Relevancy22: Contemporary Process Christianity: Post-Evangelic Topics and Theology: Nov 15, 2021

Quotes & Sayings

We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write from the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Monday, November 15, 2021

Authoritarianism has entered the Church; but not in a good way...

Former United States president Donald Trump's photo op at St. John's Church has been
described as following the "playbook of authoritarian-leaning leaders the world over".

Constitution of the United States - The First Amendment

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Authoritarianism has entered the Church; but not in a good way...

by R.E. Slater

This morning's news of Michael Flynn's extremist speech last night at a radical right rally in San Antonio, Texas, is cause for concern to all Christians and Churches teaching an openness of dialogue, irenic critique of beliefs amid doctrinal tenents, and welcoming of all religions different from themselves as is proper in an expanding, polyplural, civil democracy of the 21st Century.

However, under the recent Trumpian era of gaslighting fundamental and conservative evangelical Christian churches, white religious nationalism (aka, white supremacy) has gained a new traction in American churches once content in arguing doctrine with one another rather than attacking the democratic institutions of the United States of America as expressed in the Constitution's First Amendment Rights.

The church in the past twenty years has changed. And not in a good way. For those interested in see how these changes have taken place I have put together a complete podcast series of 14 discussions held by Tripp Fuller with Diana Butler Bass and Brian McLaren this past Fall. All these speakers (and friends), like myself, were at one time part of the fundamental / conservative evangelical church, but have now transition to a wake-up call in Jesus to step away from any self-referential belief systems into a more expansive, and tolerant, progressive Christian frame of mind where beliefs and dogmas might be discussed more patiently with one another.

R.E. Slater

November 15, 2021

News References

November 14, 2021

The Guardian -

Trump ally Michael Flynn condemned over call for ‘one religion’ in US

MarketWatch -

Michael Flynn draws condemnation for saying

U.S. should only have one religion

Google Search - Extremist Authoritarianism in the Church

One may also add multiple examples in European history
of both Catholic and Protestant authoritarianism

Religion and Authoritarianism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Most measures of religiosity, such as church attendance and affiliation, are positively correlated with the authoritarian personality cluster, which includes submission to authority, conventionality, and intolerance of out-groups. The correlation is especially strong between religious fundamentalism (defined as belief in an "inerrant set of religious teachings") and authoritarianism, both of which are characterized by low openness to experience, high rigidity, and low cognitive complexity. In particular, authoritarianism "is positively associated with a religion that is conventional, unquestioned, and unreflective".

Background

United States president Donald Trump's photo op at St. John's Church has been described as following the "playbook of authoritarian-leaning leaders the world over".

Hundreds of scientific articles have been published investigating the connections between religion and authoritarianism. There is a distinction between psychology, which treats authoritarianism as innate to the personality, and sociology, which considers authoritarianism a result of one's environment and posits that it may be influenced by factors such as religion.

A longitudinal study of Americans born in the 1920s found that this effect held for traditional church-centered religion but not for those that are seeking non-institutional spirituality. The latter mode of religion is "characterized by an openness to new experiences and by creativity and experimentation, characteristics that are antithetical to the conventionality that adheres in authoritarianism".

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Christianity 20 Years after 9/11/2001
by R.E. Slater

I've been finding Tripp's 14 or so podcasts on white authoritarian religious groups very relevant. These past recent years has shown to America the highly uncivil rhetoric and radical nationalism which has swept up the greater part of evangelicalism. If you, like myself, are finding yourself at a greater and greater distance from your church, family and friends, this is why.

Theo-Politicism has swept into the church and neatly divided 30% of us from our present fellowships. In these podcasts Diana has been tasked with reporting from the Pew Surveys and PRRI surveys issued recently during the discussions (the ones I listed not long ago that are always available to the public)....

Diana's religious focus is on reporting on the history of the contemporary Christian church as a religious sociologist who participates with these surveys on a regular basis and has written many books and blog articles over the years based upon her findings. You may also walk with her weekly on her website, "The Cottage".

R.E. Slater

November 15, 2021

You may subscribe free of charge -

https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com/

diana's podcasts -
https://dianabutlerbass.com/online/

also check youtube for more of diana's podcasts -
https://www.youtube.com/results...

and of course anything tripp fuller -
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=tripp+fuller

Homebrewed Christianity -
https://www.youtube.com/results...

tripp's site -
https://trippfuller.com/

mine own site -
https://relevancy22.blogspot.com/

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