Category Archives: Uncategorized

“Sometimes the Bible is Wrong”–An Interview with Marcus Borg

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Check it out.

Let me echo the words of Paul, who says we have this treasure in earthen vessels. I think the NRSV translates it as we have this treasure in clay pots. I see the words of the Bible as the earthen vessel. The words are a human product, made of the earth, and yet within this earthen vessel we have this treasure of divine wisdom, this treasure of our spiritual ancestors, the stories and experiences and insights that mattered to them—as well as the limited understanding and sometimes even blindness of our spiritual ancestors.

Gordon Kaufman

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I learned yesterday of the death of Gordon Kaufman, Professor of Theology for many years at Harvard Divinity School. He was 86. Gordon was my teacher, occasionally my pastor at the Mennonite Congregation of Boston, and over time, became a friend. We were both Mennonites although we came from different branches of the Mennonite family and it is a testimony to his commitment to the Mennonite tradition that he remained one until his death.

He was a towering presence at HDS in the 1980s. His booming voice and incisive intelligence were intimidating. The first class I took with him was “Constructing the Concept of God” that worked out some of the details in his The Theological Imagination. Already by that point, he had become quite insistent that Christian theology had to remake itself in the face of the scientific worldview and jettison concepts and modes of thinking that no longer made sense in the twentieth century. His Essay on Theological Method remains an insightful discussion of how to do theology and the reality that theological thinking is a human enterprise. He and I had several lengthy discussions about the continuing importance of traditional symbolism and language, and the possibility that such language might remain lifegiving even in a very different historical context.

Gordon was one of the best teachers I ever had. His command of a seminar room was masterful. He could take a barely adequate student paper that introduced the material at hand, and use it create a discussion that dealt with the major points of the reading at hand, as well as help students learn to ask better questions. I am still amazed at his ability to generate movement in a two-hour seminar session. Whatever analytical skills I have were honed in his classes and by his responses to my writing.

It was also moving to join him on Sunday evenings for worship. He was one of the founders in the 1960s of the Mennonite Congregation of Boston, to which I belonged in the 1980s. He remained the theologian there, but he was also comfortable being with somewhat more “typical” Mennonites, families, singles, college and graduate students. One of my fondest memories is of a service in the late 1980s. The Society for Christian Ethics was meeting in Boston that weekend, and John Howard Yoder surprised us by visiting our service. The worship leader had planned some sort of song that including holding hands and walking around in a circle. Seeing Yoder and Kaufman together in that way was both amusing and a testimony to the power of grace.

We saw Gordon over the years when we returned to Boston, and at the occasional meeting of the American Academy of Religion. Our last meeting was a lovely breakfast we shared one morning when Gordon was the plenary speaker at the Southeastern Academy of Religion meeting. We spent time catching up; he remained genuinely interested in our life journeys. I had always hoped to have another such conversation with him one day. Alas, that is not to be.

The Fourfold Franciscan Blessing

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May God bless you with a restless discomfort about easy answers, half-truths and superficial relationships, so that you may seek truth boldly and love deep within your heart.

May God bless you with holy anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may tirelessly work for justice, freedom, and peace among all people.

May God bless you with the gift of tears to shed with those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, or the loss of all that they cherish, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and transform their pain into joy.

May God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you really can make a difference in this world, so that you are able, with God’s grace, to do what others claim cannot be done.

h/t Richard Beck

Two essays about death

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Dudley Cledenin, former national correspondent for the NY Times, writes about his impending death due to ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease) and his desire to die well.

In the Guardian, Sabine Durrant writes about Nell Dunn’s play Home Death, which was written after the death of Dunn’s partner Dan Oestreicher, who wanted to die in dignity at home. However:

Oestreicher was visited by five national health professionals – four district nurses, one doctor – in his last 24 hours, but none of them seemed trained to deal with a home death. When Nell woke in the early hours, she realised Dan was dying. His lungs were bubbling; he was panicking – he felt he was drowning – and in pain. She couldn’t ring for an ambulance because they would take him to hospital and he didn’t want that. She had four phone numbers, including one for a hospice, but when she rang she was told to ring back after 8.30am; when she called again it went straight to answerphone. Her doctor’s surgery was closed. There was no morphine. A district nurse came, gabbled into her mobile phone inches away from Dan’s ear, a doctor, another nurse. No one knew where to find an open chemist. “I know it was a Sunday, but people die on a Sunday for God’s sake.” There was irritation from the doctor who visited, tactlessness: “I’m being paid well for this.” Finally, late morning, everyone dispersed and Nell and Dan were left alone. She lay next to him on their bed. He came in and out of consciousness and at 1.30pm, their dog Primrose beside him, he died.

The nurse returned with the morphine at 4pm. She had been gone for five hours. Was she embarrassed? “I don’t know. I didn’t let her in.”

Dying well–the notion reminds me of the ars moriendi  of the medieval period, a genre of devotional literature that encouraged Christians to prepare for death, making a proper final confession, so they could be certain of a successful passage into purgatory. But there’s something else here, too–the desire to have control over how one ends one’s life. That’s certainly the case in Clendenin’s piece. It also seems to be some of the motive behind the assisted suicide movement. Those who are opposed to such things often criticize people like Clendenin for aspiring to self-sufficiency. He points out how he ministered at the end of life to his mother and other relatives, and that he wishes to spare his beloved daughter that experience. But has he asked her?

I don’t have answers to the questions raised by these essays, to the question of assisted suicide, or even to the question of human dignity, whether it be in the sickbed or at end of life. Posing the questions is hard enough.

Technology, life, and faith: Some links

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It seems there are always those who contemplate the effects of new technologies (and now, social media) on our lives and our faiths.

We could begin with the Amish, who make careful, and what to outsiders seem arbitrary and irrational, decisions about technology.

Then there’s Johann Hari pleading for real books against the distractions of ebooks and the internet.

Someone asks what sort of Christians does contemporary worship create.

Jason Byassee encounters texting while teaching a Sunday School class and wonders how leaders should deal with the presence of smartphones and the like in church services or other meetings.

James Martin comments on the use of the web by Catholic organizations.

And Elizabeth Drescher identifies elements of the Digital Reformation. Based on the results of a Pew survey, she observes:

While participation in digital social networks does not cause participation in religious groups, digital social engagement parallels local religious engagement. Where these two paths intersect would seem to be a particularly fruitful locale for socio-spiritual encounter.

 

 

Religious Institutions and the Property-tax exemption

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The property-tax exemption for religious institutions has been in the news of late. In Wisconsin, the legislature passed a measure that revoked the exemption granted to Presbyterian House at the University of Wisconsin for the student rental complex they constructed several years ago. Gov. Walker vetoed the measure. St. Francis House, the Episcopal Chaplaincy at UW is also proposing a housing development on its site, although plans there are for the project to return to the property tax rolls. From the comments on these stories, it’s clear that the property tax exemption strikes raw nerves.

Meanwhile, city officials in Palmer, Massachusetts, have asked several non-profits, from the Chamber of Commerce, to churches, to make payments to the city in lieu of taxes (this idea is not new; Harvard University has been making substantial payments to the cities of Cambridge and Boston for many years).

Matt Yglesias has posted on this issue. He argues that:

Urban land is a scarce commodity, and structures are valuable fixed assets. If you tax land and structures that are operated as homes and business, but don’t tax land and structures that are operated as churches, you end up with more land being used for churches and less being used for homes and businesses than would otherwise be the case.

This is silly. Take Grace Church for example. Grace is on the National Register of Historical Places; it is also landmarked by the city. As such, the property has no value except to members of Grace Church. If we were to abandon the property, as so many churches have been abandoned in America’s cities due to population shifts and declining attendance, the property would probably remain vacant. No other church would purchase it. The space is ill-suited for the needs of contemporary worship: there’s no parking, the space is not airconditioned, and barely handicapped accessible. No other other entity would be interested in it, either, except a themed restaurant-nightclub, perhaps.

At the same time, we provide valuable services to the city and the community: housing a homeless shelter that would be incredibly difficult to relocate, a food pantry, space for AA and other community meetings. Yglesias himself often argues about the importance of balance in urban planning, and we offer that as well, a courtyard garden that is much appreciated by local residents and tourists, a beautiful space that beckons even non-churchgoers who sense the sacred when they enter it.

I suspect that at some point in the future, the property tax exemption will be challenged, if not in Madison, the home of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, then in another part of the country. When that happens, some religious institutions will be forced to close their doors, and my guess would be that many of the endangered congregations would be located in old buildings in towns and cities that are already struggling to make ends meet, impoverishing the cultural and historical landscape of our communities.

St. Columba, 597

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Columba’s Affirmation

Alone with none but Thee, my God,

I journey on my way;

What need I fear, when Thou art near,

O king of night and day?

More safe I am within Thy hand,

than if a host did round me stand.

My destined time is fixed by Thee,

and death doth know his hour.

Did warriors strong around me throng,

they could not stay his power;

no walls of stone can man defend

when Thou Thy messenger dost send

My life I yield to Thy decree,

and bow to Thy control

in peaceful calm, for from Thine arm

no power can wrest my soul.

Could earthly omens e’er appal

A man that heeds the heavenly call!

The child of God can fear no ill,

His chosen dread no foe;

we leave our fate with Thee and wait

Thy bidding when we go.

Tis not from chance our comfort springs,

Thou art our trust, O king of kings.

                  St Columba

                  (trans. unknown)

 A Celtic Primer, by Brendan O’Malley

Here’s the commemoration in Holy Women, Holy Men.

The Search for the Historical Adam

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Now that the dust has settled over universal salvation, it seems Evangelicals are going to war over “the historical Adam.” Here’s Christianity Today’s cover story on the matter. It seems faculty at Calvin College are under investigation for having publicly questioned whether Adam ever existed; scholars elsewhere have lost their jobs. For those of us on the outside, the question whether Adam and Eve once lived and were the progenitors of all of humanity may seem a bit silly. The scientific evidence is clear–the human genome is virtually identical with the genome of Chimpanzees and it seems that we are descended from a community of at least several thousand hominids, not two.

But it’s not just the historical (and scientific) accuracy of Genesis at stake. If Adam never existed then Pauline theology is in trouble, and if Pauline theology goes, then what remains of the whole Reformed edifice? If Adam never existed, then humans didn’t inherit sin from him, and our shared fallenness can’t be redeemed, needn’t be redeemed by Jesus Christ

Much of the work trying to flesh out the theological implications of contemporary science for Evangelicalism is followed on the BioLogos website, founded by Francis Collins. Their take on this controversy is here:  http://biologos.org/blog/biologos-and-the-june-2011-christianity-today-cover-story/.

We might be tempted to laugh at this controversy, just as many of us laughed at the Rapture theology of Harold Camping, but there are significant implications for traditional theology and to the extent that contemporary Christian theology, and churches, like the Episcopal Church, claim continuity with the past, there are implications for us as well.

One of the reasons I am so fascinated by scientific advances in the understanding human beings, especially neuroscience, is that it challenges traditional notions of human nature-the body/soul dichotomy, for example. It is incumbent on us to develop a robust theology that remains faithful to the tradition, but also takes into account these scientific discoveries. If we can’t make our imagery and symbolism meaningful for the twenty-first century, we will no longer be able to help people orient themselves in the world and in their own lives. We will sound like we are speaking in a foreign language, describing a fantasy world.

The Venerable Bede 735

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Bede was one of the great figures of Anglo-Saxon Christianity. He entered the great monastery at the age of 7 and writes later that he spent the rest of his life there and “devoted myself entirely to the study of Scriptures.” He compiled Patristic commentary on scripture and provided his own interpretation of that commentary, many other works, but most importantly, The Ecclesiastical History of the English People. This work is the basis for much of what we know about Christianity on the island of Britain between the arrival of Augustine in 597 and 731. His work details the conversion of the Angles and Saxons to Christianity as well as the conflict between the Christian culture imported from Rome and that which had developed independently in Ireland and Britain over the previous centuries, symbolized by the different dating of Easter. This was resolved at the Synod of Whitby in 664.

He provides vivid portraits of many of the important figures of Anglo-Saxon history, and of many of the leaders of Christianity in that time, both men and women.

At the end of a brief autobiographical summary that concludes the Ecclesiastical History, Bede prays:

I pray you, noble Jesu, that as You have graciously granted me joyfully to imbibe the words of Your knowledge, so You will also of Your bounty grant me to come at length to Yourself, the Fount of all wisdom, and to dwell in Your presence for ever. (from the Penguin edition)

More on Hawking and Science and Religion

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N.T. Wright v. Hawking: In the Washingon Post. Wright points out that the view of heaven Hawking rejects is neither biblical nor is it particularly Christian. Wright calls his view “low-grade and sub-biblical.”

From an interview with Rolf-Dieter Heuer, the director of the European Organization for Nuclear Research and oversees the vast CERN laboratories in Switzerland.

We separate knowledge from belief. Particle physics is asking the question of how did things develop? Religion or philosophy ask about why things develop. But the boundary between the two is very interesting. I call it the interface of knowledge. People start asking questions like “if there was a Big Bang, why was it there?” For us physicists, time begins with the Big Bang. But the question remains whether anything existed before that moment. And was there something even before the thing that was before the Big Bang? Those are questions where knowledge becomes exhausted and belief starts to become important.

And:

But the more we investigate the early universe, the more people are trying to connect science to philosophy. That is a good thing. Since we are struggling with the limits of knowledge, maybe philosophy or theology struggle also with our research. I think it is important that we open a constructive dialogue.