assumed the issue could be resolved through some sort of legal domestic partnerships. But as his thinking developed, not as to basic beliefs but as to strategic ways to get there, he realized the inadequacy of that position.

For many of us the question arises as to the part religion has played in the ethical progression of millions of Americans who now favor marriage equality. Let there be no mistake, for the most part religion in this nation has played a negative and destructive role. Even among many liberal churches the change has been too slow in coming—just as it has throughout American society. For the most part, the religious community has been more part of the problem than it has been part of the answer.
That dismal record granted, it is not the whole story. There are thousands of churches which are not only open to GLBT people, but also actively involved in the movement to about marriage equality.

www.gaychurch.org/find_a_church/find_a_church.htm

Here is a listing of hundreds of US congregations that are open and affirming. You can check out specific congregations in your State or City, in his nation or around the world. In addition, there are several denominations which have taken a clear stand for human rights for GLBT people. Among them is the United Church of Christ, which has been on record for a couple of decades. For most of his adult years Obama had been a member of that denomination and one of its progressive churches. While it would be overreaching to say that he got his ethic in this manner from that relationship alone, it is fair to say that the church and the denomination played an important role in the formation of his ethical posture. While he and this church may still constitute a religious minority, the religious community is on the move. Every year there are more denominations, ecumenical bodies and congregations which are taking a clear active position on this issue. The false notion that religion is totally on the wrong side is to misread what is happening among believers. As religion continues to evolve and mature, many millions of us are facing the imperative of a faith committed to equality before the law and before God.


If you are curious about what is happening at the local level, I invite you to check out the congregations in your area whose names appear in the above list. You may be surprised.

May 7, 2012

What progressive theists think about atheism

Since it has come up a number of times, consider here what most progressive theists tend to believe about atheism. This response does not quite fit in the current string, so I’ll take a different go at it. Right at the beginning let’s be clear; many, if not most American church-goers are conservatives, and tend to believe that only Christians of a certain sort are “saved,” whatever that means. The religious scene in the United States tends to be dominated by these believers. While they may in these days be a majority of religionists, by no means do they represent all Christians. As I have often said, most ecumenical seminaries, denominations, Councils of Churches and progressive congregations do not fall into this fundamentalist pit. Increasingly religious progressives find common cause in a vital inter-faith dialogue. A large congregation near here has on its staff a Rabbi and an Imam. Our local interfaith seminary trains religious leaders in all three disciplines. If there is any argument within these groups, it is with a few within them that take a very conservative stance. For instance, if portions of the United Methodists Church is wrong on GLBT issues, they hear about it from the progressives within their own body—as well as from the rest of us.

Since atheism is not a religion, but the absence of one, atheists are obviously not included in any inter-faith conversations. The vital and growing “Parliament of World Religions,” has no representative from atheism, although Buddhism, Confucianism and several other “faiths” do not believe in a supreme being. Yet they call themselves and are called “religions” because they have doctrines, rituals, practices which are formally accepted by the adherents.

I have been deeply involved in all the ventures and groups listed above, and I have never heard, seen or witnessed in any verbal or written form, a criticism of either atheism or atheists. It is just not on the agenda anywhere. There has been some commentary about secularism as having a negative effect on culture, while humanism and humanistic institutions and groups are always seen as colleagues. In most cases Unitarianism, which is substantially composed of humanists, is always welcome to the conversations, and is among the groups that make the most important contribution. So-called Ethical Culture societies are largely atheistic, but they too often join the conversations.

In these ecclesial gatherings, nobody flouts a particular doctrine. The main interest lies in what various people and groups think about the issues facing society—which are the same issues facing theists and atheists alike. How a person or a group comes down on the rights of the poor, GLBTs, war and peace, economic disparity, etc., forms the basis of these conversations. There is no doctrinal litmus test, and nobody seems to care. What is important is the relationship between faith and the issues we all face.

Beyond these wide-ranging conversations, I have never seen in print, in journals books, periodicals or reports, a single word critical of atheists or atheism. It just never comes up and is on nobody’s agenda. There are, however, serious ideological confrontations with both fundamentalist religionists and philosophy’s like Randian Objectivism. It is not Rand’s atheism that is the focus of the objection, but the ethical framework out of which it operates.

These groups and persons believe that how they view issues before society flows from their religious commitments, but realize that others who have the same notions of what is good for the world, may have widely differing ways they have come to the same conclusions. Faith is not essential to any ethical stance, even while the ethical stance of many of us is in direct relationship to our faith.

None of these bodies is a debating forum with atheists. We would consider that an unproductive waste of time, and no one is interested. DU is the only place I know where this happens. We simply accept as colleagues in the struggle for human values, all those committed to those values. Faith or no faith is beside the point.